The Last Days of Max Payne

Part Two: To Hell And Back

Prologue

The stars are bright tonight, like glitter sprinkled on thick black velvet. It's a beautiful night in New York city. People are sat on balconies and verandas, drinking cocktails and wine. Housewives sit out on the steps of crumbling brick tenement blocks with children in their arms, smelling that sweet night perfume. But the streets are quiet. The air, laden with a strange foreboding.

See the blazing fire that swallows the hulk of an old Bronx theatre, the look of horror on the faces of those brave first few souls to enter the crumbling building at what they discover in its ancient wooden walls. Corpses, everywhere, most of them burned beyond recognition to blackened husks. Those few that have escaped the all-consuming flames are, mysteriously, riddled with bullets. One of the fire-fighters throws up his Italian lunch on some burn-blackened wood. Another mutters, "Oh god…"

See the hopeless horror on the faces of revellers in a gothic nightclub as they stumble across the corpse of a girl sat near the dance floor, her red-rimmed eyes flashing white in the pulsing lights, her mouth wide and frightened, splattered with the blood that she choked on, the pounding beats of Nine Inch Nails reverberating in the heads of those who look upon her, coming through a haze. As they stagger backwards, another starts to cough, and a bouncer calls the emergency services. By the time the emergency services arrive, four are dead.

See the newspaper seller on a corner in Manhattan bending over and clutching his chest halfway through handing a customer change, and the look of utter horror that slides over his pale face as a horribly big splatter of blood hits his work-hardened hands.

See the hundreds of locked doors across the city, the silent bedrooms, musty and cloying with sickness and disease, the bloodstains on the pillows. See the TVs left on in silent lounges, broadcasting nothing but harsh blue light to the vacant eyes of the occupants.

See the graffiti on the side of an old brick factory in the docks: MIASMA IS GOD'S PUNISHMENT, NEW YORK CHOKE ON YOUR SINS!

Now see the congested hallways of Mercy General Hospital. See the seemingly never-ending green linoleum corridors, littered at every yard with slumped bodies, the dead and the dying, hacking out their guts in final desperate spasms beneath the harsh white lights. See the nurses moving along the corridors, the squeak of their pumps on the tiles accompanying the symphony of choking and groaning, their eyes spinning and rolling in desperation. Their job has gone from saving the living to finding ways to dispose of the dead. Already a few have been sent home sick, but finding a gap in the care is nearly impossible. There are two bodies in the staffroom. Another is slipping out of consciousness.

Now see a small corner of the hospital, a relatively quiet corner. A woman, pale, beautiful, but as gaunt and pale as a corpse, is slumped against a wall. The man standing over her doesn't look any better. His eyes are haunted shadows, his face deeply etched and old, his shirt splattered with blood stains, his dusty, soot-stained leather jacket ragged. They're survivors.

Hell… people must think we look like we've gone to hell and back.

I brush the hair out of my eyes and tell Mona that everything will be ok. It's a lie and I hate myself for it. She's contracted miasma, the disease that has left such a distinctive scar all across the city, in all those rooms, in those clubs, in those news vendor's stands. And here, where the scab is at its deepest. It's still bleeding. The city has taken some serious blows. If someone doesn't stop it soon, it'll succumb.

All I'm interested in is saving her life. I don't know how much time I have left. I don't know if the crusade I'm about to embark will prove to be a useless, foolhardy waste of time. A wasteful plunge back into the hell I just scraped out of. Maybe it will, but if there's the slightest glimmer of hope, the slightest possibility that I can save her life, I'll take it. I owe it to her. She saved mine. My guardian angel.

I take her cold, pallid hands. She's always cold, but never like this. It's like handling a corpse.

"I'm leaving," I tell her frankly. "I'm going to follow up that lead you gave me. If it's connected to Miasma, maybe there's a vaccine out there I can get." I stare into her eyes and prepare to lie through gritted teeth. "I'm not going to let you die, Mona."

It's all she can do to nod. Since we walked through the hospital doors, she's been drifting in and out of consciousness. Getting weaker. The coughing hasn't started yet – not that retching, high-pitched final wheeze as the lungs squeeze themselves into annihilation. I've got time on my hands.

I kiss her hands. "I'll be back, Mona. I promise."

Leaving her hurts me more than I can imagine. Just that one glimmer of hope, Max. Hold on to it. Follow it through. Don't think about her, alone here, surrounded on one side by a dying man in an overcoat, and an elderly woman who looks dead already. In these never-ending corridors of death, like some horrible huge charnel house. You're going to save her.

I leave the hospital and set out, once more, into the night.