laborious detail about lube jobs and oil changes. The streets seemed infinite, caught as they were in the middle of their tangles. Twisting stone paths winding a petrified forest. An army, a hundred armies, could hide within those hollow trees.
They cut through a narrow alley, as scrawny rats fled the jabs of their headlights. Then, about halfway along the dark pathway, they stopped.
“Well, here we are,” the cabbie said.
“Where?”
“Here. Come on.”
The man creaked open his door and hefted his bulk out of a broken seat that had cradled him for those thirty long years. He looked up and down, hitched up his grease-stained pants and smiled.
“Can’t leave her on the street,” he said. “Usually don’t leave her at all. But you’re a special case, Snake.”
Plissken climbed cautiously out of the back seat and followed the cabbie down the length of the alley and out. They were moving toward a huge stone building that was relatively intact. Wide stone steps led up to the big, iron doors. Cement lions crouched by the steps, guarding this stone palace in the stone jungle. They started up the steps. It was a public building, a library.
“It’s okay. Snake,” the cabbie said. “Better neighborhood. You can relax.”
Plissken thought about the time bombs planted in his arteries. “No thanks,” he replied.
They got to the top of the steps and the cabbie banged on the iron door with the flat of his hand. It echoed hollowly, like knocking on a huge bell. He waited a few seconds, then did it again.
He smiled at Plissken, his eyes gleaming slits. “They got a great place here. Like a fortress.”
“They?” Plissken returned.
A voice from the other side, female, said, “Who is is?”
The cabbie rolled his eyes and cocked a thumb at the door. “It’s me!” he yelled, loud enough to wake up the dead-or at least the walking dead.
“Who’s me?” returned the muffled voice.
“Cabbie!”
“What do you want?”
“Somebody to see Brain,” he said officiously. “It’s important.”
“Go away,” the voice returned.
Plissken grimaced and started looking for accessible windows.
“It’s Snake Plissken,” the cabbie returned, then winked in the Snake’s direction.
There was a pause. The magic words, the passport to the asylum. Sounds, scratching sounds, came through the door. Locks slid, bolts scraped. The door opened a crack. An eye peered through.
“You’re Plissken?” came the voice connected to the eye.
“He wants to see Brain,” the cabbie said.
“Why?”
Plissken shoved the cabbie aside and got eye to eye through the door crack. “I want to meet the Duke.”
The eye stared, unblinking, at Plissken for a short time. It wiggled, looking up and down. Then the door closed softly and they could hear the rattling of chains. Then the big door slid quietly open.
Plissken stepped through and looked at the woman. She was clean, head to toe-clean face, clean clothes, clean fingernails. The clothes looked new, and fit her well-filled frame like they were made for it. She had dark hair, mid-thirties hair, but her eyes were younger. Plissken fell into those eyes. They were liquid and inquisitive and more than a little mischievous; and he couldn’t detect even a touch of madness in them. Well-maybe a touch.
She looked him over, too, and when she was finished, the corners of her mouth turned up a notch. Like a smile. Or maybe like a sneer.
She made a gesture with her arm toward some stairs that led down into the great hall of the place. Cabbie jerked his head and they started down, the woman staying behind to relock the door. The place was huge, a lifeless cavern. The ceilings were high enough to be swallowed up completely in the darkness. A few torches lit the walls, trying to warm the cold, bleak marble that gave the place its deathlike chill.
They got down the stairs and waited. Cabbie put an arm around Plissken’s shoulder. The Snake shrugged it off.
“Brain’s the greatest. Snake,” the man said. “Mister Fabulous. The Duke loves him.”
Plissken turned to the sound of footsteps. The woman was coming down the stairs, a torch throbbing in her hand. He watched the yellow light caress her body.
“Who’s that?” he whispered to the cabbie.
“Maggie,” he answered. “Brain’s squeeze.”
She was almost down the steps. The cabbie leaned close so she wouldn’t hear him. “The Duke gave her to Brain, just to keep him happy.”
That Plissken could understand. The woman walked up to them. She used the torchlight to look him over again, and this time, the look in her eyes was all mischief.
“I heard you were dead,” she told him.
He frowned. Maybe everybody else knew something that he didn’t.
She led them down the hall. They went through an ornate archway to enter a large room lit to semi-light by well-placed, flickering lanterns.
Hooking the torch on a holder by the arch, Maggie led them into the room. It was the reading room of the library, shelves stuffed with books, stacks of them everywhere, piled high. They were all covered with a thick layer of gray-white dust.
There was a sound, a generator noise that got louder as they walked farther into the room. They came around a row of shelves and Plissken saw the source of the noise. A generator stood right in the center of the room. It ran a belt drive system that operated a pump, and the shaft of the pump was plunging up and down into a hole cut right through the floor-their own oil well, probably sucking gas or crude oil right out of an old underground storage tank somewhere.
Plissken was looking the well over when his good eye caught something else. On a near wall was tacked a large map of Manhattan. A figure stood before the map, well-dressed, like Maggie. He turned around. He was thin and brooding, but obviously well-fed. He wore a long, shaggy beard that covered a laughable, baby face. He stared at Plissken, then flicked out a thin tongue to lick dry lips.
“Brought someone to see you, Brain,” the cabbie said.
Plissken took in the man, studied him in the dim light. His bad eye was twisting the nerves under the patch, trying to get his attention. He mentally removed the man’s beard, and a tight-lipped smile stretched across his teeth.
“Harold Hellman,” he hissed, low and menacing.
The man’s eyes got wider. “Snake?”
“Harold?” Maggie squeaked.
Plissken eased his hand back on the rifle, back toward the trigger guard. “How have you been, Harold?” he asked. “It’s been a long time.”
“You never told me you knew Snake Plissken,” Maggie said, obviously impressed. Plissken wondered what it was he did that people thought was so special.
The cabbie was laughing again, having a ball. “Isn’t this great!” he said loudly, slapping his hands together. Then, “You know, Brain. If you could spare some more gas. I’m getting kind of low and…”
In a flash, Plissken had crossed the distance to Brain. He shoved the rifle’s barrel right into the man’s mouth. He started gagging around the thing. Maggie came forward to defend her man.
“Don’t move or I’ll spray the map with him,” he said, never taking his eyes from his prey.
The woman stopped, muscles tensed. The cabbie sputtered behind him, undoubtedly wondering where his next gas was going to come from. Plissken moved his face to within inches of Hellman’s.
“I’m glad you remember me, Harold,” he said in that low voice. “A man should remember his past, don’t you think? Remember Kansas City? Four years ago? Hmmm?” He shoved the gun in a little farther, choking the man with it “You ran out on me. You left me sitting there.”
He pulled the gun out of Hellman’s mouth and directed him to a chair with it. Fear overflowed the man’s eyes
