dead, its veins deteriorated and collapsed.
“He’s down there,” Hellman said, pointing to a burned-out train farther along the track.
Small campfires dotted the area around the outside of the Station, around the platforms. Light also flickered from within the still distant, crumbling testament to a world that no longer existed. Figures moved around the fires, silhouettes going about the business of survival. Plissken kept watching, looking for trouble.
Hellman was still pointing. “He’s in the third car, by the campfire.”
The train was just ahead. It was a hulking ruin, tons of dead metal, useless. Plissken eased up on it slowly and carefully. He heard sounds, and turned his head.
Engines, thundering engines. They watched past the weeds, past the out buildings, to the streets beyond. In the distance, the Duke’s caravan rumbled toward the Station, homeward.
“It’s all right,” Hellman said, but his voice didn’t sound like it was all right “Duke’s gotta go the front way. He’ll never beat us.”
Plissken grunted and looked at the man. “When you get in there,” he said, “talk fast, understand?”
The dirt road terminated in the crumbling platform. They bumped up on the cracked cement and sputtered toward the distant fire.
“What if they recognize the car?” Maggie asked, as they closed on the dark figures who huddled around the fire.
“Then I guess we’re all out of luck.” The Snake smiled and shoved his rifle into Hellman’s ribs. “Isn’t that right, Harold?”
Hellman just frowned at him. “Stop here,” he said.
Plissken had to floor the brakes with both feet to get the thing to stop, but stop it did, about twenty paces from the fire. The train loomed silently beside them like the carcass of some monstrous prehistoric beast.
“You know what to do,” Plissken said softly, and slid down in the seat. Hellman just sat there, staring out the bullet-pocked windshield.
“Let’s get it over with,” Maggie said from the back seat and opened her door.
It got Hellman to moving. He opened his door, and they both got out of the car. The Snake slid up in the seat enough to peek out the windshield. Seven men stood staring at them around the campfire. This was the part he hated, trusting Hellman.
Sliding across the seat, he quietly opened the door and eased out of the car on the train side. He rolled along the ground using the car as a shield, and finally off the platform, next to the train.
He rolled under the thing, then began climbing a boxcar to get up above them. He moved quickly, the speed still controlling his tempo.
Getting to the top of the car, he crept along its length, toward the one that held the President. He made the first one, then bridged the gap to the second as quietly as he could. Below him, Hellman had made it to the campfire.
“Hey,” the man said, smiling broadly. “How’s it goin’? How are you boys tonight?”
A small one with chunky, compact features and a red and yellow polka-dotted bandanna seemed to be in charge. He stepped out of the group around the fire.
“What do you want. Brain?” he asked, and his tones were edged with suspicion.
Hellman hesitated, his eyes drifting up to Plissken’s form on top of the car. The Snake held up his rifle, so that the man could see its shadow in the darkness.
“Well, ah…” he took a breath. “We’re going inside to meet the Duke,” he said finally. “He’s on his way.”
The man stepped closer. “He never said nothin’ to us about it.”
Plissken started moving again, past the figures to the next car.
“You know the Duke,” Hellman said. “He don’t talk much anyway. Sometimes you gotta guess what he’s thinking.”
Plissken slipped between the cars, going in the door of the rusting passenger car that held the President. He slipped in quietly, moving through the long shadows.
The President was in there, about halfway along in a seat. He was dirty, his clothes ripped and shredded. His face was waxen, drained of blood. A lantern lit him to yellow pallor. A cloth was wrapped around his hand, around where a finger should have been, but wasn’t. He was facing Plissken’s direction.
Beside him, facing away, was a Gypsy with a hacksaw, trying to cut through the titanium chains of the cuffs that held the briefcase to the President’s wrist. Another one, red bearded and scarred, was down close to Plissken, watching out the glassless window at the exchange going on by the campfire.
And through it all, the only thing he could think about was Hellman. Hellman dead. Hellman with a railroad spike driven to the hilt between his eyes. Hellman on fire. Hellman without a head…
They banged on him, but he was removed from the pain. He had maxed out on pain, O.D.’d on it; and like too much of any drug, it left him numb and sedentary. Through the haze, he saw his own rifle leveled at his head, and he laughed to think that Hauk would be deprived of the pleasure of blowing up his insides. He figured that the bombs would go off anyway, doing their duty, desecrating the remains of already lifeless meat.
Hands were grabbing at his holster, pulling it off him.
“Hold it!”
A voice, strong with authority.
Figures moved away from the Snake. The black man with the fedora strode over to him, stopping only long enough to give Hellman a sidelong glance.
“Kill him quick,” Hellman whispered. “He’s slippery.”
The man ignored him and walked on. Plissken opened his eye wide to stare his hatred to the man. A feeling they could share.
There was a sound, a creak. The Duke turned to it. The President was trying to slip away between the cars.
“Don’t move, craphead,” the Duke said, then immediately turned his attention back to the Snake.
They stared at one another.
“Who are you?” the big man asked.
The Snake ignored him. If he was going to die, he would do it as he lived. In total defiance.
The Duke pursed his lips and put his hand on the arrow in Plissken’s leg. He pushed it in farther. The fire again shot through Plissken’s brain, threatening to short circuit him into unconsciousness.
“He’s Snake Plissken,” Hellman said. “From the outside. He had a gun, Duke. There was nothing I could do.”
Plissken turned for one more look at Hellman. Maggie stood behind him. She was slipping him something that he tucked under his coat.
The Duke released the arrow and stood up full, running fingertips lightly across the scars that gouged his face like planting furrows. “Snake Plissken,” he said from faraway. “I’ve heard of you.”
He walked up to straddle Plissken’s form. A tire tool was in his hand. He smiled through crooked teeth, and the Snake watched the metal bar coming toward him in slow motion. It came down on his head, but he never felt it. He just drifted away into the black, gas jumping night.
The last thing he heard before the dark mist came to wrap him up in taffy-like dreams, was the Duke’s voice echoing from another world somewhere.
“I heard you were dead.”
XVIII
5:45 A.M.
Bob Hauk stood at attention atop the great wall, looking toward the mammoth towers of the World Trade Center across the bay. His hands held a deathgrip on the binoculars that were strapped around his neck.
The morning was coming up bright orange and purple, the polluted atmosphere refracting the early sunlight in
