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Peaks bowed his head, then walked around behind the counter. The clerk, terrified, tried to back away but Peaks grabbed him by the shirt front and said, “I need a shotgun. Short barrel. And one shell. Just one.”
A minute later store security came hustling up just in time to see Peaks jack the 12-gauge shell into the cham
ber, place the barrel of the shotgun under his chin, and blow the top of his head all over the display case.
CHAPTER 5
How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?
IN SURGERY THEY had reattached Bob Markovic’s nearly severed hand. He was given painkillers. He was also given a sedative. And by the time he woke he was in a very surprising yet oddly familiar place. Consciousness returned to Markovic in the form of too-bright lights and a sea of red velour. He blinked, and then squinted against the light, and then, with rapidly mounting panic, recognized where he was.
Carnegie Hall?
Markovic’s Money Machine had season tickets to Carnegie Hall, using them to reward especially productive senior employees and the occasional politician who needed some TLC. But, he realized, he was not in the corporate seats, which were up in the first balcony, stage left. He was in a seat toward the rear of the orchestra section.
And the people around him were definitely not regular patrons. Not even close. Carnegie Hall’s Isaac Stern Auditorium held 2,804 people; less than a tenth of that number were in the hall now, but they were not there to watch a show. Many were in pajamas or robes. Many others—like Markovic himself—were in hospital robes. Some were in street clothes. But all were bloody to one degree or another. Some showed just a few blood-soaked bandages slowly drying from crimson to rust color, but others looked as if they’d been dipped in red paint.
Markovic’s pain seemed to come out of nowhere, a series of pains, really, starting with the total-body bruising he quickly traced to what looked like dozens of pinpricks, or ice-pick stabs on his arms, his hands, his face. Then there was a deeper wound, a thick bandage on his chest that seeped blood and felt terrible. That wound suggested danger to life and limb. But it was the hand, wrapped in gauze and surgical webbing, that was the most troubling because he had no idea what had happened to it, or why he could not feel his fingers.
He opened his robe with his good hand and peeled back the thick bandage on his upper pectoral. This was no pinprick; this was a gash, maybe three centimeters long with a dozen black stitches holding it closed.
Have I been shot? Stabbed?
Some kind of terrorist attack?
And, given the pain and the wounds and the blood and the incessant pounding in his head, why in holy hell was he at Carnegie Hall?
He tried to stand and sat right back down, head swimming, thighs quivering, knees as firm as overcooked spaghetti. Markovic began tracing back through his memories. He’d been arguing with Simone, which was not unusual. She was an amazing kid, of course—after all, she was his daughter—but she was headstrong. Then there had been a strange light . . . no, two lights, each far more steady and intense than any star. Then . . .
Beyond that point, memory became disconnected flashes. A flash of an impact of some sort. A flash of his living room. A flash of Simone, face bloody, bending over him. Then . . . doctors? Nurses? He furrowed his brow, thinking. Cops?
The back seat of his Mercedes?
A linoleum floor?
And a gurney rolling fast down long corridors, he remembered that. And the next memory was coming fully conscious in the last place on earth he’d ever . . .
It must have been a mass casualty event. His brain was working now despite the pain everywhere. Mass casualties, and the first responders had decided to use Carnegie Hall as a temporary . . .
Temporary what? Hospital?
He squinted to focus and turned his stiff neck. Beside every door—and there were a dozen or so—beside each one was a national guardsman in green uniform, helmeted, and carrying an assault rifle.
Some hospital.
He fumbled for his phone, but he was in a hospital robe, underpants, and socks, which meant his street clothes and phone were back at whatever hospital had done whatever they’d done. . . .
“What is going on?” he muttered, getting no response. So he looked left and right and decided the best target for conversation would be the woman seated in the row behind and left.
“Excuse me,” he said through a parched mouth. “Do you know what’s going on?”
The woman had gray hair cut short, was small, compact, and full of nervous energy, like a clever sparrow. “The explosion,” the woman said.
“What explosion?”
The woman glanced over her shoulder like they were in fifth grade and she was worried the teacher might hear her gossiping. “One of those meteors. The alien ones. I heard the major—I think he’s in charge here—talking about it. One of those alien rocks was heading for the city, so they nuked it. I guess they saved the city by breaking it up, maybe, but we still got hit by a lot of stuff. Smaller pieces. I live on West Forty-Ninth and it’s burning.”
Markovic nodded. “Thanks.”
