None of it could matter.
“Let me down over there,” Franklin pointed. “On that.”
Everon took one look. All of two seconds—“No, no way, Bro! You can’t! It’s suicide!”
A falling statue’s descent had been arrested by the top of a water tank, on the building separated by the alley behind Cynthia’s building. It was some kind of winged creature. An angel?
Its feet and the lower tips of its huge flared wings had pierced the tank’s round lid. It had come to rest about knee high. One end of a narrow steel I-beam sat nestled between the arched, protruding top of the broad, curved left wing, and the statue’s ugly head.
Not an angel. A stone gargoyle.
The I-beam’s other end sat across the alley on the top remaining floor of Cynthia’s building. Four stories in the air.
“Even if you find them, how would you get them out?” Everon shouted.
“I’ll take some rope, lower them over the side.”
Everon was right. He didn’t have to do this. He could just stop. No! He couldn’t!
“I have to know!” he cried. “We have to know!”
“Are you both fucking crazy? Is he?”
“Hey!” Clarence jumped in at Kone. “Do you realize you’re speaking to a—”
“It’s okay,” Franklin said.
“I don’t care if he’s the Queen of Sheba.” Kone was looking down through the window and let out a piercing, maniacal laugh. “You can’t be serious!”
The roly-poly bureaucrat’s words hung on the fetid air.
But in his mind, Franklin saw Cynthia, Steve, Melissa, burned, injured, somewhere in the mess below. Victoria, Walter van Patter, the others were watching him.
“Am I crazy?” he said. “Maybe right now a little.”
But Kone’s doubt seemed to buck Everon up. Everon shook his head, lips pinched. “I’ll get you as close as I can.” He turned northward, then hovered them over the middle of a twenty-yard gap.
Franklin slung a coil of rope over one shoulder.
“Isn’t that rain?” Kone pointed through the east windows. “Is that radioactive? That can’t be more than a mile or two away!”
“Ready on the hoist,” Chuck said, a determined pressure visible around the big man’s mouth.
Franklin hooked his harness to the cable with a carabiner then swung himself through the Pelican’s wide doorway. This time he was ready for the freezing rotor blast. Chuck pressed the down button. Franklin began to drop.
His toes touched down on a wobbly beam more than three stories in the air. Franklin centered his mass, feet sideways, single file. The beam’s top was only inches wide. It hadn’t come to rest flat but angled slightly upward toward Cynthia’s building. A foul-smelling wind took his hair behind him, pushed at his chest, his shoulders. He stood wavering, knees bent, hands out trying to find his balance.
As Chuck slowly let out more line, Franklin took a deep breath and released his harness from the hoist cable.
He took another breath and slid his right foot forward. Left foot step. A long way down to the jagged pile of junk at the bottom. Slide-step. What am I doing? Maybe Kone’s right. I must be out of my mind.
His only safety net was to fall on his chest or arms and try to hang on. This was the craziest thing he had ever done.
The girder wobbled. Or is it the statue? Is it slipping?
He waited. The rope coiled over his shoulder made balance difficult.
Step. Slide-step.
It would be no worse than the splat falling from Ash Cave.
Heights had once bothered him. Years ago he had found a way to fool part of his mind into thinking he was only a few feet in the air.
Step. Slide-step.
He caught the beam’s rhythm and moved faster. As long as he remained in some way connected to the ground he was okay.
He. Was. Across!
As he stepped off the beam’s edge onto open floor, the beam slid backwards, statue disappearing into the water tank. He watched his end of the long beam fall end-over-end into the alley below.
The fireball flared and he felt the heat against his cheek. On his other side, wind from the rotor blades whipped up a storm of swirling garbage. The floor shook, vibrating—each step like walking on poorly supported plywood.
Has to be concrete, though, doesn’t it? he thought, waving Everon away.
The helicopter moved up the block, the blades still loud but his footing didn’t vibrate so much.
Dark smoke drifted across what was left of Cynthia’s apartment. Twisted pieces of metal, piles of block from other buildings. Definitely the right place though. Strange, the file cabinet wasn’t touched. It sat by itself against a chunk of one remaining exposed brick wall.
There seemed to be no other sign of Cynthia or Steve or Melissa. Areas of jaggedly broken brick wall still separated the apartment from its neighbors—he wondered if he really was standing in the right one. The thick smoke stung his eyes, burned his nostrils. Isn’t their bedroom across from the room this cabinet was in? Could the cabinet have moved?
For a moment a breeze blew the smoke away, and the corner of the pink blanket he’d noticed from the chopper protruding from the third file cabinet drawer, waved in the wind. And then, two apartments over, his eye caught on a roll of burned cloth, seven or eight feet long, three feet in diameter.
He felt himself being pulled toward it.
Some type of garbage, an old rolled-up rug.
But it was too familiar. He knew that pattern. Too well.
The blackened outside let only a little of the bright colors show through—in small places—yellow and orange, green and red and blue. A comforter. A Mexican blanket. The edge of a woven design. A giant round Aztec calendar stone that he knew filled the entire center.
He knelt down. There was a large dark stain across its middle he’d never seen before. A scratching, sucking sound as he carefully peeled back the crisp outer layer.
And his sister’s eyes opened to him.
“Cynthia!”
Cynthia
“Franklin,” Cynthia coughed. “I thought I was—I didn’t think anyone would—” Tears streamed from the corners of her eyes. Face-to-face inside the cocoon with Franklin’s sister was her husband.
Franklin looked at Steve. Felt his cheek. It was cold. Ice-water cold. He wasn’t breathing. He was gone.
Cynthia laughed bitterly, began to cry, “He went an hour ago,” she coughed, struggled to pull a breath. “My arms . . . I . . . couldn’t move.”
At least I can still save Cynthia, Franklin thought. They were wrapped so tightly, Cynthia’s arms pinned to her sides. “Here, let me get you out of—” he began, unwrapping the blanket—
“Ahhhh!” Cynthia cried, “Don—don’t!”
But Franklin had already peeled it open far enough to see.
A piece of metal he hadn’t noticed, barely protruding from the outsides of the charred blanket, had pierced them both. The only difference being it had gone through Steve slightly more in the center of his chest. Cynthia’s wound was more to the right side.
“I’ve had better nights-out in New York,” Cynthia rasped out with a weak smile. Her attempts to ignore the obvious pain were betrayed by her ragged gasping for air. Her lips were turning blue.
Franklin looked around wildly, up to the helicopter. The black rain was closing fast. By the sound of her breathing, Cynthia’s right lung was punctured. How do I get her out of here? How can I get her over the building’s side, down to the street? Without killing her?
Everon must be able to see.
He waved frantically, trying to will Everon in closer. But the ball of flame expanded, driving the helicopter back. He could just imagine how Kone was responding.
It looked like Everon was going to try another tack, come around back, inside the block.
Cynthia’s eyes shot to her left. “The cab—” The word died on her l
ips. Her eyes rolled back in her head. A long gurgling breath poured from her mouth.
“No . . . Cynthia!”
Franklin grasped his sister’s head. But he knew that sound too well. He’d heard it from the throats of too many dying Rangers. A death rattle. His sister was gone.
He held his sister’s shoulders in his lap, a hand under Cynthia’s head. He threw up on the dusty floor. He’d found them too late. If only I’d gotten here thirty minutes sooner. An hour the subway had cost him. Another hour at the damn bridge. Would I have been able to save both of them? Did I actually kill Cynthia by unwrapping the blanket, removing the pressure that held her together?
He let out a long, deep exhale. Tears flowed from his eyes, down his face, onto his chin, his mouth gasping for air.
His sister and brother-in-law’s naked bodies still clutched each other, holding each other tightly. Cynthia’s blonde, conservative banker’s hair; the short dark hair matted about Steve’s head—he brushed a couple of flies angrily away from Cynthia’s face. But for the blood at the corner of Cynthia’s mouth, in the midst of smoke and fire and the ultimate violence, they were only sleeping.
She had always quoted one verse to him, a Proverb: Above all your possessions, value understanding. Cynthia’s humor had been a door to that understanding. And what she’d always said to understand was that everything—every effect—had a cause. That every cause was a value. And values, were completely personal. Cynthia had been one of Franklin’s highest values—besides God—a major cause, a reason for living. And now that link to his family, to their mother and to Everon even, was gone.
His arms twisted. Like being forced to chew a jalapeño pepper whole while someone used a hammer to break both his arms and legs, unbearable agony coursed through his entire body. Some distant part of him knew the pain in his every cell was purely mental. He didn’t want to think. About anything anymore. His altruistic gamble may have saved a bunch of strangers, but it had cost him his sister’s life. There was nothing he could do. No magic formula. No prayer. No take-backs. This was it. Cynthia was gone.
I have to get them out of here.
He would lower them to the ground, then himself. Chuck could pick them up there. He looked over the building’s edge. But the street was flooding.
From the helicopter, Everon watched the low dark tide rushing down the avenue. Flooding into side streets. Reaching Cynthia’s building.
“Aren’t there big water supply tunnels under the city?” Chuck asked.
“The water’s gravity-fed,” Walter van Patter answered. “It comes down from the Catskill Mountains. If the tunnels have cracked open, there’s no stopping it.”
“We’ll have to leave him!” Kone screamed hysterically.
WHOOM! The sound of fire imploding echoed, rocking the floor beneath Franklin’s feet. Out in the street, the huge gas ball of fire shrank back again . . . to nothing. The flame was out!
He squatted there, looking around, shocked by the sudden loss of noise and heat. He blew some air from his nostrils, wiped his eyes.
He looked up at the helicopter, then back to the bodies. He could just imagine what Everon was going to say—to think.
Everon must see him. There was nothing either of them could do now. He quickly cut a piece of rope, tugged the burned edge of the Aztec comforter back into place and began winding the rope around and around them, binding the entire thing like a cocoon.
The black wall, nuclear rain out 60th, was nearly on them. Everon was already bringing the helicopter over.
Franklin hooked the bundle onto the cable and gave Chuck the signal. The cocoon lifted skyward. Franklin looked around to see if he might have missed anything. There was no sign of Melissa. No bassinet, nothing.
Above his head, Franklin watched Chuck swing the wrapped bodies through the helicopter door. The storm was bearing down on them. Wind blasting in sudden gusts.
As he waited for Chuck to send the cable back down for him, he noticed a shaking brown mass the shape of a small football by the base of the file cabinet. What’s that? he wondered.
It turned its head.
Some sort of bird, he realized. The exotic brown and white pattern across its feathers fluttered in the strengthening wind. Huge yellow eyes peered up at him as it shivered against the cabinet. An owl?
He reached out to touch it. Doesn’t seem afraid or aggressive. He scooped a hand underneath, gently lifting it, sliding his wrist against the cabinet.
And then he heard something—a crying sound.
“The cabinet—”
Pivoting his ears back and forth—from inside?
His eyes locked on the flapping pink material caught in the second drawer. Holding the bird in one hand, he tried to pull it open. To force it open. He tried them all. None of them would budge. The oval-shaped lock was sticking out. Unlocked position. He lowered his head—loudest from the second drawer!
She’s in here! She’s alive!
The side of the file cabinet was warm. He could feel the heat right through the glove on his hand. The fireball.
Using the hook knife from his harness, he pried into the crack along the drawer’s side—hoping at least to bend the drawer outward far enough to confirm his suspicions. The black edge widened to an eighth of an inch.
Snap! The curved blade broke halfway back.
He looked desperately for some way to get the drawer open. Dammit! A whole tool kit in the helicopter, a screwdriver, a pry bar—
Before he realized what was happening, the building’s entire floor suddenly shifted—he felt his thigh and calf muscles react, even before his conscious mind. “Ahhh!” He felt the whole building wobble as if the foundation of life were cracking beneath his feet.
His first thought was to grab for the cabinet handles, but the floor steadied at a slight angle, maybe five degrees. The foundation rumbled deep somewhere below. Damn, this thing could go any time! Why am I swearing? Too much time spent around Everon. Starting to affect me.
He waved frantically for Everon to fly the cable over the cabinet. The dark misty rain looked less than two or three blocks away.
As Chuck lowered the cable, Franklin quickly unbuttoned the middle of his white shirt and stuffed one of the few living creatures he’d seen today, the owl, inside. He used what was left of the hook knife to cut a piece of rope. He looped the rope through the cabinet’s four drawer handles and tied the ends together.
The wind blasted. The cable hook whacked him on the shoulder.
He snagged it onto the rope. Pulled on the handles to test their strength. They looked like they would hold. He stretched the connecting loop of his own harness to the cable hook. The floor shook violently and with a rumble, as if in slow motion—all he could do to throw both hands around the cable, himself onto the cabinet—the floor fell away.
And the building collapsed below.
His arms felt like they were being pulled from their sockets. His body stretched over the top of the cabinet as the lift cable dug through his gloves, into the palms of his hands. He felt a sharp pain beneath his shirt. The owl had latched its talons into his stomach. He moved his knees against the cabinet to keep pressure off the bird. The pain in his midsection eased off.
Overhead blades whipping at his dark hair, the hoist reeled Franklin skyward.
While the cabinet’s handles might have been strong enough to support the cabinet, they now had to carry his weight as well. He couldn’t get enough grip on the hard stainless cable to pull himself away. The angle, the bird, all combined to make it impossible. But he was rising.
Fifteen feet from the opening in the side of the helicopter, unable to see what was happening below his dangling feet, he felt something sag. With a loud BANG! the bottom handle ripped loose. It felt like the cabinet was going to keep going. But the next lowest drawer handle held—and immediately began to bend.
“Oww!” Franklin yelled as the bird dug into his flesh, this time into his ribs.
The little owl was getting rambunctious in there, rummaging around under his shirt. He tried to suck in his stomach but it was all he could do to just hang on . . .
Out the open helicopter side door, Chuck could see what was happening. But the hoist had one speed—slow. Chuck mentally willed it to go faster.
He shouted to Everon, “You’d better find a safe place to get this thing on the ground before that cabinet drops off there. Looks like he’s got it connected by its handles. And they’re tearing out!”
The wind blew.
Out Everon’s front window, the deadly black rain was closing. Almost near enough to touch. The weight of the swinging cabinet made the helicopter dance despite radical corrections to the controls in Everon’s hands.
“There’s just no good place, Chuck, the way it’s swinging. The wind’s picking up from the east causing turbulence around these buildings. That black rain’s closing in. We can’t go back to the fountain—there’s no other place the blades can fit around here. Isn’t he almost in?”
As the top of the cabinet cleared the helicopter’s floor, Clarence reached out to swing it in—and slipped. Like slow motion, he was falling out the door—twenty degrees past vertical when the transit engineer snagged a grip on his shirt, and yanked him back inside.
Petre the Russian, on the wide door’s other side, reached for Franklin’s harness. Franklin tried to swing a foot around to step inside.
Plunk!
One side of the second lowest handle—on the drawer he thought she might be inside—chose that moment to rip away.
The rope slipped around it. With a scraping jar, the big metal box slid a foot-and-a-half down against the lower doorframe. Now the top two handles carried the load.
If I could just get my weight off it! He could barely hold onto the rope with one hand. The Russian, Clarence, Chuck and the engineer tried to grab the box’s smooth sides to haul him in.
LOSS OF REASON Page 15