NEW YORK ANIHILATION

DARKNESS WITHIN

INSTALLMENTS

PAGES TUSSLED IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER
FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES

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"I HAVE TO BLEED THE BEAST BEFORE

I BLEED THE BEAST"...

WE ARE
ALL OF US
BOOKS OF BLOOD
WHEN YOU OPEN US
WE'RE RED
--
--CLIVE BARKER

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Meteors fell from the darkness of the sky.

Missiles of yellow-green flaming rock, some the size of basketballs, others the size of compact cars.

The damage they did to buildings and edifices was devastating. It was a presentation of apocalyptic proportions.

 

Towering sky-risers were slammed by the flaming stone, windows burst violently, structures collapsed or fell sideways, falling in crumbling masses to the street below. A declaration of a National State of Emergency went out.

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One hit Jerry’s Mom and Pop store, and the establishment disintegrated on impact. Cars were upended, or lifted up off the street from the detonations, which landed on other vehicles in the streets, some that in turn rolled in a conflagration of fire and twisted metal, while glass and pieces of the cars and trucks scattered round about.

Rock and dust exploded from the street.

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A police cruiser slammed into another taxi. While further down the street, unaware of the meteors, people were wondering if terrorists were attacking, and soon traffic crawled to a halt. Fires erupted everywhere they were given fuel to do so, mostly from the cars that rolled, overturned, and exploded with the impact of other vehicles.

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Two meteors hit the commuters on 53^rd Street, and the detonations were paramount. Cars disintegrated, or people were fused to their steering columns in spite of their air-bags. For a time it was difficult to make anything out from the fire that erupted in the street. More cars flew and rolled, and people began to leave the traffic jam to find safety wherever they could.

       .…

   

Grand Central Station was hit next. Three fireballs slammed into the roof and windows---tearing up the masonry, and shattering glass, punching holes in the floor that erupted violently, and forcing people to scatter in a flurry of screams. For them it seemed like the end of the world as glass rained furiously inside the Station, while stonework flew in all directions.

Some of the people that ran were knocked down by stone or incapacitated by glass, some slipped, but managed to get to their feet--the stonework and glass somehow managed to miss them. People didn’t know if it was safe outside or not. Still the place was coming down, and so people ran for the exits, some knocked down or aside from the sheer panic of other escaping customers.

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Outside wasn’t much better as the people soon found out. Even as cars—hardly recognizable flew passed them and rolled over still more vehicles that upended and joined the flurry of chaos. One vehicle landed on the roof of a McDonalds, which was crushed and soon the restaurant blew apart, throwing bodies helter-skelter into the street and parking lot.

People were running now in all directions—not sure where it was safe to be, even as winds gusted, blowing them back-- pieces of more stonework and masonry fell into the street from a nearby library. Gargoyles fell, slamming against the concrete, and barely missing the running crowd by mere feet.

An eighteen-wheeler carrying fuel for the Exxon Station six blocks away, was stuck in traffic almost a mile from Time Square. The driver was irritated as he was already an hour behind on his scheduled stops, and a traffic-jam was just going to put him further and further behind.

A meteor the size of a watermelon punctured the tank of the truck.

 

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Those within a half-mile radius, trapped inside their cars, didn’t stand a chance. No one had the opportunity to run before the truck exploded.

The tank of the freight-liner ruptured under the impact of the meteor. The eruption was as superb as it was devastating. It was not unlike witnessing the awesome power of a bomb going off.

The blossoming fireball could be seen from two miles away, lighting up the night.

The truck was vaporized in the explosion, its tires melting and fusing into the pavement.

More than two-dozen vehicles in the radius off the blast—burst apart explosively in a furious chain-reaction that was almost instantaneous, following the detonation of the fuel truck.

A tour-bus, a double-Decker bus, and two RVs were engulfed in the conflagration; the fire-storm moved like something alive, spreading out for almost an eighth of a mile swallowing and wiping out all in its path. This included—but was not limited to—the unsuspecting and hapless bystanders caught in the waves of fire.

 

One of the meteors to touch down was the size of a small forklift and hit with the force of 10 tons of TNT. It struck in the equidistance of a cluster of cars, just outside the prism-shaped Westin Hotel.

Windows in the building shattered, spilling millions of shards outward into the street, while vehicles erupted into flowering balls of flame, more than just a couple rolled and smashed through the broken windows of the Westin. People inside the lobby scattered in time to avoid the hulking masses of burning and twisted metal that landed precariously on the furniture inside, crushing and/or smashing it, then sliding all the way to the receptionist’s desk.

Thirty stories above Time Square, half a city block away from the Whittaker Building that climbed upward for another fifteen stories, a Sky Catcher crane was in operation handing building materials over to the skeletal structure that was scheduled to be the Spartas Corporate Headquarters one year from today. It would dominate the Whittaker Building by another ten stories.

Currently the Sky Catcher was in the process of delivering a thousand pounds of re-bar to the awaiting construction workers; the material weaved back and forth in the air at the end of the sixty-foot arm of the Sky Catcher.

Another yellow-green flaming meteor, ten feet in diameter, cut through the reinforced steel arm of the crane, severing it in half in less than a heartbeat--it continued without impedance, and slammed into the side of the Whittaker Building, taking out the thirtieth floor, the twenty-ninth floor, and the twenty-eighth floor in the process of its downward trajectory.

  

Having reloaded, Megan set the gun down between them, while Stephen tried to focus on moving the rig out of the street. Gears grinded in protest, as he put the tractor in first-gear and, somehow through a veil of pain and adrenaline, he directed the truck toward the front lawn of the house nearby. There was the tearing of metal, and the rig shuddered as it tried to pull lose from the pick-up attached to its tail. It wrenched itself free from the Nissan, and jostled as it cleared the curb bordering the Victorian structure that wavered through the broken windshield. Stephen almost pushed the rig onto the front porch of the house, insuring that the trailer was no longer in the street, blocking traffic.

  

“There’s a car and a truck that we have to move before anybody will be able to get out of the driveway.” Stephen told Megan.

            She nodded and said, “I have to put my belt around that to keep pressure on the wound, or you might bleed to death.”

            “That would be a hell of a way for the hero to go out.”

He let her tie his hand the best she could, then he let her chamber the slugs, before he exited the cab with the rifle in one hand, in the most coordinated fashion that his current state allowed. He almost fell to his knees outside the tractor.

            He went to the Nissan while Megan covered him. The door was locked, and Stephen had to break the window of the truck with the butt of his rifle in order to unlock the door. The driver was sprawled to the side, lying near the passenger’s door, looking diseased and rotting. Stephen did his best to ignore the unsightly form, as he put the truck in gear, and guided it up onto the lawn next to the rig.

  

Then he was out and running toward a silver Sentra that had been behind the Nissan. When he pulled open the door, he stopped short. The owner of the vehicle was still alive, if just barely.

            A woman, perhaps in her mid to late twenties was lying on the seat of the car. Her blond hair was damp with perspiration, and matted, pasted mostly to her face. For the briefest of seconds Stephen felt a surge of hope that the woman could somehow still be saved. But this sensation drained away quickly as he observed that she was turning a ghastly shade of gray. Stephen could see where the woman had been stung by a Nhei’hari. A silver-dollar-sized hole in the left side of her neck leaked a brackish fluid, while putrid sores began to surface beneath the skin that was exposed by the woman’s white tank-top.

Even as she looked forward to the dash, Stephen could see a glazed cast covering her eyes. Her voice was a croaked whisper as she opened her mouth to speak. “Yvonne…my baby…” Stephen shuddered at the sound of her voice. There was a cryptic implication of underlining undertones of bereft longing. “My…baby, Yvonne… Save her…please…”

Tears came unheeded to the rims of Stephen’s eyes, at his own pain, and at the atrocity of the situation. The woman was obviously delirious from her own agony that she was suffering. Still, something inside Stephen compelled him to look toward the backseat of the car. There he saw a blond-haired angel, maybe two years of age, nestled in her safety-chair. She stared back at Stephen with a look of mute fascination.

            “Ah, god—no…” Stephen whispered on the verge of trauma.

            “Save…my baby…girl… Please…”