Anthem's Fall

Chapter Sixty Four

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The Lord General and Royal Guard

The sun reflected against their Imperial First Class armor and shimmered off the buildings below, the noon radiance contradicting the dark nature of their charge. Hoff and Darien reached the last skyscraper lining the southern tip of Manhattan, and before them the end of the city met with the swelling gray waters of an open bay. On the banks surrounding the bastion of skyscrapers on the narrow city-island, dense populations extended as far as the eye could see. Where earlier in the morning the two soldiers had embraced boundless woodlands and rolling hills and fields, now they were witness to the grand kingdom of man: sharp angles, towering monoliths of austere glass and concrete. A mirage of smog hugged the horizon and spread across the region.

Two rivers extended up each side of Manhattan, and a few prodigious bridges connected the main island with the adjacent lands. Even from his distance, Darien could see the nearest one spanning the eastern waterway—an enormous and dignified suspension bridge—was congested to a standstill with evacuees seeking refuge outside the city limits. Surely they were the survivalists, the smart ones, leaving the city merely as a precautionary measure after what they saw happening in Chicago.

"Vengelis told us to seal off the island. Let's separate and move up each side of the city," the Lord General called, and pointed to the east. "I will take the river to the west. You go up the eastern river there, and bring down any bridge connecting the city to the mainland. I'll meet you up north."

"Okay." Darien nodded.

The two soldiers turned from one another at once and soared northeast and northwest up the expansive rivers surrounding Manhattan.

...

Sam Larson pressed hard on the steering wheel of his Acura, more out of exasperation than as a command to the Taurus with Connecticut plates idling in front of him. The sound of his horn was drowned out in the resonance of puttering cars that sat at a dead stop along the Manhattan Bridge.

Twenty minutes ago, as Sam had hastened out of his office on William Street and made for his car, he had felt certain that if—god forbid—something did happen in New York, he would at the very least beat the traffic out of Manhattan.

Sam's situation could not have been better, given the circumstances.

It was by chance that he had happened to drive his car to work that morning and swallowed the agonizing parking bill. Furthermore, it was by shear happenstance that Sam had been absentmindedly clicking the refresh button on The New York Times website for stock quotes when he saw the breaking news of the Chicago attack. Straightaway, it had not felt right as Sam read the bizarre headline. Preferring an approach of prudence, he stepped out early and stopped at a sandwich place near the parking garage while the broadcast was still speaking of a single skyscraper falling in the Windy City.

The moment the second skyscraper fell, his pastrami was in the trash and he was hastily pulling his car out of the parking garage and through the intersections toward the Manhattan Bridge.

Despite his seemingly good luck and quick thinking, Sam was forced to slam on his brakes as the lanes atop the bridge abruptly clogged to a halt the moment he crossed over FDR Drive. After several minutes of creeping along, he found himself utterly gridlocked, suspended a hundred feet over the East River and staring up past his sunroof at broad cables and naked steel girders of the bridge and blue skies beyond.

The Billboard Top Forty radio station he normally listened to was at the moment covering what the media had tentatively dubbed, The Devastation in Chicago. Sam listened in growing disbelief as the anchors stressed that this was no nine-eleven; this was no earthquake. This was something infinitely more terrible and catastrophic. The anchors described the video footage as unspeakable, as apocalyptic. Hundreds of thousands were feared dead. The word war was repeated over and over, and it filled Sam with a very poignant kind of dread that he was not accustomed to.