The Filter Trap (18 page)

“Thirty miles an hour.”

Natalie approached Kam from behind as he stood with his back to the tower.

“Hard to believe, right?” He didn’t put down his binoculars. “Feels like 300 cutting through the water like this.”

“Still faster than going from Nova Scotia to New York in a car.”

“I can see the Freedom Tower.” He offered her the binoculars. “Want to see.”

“If Manhattan is anything like Boston I’m not interested.”

“Can’t tell much from this far, but the skyline certainly seems different.”

“They sent me up here to get you, Kam. It’s time for our briefing, c’mon.”

She put her arms around his waist, locking him in place.

“Seems like you don’t want me to go anywhere.”

“Everything’s changed. Even if they let me go home, I may not be able to get back. I may never see you again.”

He put his hand over hers and turned to face her.

“Life isn’t binary. Stop thinking in absolutes. I seem to be more important now than a no-name MIT professor with a few mentions in Wired magazine. Whatever the Event is, things will normalize. That’s what humans do: we move on.”

She hugged him closer.

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

The briefing took place in the ward room, large for a Navy ship, but small compared to anything else. Filled with many chairs, a few tables, a few couches, and two televisions, Kam imagined it was the one place the sailors could cool down and relax. Today the room filled with tension. All the uncertainty for sailors and survivors alike focused on the mysterious professor that rode in on a Huey.

The insistence of everyone involved that they knew nothing about the Event, that there was no conspiracy, only fueled the flames of suspicion. To keep them on board any longer might be downright dangerous. Although Natalie and Kam were not eager to leave the safety of the ship where their brief romance had started to flower, Susan, Pith, Minor, and Silversun were more than happy to leave. The latter had already taken spots at the large U-shaped table facing one of the televisions when the lovebirds came down from top deck.

Without waiting for Kam or Natalie to sit down Pith began. “I’ve received word that the corporal and private will be taking you to an evacuation base in the Catskills. After that you will be taken to an undisclosed location and rendezvous with two other scientists, a Doctor Jill Tarmor—”

“What?” Kam couldn’t help but interject.

“This isn’t a classroom discussion, Douglass! At the very least you will ask permission to speak. You better get the protocol down before you try interrupting the president!”

“I’m sorry, General. I was not expecting to hear that name. I have . . .
worked
with Doctor Tarmor in the past.”

Natalie looked at Kam with suspicion. He opened his mouth to say something but the general started again.

“We’ve all worked with thousands of folks in our careers. Since your big brain got you on the safe list you shouldn’t be surprised that a few of your liberal university brainiac friends also made the cut. I don’t suppose you know the other doctor, Dr. Sands?”

“Alan! Is this a joke? I couldn’t believe it when Private Silversun mentioned it before. Thought she had to be mistaken.” Kam slammed his hands on the table.

“So you know them. Fantastic. A little family reunion is in store. Lucky you. Anyway, what’s going to happen is we’re going to put you on another chopper with the Marines here. They’ll fly over to Manhattan on the way to the Catskills and pick up some senators and other folks on the president’s list.”

Natalie raised her hand and Pith pointed. “General, why Kam? And why the other doctors?”

Kam didn’t wait for the answer, fairly sure the general didn’t know anyway. He put his hand up. Pith nodded. “Allan is one of the best astrophysicists in the world. He’d cataloged hundreds of exoplanets at home, by himself. And it’s no coincidence they’re gathering the three of us. We all worked on SETI research. Jill still does—er—did until the Event.”

“I’m sorry.” Susan raised her hand. “SETI?”

“That one I do know,” Pith said. “Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence. Aliens.”

“Oh God!” Susan buried her head in her hands. “My uncle said they were coming for us. Told me to listen to
Coast-to-Coast
. I thought he was crazy. Which ones are they, the reptilians? The Grays? Oh, Jesus, not the robots!”

“Not nothin’!” Pith announced. “Don’t believe everything you see at the multiplex. The government has been studying the prospect of alien visitation since the 40s. Project Blue Book is barely classified these days, and all it showed was how much money the government could piss away on a wild goose chase. There are
not
little green men invading at the poles.”

“Sir,” Silversun asked, “why are we taking the SETI scientists to the evac, to an undisclosed location, then?”

“
Undisclosed.
Sounds like Area 51 to me,” Susan said.

“Because the Commander in Chief said so!” Pith bellowed. “Or do you think the senator on his list you’re picking up in Manhattan
also
knows aliens personally? My guess is our president wants more of his liberal pals around when the shit hits the fan.”

Pith glared at Kam, then turned to the Marines.

“No more questions. You’ve got your assignments.” He stormed out of the ward room.

Minor looked to Kam. “Those other docs are space researchers, stars and radio waves and stuff, right?”

“For lack of a longer, more accurate description, yes, that kind of
stuff
.”

“Then why do they need a language guy?”

Kam looked at Susan and chuckled. “Maybe they need me to talk to some little green men.”

Nobody else laughed.

“You were right before,” Silversun surmised. “They musta found somethin’”

Susan scoffed. “Hope you have better luck than the scientists that try to talk to aliens in every movie I ever saw.”

“What do you mean?”

“They all die.”

“Where is the general?” Susan yelled over the rotor noise.

“Different chopper,” Minor yelled back, as he helped Susan and the others into the V22 Osprey’s main hold. The cargo section had nothing more than folding seats with harnesses for the passengers. Minor quickly made sure they were all strapped in and then handed out earplugs as the engine noise increased.

With a small bump, the aircraft lifted off the ground.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Kam said, though no one could hear.

The nacelles turned slightly away from the sky and the Osprey’s nose dipped forward. The passengers, strapped along the inner hull, squished shoulders. Gradually, the Osprey leveled out before a few quick banks pointed it toward the eastern coastline, not that anyone but the pilots could tell. Unlike the choppers the passengers had ridden in previously, the Osprey passenger compartment had no windows of any kind. If it had, they’d have seen little more than fog rolling off many miles of open ocean.

After twenty minutes they reached the remnants of Montauk and the Hamptons. The few luxurious multi-story estates that remained standing peaked from several feet of water. The Long Island State Pine Barrens Reserve struggled to absorb flooding from the Peconic River in the north and the tributaries of Seatuck Cove in the south. Steep barren hills stood like rudders before backwash of thousands of pines, torn and battered like toothpicks.

Dirty, deep water sloshed through the empty neighborhoods along I-495, cutting the peninsula in half. Nothing would be rebuilt below it. The Osprey stayed low, taking a visual record in case any survivors could be spotted and reported.

In Queens, buildings appeared on the horizon like fists protesting the calamity. Despite their New York resolve to withstand the storm, many were stripped to bone and fell into piles of weathered steel and broken old bricks.

The bridges were the only remaining dividing line between the eastern boroughs and Lower Manhattan. The East River had disappeared into channels of water crisscrossing Midtown and SoHo, remaining only as a wide street demarking the transition to taller buildings made of tougher stuff.

Manhattan’s residents hadn’t fared well, but their construction remained. Glass shattered in the waves cut bodies in the water to ribbons. The streets filled with trails of auburn in standing water. The East Village and the Bowery benefited by hiding behind the high apartment buildings of the Lower East Side; the skeleton still hung in the second story window of Search and Destroy. Further west, the top of the Washington Square Arch stood tall over uprooted trees.

Banking north, the Osprey flew over the Empire State Building, still a symbol of endurance as the world under it changed dramatically again. Survivors huddling inside waved makeshift flags made of clothing as the aircraft approached and flew along the wide path of Park Avenue.

Grand Central Station’s glass windows were gone, but the steel and stone largely remained. Hercules and Minerva were demoted to collectors of trash and debris caught on their battered, giant bodies. Mercury left his post above the clock to revisit his earlier occupation. Abandoning his duty to protect the lesser gods of Wall Street, Mercury returned to the Earth to ferry the unfortunate souls of the city to the underworld.

Though he’d left, his protection allowed buildings like the adjacent MetLife Tower to withstand the waves. The Osprey slowed and maneuvered to land on the broad eight-hundred-foot-high tower landing pad, one of few in the city large enough to accommodate it. On the periphery of the rooftop, a man and woman in tattered suits waved to the chopper.

“Senator evacs spotted,” a pilot said over the com. “Let’s make this quick and tight.”

The Marines started to unbuckle and prepare to help the senators on the rooftop board the chopper when it landed. They gripped bars by the door to the main bay, prepared to leap into action as soon as it opened. The other passengers teetered slightly and eagerly anticipated loosening their own straps.

A hard bump meant they’d landed, though sirens didn’t normally accompany it. The thumps continued as the Marines shouted at each other-something was wrong. They pulled the door closed and Minor shouted, “Brace yourselves!”

“Get back!” the pilot shouted over an exterior loudspeaker to the senators on the roof.

Over a wail of sirens and shouting, the rotors and engines struggled as the aircraft lurched to one side. The Osprey skittered off the side of the helipad and attempted to right itself, pulling back up. The pilots had never trained to fly the notoriously difficult craft in the confines of a Manhattan city block. A moment later the passengers heard and felt one of the rotors clash with the side of One Grand Central.

The Osprey, dependent on the power of only one engine, spun and tipped forward before hitting something hard below. Bereft of any upward thrust, the aircraft rolled and crashed, landing at a strange angle that left half the passengers hanging forward from their harnesses as sirens blared and lights flashed.

To their surprise, after going down in the middle of Manhattan, the aircraft rested in the clutches of a row of tall trees. The leaf-bare columns and top-fingers of Bryant Park’s London Planes, protected from the waves on the eastern side by the taller New York Public Library, fused into a giant bramble, perfectly suited to grab and nestle broken fuselage.

“Headcount!” Minor yelled while trying to help Natalie escape from her harness. Silversun scuttled to the bottom of the tipped aircraft to grab emergency supplies, then visited the cockpit. “They’re both gone.”

“Radios?”

“Also gone!”

“Shit! Starting to think you two are bad luck,” Minor complained as he finished unharnessing Natalie. He motioned to Susan by Kam’s other shoulder. “She alright?”

Susan didn’t respond. Her head hung, hair in knots and mouth agape beneath it. Kam lifted her head to see blood trickling down the opposite side onto her arm. Feeling around the back of her head and seeing more blood on the hull behind it he knew she was probably dead. He felt for a pulse and never found it.

Realizing how close he’d come to losing Natalie, he shivered.

“Yeah, bad luck alright, she’s gone,” Minor said, while helping Natalie up to Silversun, preparing to hoist her out.

“You’re next,” Minor told Kam, who squirmed until he realized Minor meant next out the door.

Kam dropped inch by inch on the makeshift rappelling line to the water beneath the smoking Osprey. Silversun and Natalie waited thirty yards away, in the calm water at the center of the park, barely visible through a fog of burning fuel.

“What happened?” Natalie asked when they reunited.

The water rippled and any remaining leaves on the London Planes shook. Natalie reflexively grabbed the small handles of the inflatable raft.

“Easy!” Silversun grabbed Natalie from behind before she capsized them.

“
That
happened,” Minor said, paddling another raft over with Kam.

“Earthquake,” Kam said while tossing out his earplugs. “A missing Moon does more than affect the tides.”

“We were coming down fine,” Silversun started, “but then the whole building shifted a foot to the left, right underneath us. I saw it out the window. The wheel slipped off and unbalanced the rotors, and we never recovered.”

“Lucky to bang up and fall over into Bryant Park, though,” Natalie said.

“Susan wasn’t so lucky,” Kam said.

“Nor were the senators or the pilots,” Minor said.

“We mowed them down like grass before we went over the side,” Silversun said.

Natalie tried to keep tears down. “When will this end, Kam?”

“Earthquakes and aftershocks could last for days.”

“No, this
thing
. The ‘Event.’”

“Gotta find out what it is first, ma’am,” Silversun said.

“And according to the general, that means getting your boyfriend upstate.”

“He’s not my—”

“How are we going to get there now?” Kam cut her off. “We’re in New York City with no radio after a tsunami.”

“Hey!” Silversun stopped him. “We’ve still got a radio.”

“Then why haven’t you called anyone on it yet?”

“Because we’re not there yet,” she said, pointing at the spire atop the landmark art deco skyscraper only a few blocks south.