“Jason? Please, honey!” The voice grew louder, and when Vasco didn’t move it changed, morphed into something deeper, more menacing, the sound of a synthesizer breaking up in anger. “Jason…”
The screens came back on and switched to the same real-time image of their own group, as seen from a camera mounted somewhere on Park Avenue. Hawke scanned the street and found it mounted on the traffic light pole. They were in full view now. It would only be a few minutes more before the cops arrived, or worse. He had to calm Vasco down, get him away from here.
Vasco had turned to look at the camera, Hawke watching him mirrored on the TV screens, the two of them side by side. “I’m going to track down who did this,” he said, struggling to regain his composure. “If you’re involved, so help me God, I’ll kill you.”
“I’m not involved, dammit. Why would I do this to myself? It’s a machine, code running a program.”
Vasco shook his head. “Weller knows more than he’s saying. I’m going to beat it out of him. If Sherri’s hurt, if she’s… if she doesn’t make it…”
“At least she’s still alive.” Hawke didn’t bring up the possibility that the footage had been recorded hours ago. “Calm down; think for a minute.”
“Hey,
“I saw things, too, back at Lenox. Blood on the wall of my apartment. We can’t accept these images as real. The best way to help Sherri is to get out of New York alive. You won’t be able to do anything if you’re in custody or shot. That’s what this is all about, don’t you get it? They’re trying to get into your head, use your emotions against you, force you to make mistakes.”
Vasco gritted his teeth, shook his head, tears in his eyes. “It’s gone too far,” he said. “Nobody’s safe. Nobody’s sacred.” He looked around, spreading his arms. “Where’s the army?” he said. “National Guard? Where are the goddamn troops?”
Hawke looked at the burnished-steel color of the sky, the plumes of smoke rising up across the city. Vasco was right; the sky should have been swarming with choppers, military aircraft, boots on the streets. But of course they wouldn’t be able to operate those aircraft or personnel carriers. Military machines had been commandeered, too.
And yet Doe had allowed the police who had shot at them to drive their vehicle. She was pulling the authorities’ strings, manipulating them into playing her game. But the rest of it still didn’t make sense.
Missile strikes against the bridges, isolating the city, cutting civilians down at every turn. Why?
“It’s about power,” Hawke said quietly. The words came almost without him knowing it. “Energy. That’s the answer.”
Vasco was staring at him. “What are you talking about?”
“Never mind.” His mind was buzzing again, worrying at those puzzle pieces, trying to make them fit. He glanced at the screens, back at the camera, wondering if Doe had cut through their crude attempt to disguise themselves and truly made a features match and knew where they were or if she was fishing. It didn’t matter; their window was closing fast. “We need to move.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
4:19 P.M.
THEY CROSSED PARK AVENUE QUICKLY, and then Madison Avenue. The windows of the swanky chocolate shop on one corner had been smashed in; a taxi had been driven right through the display window of a Michael Kors store on another, its rear end half on the sidewalk, mannequins draped over its roof like broken bodies. Someone screamed inside one of the buildings, the shriek ending in a slow, chilling gurgle, but Hawke ignored it and kept going, feeling sick that he had been reduced to someone who would turn away from another person in distress. But he remembered how they had been lured into Lenox Hill Hospital by the screams of an infant, and he had no doubt that if Vasco had gone into the electronics shop he wouldn’t have made it back out. Nothing could be trusted anymore; everything was a potential trap.
Central Park loomed in front of them as they hit Fifth Avenue, a thick canopy of green sprouting through the concrete and metal of the city. Now that he saw it, Hawke wasn’t sure which was more threatening, this stretch of strange wilderness or the streets of New York. He’d been in the park many times, skating in the winter, sitting on the grass with Robin, bringing Thomas to the Victorian Gardens Amusement Park. But back then, it had been a welcome refuge. Hawke had never imagined it quite like this: shadowed, unknown and possibly dangerous. He wondered if this was a good idea after all.
“You sure about this?” Young stood on the corner next to him echoing his own thoughts, looking across the street into the trees.
“It’s the best shot we have,” Hawke said. “It gives us a chance to disappear, to get out before we’re targeted again. But we’ve got to take out any eyes on us, keep anyone from knowing which way we went.”
She nodded once. She seemed to have picked up a new resolve. Weller was close; if they could get to the tunnel, he would be waiting there. It seemed to give her strength.
Vasco was keeping his distance about twenty feet away. He had calmed down enough to leave the window of the electronics shop, but Hawke could sense his anger and fear simmering under the surface. He was terrified for his wife, and Hawke couldn’t blame him for that.
Hawke scanned up and down Fifth Avenue and saw an NYPD security camera on a light pole nearby. A delivery truck had jumped the curb and slammed into the stone and concrete wall that bordered the park, scattering debris across the cobblestone. He crossed the street, selected a good chunk of stone and hurled it at the camera. Young and Vasco got the hint, joining him in throwing debris until the camera shattered.
They followed Hawke down Fifth Avenue to the 66th Street crossover, where he took out another camera. It wouldn’t be too hard to figure out where they went from here, but disabling the camera might buy them some time, enough to lose themselves in the park. The road was jammed with abandoned cars, doors hanging open. Other vehicles had smashed through the walls and into the park itself, and several of them had mangled bodies slumped over steering wheels or against cracked glass smeared brown with drying blood. A motorcycle had slammed at considerable speed into the 66th Street wall, launching the driver through the air and into the arms of a tree, where he dangled white-limbed, head cocked at an impossible angle from a broken neck.
An unearthly howl echoed through the park, followed by a screech that tailed away like gibbering laughter. For a moment, Hawke could almost believe Doe had assumed some kind of physical, monstrous form, before he realized what it was.
More animal calls split the air. The occasional shouts and screams of people blended with the roars of the leopards and shrieks of the monkeys, the calls of the birds in the aviary. The sounds were chilling in the odd emptiness that engulfed them. The normal noises of the city were gone—no more rumble of big trucks and car horns blaring, jackhammers thudding into concrete. They had descended back into the Stone Age.
They took the crossover past the bird enclosure to 65th Street, clearing the bottleneck of vehicles quickly as they rushed through shadows. From what Hawke could tell, the animals were still safely in their enclosures. But he couldn’t see much through the trees.
As they approached East Drive, the road was clear. The sky had turned a deeper gray, smoke from the fires that still burned descending over the park like a fog. Despite the adrenaline that coursed through them, the events of the day were catching up to them all. Hawke’s lungs burned as he ran along the narrow sidewalk that edged the shoulder-height rock wall, keeping under the cover of the trees, his limbs shaking and threatening to send him spilling head over heels at any moment. Vasco was lagging behind, and the gash on his head had started to bleed again. Hawke wondered about a concussion. He felt a momentary twinge of guilt over punching the man, but at least it had appeared to make an impression.
