25 Years Ago
It was late in the morning before Cecil realized something wasn't right.
He'd had his head buried under the hood of a '67 Firebird since around 6:00 am, doing a full rebuild on one of the sexiest engines he'd ever laid his eyes on. Missy and the kids were up at the lake for the month—the brood always went during August—and Cecil, who'd come back a bit early, was baching it for a few days while he caught up on a few loose ends like the Firebird.
But when he popped his head up at around 10:00, something didn't feel right. Mondays in August usually weren't busy, but at that moment, Cecil could've heard a pin drop in the garage bay. A quick glance at the clock told him it was too early for lunch.
He slopped some goop on his hands and wiped it free with a rag as he headed for the office. The tiny room was empty.
"Hey!" he called aloud in his usual rough but agreeable baritone. "Where the hell is everybody? We got work to do. Let's get hopping."
Nothing.
Something unpleasant filled his belly. Cecil had seven fulltime employees at his Brooklyn Heights auto shop, and each and every one was as dependable as a fine timepiece. They didn't just .... He leapt into action, jogging through the bay, back to their tiny loading dock, up to the parts closet, and finally out front.
No one.
And then a movement caught his eye, and he noticed people on the roof of the building across the way. Searching the length of the street, he saw people standing on the rooves of a dozen buildings, some shielding their eyes, but all staring silently toward the City.
No. Not silently.
The moment the sounds of sobbing reached him he knew ... he knew ... something terrible was happening. An eel suddenly twisted in his gut, and Cecil took the stairs to the roof four at a time, and when he emerged, he found a dozen people standing and staring north, some groaning in fear. The first person to look his way was Andy Tares, an employee and friend, a man he'd known for twenty years. Andy's eyes streamed with tears, but the man said not a word. He merely looked back toward the City as if imploring his boss to do something.
When Cecil followed the man's gaze, he saw what all present had been watching: The City was on fire.
It took the mechanic less than a minute to take in the picture, his terror growing with every second. It looked like the better part of Lower Manhattan was ablaze. And all he could think for that long moment was, thank God Missy and the kids are upstate.
And then he saw in the distance what the others could not and nearly let out a shriek.
Abandoning all pretense at normalcy, he turned and dashed for the stairs and was down the three flights in three light bounds. He stopped only long enough to try the phone—it was dead.
"Of course," he mumbled on his way out the front entrance. He'd wanted to call Missy to say—well. He also wanted to call Kyle. Both conversations would have to wait. "Angie! Angie! Angie!" he shouted up to the rooftop until a woman's head appeared. "When the phones are back up, call Missy and tell her to stay put. I'll be back."
"Where are you going?"
"I'll be back," was all Cecil said as he dashed down the road toward Camden Street.
How to explain all this to his friends and employees? There was no way.
Despite his fifty-some years, Cecil was a man of prodigious speed and strength, whose physical abilities were far beyond those of normal folk. Seconds before, on the rooftop, his keen eyesight had discerned something that others had not: there were figures streaking about amid the buildings and skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan, figures too small to be airplanes but far too large to be birds.
He kept running and thought how to get in contact with the others. Kyle was the strongest and the best, but there were two or three others in the City who Cecil knew, or knew of. People like Cecil and the others had kept a low profile for so long that it had become second nature for them. But now?
Shit, he thought. Shit.
Now they all were out in the open, or at least they soon would be. This was the day Cecil had dreaded and had hoped would never come. The City was under attack, but not by any conventional army. The City—his City—was under attack, and its assailants were people like him, people tougher, stronger, and more talented than the world knew existed.
As he increased his pace, he hoped and prayed to God he was wrong, but deep down he knew he wasn't.
Yet Cecil would be goddamned if he'd sit back and let it happen. He needed to make it to Lower Manhattan where the fires raged, and he somehow needed to put a stop to this madness.
Traveling on foot was the best and only way to go. He hadn't needed to see the throngs of people on the Brooklyn Bridge to realize that a car was a waste of time today. The artery was clogged with vast numbers of people fleeing the havoc and chaos of Manhattan, and when he reached the on-ramp to the bridge after some minutes of running, he realized even travelling afoot would be difficult.
To his great relief though, the crowds on the inbound vehicle lane were lighter. Save for the occasional emergency vehicle, it mostly was a handful of fools like himself heading toward the danger, so after jumping a couple of rails and dodging a few panicked cops, he was soon running at a swift pace across the bridge.
Cecil was big and old, but he could run like a college athlete, and in no time, he was whizzing past others. Before long, he realized a small mob of people was pacing him, or attempting to do so, a group whose size increased as small numbers of fugitives on the footpath above found their better selves and leapt the rail to turn about and join him in his charge into the inferno.
The heat of the flames and the sound of explosions already had reached out to lick at them before they'd reached the Manhattan side, where the scene near City Hall Park was a hellscape. Bodies were piled, and the injured were spread everywhere as medics attempted to triage the many victims and move them to nearby hospitals.
No one seemed to know what was going on, and Cecil slowed several times to catch snippets of conversations. All agreed the attack had begun near Foley Square, and fighting even now raged in Tribeca. The attackers were creatures—no ... they were men encased in suites ... no ... robots ... no, some sort of aliens.
Whatever they were, they were burning the City, and no one could stop them.
In the smoke-filled sky, several figures shot past too swiftly even for Cecil's keen eyes to discern them. He hoped to God Kyle was one of them. There were more explosions to the north amid faint gunfire, and as the old mechanic glanced back, he saw that the trickle that had followed him across the bridge had grown into a torrent. Great crowds of people seeking to help had begun to look about for an outlet, some way to do some good.
Cecil, whose every instinct said to continue alone, thought of what to say to these folks. He'd never been a talker, but ....
"This is our City!" a voice thundered thirty or so yards away. "This is our City, and today we prove it! If you're ready to fight, come with me."
The speaker was a powerfully built man easily as tall as Cecil's six-feet and six-inches, with olive skin and a soldier's haircut. The man was a stranger, but Cecil knew his type, suspected the man was like him, and followed him north. Others did as well, some walking, some running, and others limping along as best they were able.
It was just a short march to the heart of the chaos, and as they moved, an injured firefighter half-ran, half-hobbled to keep pace with the leaders. His excited monologue couldn't be missed.
"There are four or five on the ground—the things are fucking unstoppable, rip you to shreds ... bullets don't do shit. But watch out for the ones in the air. They're all working as a team. Nobody can get close. They won't even let anybody move close enough to do rescue work."
By that time, they'd reached a point near Broadway and Reade where police had established a cordon. At that distance, explosions rocked the street with such power that Cecil could feel them in his teeth. The pleas and cries of those trapped and injured in nearby buildings were too much. The sonsofbitches responsible for this were just around the corner, and the mechanic muscled past the uniformed officers and detectives barring their way.
"I'll do what I can about the ones in the air," he called out to those behind him. "You take care of those little pricks on the ground."
Cecil took off at a run.
In addition to his great strength, he'd always had good timing—and good luck. Football as a youth had taught him the basics, and when crime had been at its worst in the 70s, he'd even done his bit to help keep the streets safe. Now he would need all of his skill and luck.
He'd twice seen flying figures skim down Broadway at thirty or forty feet, and there was a parking garage a half block up at which a friend used to work. It had an open roof, and Cecil made his way to the structure at a dead sprint. Within seconds, he'd reached the building, and it took him no time at all to ascend to the top level.
As he stepped off the ramp and into the smoke-filled air, Cecil caught a motion from the corner of his eye three blocks distant and coming fast. With all his strength, he dug his toes into the concrete and soon was running like a deer. Twenty long strides brought him to the roof's railing, which he hit with his left foot and executed the most powerful and dangerous jump of his life.
The old man sailed a good sixty feet through the air and intersected the passing flyer forty feet above Broadway, and as he swung and contacted with the hardest punch he'd ever thrown, all he could think of was Missy and the kids.