The force of the blast flattens my lungs as if I’d been slammed in the solar plexus by a sledgehammer. The other thing is the fireball doesn’t just ignite any adjacent structures. It incinerates them.

Somehow Manning is beside me. I snatch the Zombie Killer off the deck. The alley has become a tunnel of flame. Manning jerks me to my feet with one hand. To my amazement, I can actually think. I’m not scared of the fire or of any further explosions. My single thought is, Hang on to the shotgun. If I have to file a property report stating that I have through carelessness or negligence lost a weapon issued to me by the city, I will never find work in law enforcement again.

Three ESU operators appear in the perpendicular alley. They’re running. They shout something I can’t make out.

MANNING

(to me)

Go!

Ten seconds later he and I are out of the alley, pounding past pancaked, blazing Building #3, and sprinting in forty pounds of armor out the entry gate and onto Brighton Beach Avenue. Fugitives #2 and #3 have peeled off right and left and are being chased by various DivSix and ESU teams.

It’s me and Manning, joined by two ESU operators, pounding in the wake of Fugitive #1.

Could it be Instancer?

Could he somehow be part of this?

We can see Fugitive #1, ahead, fleeing onto Surf Avenue. Floodwater is above his ankles, as it is above ours. It’s not run run run, it’s splash splash splash. Fugitive #1 turns off Surf, bolts down a gale-howling alley, then another, and out onto the strand itself.

To the right, shrieking in the storm, I glimpse the derelict structure of the Super Cyclone roller coaster. This is Coney Island, or what’s left of it. The strand at Brighton Beach, which used to be hundreds of yards wide, accommodating bathers by the thousands, has been underwater since the ’20s.

A twelve-foot seawall was erected in ’27 intending to shield the row of apartment buildings fronting on Surf Avenue, but this has been overwhelmed twice, by Hurricane Alice in ’29 and Superstorm Dominique in ’31. The structures are shells now, occupied by squatters and migrants. The Rockaways have vanished from the map. Bay and Sound stink of sewage and contamination.

Our fugitive sprints onto the seawall. The ESU guys are half a block ahead of Manning and me. How hard is it to run in this gear and this gale and this heat? My eyeballs are flashing so lividly I can see the veins of my own corneas. My heart is about to erupt out of my chest. The shotgun in my fists feels like a ninety-pound barbell.

Manning slings his armor vest. I do too. We’ll both catch hell tomorrow, but right now who gives a shit?