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“That’s no rubberized plastic,” Chuck snarled. “Flies. Thousands of ’em.”
“Shit!” Everon said.
“I hate flies,” Chuck said. “Nothing — nothing will ever kill all the flies and roaches in New York City.”
Why can’t the big guy just shut up? Everon thought. Rats, pigeons, cockroaches, he’s okay with. Flies, he has a problem —
The train engineer flipped the lever to put the hoist in gear. Everon watched the hoist grinding Franklin upward. Wind gusted along the street. Buildings blocked any sense of direction. Everon could see some blue sky, a puffy cumulus overhead. “As soon as my brother’s up I’m going to run ahead, start the helicopter . . .”
Franklin was only up six feet when the hoist rrrrr-ed to a stop. “Not my day!” The cable rope slowly paid out and set him back in the shin-high water . . .
“Pull him up!” van Patter urged. “Pull him up!”
Everyone but Victoria, van Patter and Kone grabbed onto the winch cable. Too slick and smooth. There was nothing to grip.
“I’ll get another battery!” Everon yelled, grabbing the drill and heading for the nearest abandoned car.
Everon had the hood raised and was disconnecting the battery’s second lead, when a shout went up. “There!” Franklin’s head appeared at the top of the rope, tied around Bloomingdale’s front doors. Bent over, straining, he rose out of the ditch hand-over-hand.
Franklin’s climbing shoes had no laces.
“Ahh,” Everon smiled, running back. “The old pull yourself up by your shoelaces trick!”
Franklin’s laces were wound around the rope, ends tied in knots to form loops. Slide one up. Stand on the other. He pulled himself over the street’s edge — to the waiting grip of Clarence, the Russian guy and the train engineer.
“Faster than changing batteries,” he said as he undid the knots and threaded the laces back in his shoes. He looked at Everon. “Haven’t you got a helicopter to start?”
“Right!” Everon scooped up the hoist, tugged on Clarence’s jacket. “Come on! Give me a hand!” And they ran down 59th Street.
Victoria looked at Franklin’s pants, jacket — his face and dark hair were caked with gray mud. “What happened?”
“New York’s streets are underlain with dozens of creeks and streams,” the voice of white-haired van Patter answered for him. “But I wouldn’t doubt the water coming into the train is part of the East River.”
Franklin glanced back over the edge, rapidly coiling purple rope around a hand and elbow. The rubble above the train was completely submerged now.
“I didn’t pay to get on. Maybe the Transit Authority didn’t want to let me go.”
To The Chopper
“Just a little higher, Clarence . . . wiggle it a little . . .”
The newspaper guy cradled the winch in place as Everon reattached it to its tubular support arms above the Pelican’s cargo door. Everon hated having to take time now, not being too certain how difficult the helicopter would be to restart. But they would need the hoist to have any chance of getting Franklin on top of Cyn’s building.
“Damn!” Clarence said as the green cap blew from his head. “Getting windy.” Dark kinky hair stood out in all directions, flipped back in the gusts. From the southeast now, Everon saw. From the cloud.
“How big was the bomb?” Clarence asked.
“I don’t know.”
Way down the avenue, thick dark slanting wisps of death, the radiation cloud and its rain were definitely moving in their direction.
“There!” Everon said, “Got it!” sliding the last bolt home. Zzzzt! He quickly tightened down a nut and moved to another.
Zzzzt! Zzzzt! He moved to the last nut, part of him wishing they hadn’t taken time to get these people out. Zzzzt! What if Franklin’s right and Cyn’s up there half alive?
“My mother’s in Brooklyn,” Clarence interrupted worriedly. “Do you know anything about Brooklyn . . .”
They were hustling at a pretty good clip, dodging chunks of debris, smashed furniture, fly-covered corpses. But the wind was gusting now, back and forth along 59th. They’d left the battery behind. Cars were everywhere. They could always get another.
Victoria Hill rode on Franklin and the train engineer’s interlocked hands. The Russian couple, who called themselves Petre and Kat, Franklin learned, carried his larger bags. Tyner Kone trailed the others. He’d refused to carry anything.
The slightly built Walter van Patter carried the small blue bag with Franklin’s climbing harnesses. “Has the President said anything yet?”
“Communications are down everywhere,” Chuck huffed as he lugged his med case.
“I doubt any television stations are operating,” Franklin said. “Only one radio station was on the air when we flew out of Teterboro. Everon can tell you more about electronic damage.”
“My family’s in the Bronx,” the transit engineer rasped out. He was tiring now, his side of Victoria lagging up and down with every step. “Have you heard anything about the Bronx?”
Franklin shook his head.
They were halfway up the block when the transit engineer asked, “Can we stop to rest? Just for a minute?”
An explosion rumbled ten yards behind them. A chunk of concrete slammed into the street, putting an end to the engineer’s rest idea. They pushed on. Past where the subway cave-in ended they were able to hustle still faster more in the center of the street.
Victoria studied the dark-haired man carrying her, pushing them all to go faster. Her knee was almost numb. How did he do it? And he speaks Russian? They don’t look much like brothers. The other one — Everon? — the wavy sun-blond hair. Certainly dresses well — Beneath the mud, she’d recognized quality in the cotton diagonal running through his sturdy tan trousers — gabardine.
But it was this one, Franklin, carrying her, almost running along the street. The gray mud streaked on his black leather jacket, on his long, dark tied-back hair and face. Tall and rangy. A flutter in her stomach. Those shining cobalt-blue eyes seemed to see her as she had never been seen before.
“So you’re on a Red Cross mission?” she asked.
“No,” he huffed. “We just came in to find our sister.”
“She was on the subway?”
“We don’t know where she is.”
“Does anyone know who did this?”
“No one seems to.”
Despite a minor case of numb-butt, she could feel his fingers below her thighs, long and strong. She’d noticed a little dirt caked around their tips. From where he must have been clawing his way out of that hole. But his nails were clipped close. Barely any white showing at the ends.
Why the hell am I thinking about his nails?
She felt her face redden with embarrassment. She knew why. What am I doing? It’s only a you-saved-my-life attraction.
She remembered reading somewhere that more babies were conceived around a major disaster than any other time. What is it about disaster that makes people think about sex?
The helicopter came into view, blades already turning.
“We’re almost there,” Franklin urged. “Come on!”
Cynthia has to be alive! Has to be! A kind of mantra he repeated with each step, clinging to uncertainty, holding tight to his fear. Grief, sadness — they meant his sister was already gone.
Fear was better. As long as he was afraid, Cynthia had to be alive.
Hopeless
As they rose above ruined streets and broken buildings, the survivors learned in silent fear what the city had become. Franklin wished he could have distracted them from what lay below, keep them from going into a state of shock. There just wasn’t time.
“Chuck, can you handle the hoist?” he asked.
“Of course.”
Franklin stepped to the rear of the Sea Pelican’s cargo area and pulled a climbing harness out of his blue bag.
“What are you doing?” Tyner Kone asked, voice rising.
“Before we can get you to Teterboro, we have to make a stop,” Franklin said.
“Stop? You can kiss my ass!” Kone yelled.
“Our sister, her husband and child live two blocks over. The first floor was blocked when we tried to get inside their apartment building. We were on our way to get the helicopter to do a flyover when we knocked a piece of concrete down onto your train.”
“These people belong in a hospital!” Kone said.
Victoria gave the barrel-bodied little bureaucrat a severe look.
“Maybe we should just give these men the time they need to do what they came to do. If it weren’t for them we’d still be in that damn train. Probably dead.”
“I agree,” added Mr. van Patter. He looked toward the empty bench. “This helicopter’s not full, and none of us are in worse shape than this young lady here. If she can wait, I think you can, Mr. Kone. If we can locate any more survivors, we ought to do it.”
“Yeah, man, just shut up,” said Clarence the newspaper vendor.
The Russians said nothing. The transit engineer gave a small nod of agreement.
Kone shut up.
Victoria sat on the fabric cot-seat looking at him silently. Though her knee was swollen nearly twice its normal size, the pain wasn’t that bad.
If I hadn’t gone out to the television studio in Queens, I’d probably be dead now. Like David, the guy she’d had a first date with last night. David lived in Chelsea. South. She could see nothing but fire in that direction.
What if I’d stayed at David’s last night like he wanted me to?
There was probably still a job here — of some kind. If she wanted it. She didn’t. She didn’t want Atlanta either. So then, back to Chicago it would have to be, she figured.
The helicopter rocked violently as Everon crabbed them over the wrecked building tops.
“That one!” Franklin said.
There on the floor of Cynthia’s apartment was the flower-covered four-drawer file cabinet, situated up against that half-broken bit of outside wall. Again Franklin noticed the fluttering splash of pink along the cabinet’s side.
Everon dodged them around the roaring yellow ball of flame as it expanded again in the middle of Lexington. “I — I just can’t do it,” he yelled. “I can’t get you over top and still keep the blades out of the fire!”
Franklin studied the building through the ball of yellow as they slowly drifted around it. Something. We aren’t seeing something. Has to be a way down there.
The flame shrank. Everon inched closer. Expanded again. They could feel the heat from it as it rocked the big Pelican.
But after two more complete circles, there just wasn’t. Not one debris-covered square foot. To put the winch’s hang point over any part of what was left of the upper floors would put the blades right in the flame.
At the fireball’s smallest, just as it began to expand, they got a brief look at the apartment floor. The broken walls. Junk littered everywhere.
Fortunately one person wasn’t looking down.
“Uh — I think we better GET OUT — OF — HERE!” Clarence shouted. “SHIT!”
Franklin’s eyes shot upward. Pieces of steel I-beam fell
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