by Melissa Good
"Broadway," Kerry supplied.
Dar looked at her. "Really?"
Kerry nodded. "It's where it starts. Kind of like where US 1 begins in Key West."
"Huh," Dar muttered. "Okay, we'll go try and find your Telco folks and see what we can do in that area, then we can come back and see what's left of our technical office down here. It's just south of the Exchange."
"Sounds like a plan," Alastair said. "I told the gals to see what they could offer those poor guys out there after they get set up." He indicated the firemen. "Can't be easy."
They started toward the edge of the park, as Mark's voice crackled and echoed doing his checks. The guardsmen glanced at them and waved as they went by. They paused at the end of the park for the entire group to gather.
Dar gazed down the street and acknowledged the sense of nervous dread in her guts. This was something past her experience.
Something past all of their experience, save maybe her father. She looked at him as he came up to stand next to her, pale eyes flicking back and forth as he watched everything around them. "Dad?"
He focused on her. "Yeap?"
"Glad you're here."
Andrew reached out and clasped her shoulder, but didn't say anything in response.
"We all here?" Dar asked, assuming the leadership role. "Everyone geared up and got radios? Listen up." She turned to face them. "Stay together. No one goes wandering around anywhere. This is a dangerous place"
Everyone sobered and regarded her seriously.
"I don't know what we're going to have to do. If it's something I think is too dangerous, we're not going to do it. Everyone understand me? No one is risking their lives for someone's stock options."
Everyone nodded. Even Alastair.
"We're not heroes." Dar pointed past them. "Those guys over there? They're heroes. They went into those damn buildings while they were falling around them to try and get people out. A lot of them are missing. We're not here for that. "
One of the techs raised his hand. "Ms Roberts?"
"What?" Dar put her hands on her hips.
"We get the point," the tech said. "And that's really cool. But we all saw you on television hanging out of a ten story window putting kids in a basket." He looked past her. "So can we go see how we can help out?"
Kerry scratched her nose to give her an excuse to muffle the smile on her face.
Dar sighed. "Let's go." She turned and started up the street, with her little army behind her, walking carefully around lumps in the road that could have been anything.
KERRY DECIDED AFTER a few minutes of quiet walking that the settling of dust over everything reminded her not so much of snow, but of the underwater landscape she and Dar so often explored together.
The dust had that kind of silt, grungy appearance to it. It draped over everything--the sidewalk, the cars, anything on the sidewalk--just like it did underwater over discarded concrete blocks, and forgotten anchors.
The odd gust of wind from behind them stirred it just as an errant fin would. She'd only gone half a block before she'd put her smaller mask on, convinced she could taste the stuff on the back of her tongue.
There were workers and firemen, an isolated few, walking the other way, but they all looked exhausted and none of them paid attention to either their surroundings or the passing techs. Some had breathing masks, some had full face units like they did, a few had nothing at all protecting them and were rubbing at their eyes with the backs of their hands.
It was quiet. Far off, she could hear the sound of heavy machinery,the faint hoots of a big truck or something backing up, and the sudden, unexpected sound of metal against metal that rang in the middle of her ears, making them itch.
It was surreal. If she looked behind her, she could see the clear blue sky of an autumn day with wind riffling over the waters of New York Harbor. But ahead of her, she felt like she was going down into a dungeon as the air seemed to be getting thicker and more hazy, and the ravaged building fronts rose high on either side of them.
"Put your masks on," Dar ordered her voice startlingly loud.
Kerry removed her small one and replaced it with the full face mask, adjusting the straps as it put a surprisingly comfortable veneer between her and the scene. The constriction of her vision almost seemed welcome, and after a minute she realized it wasn't really very different from putting on her diving mask.
They turned a corner and headed west. Rising up in front of them were fire trucks and cars, beaten and half destroyed.
"Wow."
Kerry glanced to her left to see Nan with her mask on. "Hey."
"This is unreal," Nan said. "I feel like I'm in a sci-fi film."
The sunlight filtered through the haze outlining the destruction in a peculiar beauty. Kerry pulled her small camera from her pocket and paused, focusing and snapping a quick shot of it. "It's definitely unreal."
They walked along the center of the small cross street and at the corner turned right and faced north.
Everyone stopped in their tracks. The people in front only barely avoiding being crashed into by those following until their eyes could take in what they saw and freeze their steps too.
"Holy shit," Mark said, after a few moments of silence.
DAR FOUND IT hard to absorb what she was seeing. The entire end of the street was blocked by a huge pile of twisted debris. Heavy smoke was coming out of its depths and chunks of ruin tumbled down toward her amidst the wreckage of cars, trucks, and vans.
Kerry put a hand on her back, easing closer. "I saw this on television but my God, Dar."
"Yeah." Dar looked around. "Don't think we can get through that way. I guess we better...well, hell. I have no idea where we should go.Want to give your buddies a call, find out where they are?"
"Sure." Kerry unclipped her cell phone and opened it, finding the number and dialing as she switched her headset to the phone from her radio.
Andrew and Alastair had walked a little further down the street and now had stopped next to an ambulance that had been flipped on its side and burned almost past recognition. They studied it and shook their heads.
"This is fucked up," Mark finally commented. "This is really, really fucked up."
"Yeah," Dar said. "It is."
"This is crazy," Mark said. "They should just move all the freaking banking stuff out to Wyoming. We've got lots of power and bandwidth there."
Dar pondered that. Could they?
"Look at this place. Holy shit." Mark shook his head. "Man. I can't believe it."
Dar mimicked the motion and studied the scene.
The shops on either side of the street were blown out. Windows had imploded, driven inward by the blast of roiling debris the tall buildings had funneled down away from the collapse--no where to go but out and down--scouring the area raw.
It smelled. Even through the mask and the filters she could smell rot mixed with electrical burn, and garbage from the surrounding areas that hadn't been touched since Tuesday. Bags, covered in dust were on the sidewalk, buzzing with flies.
A puff of air brought a stronger scent to her--one of death--and she barely stifled a gag.
She realized she didn't want to be here. Dar never minded reality and considered herself a straightforward person, but there was such a thing as being too much in the moment, and she thought this might be one of those times.
"This is one bad thing."
Dar turned to find her father at her shoulder. His voice was slightly muffled by the mask, but the somber look in his eyes wasn't. "It's hard to take in," she admitted. "It's like a bad sci-fi movie."
"Yeap," Andrew agreed. "Real bad things are hard to look at and take serious." He went on reflectively. "Cause your mind says, nah, that can't be. Can't be so."
"But there it is." Dar studied the smoking, twisted debris. "And the more I look at it, the more I wonder what the hell we're doing here."
Her father snorted a bit.
"We can't fix any of this, Daddy," Dar tol
d him. "This is broken past my ability to make it right."
Andrew studied her. "So what're you all doing here?"
Dar folded her arms over her chest. "Good question."
"Dar." Kerry came back over. "Okay, they're one street back down and further in front of 2 World T--" She paused. "Where 2 World Trade Center was. There's a damaged subway entrance there." She pointed to the street they'd just come from. "There, and then the first left."
"Lead on," Dar told her.
They trooped back down to the corner and headed back the way they'd come, turning again at the corner Kerry indicated and walking down this wider street full of wreckage.
The building faces here were ravaged. Parts of the brickwork had been scoured off, and the fronts were crumbled in and sagging. One of the roofs nearby was draped in metal debris, dripping down into the street and forcing them to circle it to get past . The metal stained in a dark rust color made Dar's guts shiver.
Once past that, she could see a group of men clustered at the corner near a set of stairs going underground. As they approached, the men at the edge of the group turned and shuffled, splitting apart to allow two figures through from the center.
The one in front headed right for Kerry. "Kerry Stuart, you're a welcome sight."
Kerry extended a hand. "Hello, Charles." She could see his red rimmed eyes behind the shield of his mask. "Did you find your brother?"
He hesitated then shook his head. "They're still looking at the hospitals in Jersey. A lot of guys were found over there today," he said. "Glad you could come down here. We were going to see how far we can see underground. Maybe there's clearance enough to get to the line pipes"
"Okay." Kerry half turned. "I brought some help."
Charles nodded briefly. "Any help's welcome." He gave the rest of them a distracted look. "Do you have--oh, yeah, you do have flashlights. Great. We can get going then." He gestured toward the half wrecked staircase downward. "See what we can see."
Another man walked over in a vest with Verizon on it. He had a small breathing mask on his mouth, but no other protection. "You people ready?" he asked. "We got a lot of other things to do, y'know? I got people chewing my ass right and left here."
"Let's go." Charles motioned them all forward. The group by the stairs was a mix of Verizon staff, his own staff, a few people in different color protection suits with Sprint's logo, and one with MCI World Com on the shoulder.
They all looked at the newcomers in question. Charles gestured vaguely at them. "ILS sent a team to see what they could to do help," he said. "I figure the more help the better." They started carefully down the steps that were full of dust and debris, the railings half collapsed."Be careful folks."
"Took them four hours to clear them this good," one of the other men said. "We're crazy to be going down here."
Everyone turned on their flashlights and the space erupted into a dancing, bobbing light show as the beams reflected against all the dust in the air, and what they were walking down into. Kerry felt like she was descending into some cave, and she felt Dar's reassuring hand rest on her shoulder as they picked their way downward.
One of the Sprint techs was right in front of her and he turned as they slowed waiting for the people in front to continue. "Jake Davies." He offered a hand. "Thanks for coming down. We got some cell sites up and running on generator, but it's tough."
"Kerry Stuart." Kerry returned the grip. "We've got some satellite trucks and generator vans with us."
The men closest to her half turned, their ears perking up. "Yeah?" one asked. "We could sure use those."
"Everyone could," Dar answered. "Once we finish seeing what the needs are, then we can talk about who gets what." Her voice indicated
lack of debate on the subject.
The men looked at Kerry then looked up at Dar.
"She's the boss," Kerry remarked. "Want to go on down? I think they're waiting for us."
The men turned and headed down the steps with Kerry and her group behind them. It was very dark, and the ground was very uneven.She reached the bottom of the stairwell with a sense of anxiety as the flashlights danced around the dark interior.
"Holy shit," one of the men said, as they moved a little further inside. His light shone on the walls that had big, gaping cracks in them, tile scattered all over the floor and sliding around with a brittle sound as boots kicked them.
They moved past the turnstiles cautiously. "We sure this ceiling's all right?" one of the men from Sprint asked. "There's a ton of concrete over our heads."
"Look at that!" another man said, shining his flashlight down the second set of stairs. A huge metal column was piercing the ceiling extending down and bisecting the steps halfway down.
"Wow." Charles shook his head. "I don't know about this."
"Aw, c'mon you little girls." The Verizon man headed down the steps.
"Now there's a right jackass." Andrew started to push past Dar and Kerry, only to have his daughter casually block him with one arm. "Scuse me, rugrat."
"Dad. Relax." Dar started down the steps. "If asses need kicking, I'm capable of that."
Kerry was glad of the banter, since the area around her was giving her the severe creeps. Aside from being dark, it stank, and, despite the filters, her eyes were watering from the smell. Her imagination was painting almost anything in the corners, and she was halfway afraid of looking too closely in the glare at what might be there.
She instinctively edged closer to Dar, hooking one finger in her partner's belt as she followed her down the second set of stairs deeper into the earth under the collapsed tower, down to the platform that was the subway.
There she had to halt, as Dar had halted, because everyone else had.
The flashlights couldn't do the scene justice. "Hang on." One of the Verizon men went over to one side and worked a latch on something,accompanied by a long, screeching sound that made everyone jump.
A floodlight flickered on, dim with age. "Shit for batteries," the man muttered. "But it's better than nothing."
The light blared down the tracks showing the destruction. A subway train car was at the end of the platform, its top crushed in, the tunnel ceiling collapsed on top of it.
They were all silent for a moment. "Hope that was empty," Kerry murmured.
On the other side of the tracks, the entire tunnel was collapsed on top of the platform blocking any further travel in that direction. The tunnel leading east, away from the towers, was still intact, but a light shown down it displayed debris covering the tracks as far as the eye could see.
A rain of debris suddenly came down from the ceiling, rattling down on the tracks.
"Shit," the Verizon man said. "This ain't going nowhere. We can't even get to the intake blocks." He ran his flashlight along the back wall. The concrete and steel pylons were cracked and bent and somewhere, a faint hissing noise was going off.
"No," Charles said. "Dead end."
Another silence. "Probably a lot of them," the Verizon man finally muttered."Let's get outta here. Waste of time." He took a step backwards, as another rain of debris came down. "I tolja it would be. We should get back to the damn work site and do something productive."
Rude or not, Kerry was totally in sync with the idea. She kept thinking she heard things moving in the distance, and she could feel her heart racing as the shadows seemed to move closer. She backed up and got on the steps, swallowing hard to keep her stomach down.
The upper level was almost bright by comparison. Hazy sunlight was coming down the steps to the outside world, and Kerry made a beeline for it, relaxing only when she knew her head was out from under the cracked ceiling and she could see sky above her.
"You okay?" Dar asked, climbing up the steps at her back.
"Yeah," Kerry answered after a brief pause. "Just freaked me a little."
Dar patted her back in comfort, as they exited onto the street, faced with the pile of wreckage and the sound of sirens blaring suddenly.
They both jumped. Dar turned in a circle, her eyes scanning the area.
"Shit. Now what?" The Verizon man hauled up out of the stairwell after them, looking quickly both ways. On the next street, a police car growled by, it's lights cutting the dusty air as the officer inside aimed a high beam light on one of the building fronts.
The Verizon man relaxed. "Looter." He guessed. "Bastards." He looked around again. "We should get the hell--"
"Away from here? I agree." Dar turned and counted quickly, making sure all her team had come out from the subway. "Tell you what. We've got a tech office a block or so over. No lights but we can sit and talk about what we can do there."
The group gathered around her, most looking a bit shaken, and even Andrew assuming a somber expression on his face.
"You said you had sat trucks?" Charles asked, finally. "I thought I heard you say that, Kerry." He turned to look at her. "Right?"
"We do," Dar answered for her. "So let's go put our heads together and figure out a plan," she suggested. "Maybe we can start from the other end, at the Exchange, and see where that takes us."
After an awkward pause, Charles nodded, though the rest just looked at Dar. "Sounds like a good idea," he ventured. "Sorry, I didn't--I don't think we were introduced."
"My manners are slipping." Kerry shook herself out of her funk."Sorry, Charles. This is Dar Roberts. Dar, this is Charles Gant, the technical executive on our account." She paused, as she took in Charles' wide eyed expression and the sudden, startled looks from the other men.
It would have been funny, if it had been any other situation. Kerry couldn't appreciate the humor at the moment. "Let's go folks. You can gawk later," she said. "We need to get out of here."
"Git." Andrew started herding them toward the cross street. "Just git."
Another siren started screaming behind them, and they retreated around the corner, just as a second joined it, and then a third, rending the air as though the sound were chasing them.
