Suddenly, before he expected it, the entire corner section of the bunker containing the stairway and the recess between the corridors twisted and slid away into the ravine, sending up a tremendous cloud of white dust. A narrow projection of ceiling separated them from the open air stream, but above this was another toppling piece of masonry, a huge section of the original wall pivoting on its stem of reinforcing bars. Most of these had snapped, and the giant slab, a block weighing 15 or 20 tons, was slowly tilting down over them.
Seeing it, Patricia Olsen began to scream helplessly, but Lanyon managed to steady her for a moment, looking around desperately for some way of escape. Their only chance seemed to be to slide down into the ravine, then hope they would find some narrow crevice where they could shelter from the monster poised above them.
Quickly he seized Patricia’s arm, began to pull her toward the edge. She dug her heels in desperately, still clinging to the temporary safety of the ledge.
“No, Steve! Please, I can’t!”
“Darling, you’ve got to!” Lanyon bellowed at her above the roar of the wind. He twisted her arm roughly, dragging her with him, holding the ragged ledge with his free hand before pushing her over.
“Lanyon! Wait!” Maitland grabbed his shoulder, then pulled Patricia back before she could fall. “Look! Up there!”
They craned upward. Miraculously, the great wall section towering above them was slowly keeling backward away from them into the wind. Showers of stones and flying pieces of rubble cascaded across its exposed surface, but by some extraordinary reversal of the laws of nature, it was no longer yielding to the greater force of the wind.
Amazed, they looked up at this incredible defiance, intervening like some act of God to save them.
Suddenly Maitland shouted out into the air, began to pound insanely on the wall of the ledge. For a moment he raged away hysterically, and then Lanyon and Waring held his arms and tried to calm him.
“Hold it, Doctor,” Lanyon roared into his face. “Don’t be a fool. Control yourself!”
Maitland shook himself free. “Look, Lanyon, up there! Don’t you realize what’s happened, why that wall fell away from us, into the wind? Don’t you see?” When they frowned at him in bewilderment he shouted, “The wind’s dropping! It’s finally spent itself!”
Sure enough, the great fragment of wall was moving slowly forward into the face of the wind. Maitland pointed at the sky around them. “The air’s lighter already! The wind’s dying down, you can hear it. It’s finally subsiding!”
Together they looked out across the ravine. As Maitland had said, visibility had now increased to over 600 yards. They could see plainly across the black fields beyond the estate, even trace the remains of a road winding along the periphery. The sky itself had lightened, was now an overcast gray, the sweeping pathways across it inclined slightly downward.
Like a cosmic carousel nearing the end of its run, the storm wind was slowly losing speed.
EOF
The Wind From Nowhere Page 18