She walked quickly. In fact she found that she was hurrying faster than she wanted to, in the same direction as all the rubbish and tumbling chairs and tables and news-stands and bicycles. More and more cars and taxis were being dragged along the roadway, their tires smoking, and by the time she reached Columbus Circle the smashed-up vehicles were three-deep, with more and more of them piling into the wreckage all the time. She heard people screaming in pain, deep within the caverns of cars. She saw twenty or thirty people, beating desperately at the windows of a half-buried bus. Cars and vans were piled on top of the roof, and more were piling up by the minute. As Amelia watched in helpless horror, the bus roof collapsed under the weight, and the passengers were crushed into an aluminum coffin that, in places, was no more than nine inches high. One man had managed to force his head out of one of the windows, but as the roof came down he was guillotined, and his head came tumbling down the heaps of cars, while his neck jetted blood in a grisly parody of an ornamental fountain.
Amelia hurried on. The noise in the city was deafening and frightful, completely unlike the sound of the New York she knew. She was so used to the high-pitched roaring of traffic and the echo of car horns and sirens that usually she scarcely heard them. But this was a low, thick, sinister rumbling, overlaid with the long-drawn-out scraping of twisted metal and the endless warning-bell ringing of falling glass.
She was a little more than halfway along Central Park South when she saw the unthinkable happening, right in front of her eyes. The sidewalk was crowded with people who — like her — had decided it was safer to stay away from tall buildings. She was jostling her way across the tide. Almost everybody else was trying to get into the park. But then a man’s voice hoarsely screamed, ‘Look! My God! Will you look at that! The Plaza!’
Amelia couldn’t understand what was happening at first. But then she managed to struggle up against the railings, and lift herself up a little, so that she could see over people’s heads. With an awesome thundering noise, the huge grey bulk of the Plaza Hotel was slowly sinking, its green chateaulike rooftops dropping faster and faster towards the ground.
It wasn’t collapsing. It was disappearing. Floor by floor, gathering speed, gathering momentum, until the upper floors were rushing into the solid rock with a rumble that blurred Amelia’s vision and blocked up her ears. With a last shattering explosion and a wind-whipped plume of dust, the Plaza had vanished, leaving nothing but rubble and broken brick, and a twisted bronze elevator door that stood like a surrealistic memorial, a door that led nowhere at all.
There was a moment of shocked silence. Then the crowds all around Amelia began to scream and shout in panic. They rushed into the park in hundreds, pushing and trampling and waving their arms. Amelia saw a young black girl pinned against the railings by the weight of 60 or 70 people. Her eyes were bulging and her lips were frothing with blood and bile. She was being forcefully and effectively crushed to death, and there was nothing that Amelia could do but watch her die.
A security guard pushed Amelia against the railings, too, bruising her shoulder.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ she screamed at him. ‘Have you all gone crazy?’
A fat man in a sweaty undershirt gave Amelia a shove with his shoulder. ‘Get out of the way, ya bitch!’ he yelled at her.
And a red-haired woman echoed, ‘Bitch! You want us to die? Get out of the way!’
It took her nearly an hour to reach the 13th Precinct. The sky hung over her head like black bedsheets filled with blood, and although it was well past eight o’clock in the morning, it was suffocatingly gloomy. Lights still glimmered in most of the buildings, but all of them seemed to have a glowering, reddish tinge, as if blood were running thinly down the windows.
She made her way down Fifth Avenue because Seventh had been barricaded with derelict automobiles and there were black-and-orange Walpurgis-nacht fires burning all the way along the Avenue of the Americas. She heard a woman saying that Radio City had gone; and the Hilton, too; and the Simon & Schuster Building.
Even Fifth Avenue was blocked with a slowly-moving tide of abandoned cars and buses, although most of the pavements were still passable. A huge refrigerated tractor-trailer lay on its side, scraping its way gradually southward. Its rear doors had been torn open and it was dropping beef carcasses all the way along the street.
Glass and masonry showered sporadically from the buildings all around. A huge stone head dropped only a few feet in front of Amelia and shattered like a bomb. All that remained was a sculptured snarl, and part of a nose.
She climbed awkwardly over the dented hood of a maroon Lincoln Town Car, and then over a tangle of motorbikes and bicycles and baby-buggies. The body of a young woman was lying in the street, her face white, her mouth slack, her eyes staring at nothing. She seemed to have no injuries at all. Amelia watched her in terrible fascination as she slid across the sidewalk, softly collided with a fire-hydrant, and then continued her slow, dead swim down Fifth Avenue, drawn by magical forces which — in life, she had probably never known about.
By the time she reached the precinct house she was exhausted — not so much from walking or climbing over car wreckage, but from fighting against the dragging sensation which kept pulling her more and more powerfully southward. She was surprised how few people she saw. It seemed as if most New Yorkers had decided to stay in their apartments and close themselves off, and hope that this blood-red day of judgement would simply pass them by and leave them alone. She saw a few looters — a crowd of teenagers of all races, smashing in the windows of camera stores. But they were obviously finding it difficult to fight against the dragging force, too; and she saw one youth being pulled on his knees across the sidewalk, his jeans literally smoking from the friction, yelling in pain, but desperate not to drop the three JVC video-recorders which he was cradling in his arms.
At the brownstone precinct house, three squad cars were lying wrecked against the front wall, and Amelia had to climb over a thicket of wooden POLICE LINE barriers before she was able to reach the front doors. A thickset uniformed sergeant with prickly hair was manning the desk, although he was gripping the edge of it with one hand to prevent himself from being slowly dragged away.
‘Don’t tell me,’ he greeted Amelia, even before she had opened her mouth. ‘It’s the end of the world and you need somebody to hold your hand.’
Amelia said, ‘It’s the end of the world and I need to see Sergeant Friendly.’
The sergeant stared at her with piggy, pale-lashed eyes. ‘Friendly’s busy. We’re all busy.’
‘I’m not a crank,’ said Amelia. ‘But Sergeant Friendly has something in his possession which may be able to stop this happening.’
‘Friendly has something in his possession which may be able to stop this happening? Are you kidding? The north Trade Tower just vanished.’
‘Please,’ said Amelia. ‘I’ve walked all the way from 98th Street’
The phone rang. The sergeant picked it up and put it down again without even bothering to answer it.
‘Please,’ Amelia begged him.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the desk-sergeant. ‘Friendly isn’t here.’
‘Is he coming back?’
‘Who knows? It’s a war-zone out there. You’ve seen it for yourself.’
‘Well, could I talk to one of his colleagues?’
‘Lady, why don’t you just come back when this has blown over?’
Amelia pounded her thin-knuckled fist on the desk in front of him. ‘This isn’t going to blow over! This is going to get worse! This is going to be worse than Chicago and worse than Las Vegas and worse than Phoenix! You’re right! You don’t even know that, do you? You’re right! This is the end of the world!’
The sergeant kept his grip on the edge of his desk. ‘Listen, lady, Sergeant Friendly isn’t here, and that’s the truth. He went back to check on his family, if you want to know the truth. There’s nothing else we can do, except to look after our own. I mean, what would y
ou do?’
Amelia said, in a low and forceful voice, ‘Sergeant Friendly is holding onto two antique forks. They don’t belong to the NYPD and they don’t belong to me, either. But they belong to a man who could stop this happening, given luck. So what I’m asking you is, do you think somebody could check out the evidence relating to the death of Martin Vaizey, the psychic medium, and find those fucking forks before it’s too late!’
The desk-sergeant lowered his head for a moment so that Amelia could see right into his prickly scalp. Then he turned, and snapped his fingers to a pimply young uniformed officer who was standing in the doorway, his back wedged against the architrave in order to stop himself being dragged away.
‘Officer Hamilton, escort this lady to Sergeant Friendly’s office and give her all the assistance she needs.’
Amelia breathed a deep sigh of relief. ‘Thank you, sergeant. You won’t regret this, I promise. They may even give you a medal.’
The sergeant fixed her with a pale stare.’ Who’s going to give me a medal? It’s the end of the world, remember?’
Amelia blew him a kiss, ‘With any luck, pal, it won’t be.’ She followed Officer Hamilton up to Sergeant Friendly’s office. Officer Hamilton didn’t seem to appreciate escort duty and hummed monotonously all the way. When Amelia smiled at him he didn’t smile back. The elevator made an alarming screeching noise as it slowly hauled them upwards, but at last they reached the seventh floor and the doors juddered open. Officer Hamilton managed to say, ‘This way,’ through one nostril, and led her along the silent, wax-floored corridor. He walked in a kind of arrogant mince, and his shoes squeaked, but just like Amelia he had to keep his hand against the wall to prevent himself from being dragged sideways.
Through the windows, Amelia could see that the sky was even darker and even bloodier. Lightning crackled like burning hair, and for a moment she could see the Empire State, veiled in static. By the old Moulmein pagoda, looking lazy at the sea.
They reached a frosted-glass door that said SGT J.P. FRIENDLY in chipped black lettering and Officer Hamilton opened it up, asking, ‘What is it you’re looking for?’
To Amelia’s relief, the forks weren’t at all difficult to find. In fact they were lying in Sergeant Friendly’s out-tray in a sealed plastic envelope, only half-concealed under a sheaf of letters and reports, with a scribbled note saying M. Vaizey: these are what he used to blind himself.
Amelia held up the forks and said: ‘These. These are what I wanted.’
‘Okay, help yourself,’ said Officer Hamilton. ‘Take ‘em back to the desk and Sergeant Zuwadski will give you a receipt to sign. That’s all.’
They walked back along the corridor. Officer Hamilton hummed, and his shoes squeaked. Amelia lifted up the forks in their plastic envelope and gentlyjingled them. They looked very dull; and extremely old; and she couldn’t imagine how they could be used to fight Misquamacus; but she would leave that to Harry. She was pleased enough that she had been able to get hold of them. In fact, almost triumphant.
They reached the elevator and Officer Hamilton pressed the button with the flat of his hand. They waited and waited, but the elevator didn’t respond. They heard winding-gear clicking and faltering, and electric motors whining, but still no elevator.
‘Better take the stairs,’ said Officer Hamilton.
He opened the mustard-painted door to the staircase and they began to climb down through the gloom, their feet chip-chipping on the bare concrete treads. The staircase smelled of stale air and urine and industrial bleach. They could still hear the elevator whining and clicking as they passed the fifth floor, and carried on down to the fourth floor. ‘Whole city’s collapsing,’ said Officer Hamilton; and there was something in the tone of his voice, a rising note of panic, that made Amelia realize that he wasn’t being surly, just scared. After all, how old was he? Twenty-three or four, and Manhattan was falling around his ears.
Amelia said, ‘There’s a chance we can save it.’
Officer Hamilton glanced back at her. ‘Oh, yeah? How do you stop an earthquake?’
‘This isn’t an earthquake. We don’t have earthquakes in New York. It’s solid bedrock, no volcanic faults.’
Officer Hamilton wasn’t even listening. ‘Did you see the Chrysler Building go down? It just vanished, like it never happened. I can’t even imagine New York without the Chrysler Building.’
They had just reached the third-floor landing when they felt the precinct house give a lurch beneath their feet. Then another lurch. Then windows broke, with a sharp ice-puddle crackling noise, and a length of metal banister came clanging and careening all the way from the fifteenth floor. Officer Hamilton pushed Amelia against the wall as the rail bounced past them, and then they both stared down at the darkened bottom of the stair-well, until they heard the rail crashing into the basement.
‘It’s going,’ said Officer Hamilton, in complete panic. ‘The whole damned precinct’s collapsing!’
Amelia heard a whistling, whirring sound, long-drawn-out, and then a flurry of snakey whiplashes. That must have been the elevator plunging all the way down to the lobby, followed by its broken cables. A dull smash confirmed that she was right.
‘Come on!’ she urged Officer Hamilton. ‘We have to get out of here!’
‘Jesus!’ said Officer Hamilton, and she could tell by the shake in his voice that he was almost hysterical. ‘Jesus frigging Christ!’
It was then that the building began to drop beneath their feet, just like a giant elevator. It fell faster and faster, gathering a huge and irresistible momentum. Amelia was clinging onto the nearest doorhandle, trying to stop herself sliding sideways across the landing. She collided with the stair-railings, she collided with Officer Hamilton’s back. Then she lost her grip and rolled over him, and she was hurtled down the stairs, banging and bruising all the way down to the next landing.
She could feel the building shaking and roaring away as it was dragged down into the ground. Below her, she could hear terrified shrieking — so high-pitched that it was impossible to tell whether it was a man or a woman. Officer Hamilton screamed, too.
She suddenly thought to herself: this is it, this is the end. I’m going to be buried alive.
The walls of the building were vibrating fiercely, as if it were determined to shake itself apart. Dust boiled up the stair-well, and there was a grating, ripping noise as the concrete staircase was wrenched free from its reinforcing rods.
Amelia smelled death rushing up to meet her. She grabbed at the nearest banister, and managed to stand up. At the end of the landing, only fifteen or twenty feet in front of her, was a frosted-glass window, yellowed with years of dirt and cigarette-smoke.
The only way out. And even now, it was probably too late.
But even as her mind spelled out probably too late, she was already running towards it, straining every muscle, remembering her high-school sprinting days, come on Amelia, come on Amelia, and then she crossed her arms over her face and flew into the window and thought that she would probably die.
She smashed through the window and circled in the air with all the slow-motion grace of an acrobat. Fragments of glass glittered and spun all around her. She was a ballet-dancer, an athlete, an angel in shattered fire. Then she hit the gritty street and knocked her head and rolled over bloody and winded and bruised.
But at least she was alive. Because she twisted herself round, and sat up and looked, just in time to see the window from which she had jumped disappearing into the bedrock, and then the rest of the precinct house following, thunder and dust, until its water-tanks and its elevator housing and its radio antennae had been swallowed up completely, and there was nothing but rubble and an empty lot.
She was weeping, when she finally managed to climb to her feet She had sprained her wrist and hurt her back and grazed both of her elbows. But she still had the forks. If only she could get in touch with Harry.
A black woman in a torn blue cardigan confronted her at the next cor
ner, looking forlorn. ‘Where’s the police station?’ she wanted to know.
All that Amelia could do was point behind her, at a vacant acre of dust and brick.
The black woman said, ‘I don’t understand.’
Amelia’s cheeks were streaked with tears. ‘Neither do I,’ she told her. ‘Neither do I.’
Seventeen
At first, I felt nothing at all, although I hadn’t imagined that death would feel like anything anyway. All I had was a choking, dizzy sensation, like I’d accidentally sniffed up half the contents of a vacuum-cleaner bag. I looked at Papago Joe and Papago Joe looked back at me and asked me, ‘Well? What do you think?’
I took my own pulse. ‘I’m not dead yet,’ I told him. ‘In fact, I’m not even sick.’
He gave me a slow smile. Then he leaned over the table with the rolled-up bill in his right nostril, and inhaled the rest of the powder. I glanced at E.C. Dude and shrugged. I was beginning to feel a little foolish, to tell you the truth. Apart from that, I wanted to sneeze. What would happen if the powder didn’t work, and we tried to enter the Great Outside without any occult protection at all? It was bad enough to hallucinate that we were dead. I didn’t fancy dying for real.
Papago Joe closed his eyes and sat up very straight-backed. He began to chant something under his breath, over and over, something that sounded like ‘Nepauz … nepauz …’ It reminded me of Naomi Greenberg’s chanting, hypnotic and strange, words that I could scarcely get my tongue around.
E.C. Dude said, ‘I should be coming with you, you know that? How are two old geezers like you going to stop the world from falling apart? There’s no way. You need youth, man, you need extra cool.’
I was inclined to agree with him. After fighting with Misquamacus and struggling with Karen and driving all the way to Apache Junction through storm and wreck and disaster, I was pretty much exhausted. My adrenalin had all ebbed away, and I was feeling my age. I would have done anything for a good breakfast and a pot of hot coffee and a couple of hours’ dreamless sleep.
Burial Page 42
