“Gray?” Aurora called out in a whisper, though she wasn’t sure why she was being quiet.
The breathing stopped.
“Gray? Is that you?”
Hooking a right, she came to a dead end. Gray sat hunched in a corner, pressing against the sides of his head with both hands. He was shaking, taking deep, gasping breaths. He looked deranged. Peering up at Aurora with those hazel eyes, he reached out a trembling hand to her. She took it without hesitation, kneeling beside him.
“What happened?” she asked.
“We need to get out.”
“We’ll find—”
“There’s no way out!” he exclaimed, startling her. “I looked. We’re trapped.”
“We aren’t trapped, Gray. Calm down—”
“No, Aurora!” he cried. “He was trapped! He couldn’t get out! And he died.”
“Who…?” Aurora asked, wide eyed. “Who died?”
“My uncle.”
Aurora frowned. “The firefighter from New York?” Gray nodded. “That’s been years, though, hasn’t it?” she said as gently as she could manage.
“Fifteen years in September.”
Aurora’s brows slowly met at this. “September. Not…the eleventh?”
Gray looked at her with hollow eyes.
Then, he nodded.
Fifteen
GRAY
“Your uncle died on 9/11?" Aurora said.
Taking an unsteady breath, Gray told her his story.
He’d been ten then. A miserable little boy who’d lost his mother and had no knowledge of the whereabouts of his father. Chief Joe Mancuso was all he had, a man Gray always admired and looked up to. Joe was never particularly good at discipline or laying down rules. He’d let Gray make his own decisions and mistakes—said it would help shape him as a man. Joe was the bravest man Gray knew, always the first one into a burning building and the last one out.
The morning of 9/11 was like any other. Joe was on duty at the firehouse and Gray was left alone in their tiny efficiency apartment that cost more than a large house in Texas. Gray didn’t mind it, though. He was happy to sleep on the couch. At least he had somewhere to sleep. That morning he awoke with a flaming red throat and tonsils the size of Ping-Pong balls. So, he stayed home. His uncle wouldn't mind.
He slept late, ate ice cream for breakfast, and lounged on the couch, surfing, mindlessly, through the channels.
Just as he'd settled on a random cartoon, a massive sonic boom—or, at least, that’s what it sounded like—echoed from outside his apartment.
But that had been too loud, too close to be a sonic boom.
Moving from the couch to the little window in the kitchen, Gray pushed the dusty curtain aside, gaping at the scene in the distance. The twin towers were only a few blocks away, and one of them was now puking black smoke. A massive hole yawned near the top, malevolent flames licking the air.
Fire engine horns blared nearby, and Gray’s thoughts went to his uncle. He was on duty. He would be there.
Gray turned on the tiny TV in the kitchen and clicked through the channels until he reached CNN. As he'd hoped, a different angle of the burning tower filled the screen. Returning to the window, he both listened to the news anchor and watched the live view.
A nervous worry clenched his stomach as he watched the smoke darken the sky. Time seemed to stop and speed up simultaneously.
Gray glanced back at the clock on the wall.
8:59.
Three minutes passed as quick as seconds ticking by, and then came another loud explosion, followed by an enormous fireball blossoming in the smoky sky. The second tower had been hit. And it was clearly not an accident.
The words "terrorist attack" blared from the television, and Gray bolted from the kitchen, pulling on his unlaced boots and jetting out the door.
His uncle was in the thick of a terrorist attack. He couldn’t just sit and watch as it unfolded on television.
So he ran.
Two blocks away.
One block away.
Legs pumping, heart racing, he wove through crowds of people running away from the burning towers as he ran towards them. Papers, ash, and pieces of the buildings fell from the sky like deadly flakes of snow. The air smelled of smoldering metal and burning paper, and something else. He shuddered to think of what that something else could be.
Many people fled in fear, but just as many stood transfixed, staring up at the two burning skyscrapers. A cacophony of noise blared in Gray’s ears. People sobbing. People screaming. Sirens. Policemen and firemen calling out orders. Periodic explosions from above. Debris raining down on the ground.
As he neared the buildings, a policeman blocked his way, telling him to stay back.
“But my uncle is a firefighter—”
“I’m sorry, son, it’s too dangerous,” the policeman said.
Gray moved away from him, his eyes fixing on the terrible sight above. He wondered if his uncle was already in there. Already thirty, forty, fifty stories up. He may have been the chief, but he would have wanted to help the people. As many as he could. He wouldn’t be at the command center.
And, as he thought this, Gray noticed large objects falling every few minutes from the top stories of the towers. He squinted his eyes to see what they could be. Were the people throwing desks out of the windows? Chairs? But desks and chairs wouldn’t move and twist in such a way as they fell. Then understanding washed over him.
The objects were people.
People falling. No…worse—they were jumping. And he momentarily forgot about his uncle while he watched as, one by one, another life was extinguished.
Gray watched the base of each tower for a sign of his uncle. Several firefighters he recognized came out of the first tower and moved to the second, but none from his uncle’s battalion. They remained in the first tower. Gray’s eyes moved from one tower to the other, trying to ignore the bodies that continued to fall from the upper levels.
Then something on the second tower caught his attention. The place where the plane hit was bending outward, nearly buckling. Glass began shattering out from the area, and Gray realized what was happening just as a deafening roar erupted above him.
The second tower was collapsing.
It crashed straight down, like a burning ship sinking into an ocean of cement, waves of debris splashing up into the air. It was the wave of debris that sent him sprinting in the opposite direction. After a few seconds, he realized he wouldn’t be able to outrun the impending cloud of dust. He came upon a pickup truck sitting empty against the curb, its front door resting open. Gray leapt inside, slamming the door shut, just as the dust cloud passed over him.
Everything went dark.
Ash rained down on the windows of the pickup until Gray could no longer see out of them. The smell coming in through the vents was indescribable. It burned his nose and already burning throat. It took several minutes for the dust to settle enough for Gray to see anything more than dark shapes. It took the same amount of time for his heart to not feel like it was trying to escape from his chest. He cracked the door of the truck, peering out. What was once a crowded street was now a gray wasteland. A few dust-covered people remained, coughing and retching on the street from inhaling the toxic ash.
The North Tower still burned, pumping black smoke into the sky to accompany the white cloud of debris. Gray bent down and ran his fingers over the ashy ground, wondering what these particles were before. Glass from a window? Part of the floor? A picture of someone’s family? Or…someone. He hastily wiped the ash off on his pants, shuddering.
There weren’t as many policemen blocking his way this time, and he was able to slip past one who was rinsing his mouth out with water and spitting it on the sidewalk. Debris continued falling. Bodies continued falling. And firefighters were already beginning to pour out of the remaining building. Some looked severely injured.
One by one, firemen from his uncle’s battalion trickled out of the building and on
to the streets. Luka, his uncle’s close friend, came within earshot of him, and Gray had to call out his name several times before the fireman turned his ash-covered head to look in Gray’s direction.
“Sonny?” Luka said, approaching him. “What’re you doin’ over here? It’s dangerous. Go to the firehouse and—”
“Where’s Joe?” Gray interrupted.
“He was a few flights behind me. He should be out soon. Why don’t you go to—”
“I’m not going back to the firehouse!” Gray exclaimed.
“Okay, okay!” Luka held up his hands. “Just keep away from the tower, alright, son?”
Luka turned and trudged back towards a group of firemen.
Then Gray saw him. His Uncle Joe. Carrying a bleeding woman on his back. Paramedics relieved him of the woman and took over. Joe was given a water bottle by another fireman who was yelling in his ear, pointing towards the collapsed tower. Joe shook his head, looking defiant. And Gray knew then what Joe wanted to do.
Ignoring his better judgment and Luka’s warnings, Gray raced across the street to his uncle. “You can’t go back in there!”
“Gray?” Joe said in surprise.
“What if this tower falls too?”
“Then I’d better hurry,” Joe said.
“Uncle Joe! You can’t—”
“There are still people up there. I’m goin’ back up,” Joe said, turning back to the remaining tower.
“If you go back in there, you’ll die,” Gray shouted angrily.
“Then I'll die knowing I did everything I could,” Joe yelled over his shoulder.
“Uncle Joe!” Gray called desperately.
But Joe was already in the building.
A couple of firemen watched Joe go back in with grave expressions, and Gray knew they were thinking the same things he was.
They were not good things.
It was only a minute—maybe two—before the first tower began to fall around them. Gray ran, but he was too stunned to get far. Something crashed into him, and he was pulled by invisible hands under a nearby fire engine.
The cloud of ash quickly filled his lungs, and he was sure he was going to die there, suffocating on the clotted air. The last thing he saw before he passed out were hundreds—perhaps thousands—of colorful, pulsating orbs of light circling the air where the buildings had once stood. They were breathtaking.
The next thing he remembered was water being poured into his mouth and over his face. He was laid out on the sidewalk in a layer of dust. The others around him sounded like they were coughing up their lungs, but his felt fine. Though, he did have dust in about every exposed orifice.
Luka handed him another bottle of water, and Gray rinsed out his mouth for the second time before pouring the rest over his head, the soot turning to mud in his hair.
What was once the twin towers was now a pile of molten metal, ash, and pieces of the building jutting out of the ground. Gray imagined that was what the gateway to Hell looked like. Compared to the earlier noise, the silence was even more unsettling. He wanted to yell, or shout something, or sob. But he couldn’t. He could barely move, much less speak. Not from pain or injury, but from shock.
Luka made Gray come back to the firehouse to wait for the other firemen from their battalion. Through a haze of numbness, he washed the muck out of his hair as they waited for the others to return. One by one, the men returned looking downcast and, at the same time, relieved. Some were bleeding. Others were crying. Some had a dead look in their eyes, as if they had completely shut their brains off to avoid further mental damage. As they trickled in, people engulfed them in hugs and pats on the back.
By afternoon, everyone was accounted for except for three: the youngest guy in the firehouse named Tyler, Luka’s brother, Larry, and Gray’s uncle, Joe.
The televisions in the station replayed the day’s events. Over and over and over again. Some of the guys recounted their experiences and disbelief of what happened. Others sat in silence, or called their families. Gray had no one to call. His last bit of family was either dead or trapped in the rubble of the towers.
“I say we go back and help search,” Luka said suddenly. “Our guys are still out there.”
Gray could tell Luka was having difficulty keeping his voice steady. His brother had still not returned.
“But they told us to—” another began.
“I don’t give a damn what they said,” Luka interrupted. “Let’s go.”
Seven from their battalion left the firehouse; the rest stayed behind in case any of the three returned. The battalion’s fire engine had been buried in the collapse, so they took Luka’s pickup. No one said anything when Gray climbed into the bed of the truck with the others.
The pile that was once the twin towers was overwhelmingly vast, and dangerous. One wrong step and Gray could fall into a thirty foot chasm. Hours passed and night fell. A blackout occurred, plunging them even farther into darkness. Flashlights were passed around, and generators were brought to the site so the rescue teams could continue searching. At around 8:30pm, someone turned on a car radio. President Bush was addressing the nation. Gray missed most of what was said. It was a speech to empower the country—to reassure them retaliation would occur. Frankly, Gray didn’t care. He just wanted him to stop talking so they could continue to search for his uncle.
Around midnight, Luka decided to go back to the firehouse to shower, eat, and sleep a bit, so they would be well-rested the next morning—when they’d continue their search. Gray showered and ate mechanically, but sleep evaded him. He lay awake for hours in the bed where his uncle had slept, replaying the day’s events over and over as the news stations had earlier that day.
The firehouse was up and ready just after sunrise. School was canceled that day. Not that Gray would've gone anyway. Luka let Gray ride down to the site in his truck again. The mound of ash and debris was referred to as “the pile” by the firefighters.
Gray helped dig through the pile with buckets and listened and looked for any signs of life beneath the rubble. Every so often someone would yell for quiet. Everyone would stop working. Stop talking. Listening and waiting for someone to be pulled out of the pile alive. Gray’s heart would nearly stop as he waited, hoping they'd found his uncle. But, more often than not, it would be a false alarm, and everyone would slowly start back to work.
There were no whole objects. No desks. No chairs. No pieces of office equipment. Just dust. There were occasional solitary body parts that forced Gray to temporarily halt his digging and take a few deep, calming breaths.
That first day they uncovered several bodies—or parts of bodies.
One person was pulled out alive.
It wasn't his uncle.
Luka, Gray, and a few others came back the next day. Technically, their battalion was off, but they still had three guys missing. Luka wanted to find his brother. Gray wanted to find his uncle.
And find him they did….
“We got a body over here!” one of the workers called. “Looks like a fireman.”
Gray ran over to the spot and froze. It was his Uncle Joe. His uniform had been burned off of him, but one of his boots remained. Gray had heard many people describe dead bodies as appearing to be asleep. Joe did not look like he was sleeping. He looked dead. His body was beginning to bloat, and dried blood covered his head. They found him under part of what used to be a staircase. The medical examiner said he'd been alive when the towers collapsed; that he'd died from lack of oxygen, due to being trapped beneath the rubble.
He had been alive.
But they had been too late.
Gray watched as they zipped his uncle into a body bag and covered him in an American flag. Luka clenched his shoulder tightly. They never did find the body of Luka’s brother or the young fireman named Tyler. After Joe’s body had been uncovered, Luka told Gray to go back to the firehouse. When he arrived there, the others had already heard the news. They wrapped him in hugs; some sobbed on his shoulder.
From that day on, the firemen were his family, the firehouse—his home.
That was the day he moved his things out of his uncle’s apartment and into the firehouse.
That was the day he decided to become a fireman.
Gray came out of his unimaginable reverie, returning to the equally unimaginable present. Though, somehow, it made sense to be in a place as bizarre as this maze. It made his memories seem less real.
Looking over, he noticed Aurora’s eyes glittering with tears. “I’m so sorr—” she began.
“Don’t,” he interjected. “You don’t have to be sorry.”
She was silent a moment before she spoke in a quiet voice, “I…I don’t know what else to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” he murmured. “Just don’t let go of me.”
Aurora’s grip on his hand tightened.
Sixteen
CHORD
“Splitting up was probably not the best idea,” Chord remarked to Sev as they reached yet another dead end in the checkerboard maze. “Now we won’t be able to find our way back.”
“I know the way back,” Sev said matter-of-factly.
Chord raised an eyebrow at him. “You do? How?”
Sev shrugged. “Just trace our steps backward.”
“Yes, that would be good. If we remembered which steps we took forward,” Chord said dryly, kicking at some rose petals.
“I do remember,” Sev stated.
Chord refrained from rolling his eyes at the brilliant boy. Maybe if he'd left a trail of dinosaur bones, he could find the way back. But they had been walking for a good twenty minutes, turning various corners and passing several dead ends.
“All right, then. Lead the way.” Chord, waved a hand for Sev to begin walking.
Etheria (The Halo Series Book 1) Page 9