LOSS OF REASON Page 12

“Okay, okay—let’s go!”

  “Okay—his name’s Everon—tell him I’ll give three short tugs when we’re ready then take it really slow. Since he’s got the grate cleared, you’ll want to take her straight up to street level. Do you need the winch to pull you up?”

  Clarence glanced at the opening. “No way, man.” Like a mole, the StreetNews! guy scrambled up through the chute, shooting loose dirt into the water behind. His feet disappeared as if he’d been grabbed from above.

  While Franklin tightened a harness strap just below Victoria’s gold skirt, the Russian sloshed through the stomach-high water to the doors, lifted his woman up and shoved against the bottoms of her shoes. She surprised them all, darting upward nearly as fast as Clarence. Victoria watched the woman’s mobility with something like envy. Embarrassment flashed across her face. She wishes she could do it herself, Franklin realized.

  When he moved around to her other leg, the strap was already on, the buckle tightened down. He looked up at her.

  She shrugged. “It seemed the right way to do it.”

  She looped an arm around Franklin’s neck and the transit engineer helped her across the rising water, around the pile of brick and wet gray dirt to the car’s other side. Franklin gave the rope three sharp pulls and its slack was taken up.

  Victoria Hill watched the wiry, dark-haired man as he guided her head carefully upward to the hole. Just before the train car’s interior dropped away, she saw what the lack of light had hidden. His irises. Electric cobalt blue.

  Water rose above the seat backs, touched the lower edge of the train’s windows.

  Kone coughed and scratched at his nose. For someone in a hurry to go—now Kone didn’t want to leave the train car! Making an odd superstitious kind of motion, touching opposite shoulders several times—as if to even himself out somehow. Water halfway up his chest, Franklin ignored it, gave the rope a tug.

  Kone halfway up the hole, the engineer looked at Franklin as they strained against the little bureaucrat’s bulk. “Feels like the chub’s pushing back!” the engineer grunted.

  Finally Kone’s weight left their hands and his shoes disappeared.

  Walter van Patter followed quite quickly, spry for someone so old. The Russian went next. Franklin pushed the engineer up into the hole right on the Russian’s heels.

  By the time the engineer was up, Franklin’s chest was completely submerged in the freezing water. He felt with the toes of his right climbing shoe onto the top corner of the plastic seat back and pushed off to propel himself up into the chute.

  The dirt around him was loose, turning to mud. He couldn’t get a grip. The mud shifted. He slid backward as he clawed against it. The earth offered no support at all.

  The hole’s sides were loosening. He could feel the loose gray mud pressing inward on his waist, his shoulders. He scrabbled faster, trying to grab onto something, anything, cupping his hands like scoops.

  The mud grew softer, washing backward without any purchase at all. The water was to his neck, closing the hole around him, squeezing his legs, freezing water rising over his chin. He kicked desperately, trying to dig forward with his knees.

  His right knee found a sharp object, an embedded brick or something in the muck and he pushed against it. But it sloughed backward. He was going down. Water closed over his chin, his mouth, his nose, his eyes. He could see nothing but a gray milky white.

  Even that disappeared in darkness.

  Losing Franklin

  Everon and the Russian pulled the transit engineer from the hole. The portly guy, Kone, was in the second harness, already riding the winch to the street. The old man would go up next, the engineer after him.

  Everon glanced at the hole alongside the train. “What’s taking so long?” he asked. “How many more are there?”

  “The rescue guy’s the last,” the transit engineer answered.

  The hole suddenly filled with water.

  Down below, Franklin reached up blindly for anything. There was nothing to grab onto. He couldn’t breathe.

  He reached again and felt fingers take hold of his right hand—then slip away. He was being sucked down, deeper now, backward into the train.

  Something caught the left sleeve of his leather jacket. It was a grip of iron and it shocked him to know who it had to be, to know the water had to be not only over his own head but over his brother’s too—startled to remember what Cynthia once told him, how frightened Everon was of having his head submerged.

  He slid his other hand onto the hand that pinched his leather sleeve. Another hand reached down attaching itself to his arm. Slowly, he moved upward. But the suction tried to hold him. He was drowning, running out of air.

  He was jerked forward—violently!

  His head burst clear. He saw Everon’s determined face, eyes big, covered with wet gray slime. They both gasped, sucking in huge gulps of the smoky Manhattan air.

  The Russian, kneeling down next to Everon, must have been holding Everon’s legs for he scrambled forward and pulled at Franklin’s arms too, helping Franklin crawl his own legs out of the sucking muck.

  Franklin’s feet came free and he made his knees, breathing hard. He rose to one foot, bent over, his muddy sleeve taking a swipe across his face, then hugged his brother. “Thanks—Bro!” he breathed out.

  Everon let out a long exhale. “Nothing better to do today.”

  “Except find Cynthia.”

  “Exactly.”

  Standing in toe-deep water as it rippled over the train car top, Franklin and Everon watched the rope help the Russian rise to the street. The others were already up.

  “Climbing out from here would have been impossible for them without the hoist.” Franklin looked up. “Nice job getting rid of the metal grate.” He turned to Everon. “We can’t just ditch them, you know.” Rising water sloshed over their boot tops.

  “I know.” Everon’s forehead held a puzzled frown. “That old guy looks familiar.”

  “Victoria—the dark-haired girl—she called him Mr. van Patter.”

  “Walter van Patter? What the hell? You’re kidding!” Everon nodded. “I thought I’d seen him somewhere. That guy’s a multibillionaire, Bro. They call him The Runner.”

  “The Runner? Him?”

  “Well, he doesn’t actually run much. It’s a nickname. Did you see those gold and white running shoes he wears? He walks everywhere. Probably the only billionaire in the city who never uses a driver.”

  The harness was coming down. “How long to get the helicopter started?” Franklin asked.

  “Just a few minutes, I hope.”

  Franklin held the harness out to his brother. “Then get up there and get going.”

  Everon got his legs in the straps and yelled up. A moment later he began ascending the tunnel wall very slowly. “Looks like the battery’s nearly out of juice . . . ”

  Chuck was handing each person a bottle of water and a snack bar as they reached the street. He pulled out a blanket for Victoria to sit on.

  “Dislocated,” he said. “Nice job somebody came up with for splints,” carefully undoing them. “Franklin?”

  “I did it.”

  “Really!”

  When he probed her bulging knee with a gentle fingertip, she barely reacted. “Not bothering you like you’d think it would,” he said puzzled, rubbing backs of fingers across red muttonchops. “I can’t reduce it by myself though.”

  The Russian woman said something unintelligible and knelt down behind Victoria’s head. She slid her arms to the elbows under Victoria’s armpits and said something else to Chuck.

  “Do it!” said the Russian man.

  “She wants you to try to put it back in,” Victoria said.

  “Yeah. Okay,” Chuck pushed her skirt up a few inches, and with a meaty hand massaged her thigh, pulling on her heel, straightening her leg.

  Now the pain came back. Her leg was three-quarters straight when her kne
ecap popped over and her leg straightened. “Ahhhh . . . ” Suddenly the world felt a whole lot better.

  Chuck replaced the newspaper splints with a clear blow-up plastic cuff. He wound another cloth around her head.

  “You should check out Mr. van Patter,” she said, as the white-haired man came from the ditch. “I think he had a pretty bad crack.”

  Chuck used some alcohol on a gauze pad to clean the blood off the side of van Patter’s forehead.

  “No big deal,” the old guy winced.

  Chuck peeled open a large flesh-colored adhesive bandage and applied it just below the scalp line. Probably a concussion, Chuck thought.

  “Who are they?” Victoria asked. “The two guys who got us out of there.”

  “Who, Franklin and the blond one?” Chuck smiled. “Just met ’em myself. They’re brothers.”

  “Brothers?” van Patter said. “They don’t look anything like brothers.”

  As the hoist walked Everon slowly upward, he wiped sweat from his eyes, more of the gray cement mud from his forehead. The sun was out. Getting warm. Or is it that gas blasting up out of the street?

  As soon as he made the edge, he immediately got out of the harness and signaled the train engineer to send it back down for Franklin.

  The smell seemed worse than before. Everon looked down 59th. “The military’s been here? HAZMAT people?” he asked, frowning.

  Chuck shook his head, “Not yet.” The others agreed. A low hum permeated the air.

  “Those body bags,” Everon pointed out two, a hundred feet up the sidewalk.

  The Russian woman watched where he was pointing. She began speaking rapidly, hands suddenly animated. Her agitation spread to the Russian male.

  “What are they saying?” Kone asked.

  “I don’t know. You can ask Franklin when he gets up here,” Everon said. “Something about body bags. I’ve got to—”

  “Look kinda rough,” Clarence frowned at the two nearest ones. “Uneven, somehow, aren’t they?”

  “Oh my God!” Victoria said.

  “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 th
e 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.