“Let’s go,” I say to the others. “Look out for anyone left behind.”
We run down the hallway calling out “It’s time to go. There’s a bomb!”
I bang on every door but each room is empty. “Looks like everyone here made it out,” I say. I feel frantic and momentarily disoriented. I can’t recall the way to the marina.
“All citizens evacuate immediately.”
Millie grabs me by both shoulders and stares intensely into my eyes. “Chris, we really have to go, or the three of us are going to die. On our way out, we’ll continue our search. But we need to go. Now!”
“You’re right,” I reply. I close my eyes for a moment. “Back to the main corridor.”
We run down the hallway and back towards the main corridor so we can find our way to the marina. Our feet are squeaking on the rubbery floor and our arms are pumping by our sides. I scan every room we pass for anyone left behind.
We turn a corner and run smack into Lincoln. He looks at me, surprise registering on his face. “Where are you going? What are you doing?” he barks.
“We are looking for the marina,” says Rich.
“Keep going.”
“What are you doing?” I ask him.
“I’m looking for my daughter, Katherine.”
I remember a snippet of a conversation from several lifetimes ago. “Yanx,” I say softly.
He glares at me, his face rippling with barely contained rage. “Yes, she’s our daughter.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t come out with the other children.”
“We’ll help,” I say.
“All citizens evacuate immediately.”
Lincoln stares at me for a beat, and then nods. “Spread out through this wing.”
We run down the hallway together, each taking a room as we go. I hear the others calling her name over and over, but we don’t find the little girl.
“We are running out of time,” pants Millie as we reconvene in the hallway. “How long has it been?”
Lincoln pulls a small device from his pocket. “Twenty minutes.”
“We need to hurry.”
“All citizens evacuate immediately.”
“I’m worried about sympathetic detonation,” yells Lincoln as we run. “We’ve got an armory of weapons. There could be a chain reaction. This whole place is going to be destroyed if that bomb goes off.”
“Where else could she be?” yells Millie over the sound of the alarm and the voice.
“She could be outside, she sometimes hides there,” he replies. He suddenly terribly looks frightened.
We follow Lincoln into the central garden. It’s dark outside, but lights along the perimeter wall dimly illuminate the garden. The alarm is loud out here, I doubt Katherine will hear us yelling her name.
“I’ll check the fruit trees,” yells Lincoln as he runs off.
“I’ll check the vegetable gardens,” I tell the others. I don’t wait for a reply. I run up and down the rows of vegetables and grain crops, searching for a small girl. When I glance back, I can see the others fanning out over the green space.
I’m in the last row of corn when I see her shoes poking out. I duck down and a scared little face looks back at me between corn stalks. She’s not alone. A small boy is next to her and they hold hands.
“Katherine,” I say, offering my hand. “It’s okay, your father is here. We’ll take you to safety.” She rubs a dirty hand over her tear-stained face, leaving smudges of mud.
“Come on,” I say to the boy. I reach a hand out to both of them and feel two tiny hands reach for my own. I pull them from under the corn plants and hoist them both in my arms, one on each hip.
The alarm continues to wail and the bomb is ticking somewhere close by.
“I’ve got them,” I yell, running into the central garden. “I’ve got them!”
Millie sees me and waves. She runs over and takes the boy from me.
“Where’s Rich and Lincoln?” she pants.
We scan the garden but can’t see them. I curse. We run towards a patch of trees that obscure the view behind them. They aren’t there.
“We need to leave,” says Millie urgently. “We need to get the kids out of here. There can’t be much time before that bomb is going to explode this whole place to nothing!”
“I’m not leaving without Rich,” I say. “It’s not an option. I don’t care if we all die in here.”
Millie sets her mouth in a thin, determined line, and nods. We split up, circling around the edge of the garden. I’m almost half way around the perimeter wall when I think I hear someone shouting over the loud wail of the siren. I look at Katherine, who wipes her snotty face on my shirt.
“Did you hear that?” I ask her. She hides her face.
I run back towards the middle of the garden and finally see Millie and Rich waving to me from the opposite wall. Lincoln is on the ground. I cover the distance quickly.
How much time do we have left? Fifteen minutes? Five minutes? No minutes…
“Help him up,” I yell at them. “Lincoln, how much time?”
He pulls the small device from his pocket. “Ten minutes,” he says. “Katherine baby. You’re okay. Daddy’s here.” She reaches for him, but as he stands his left leg buckles under his weight and he falls over with a cry of pain.
“Here,” says Rich. “Put your arm around me. Let’s go.” Rich hoists Lincoln up and wraps his arm around Rich’s shoulder. Lincoln points us in the direction of the marina and we start running.
We are inside now. The main corridor is eerily quiet, except for the voice. “All citizens evacuate immediately.”
Lincoln and Rich’s progress is painfully slow. Lincoln is limping, unable to put any weight on his leg. “We need them to hurry up,” I say to Millie.
She nods, her face stricken.
“What happened to him?” I ask Millie, as we wait for Rich and Lincoln to catch up to us.
“He tripped when he was looking for his daughter,” she replies. “Rich found him crawling through the garden, yelling desperately for Katherine.” The little girl looks up at the mention of her name.
They finally catch up to us. I’m stepping foot-to-foot, desperate to keep going. “Let me see,” I say. I try to pull off his boot and Lincoln screams in pain.
“We don’t have time for this!” he growls at me.
“Well speed up,” I snap. “We are all about to die.”
We turn off the main corridor and down a hallway towards the marina. Millie and I carry the kids and run ahead, then impatiently wait for Rich and Lincoln to catch up. We repeat the pattern over and over as the final minutes tick away.
“All citizens evacuate immediately.”
Finally, the door to the marina is in front of us. Millie and I push through the door and burst onto the wooden jetty. Many of the boats have already left. I can see them racing away from the marina.
“There,” yells Millie, pointing to a small boat already filled with people. The engine is idling and they are about to leave.
“Wait,” screams Millie. “Wait for us.”
A man spots us and screams for us to run.
We reach the boat and climb aboard. I look back at the door and watch for Lincoln and Rich. The alarm is wailing. But time stops completely as I pray for Rich and Lincoln to emerge from the building.
“We need to go!” shouts the man who helped us aboard.
“There are more people coming,” I yell. “Wait one more minute!”
As I speak, the door bursts opens and there’s Rich, his face breaking into a grin when he spots me.
It’s my brother. My other half.
“Run!” we are all yelling, when the first blast happens on the other side of the island.
“We have to get out of here,” screams the man. He starts to reverse the boat. I’m screaming so hard I’ve lost my voice and no sound is coming out. Rich is running like a madman, dragging Lincoln as they stumble towar
ds us.
“Let him go!” I scream. But Rich doesn’t hear me, or doesn’t listen. The boat begins to back away.
We are ten cubits from the jetty now, and Rich and Lincoln are almost here. They won’t make it. We are too far away. I grab a bright orange ring tied to a long rope and throw it to Rich, just as the whole world implodes.
The sound of the second explosion is deafening and all encompassing. The island spews upwards and breaks into a thousand burning pieces, the fire lighting up the night sky like an eruption from the center of the Earth. I grab hold of Katherine when I feel the boat rocking violently and she’s holding me too.
The boat lifts, and for a moment I think we are going to land back on the water upright. But we flip over, and are plunged into the dark, black river. We are flung deep into the water and I hold on to Katherine’s little hand as we sink below the surface.
I can’t get my bearings. I don’t know which way is up. But then I spot the fire burning above the surface.
Still holding the little girls hand in mine, I drag her up towards the fire. It takes us a few moments to reach the surface but we finally break free of the water. I have a vague sense of burning all around us, of the current dragging us away.
But all I can think of right now is the tiny, lifeless form I’m holding in my arms.
Something large floats by and I grab hold of it. It’s wooden; maybe a door, but I can’t be sure. I hoist Katherine up onto the floating object and breathe into her mouth, alternating with chest compressions.
I repeat the breathing and compressions until I lose all track of time, with no response. But she finally coughs and splutters up water and my heart soars.
She’s crying, deathly pale and frightened, but alive. She looks at me and I’m overcome with the tragic consequences of what we’ve just done.
I need to find my brother.
Chapter Seventeen
They come for us as the sun lightens the sky, allowing me to see the full scale of the devastation. Washington is a burning lump of twisted metal. Everywhere around us, floating on the currents, are the remnants of the city we destroyed.
The rescue boat is small so that it can pick it’s way through the debris, looking for survivors. Katherine and I see them coming and watch the boat approach in silence. She is on top of the wooden door and I am leaning my chest and arms on it, my legs cold and numb in the water.
A man who recognizes Katherine hauls us aboard. We are soaked through and they wrap blankets around us. “Who are you?” he asks me kindly. “I haven’t seen you before.”
I don’t answer him. Instead, I stand up and survey the surrounding waters. “Have you seen a young man that looks like me?” I ask him desperately. “Have you seen a woman with short cropped hair?”
“No, no one like that,” replies the man. His face is sorrowful and his eyes turn away sadly from my anguish.
There is another woman on board and she has bundled Katherine tightly in a soft gray blanket. Katherine sits on her lap, burrowing into the woman’s chest. Katherine notices me watching her and looks back with a vacant expression.
“She needs some food,” I say to the women absentmindedly. “Have you got something for her?”
“Would you like some bread, Katherine?” asks the woman. The little girl accepts the food and the woman turns to me. “What about you, dear?”
“No, I’m fine,” I reply. She looks at my hands and I follow her gaze. They are shaking, so I wrap the blanket tighter around me and tuck them inside. Then I turn back to the Potomac and continue to scan the debris-strewn river for my brother.
The boat continues on, maneuvering between the scraps of wood and plastic floating on the surface. “Did most people make it out?” I ask.
The man continues to steer the small boat carefully. “Yes, almost everyone is back on the riverbank. There was one boat that was too close to the blast and is still missing. We think there were eight on board. You two are the first people we’ve found, but we will keep looking. There should be six others.”
“Eight others,” I say, my heart as cold as ice. “Rich and Millie are here somewhere too.”
The man nods. “Eight,” he repeats. “We’ll keep looking.”
We circle around what is left of the island and I’m surprised at the scale of the destruction. The second blast must have come from the armory. It ripped the glass island apart from the inside.
The boat we are on has a canopy over the man steering the boat. I stand and let my blanket drop to the ground. The man glances at me. “I’m just going to climb up there, so I can get a better view,” I say by way of explanation.
The man slows the boat and we stop, drifting gently in the current of the Potomac. I hoist myself on to the small roof. It’s curved and slippery, but I manage to get my footing and I rise slowly on shaking legs.
The additional height gives me a better view of the surrounding waters and I scan the area carefully. I see a large white object about ten chains away, and what looks like a group of people holding on around the edges. The object may have been part of our boat. “Over there!” I yell to the driver.
He smiles at me gratefully as he reaches up to give me a hand down. His hand is dry and weathered in my own. “Thank you,” he says. “We need all the help we can get if we are going to save the missing.”
He turns the small boat in the direction I pointed. As we get closer, I realize Millie is one of a group of five. I raise my hand and she lifts one hand and waves, her mouth set in a grim line. My brother isn’t with her.
The man slows the boat and we approach the large piece of debris slowly. We gently nudge the edge with the hull of the boat and I lean over the side to help everyone on board. My hand clasps Millie’s cold, wet arm, and I heave her up onto the rescue vessel.
Millie is shivering so I take my blanket and wrap it around her shoulders wordlessly. Our eyes meet and hers quickly flick to the devastation all around us. We made a mistake and we both know it. Destroying the fuel felt like a victory. This feels like terrorism.
She scans the small boat and says, “Rich?” in a voice that shatters me into a million pieces.
“We’ll find him. He’s okay. He’s okay.”
We find two more women clutching a scrap of wood. It might even be a tree that was uprooted from the internal garden.
“It’s a miracle no one was killed,” mutters the man driving the boat.
“We haven’t found everyone yet,” I murmur. The sun is rising higher in the sky now, and we can see further down the Potomac. I climb up on top of the boat once more, bending my knees to counteract the movement of the boat, and survey the wreckage and the river beyond.
The man driving the boat passes me some binoculars and I sweep my head in a full circle, searching for any sign of life.
I’m almost back to where I started my search when I spot an orange buoy. My heart leaps in my chest. I focus the binoculars and there are two heads bobbing beside the buoy.
It must be them!
“I think I see them!” I shout, pointing to where I spotted the buoy. We turn the boat around and close the distance quickly.
I keep the binoculars glued to my eyes. “It’s them! Millie, I can see Rich!” The relief I feel is immeasurable. Lincoln raises one arm and waves to us.
The boat putters next to them and I dive in, resurfacing next to them. Rich turns to face me as I’m saying his name.
What I see causes the very blood in my veins to freeze.
Rich has a shard of metal protruding from his eye.
“Oh, Rich,” I whisper. I hold on to the buoy and feel Lincoln’s eyes on me. I can’t tear myself away from my brother and his horrific injury.
“Katherine?” asks Lincoln. The fear between her name and the question is heavy.
I don’t turn to him. “Yes. She’s on the boat.”
I hear him exhale deeply.
“Lincoln kept me holding on,” Rich says in a low, hoarse voice. We are drifting slowly in the curr
ent, holding the orange buoy, the metal shard between us. “I wanted to let go. The pain is overwhelming. But he kept me holding on. How bad is it? Will you be able to save my eye?”
Lincoln is hauled on to the boat and I can hear him crying loudly as he sees his daughter.
“I don’t know Rich. I’ll do my best,” I lie to him. I put my hand on his and he begins to cry from his remaining eye.
“They want to lift you up now. It’s going to be okay.”
He yells in pain as arms pull him into the boat. He’s lifted out of the water and there is another metal shard embedded in his arm. I feel numb.
Friendly arms reach for me and help me up on the boat and I rush to Rich’s side. Millie gasps when she sees Rich. Then the three of us sit silently, side-by-side on a narrow wooden bench seat, shivering and surrounded by Washingtonians pulled from the water.
“Anyone else missing?” asks the man steering the boat.
“It looks like we got everyone,” replies Lincoln.
The man gives a subdued cheer and there is a smattering of clapping. He turns the boat around and steers around the debris towards the jetty on the riverbank.
We get closer to the riverbank and see thousands of people gathered on the sand. At the top of the sand, where the beach meets the trees, a handful of tents have been erected. “There’s so many of them,” mutters Millie.
As the boat pulls up to the narrow wooden jetty, a group of people rushes to help us. Everyone is crying and hugging. But the faces that glance at us have an empty, hollow look about them.
A woman helps us on to the jetty and shrieks when she sees Rich’s injury. “Take him to the medics,” she says. “Hurry.” She points towards one of the tents with a red cross on the canvas door. We shuffle up the sand behind others heading that way.
“There are so many people here,” says Millie. “These clothes are blending in well. No one has noticed us. How are you doing, Rich?”
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