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Franklin’s survivors hurried past the medical tents to where long yellow school buses were filling with people. A shake of Franklin’s hand, a pat on his back. “Thank you,” they said quickly. “The pilot — he leave so fast,” Petre said in Russian, “You thank him for us?” then, “Do svidaniya,” — Goodbye, echoed Kat. Kone continued into the lot without a word.
An old white sedan with several people inside pulled up sharply. A young guy in a long heavy coat rushed from the driver’s side. Victoria smiled at him as he moved behind her chair.
Head out the window, Kone returned in the back of a black town car bearing U.S. government plates. Asked if he could offer Walter van Patter a lift. “No thank you, Mr. Kone,” van Patter declined. Kone’s jaw bulged and he told the driver to move on.
Clarence, the train engineer, the Russians, even Mr. van Patter, found seats on one of the yellow buses.
As Victoria’s friend began to push her chair away, she reached up, pulled Franklin’s shoulder down and kissed his cheek. “You did a wonderful thing for us. Thank your brother for me, will you?” She studied his face, “You’re really a minister?”
“First Congregational Church, Erie, Pennsylvania,” Franklin replied, feeling strangely warm around the collar.
“You and the pilot —” she said. “Your hair’s so dark. He’s so blond. You don’t look much like brothers.”
“We each share — a parent with Cynthia . . .” A lump formed in his throat. He looked down at Melissa in his arms, his niece’s accusing eyes staring up at him. “We’re both her uncles,” he rasped.
The guy from the car rolled her to the rear side door, helped her from the wheelchair into the back seat. She looked back through the rear window as they drove away.
Harry — as Victoria had named him — was shaking inside Franklin’s shirt. I have to do something about this bird.
Someone had left a cardboard box on the ground. Campbell’s Chicken Soup. Inside was a stack of thin USA TODAYs. The headline read:
WHO’S RESPONSIBLE?
A computer-drawn image took up the whole first page. In his mind’s eye he saw what no eye should ever see: an expanding fireball, bright and red and gold and lethal in all its evil glory. The blast was centered at Manhattan’s south end — below Wall Street, labeled: South Street Seaport.
Balancing Melissa, Franklin slipped his free hand along the stack and set half the papers on the ground. He tugged out his front shirttails. Down inside his shirt, the owl’s talons clung to the top of Franklin’s pants. Harry didn’t want to leave, the owl’s speckled brown feathers shaking, shivering, all the way down the bird’s fluffy white chest, his long feathery cape.
Franklin sucked in his abs and gently prised beneath the bird’s talons with a finger, coaxing the owl into letting go. Finally, Harry released his grip and Franklin lifted him out of his shirt. Set him in the box.
The owl kept his large yellow eyes focused on Franklin as he scooped up the box in one arm, Melissa in the other. As Franklin hustled for the jet, spots of blood weeping across his shirtfront, Harry began a soft “hup-hup-hup.”
The Bird
There’s another one! Sal thought . . . And another one . . .
Along the highway berm were stranded cars with no apparent damage.
“I think they’re running out of gas!” he said softly.
“How are we, Saly?” Margarete asked. “Will we make it to Momma’s?”
Sal glanced at the Chevy’s gauges. “Eighth of a tank,” he muttered. “I don’t know.” They were up to forty. At least we’re moving again. Another hour should do it. Margarete dialed in a local radio station.
“Evacuees who try to return before their home areas are officially open are being blocked by military personnel; they will be required to turn their vehicles around. Those not yet allowed to go home may have to spend another grueling night in their cars.”
“What’s an evacee, Daddy?” their son asked.
“Listen!” Margarete shushed. The station’s voice continued:
“Traffic is still extreme. Apparently some drivers unable to take the stress have flatly refused to move. The Army is using giant transport trucks to shove any such cars aside.
“Soldiers were forced to return fire on one man with a handgun who died after receiving two bullets to the head —”
Sal turned it off. “Those poor bastards.” Not even a glare from Margarete. “We’re lucky we got out when we did.”
“When are they going to figure out who’s behind this, Saly?” Rita asked, echoing the very thing he’d been thinking. She had a way of doing that.
As they came off the freeway the engine quit for a moment, then restarted. Sal ran a red light. When they turned onto Momma Conti’s street the engine stopped running completely.
They coasted into the driveway.
Their arrival was a complete surprise to Momma Conti.
“Oh, my children,” Daniella exclaimed as she opened the door. It was the first time Sal had ever heard such desperation in his mother-in-law’s voice. Almost as if she included him in her affection.
“Oh, darling,” Margarete’s mother gushed all over her daughter. “And you drove that car!” An eyeball glanced at Sal. “I’m so relieved to see you. The news said there are no airlines, no trains at all east of Buffalo. And my two little pumpkins!” she knelt down, arms reaching out to hug the kids. “I’m so glad we’re all together.”
“Hello, Daniella.”
“Hello, Sal.” She turned back to Margarete.
“There was no way to call you!” Margarete said. “When the sirens started and the power went off — we hadn’t planned — we barely had any food. We packed everything we had.”
“Don’t worry,” Daniella said to her daughter, Sal thought eyeing him a bit snidely. “Momma has no electricity at the moment. But our food’s still cold. Plenty for everybody.”
Margarete kissed her mother’s cheek and turned to the kids. “Time for you two to have a quick bite and get to bed.”
But the moment the kids were down, the power came on. For how long, Sal couldn’t say. “They’re transmitting from New York!” Daniella called.
The first thing Sal saw on his mother-in-law’s television was a man with an owl’s head sticking out of his shirt.
“That bird!”
Sal ran out of the room like a nut — Who cares! Daniella already thinks so anyway — to the room the kids were using, silently slid out the yellow toolbox by its black handle. Flipped up the lid, pawing through, dumping his daughter’s dolls onto the floor —
There! Narrow brown stripes painted in streaks across its entire length . . .
Rita and her mother, staring at him as he ran back in. He held the feather to the television screen.
It’s the same!
He could still picture the restaurant’s dock. That Middle Eastern man with the boat. Letting go of that bird beneath the Brooklyn Bridge.
And then the picture was suddenly replaced by snow, the sound by static.
Hunt’s Desperation
A giant of a helicopter roared in low overhead. The largest Franklin had ever seen — long and fat.
Suspended beneath on four cables was slung a semi-truck container. Its crisp white paint job, like that on the chopper, bore a huge red WILLIAMS POWER logo on its side. The amount of air the giant moved as it passed was like a small windstorm.
Franklin walked faster until he was up with Everon and Chuck again. “I thought you wanted to get out of here? That black mist looks like it’s crossing the river,” Franklin pointed.
But Everon wasn’t listening.
The helicopter descended near the end of the row of big tents.
“Shouldn’t we —”
“Hold on,” Everon barked.
Soldiers ran over, unhooked cables, opened doors on the semi container’s front and rear. They pulled out heavy wires, ran them to one of the hospital tents. A motor cranked up. Bright lights came on. Emergency diesel generator, Franklin realized.
But as the huge helicopter banked away, the air it moved didn’t calm. Now it was gusty. The wind was picking up again.
“Everon!” waved a tall salt-and-pepper-haired man in a dark suit from the door of their Lear.
“Hunt?” Everon called out.
Hunt Williams, Franklin figured.
“I see you brought one of your backup generators.” Everon studied the soldiers operating its controls. “Need to find out what’s going on with it?” he added doubtfully.
“The Army asked me to bring it,” Hunt said, “but no, my pilot could have handled this without me. I came here to talk to you.”
“Me?” Everon and Chuck rolled the stretcher up against the Learjet’s side door.
Hunt threw a questioning glance at the charred cocoon as they pushed it back into the jet’s passenger area.
“My sister and her husband,” Everon said. “We found them on the Upper East Side.”
“Oh. I’m very sorry,” Hunt said.
From somewhere along the taxiway Everon had obtained what appeared to be a large rubber — a body bag, Franklin realized. He watched Everon unfold it alongside the bulging Aztec blanket and push one edge underneath, his jaw clamped together, tugging its zipper back and forth between the charred blanket and the jet’s floor.
Chuck moved in to help lift one side of the cocoon, but Everon gently moved the big man’s arm away as if to say, “I have this.”
Chuck stood there, silently watching. Franklin couldn’t.
He scooted Harry’s soup box back beneath the jet’s small side table. Harry slanted his head up at Andréa. She was flipping quickly through a bunch of charts, pulling more from a pouch next to the pilot’s seat.
Franklin took the seat next to her. Melissa let out a wail.
“Oh! Who’s this?”
To a shocked Andréa, Franklin explained as briefly as possible how and where they’d found Melissa in the city.
“How long has she been wearing that?”
“Eighteen hours maybe? I don’t know.”
Andréa put away the maps.
Together they peeled off his niece’s soiled pink nightsuit. Andréa wrapped a strip of what looked like part of a blue airline blanket between Melissa’s legs, then doubled over the rest and wrapped Melissa up in it, cleverly finishing the job with several strips of white medical tape. Who’s going to take care of her now? Franklin wondered. Grandma Del, I guess.
Andréa pulled out some milk to warm up in the jet’s microwave.
“Don’t give her that,” Chuck said.
He fished a short disposable bottle and a can of baby formula out of his big green case. “Here.”
A few minutes later Melissa was greedily sucking it down.
Franklin threw a handful of airline peanuts into Harry’s soup box.
With Melissa slurping softly, Harry answering in his soft “hup-hup-hup-hup,” Franklin let his eyes close. We have to get out of here, he thought. That cloud is coming.
“Andréa says you have time in a Gulfstream?” he heard Hunt ask.
“Uh-huh,” Everon grunted, like he was trying to force the middle of the bag past something.
Probably that damn piece of metal, Franklin thought.
“Obviously all the generating plants surrounding the city are out,” Hunt said, “— from Long Island, to over here in New Jersey. What nobody
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