by JJ Pike
“As you can see behind me, there has been a building collapse. The Fire Department has been on scene for some hours and are asking that we stay behind this cordon, so we aren’t able to get close enough to get a look at the damage, Chuck.”
The picture cut back to Chuck in the studio. He remembered Chuck. He was a newscaster, staple of New York, friendly and reliable.
“Any word on what caused the explosion, Cindy?” Chuck sounded concerned but not alarmed.
Cindy held her hand to her earpiece. “Nothing so far, Chuck. What we do know is the building was under investigation earlier in the day. It’s possible there was a gas leak…”
Sarah, Chuck’s co-host, jumped in. “Any reports of fatalities, Cindy?”
Cindy looked down at her notes, then back up at the camera. “One so far, Sarah, but we have no name. Once the family have been notified we will be able to bring you that name. Our thoughts and prayers, of course, go out to the family and friends of whoever lost their life in this building collapse.”
“Cindy,” Chuck was back, “we have word that the Fire Chief is about to address the press. Stay right there. We will be back to you as soon as we hear from Chief Cervantes.” Chuck was a pro. He’d been doing this for a while. Bill was glad of the dispassionate reporting. He didn’t need commentary or histrionics. Chuck nodded at the camera. “Over to you, Andrew.”
Once again, they cut to another location where yet another reporter was ready with their “we’re here to bring you the disaster in subtle, friendly tones” face.
Andrew was fresh-faced and smartly dressed, almost too smart for a disaster zone. He and his cameraman had set up close to the Fire Chief’s briefing area. They had the perfect shot of the clean-shaven but exhausted Chief.
“Come on, come on,” said Bill. “Tell us what on Earth is going on.”
“At 0800 hours, we received word of an industrial accident.” The Chief was calm. Professional. Reassuring.
Bill closed his eyes. Whatever sliver of hope he’d had was fast fading.
“We were on scene with crews from Engine 65, Engine 54, and Engine 1 to secure the building.” The Chief stared straight into the camera. He had this down, this “talking to the press” nonsense. Bill’s heart sank. It was a prepared statement. Unless they managed to catch him off-guard when it came time for questions, he wasn’t going to learn anything new.
Bill dug his phone from his pocket and dialed Alice’s number. He hesitated for a second. He never called her at work. They’d agreed long ago to keep those two spheres separate. When she was at work, she was working; when she was at home, she was his pookie and their mother. The end. Those rules didn’t matter anymore. Her phone rang and rang then went to voicemail. “This is Alice Everlee. Please leave your name and number and a brief message.”
“Alice…” he trailed off. He didn’t want to say the obvious. Of course she would call him when she could. He hung up and turned back to the television.
“Chief Cervantes,” said Andrew, “how many fatalities?”
“Unknown at this time,” said the Chief. “We had word that there was one death before we were on scene…but since then we have had no reports of further injury.”
Bill heaved a massive sigh of relief. Alice had called since 8 a.m. If the call to the Fire Department came in at eight this morning, she was safe. They’d talked. She was alive. She wasn’t the fatality. Thank the stars.
“Chief! Chief!” The reporters jostled for his attention.
“Julie?” He pointed at a familiar face in the crowd. Another Manhattan reporter Bill had seen while flicking through the channels, ignoring other people’s disasters because he could.
“There were cement trucks on scene. What can you tell us about that?”
The Chief smiled. “We are doing everything to secure the scene and stabilize the building.”
“So, it’s unstable?”
“The situation is under control.”
“Is this the work of terrorists, Chief?” Back to Andrew, whose face was drawn, but excited.
“The investigation is still ongoing.”
“So, it could be a terrorist attack?”
New Yorkers went there. They couldn’t not. It was in the back of their brains. Always. If you’d lived through 9/11, you thought the passing subway under your feet might be the rumble of a bomb blast. Bill knew that. It wasn’t such a weird question. Nevertheless, it made his skin pucker and crawl. What if this was the beginning and not the end? What if this was a coordinated attack? What if there were more building collapses?
The Chief rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s too early to say conclusively, but this does not seem to be the work of a terrorist organization. No one has claimed responsibility. For now, we are treating this as an accident. While tragic, it’s not something that needs to cause alarm. I would ask that New Yorkers not panic. I’d also ask that they check the Emergency Services page on our website for road closures. Tomorrow’s commute is going to be a b…” He managed not to say it.
The reporters half-chuckled but it was a muted, worried sound, only seeping out of them because they all thought the worst.
“Tomorrow’s commute is going to be complicated,” said the Chief. “If you can work from home, that’s what I am going to recommend. Now, I’m going to hand you off to Nadine Ferr from New York’s Emergency Management team who will brief you on road closures and subway diversions.”
Nadine stepped up to the mic, shuffling her papers. “Okay, people. This is a major transportation hub so we’re looking at a lot of closures. Grand Central…”
“Change the channel,” said Bill. “See if we can get anything else. I need more angles. I need to see if it’s her building.”
“I don’t have cable,” said Jo. “You’re going to see the same shots over and over again on the local stations.”
“Did they say where it was? Did you see anything else?”
Jo pulled out her laptop and balanced it on top of the TV. “Let’s see if there’s info online yet. They’re going to disclose the location. They can’t help themselves. They’re stupid and short-sighted and always looking for the next set of eyeballs. It’s all about ratings, these days. They care about the stats more than the truth.” She dialed up her connection. The sound of a modem whistled from somewhere under a pile of newspapers. “Doesn’t matter that it invites the crazies to call in and the curious to show up. They should have a mandatory 24-hour news blackout for these kinds of things. Make a simple announcement: ‘stay away for your own safety’ and arrest anyone who breaks the law.”
She was that rare brand of thinker: free-wheeling, but adamant that people follow the rules. She was a former hippy with a gun rack that rivaled anyone in the neighborhood’s and an absolute belief in law and order. If she had been 20 years younger and Bill hadn’t been happily married, she’d have been his kind of chick.
“Here we go,” she said. “Reporting from 10th Avenue and 33rd Street. Is that where her lab is at?”
“I need to go down there.” Bill was half way to the door. “They’re just a block away.”
“Slow down, cowboy.” Jo was at his side, her hand gently resting on his arm. “Let’s think this one through.”
“She’s down there, Josephine. My wife. Her building’s collapsed. She warned me that something terrible was happening and I allowed myself to hope for the best rather than prepare for the worst. She has told me a million times that it’s going to be my downfall. But it’s not. It’s worse than that. It’s going to be her downfall. I have to go and get her.”
“Let me play Alice, for just a second.”
Bill stopped. He wasn’t sure what she meant.
“I know, I know. I am not as cute as her…” She smiled. She was trying to make him feel better. It didn’t work. She shook it off and moved on. “I know how she thinks. She thinks like a woman who has seen something of the world. Am I right?”
Bill’s eyebrows had already answered the question.
How did she know this about Alice? Had they had conversations Alice hadn’t told him about? The five of them—him and Alice, Jim and Betsy, and Jo—had shared dinners and talks; batted around theories about what to do when the SHTF; said they’d look out for one another, but Alice wouldn’t tell anyone about her childhood. It wasn’t in her nature. There was too much horror and long-term fallout for her to share that information. He doubted she’d know much, if anything, about his wife and the violence she’d seen.
“We’re on alert, aware of our surroundings, picking up cues and processing data. All the time. We can’t stop it. There’s no way to turn it off. It’s just with you. All the time. And I’ve seen Alice. Watched her watching. She’s waiting for the other shoe to drop because something was dropped on her at a young age.” She held up her hand. “You don’t have to tell me any of the particulars. I don’t need to know the details. And, no, she didn’t tell me this.”
Bill’s mouth fell open. She’d garnered all that from watching?
“One day I’ll film your face and show you how you give away what you’re thinking. It’s more science than art and it can be taught. I was taught by the best. I know how to read people.”
“You were CIA?”
Josephine laughed.
“FBI? Special Forces? Some other branch of the Intelligence Agencies?”
“The standard answer is, ‘I could tell you…’”
Bill nodded.
“Right, ‘but then I would have to kill you…’”
“Point taken.”
“Here’s the thing,” said Jo. “She’s a pro. She knows how to handle herself. The situation is volatile and won’t be helped by civilians charging in and trying to make things better. It’ll make it worse.”
“She is my wife.”
“I know. I hear you. You’re in pain. You want to do something. It’s natural. It’s touching. But that doesn’t mean it is the right thing to do.”
Bill hung his head. He was still thinking about how best to get to Manhattan.
“Let me ask you this. And it’s a toughie, so bear with me.”
Bill met Josephine’s gaze.
“If she is injured. Or worse. And you go in there and something happens to you. Who takes care of the children?”
Bill’s heart was pounding so hard he could barely hear for the blood rushing through his ears.
“She wouldn’t want that, Bill. She would want you to stay here.” Jo steered him around the piles of books and newspapers that littered her floor, down the porch, and back to the car. “Which is why you’re going to take my Charger and go home and I’m going to go to Manhattan to find her.”
Bill started to protest, but she rode roughshod right over him.
“I’m trained, Bill. I’ve extracted people from hot zones. This is something I am good at. And I shoot like Annie Oakley. No kidding. If anyone can find her, it’s me.” She pressed the keys into his hand and shoved him into the car.
Bill put the keys into the ignition and revved the engine. “I can’t do it, Jo. I have to go to her.”
“If the situation were reversed would you want her racing down to Manhattan to find you?”
Bill shook his head. “I hear you, but this is different.”
Jo tutted at Bill and whistled for Reggie who came running. He was in the back of the car panting on Bill’s neck in seconds.
“Well, I’ll stay with the kids then.” Jo let herself into the passenger seat. “Take us on over. I don’t agree with what you’re doing, but I’m not going to stand in your way. No point fighting with the tide. It’s going to come in whether you shout at it and complain or not.”
Bill peeled out of the driveway in a blur of tears.
Chapter Twenty-One
Alice had to remind herself repeatedly that she was not in a war zone. The ash, the ever-falling ash, was disorientating. The people, the sirens, the heat and press and crush, all of them reminded her of things that she had longed to forget. But war was in her DNA. She was made for this. She would find the safe place, find the broken and bruised, and make sure as many people as possible survived. But first she needed answers.
She turned her jacket inside out and flung it over her head securing the arms beneath her chin. She didn't want the ash falling on her. There was no way of knowing whether MELT could have withstood the implosion and might yet be alive within the ash.
There had only been two explosions. That didn’t sound like the work of the Fire Department. If they had been bringing the building down, it would have sounded different. More like a series of pops, all in a row. She hadn’t spotted Chief Cervantes. He was probably safely in Command Central. She needed to find someone who could tell her whether or not this was their controlled detonation, or the building falling in on itself.
She recognized a face in the crowd. Wasn’t that the man from Channel 5 news? He would probably know what was going on. “Andrew, isn’t it?”
“Hey! Did you see the explosion? We’re looking for first-hand accounts of what happened here. We can’t seem to get any straight answers.”
So, he didn’t know more than she did. She needed to move on. There were going to be other reporters, reporters who had talked to somebody. There was always one, someone who had managed to break through the wall of silence that surrounded the officials. Then she realized with a jolt that she was on the outside not the inside. How did that happen? She’d allowed herself to be pushed out of the inner circle. That was utter madness. That was not how Alice Everlee rolled.
She paused to reconsider where she was for the millionth time that day. There was an enzyme. It had mutated. Someone might or might not have tampered with it. It had taken down the infrastructure of K&P’s Headquarters in record time. Then it had either eaten the support beams and walls, causing the building to fall in on itself, in which case they were all up the proverbial creek because the ash that was falling on them might be contaminated with MELT; or the Fire Department had taken the building down—a building that was yet to be totally contaminated all the way to its exterior—and the danger was under the rubble, not in the air. Most importantly: she was in the know. She knew more than anyone else. She didn’t need someone else to help her understand what was going on. All she had to do was survey the scene herself.
There were police now at every intersection. They were going to try to turn her back. What she needed to do was get to K&P headquarters, look at the damage and then brief the right people.
The avenue was lined with businesses. Closed, shuttered, locked up. The coast was clear. She considered sprinting from doorway to doorway, hunkering down between sprints, but eventually she would run into a police officer, they would ask who she was, she’d be made to turn back. It didn’t matter that she worked for K&P. It didn’t matter that she was a senior vice president. It didn’t matter that she knew what was going on. The disaster had taken on a life of its own.
Neither could she drive there. That would draw too much attention. She needed a surreptitious way under the radar. Midge would tell her to use an invisibility cloak because in Midge’s world, that was still a possibility: magic, subterfuge, a dazzling outcome.
What she needed was Aggie’s good, practical sense. Forgive me, Aggie. I never meant to hurt you. She thought the same thing almost every time her middle daughter entered her mind. It was as natural as breathing. She didn’t need to dwell on that time, she only needed to say she was sorry and mean it. She took a deep breath and moved on. What would Aggie do? Agatha would look at the situation with a calm, cold, practiced eye and tell her what all of her options were, rank them, then dismiss the impossible so they were left with the most viable solution. She couldn’t fly, she couldn’t drive, she couldn’t run, and she wasn’t invisible. What could she do without being seen?
It was right under he
r nose. The solution. She would go underground. She could walk right under the feet of the people who were in her way and they’d be none the wiser. It was perfect. “Thanks, Aggie,” she whispered. “You’re a life-saver.”
They had doubtless stopped the trains. Which was a good thing. She could walk the tracks safely and she knew enough about the subway system to position herself directly under her building.
It was a gamble. For all she knew MELT had already made it into the tunnels. She’d seen what it could do. She knew she was possibly walking to her own death. But no matter the cost, she needed to know how far MELT had penetrated or whether they had pulled off the impossible and stopped it.
Bill was there to take care of the kids. It was a gut-wrenching thought: that she would never see her children again. But she would never be able to look them in the eye if she walked away from her duty just for her own comfort. If she walked towards danger, eyes open, completely aware of what she was doing and what the cost might be, they would understand their mother did it because she wanted them to live in that kind of world: a world where people stood up and were counted.