If I plan…
Like as not…
Sure I can.”
A head poked out the cab window, a big, ugly face with an obscene, grinning mouth. It was the man from the theater.
“Where you goin’, buddy?”
Plissken looked hard at the man, then back down the alley at the crazies who were a block away and closing fast. There was no time for thought, no time to determine whether or not he could trust the man.
He grabbed the handle and pulled it. The cab was battered. It looked like it had been dropped from a ten- story building, then hammered back in shape. The headlights were strapped on the fender. The windows, glass long-gone, were heavily barred. The faded yellow paint job was scarred by deep gouges and long, raking claw marks. Perfect. The Snake jumped in the back seat.
The cabbie turned to grin some more at him. “Bad neighborhood, Snake,” he said, and reaching beside him on the seat, picked up a peaked cap with a black bill and put it on his head.
Plissken turned to stare down the alley. The crazies were getting closer and closer.
“That’s what I’m for…
Proper time for… get, get, get, gettin’ even.”
“You don’t want to be out walking this neighborhood at night,” the cabbie said. “No sir.”
The man’s picture, faded and cracked past recognition, was stuck to the visor. There was a meter stuck to the dash, and clear bottles filled with amber liquid and rag-plugged tops sat beside the man in the front seat. Cocktails. And not martinis.
The crazies were half a block away, their screams nearly drowning out the music.
The cabbie lit a cigarette and took a deep, satisfied drag. “I’ve been a cabbie for thirty years and, let me tell you, you just don’t walk around here and live to tell the tale.” He shook his ugly head, frowning, for once, to make the point. “No sireebob. They’ll kill you and have you stripped to the bones in ten seconds flat. I’m usually not down here myself. I wanted to see that show.”
Plissken put a squeezing hand on the man’s shoulder. The crazies were nearly on top of them. “Let’s go,” he hissed.
The cabbie, smiling again, picked up one of the bottles off the seat. He touched his smoker to the rag plug. It burst into flames, licking the cab ceiling. He held the bottle out to Plissken, shaking it.
“This stuff’s gold around here, you know,” he said.
The crazies hit the car, on the run. Shaking, clawing, reaching. The cabbie casually tossed the bottle out the window and it exploded in their midst, flaring fire.
The front ranks went up in flames and the smell of burning flesh stood out even above their slime stench. The cabbie hit the gas pedal, and the car screeched away from the conflagration, swerving on down the street.
Plissken watched the orange fire disappear out the glassless rear window, then sank back gratefully in the seat. The aches and pains began to creep up his body the moment he relaxed. He took some more speed out of his pouch and ate it.
The cab was moving at top speed down the deserted streets, the driver taking obvious delight in being able to do things he could have never done when the city was a city. The buildings lay in ruins all around them, crumbled, decimated.
“When’d you get in, Snake?” he asked over his shoulder. “I didn’t know they caught you.”
He took a corner too fast, screeching around, back end fishtailing. Plissken fell over partway on the seat. He was already forgetting about the crazies and remembering how short his time on Planet Earth was going to be if he didn’t find the President.
The driver was still talking. “Snake Plissken in my cab,” he said proudly. “Wait’ll I tell Eddie.”
He turned around, grinning quickly. “Hold on, Snake!”
Turning the wheel hard, they swung into an alley, the cab going up on two wheels, nearly toppling. The cabbie was laughing, enjoying the hell out of himself. Plissken wondered if he would have been better off back with the crazies.
“Gotta take a shortcut to get out of here,” the man was saying. “You can run into real trouble on the streets.” He shook his head. “Night before a food drop, hell! Forget it.” He started laughing again. “Hey, Snake. Watch this!”
They sped through the alley, then took another hard right, throwing Plissken to the other side of the seat. His gratitude was slipping quickly away.
They tore through the empty streets, through the darkened towers of glass and stone.
“See her take that turn?” the cabbie asked, and his voice was high-pitched and excited, charged by his own mad adrenal glands. “Hell, I had this very cab before I got sent up. I locked her up before they walled us in. When they sent me back in, she started right up, like nothin’ changed.”
“And I’m tryin’ soft
And I’m tryin’ hard
Sneakin’ round to catch ’em
All off guard
Can I do it anonymously?
Can I do it?
You just wait and see.”
“Three years,” he kept saying. “Three fuckin’ years, and she started right up. What a beauty.”
Plissken was through with it. He just didn’t have the time. “Hey,” he said.
The cabbie jumped, startled. It was almost as if he’d forgotten that Plissken was back there. “What were you doin’ back there. Snake?”
“Looking for somebody,” Plissken answered coldly.
“Shoulda asked me,” he said. “I know everybody in this town. Been driving this cab for thirty years. This very same cab. Did I tell you that she started right up. After three years, she…”
Plissken jammed his rifle into the back of the cabbie’s neck. “Now, just shut up for a minute!” he said angrily. “I’m gonna ask you a question, and you got one second to answer.” He took a deep, rasping breath. “Where’s the President?”
“The Duke’s got him,” the man answered matter of factly. “Hell, everybody knows that. Sure, the Duke’s got him. Gee, Snake, you don’t have to put a gun to my head. I’ll tell you.”
“Who’s the Duke?”
The man’s head turned sideways, eyebrows up in surprise. “The Duke of New York!” he said. “The big man. A-number-one, that’s who.”
“I want to meet this Duke.”
The cabbie started chuckling again. “You can’t meet the Duke. Are you crazy? Nobody gets to meet the Duke, he’s the big guy. You meet him once, then you’re dead.”
Plissken pushed the rifle barrel a little harder into the man’s neck. “How do I find him?”
The cabbie shrugged his hands off the wheel. “Well, I know a guy who might help you. He’s a little strange, though.” The man stopped talking long enough to take another drag on his cigarette. “Gee,” he said at last. “You didn’t have to use your piece on me. I woulda told you.”
“One more thing,” the Snake said.
“Yeah?”
“Would you please slow this son of a bitch down?”
XV
150TH ST. MEMORIAL LIBRARY
17:10:19, 18, 17…
Plissken watched the streets as they drove. The cabbie droned without thought or meaning, talking in
