Dean Wesley Smith - Final Fantasy, page 11
The last man inside the door-security control room punched the door open just as the Phantom came up and killed him.
Beyond the main window of the control room another ovo-tank exploded in flashes of bright orange and blue light. General Hein knew there was no saving this city now. He had destroyed it.
And killed everyone in it.
Hein ran from the control room and onto the emergency elevator as the computer-activated voice repeated over and over the nearest evacuation point.
If he was lucky, he’d make it to the military evac area. But at that moment he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
chapter 16
The conversation in the cell block had almost ceased. Gray was even starting to believe Aki’s point of view about the dream and the Phantoms. It sure explained a great deal. No wonder humans had had such a problem fighting the Phantoms. Humans had always thought of them as an invading army, when really they were nothing more than a bunch of ghosts. Very deadly and unhappy ghosts, but ghosts nonetheless.
And with that information now in their hands, Dr. Sid and Aki needed to get out of there and talk to the Council. Everything needed to change.
“Come on, Neil,” Gray said to his man directly across from him. “We need to think of a way out. Now you’re our man, so don’t let me down. Think.”
He smiled at the shocked look on Neil’s face. “Captain, these walls are titanium alloy and the bare are pulsonic lasers.”
“So?” Gray asked, smiling at Neil.
“So?” Neil asked. “It’s not as if I can just wave a magic wand and-“
As Neil waved his arm in the air, the lights flickered and the cell doors slid opened.
“Hold your positions, everyone!” Gray ordered. He had no idea what had just happened, but he didn’t like the looks of it.
He stood and cautiously stepped out into the hall. It wouldn’t be beyond General Hein to shoot them in a made-up jail break, just to get rid of them. At this point anything was possible.
He glanced down the hallway toward the main door, which had also swung open. From the looks of this, some sort of automatic release system had been triggered. And the only thing that would do that would be Phantoms loose inside the barrier.
That thought made him shudder.
He waited. His men stood ready to move.
No one said a word.
No guard appeared. This sure didn’t have the makings of a trap. And if it wasn’t a trap, then Phantoms were in the city.
“Clear,” Gray said. “I think we had better get moving.”
Aki stepped out and looked at him with a puzzled frown.
“Neil,” Gray said, “I’m impressed at your magical abilities with hand-waving.”
Neil grunted as he stepped into the hall. “That makes two of us.”
Suddenly a computer voice filled the hallway. “Please
proceed to the nearest evacuation facility. Proceed to the nearest evacuation facility.”
Over and over the message repeated as they all stood there, shocked.
It was worse than Gray had even feared. Parts of the barrier had to be completely down if they were ordering an evacuation of the entire city.
Aki and Dr. Sid looked stunned, their faces white.
Neil nodded, repeating the computer message that droned on and on. “I think we should proceed to the nearest evacuation facility.”
“Great idea,” Gray said.
“What do you think has happened?” Dr. Sid asked.
“I don’t know,” Gray said, “but it can’t be good.”
“I thought Dr. Sid was the master of understatements,” Neil said.
When they reached the center area of the cell block, there was no one to be seen, and no weapons that would be of any use against a Phantom. The light over the emergency elevator was blinking green and the door was standing open, waiting. Emergency elevators were only used in times like this. They were high speed and only had one stop, the top level where the evacuation pods were supposed to be.
Gray herded them all into the elevator and punched the button. The force of the fast lift pushed against them. Dr. Sid would have dropped to his knees if Aki hadn’t held him up.
The quick stop at the top almost left them weightless. The door slid open and they all piled out onto a long catwalk as behind them the elevator closed and dropped back to its ready position in the cell block.
A computer voice told them how to get to the nearest escape-pod launching sight as they moved away from the building and stopped.
The catwalk overlooked the entire city. Gray was stunned at what he saw. The entire barrier was gone, the energy-towers sticking into the sky like candles in a cake. There were large explosions coming from the center that powered the barrier, sending blue light over everything. That ovo-energy light was making the Phantoms visible to the naked eye, and they seemed to be everywhere, both on the ground and in the air.
People were running through the streets below, and escape pods rose from throughout the city, their jets taking survivors to safety. Gray knew there weren’t enough pods for everyone, but with this type of massive barrier failure, most of the population would be dead before they reached a pod.
The nearest pods from this point were across the catwalk and up three floors. From what he could see, two of the five pods there were already launched and there were more people up there than the remaining pods could handle. That wasn’t going to be a route they could take to escape.
“Man,” Neil said, “we need some weapons.”
“And we need to get to my ship,” Aki said, staring at the mob scene on the rooftop across from them.
Dr. Sid nodded. “I agree. That’s the safest place we could be right now.”
“I bet it was towed into the city,” Neil said. “It would be in the military hanger.”
“I’m sure it is,” Gray said. “I saw the report on it.”
“So we go there,” Aki said.
Below them a massive explosion shook the catwalk. Bright yellow and orange flames shot out everywhere, covering entire buildings. Gray had no doubt that, just as with the original New York, this New York was doomed. Maybe some day there would be a third.
“You’re right,” Gray said. “Let’s go.”
They had almost made the first bank of regular elevators of the building they had been jailed in when Neil shouted, “Here they come!”
The Phantoms seemed to emerge from everywhere around them. Most of them were the size of humans, with flowing odd forms visible because of the ovo-energy covering the area.
Suddenly one of them came up through the floor of the catwalk, almost in the middle of the group. Since Gray and Aki had been leading, they were cut off from the rest of the group as everyone moved to get out of the way.
The Phantom hesitated, then turned toward Gray and Aki.
“Meet at the hanger!” Gray shouted.
Ryan nodded, twisted Dr. Sid around, and started running back the way they had come.
Gray grabbed Aki’s arm and pulled her as fast as they could run down the hall and then out along a covered walkway to another building as the Phantom moved to follow them.
“But the others?” Aki shouted over an explosion below. “And Dr. Sid!”
“The Deep Eyes will take care of him!” Gray shouted back. At the moment he was much more con cerned about the two of them. Without a weapon of any sort, the only hope they had was avoiding the Phantoms they could see. He just hoped there weren’t any they couldn’t see. They would never know it if there were.
At the bank of elevators at an intersection of three corridors in the next building, they both pushed the down buttons frantically. The normal elevators never seemed to arrive when he needed one, and right now was no exception.
“Gray!” Aki said, grabbing his arm and pointing at a Phantom coming down the hall slowly at them. This building had been some sort of office complex, and the Phantom was far bigger than the wide hall.
Gray punched the down button again, then looked for a place they could run. There was another Phantom halfway down the hall to the left, so that wasn’t going to work. The right corridor looked clear, but for how long?
Finally, one of the elevator doors slid open with a ding that was barely audible over the explosions.
Gray yanked Aki inside and hit the button for the train-station level, and then the door-closed button, watching as the Phantom kept coming and coming.
It seemed as if the door would never close. With the Phantom less than ten meters away, finally the door slid closed. Gray pulled Aki to the very back of the elevator as the Phantom drifted through the door, coming right at them. It was just about to pass over both of them, killing them instantly, when the elevator dropped
The Phantom disappeared through the ceiling.
“Too close,” Aki said, letting out a breath she had been holding. “Why are we able to see them, even in the elevator?”
“I don’t know,” Gray said. “Maybe they are carrying residual charges from the ovo-energy explosions.”
That would make sense,” Aki said. “At least we’re safe for the moment.”
“Just hope the elevator doesn’t pass through one on the way down.”
“I wish you hadn’t said that.” They both stared at the floor the entire rest of the way down.
The door opened with another ding. A computer voice said, “Trains are not operating. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Gray eased himself into the doorway of the elevator, blocking the door open. The station platform was like a battlefield of horror. Corpses were piled on top of each other, and the staircase leading to the next level was at least six or seven deep with bodies.
“Oh, no,” Aki said, her voice soft.
A train car had been at the station when the barrier dropped. A dozen bodies were still in the closest car, and on one car an automatic door was opening and closing on a body, the computer voice repeating over and over: “Please stand out of the door.”
“We’ve got to move,” Gray said, pulling Aki out of the elevator. He grabbed a middle-aged man’s body and pulled him a few feet to block open the elevator in case they needed it.
Then, carefully, trying to step around the bodies where the could, they headed for the far end of the
train. They hadn’t gone more than twenty steps when a Phantom came up out of the floor, as if it were coming right out of a body.
“Damn,” Gray said.
Another Phantom, and then another appeared. They were trapped and there was just no way out of there. They were going to have to try their luck on another level.
“Back to the elevator,” Gray said as three of the Phantoms started toward them.
Suddenly, from the right, there was a loud crash and an armored jeep smashed down the staircase, shoving bodies aside as it came.
Gray could not believe his eyes. Neil was behind the wheel, with Dr. Sid holding on for dear life in the passenger seat. Ryan and Jane had weapons, and the minute the jeep hit the terminal floor they opened up on the approaching Phantoms, vaporizing them instantly.
“All aboard, Captain!” Ryan shouted as Neil slid the jeep to a halt, scattering bodies in all directions.
Ryan tossed him a rifle as they climbed on board, then handed another one to Aki.
Jane was still firing as more and more Phantoms came up out of the floor, through the bodies.
Neil hit the gas, the jeep bumping over the dead as it left the platform and landed down on the rail tracks in the direction the stalled train had been heading.
“Where’d you find the equipment?” Gray shouted over the noise of Jane firing to keep their path clear and the jeep bouncing on the rough tracks.
“Council security headquarters,” Ryan said. “Dr. Sid
figured they wouldn’t be using it since they had already evacuated. And it was close by. Just luck.”
Gray just shook his head. Sometimes it was better to be lucky than good. To make it to Aki’s ship, even with weapons and a jeep, they were going to need a lot of luck.
chapter 17
General Hein stood on a catwalk near the top of one of the tallest buildings in the city. Below him the city was dying-one fire, one explosion, one life at a time. His mind wouldn’t let him turn away and walk to the military shuttle behind him on the roof. He had to see what he had caused. So he stood and watched as dozens and dozens of people pushed forward on a platform on the top of the building below him, trying to force their way into one of six escape pods that would take them to safety.
There were hundreds of the pods on similar platforms around the city, all on the tops of tall buildings, always ready to be launched. But the escape pods could only carry so many people, usually ten at most, and needed a pilot to fly them. One out of every ten citizens in the city had been trained to fly the pods, but that didn’t mean that one of those pilots got on every pod.
And clearly the people already on the pods were not waiting. They were launching the pods in panic, overloaded and without pilots, hoping to reach orbit and safety one way or another.
General Hein knew the pods didn’t work that way. Without someone with training, the escape pods wouldn’t make it above the old barrier height. As he watched, for every escape pod that lifted clear and shot into the night sky, another two went out of control and smashed into buildings or streets.
On the roof below, screams brought his attention back to the scene in front of him. A Phantom had come up out of the floor near one pod-loading area, killing three people almost instantly.
Hundreds started screaming and pushing, climbing over each other to get out of the way as the Phantom floated through person after person, leaving them nothing but a dead husk of flesh, their life forces robbed from their bodies.
The pod closest to the Phantom slammed its door and a moment later lifted.
Or tried to lift.
General Hein watched the fruitless attempt as the pod, with far too many people on board, didn’t even reach his level, but instead veered hard right, exploding and crashing into the middle of a street many stories below.
Another Phantom came up out of the top of the building, killing more people. There was no place for the people to run to.
He turned away. He couldn’t watch another death.
He moved to the military shuttle standing ready and walked up the ramp to get on board.
A soldier saluted, but he ignored the salute. Instead he turned toward the room reserved for him down the short hallway.
Behind him he heard the hatch of the shuttle slam shut. This bird could carry a hundred more to safety, but it held only him and the crew. That was a hundred more lives he was responsible for taking.
He closed the door to his private room as a voice came over the intercom. “Please strap into your seat, General. Five seconds to liftoff.”
He automatically did as instructed, not really thinking or caring. All he could think about was how his wife and daughter had died when the San Francisco city barrier had been attacked. How many wives and daughters of other men had he killed today?
He closed his eyes, but the images of all those deaths were like ghosts drifting through his mind, taking his soul just as a Phantom would take his life.
He didn’t even notice when the shuttle lifted to the safe harbor of Earth orbit.
For the moment the tracks were clear of Phantoms, and Jane wasn’t firing from the top of the armored jeep. The only sound was the tires pounding over the rough tracks. Aki was forcing herself to take deep breaths, trying to calm down enough to think. So far they had managed to get out of the detention center and find weapons and transportation. But that was a long way from getting to her ship and into orbit.
“This line doesn’t take us directly to the military hanger,” Ryan said to Gray.
“I know,” Gray said, pointing at the windows along
the tunnel that were flashing past every hundred meters or so. “We’re going to have to get off pretty soon.”
“I don’t think I like the sounds of that,” Dr. Sid said.
“I don’t, either,” Neil said, smiling at Dr. Sid. “And I’m driving.”
Suddenly, what looked to Aki to be an escape pod smashed down through a glass overhead and onto the transit tracks a few hundred meters in front of them. The pod, for a second, looked as if it might remain intact, then it bounced, hit the transit wall, and exploded. The concussion almost lifted the front of the jeep off the ground.
“Now’s as good a time as any!” Gray shouted as the orange and red fireball rolled at them through the tunnel. “Hang on, everyone!”
Aki ducked and closed her eyes, holding on as tightly as she could to the back of the seat in front of her.
Neil yanked the jeep hard right and up over the two—foot concrete barrier that separated the sunken tracks from the station platform. Then, without slowing, he smashed through a massive plate glass window and into a wide hallway-like area just as the fireball rolled past behind them.
Glass rained down over Aki as they slid sideways. Neil quickly got them going straight again and then slowed.
“Clear!” Gray said. “Nice job, Neil.”
“All in a day’s driving.”
Aki looked up.
Gray was brushing glass out of his hair. Dr. Sid, in the front seat, looked more shocked than anything else. Jane was back in her position, standing behind Aki, rifle at ready.
Aki brushed the glass off of her pants and out of her hair, then looked around. The place they had crashed into had high ceilings and a smooth, covered road down the middle. The sidewalks on either side were lined with potted trees. Skylights were spaced overhead to let in daylight. It looked like they were in some sort of massive office complex built below street level. It had to be at least a kilometer long.
“We’re inside the main military office center,” Jane shouted to Gray. “I’ve been here before. The hangers are ahead and up to the right, beyond the main transit station.”
“Got you,” Neil said, keeping the armored vehicle headed down the center of the road. At the moment there were no Phantoms in sight, but there were also no other live humans. Just bodies scattered along the sidewalk.
