Agents of Change

by Guy Harrison

  ***

  “I found one!” I hear a hoarse voice say.

  Squeezed and short of breath, I feel the debris above me shifting. A light shines through the rubble and grows brighter with the shifting of each shard of stone, each cube of concrete. Soon, I can see the origin of the hoarse voice, a firefighter. He throws each piece of debris left and right until my face is uncovered, in its entirety.

  “He’s still alive!” the firefighter says through a dust mask before lowering his voice. “And in bad shape. I’ll be right back.”

  Although I can feel my arms and legs, I’m paralyzed. I look down toward my feet but don’t see them. Instead, I only see the silver exterior of the train. I feel the jagged edges of the debris underneath me digging into my back. I lie here, squinting up into the light, happy to still be able to see, hear, and touch.

  As the light begins to blind me, I think to close my eyes but the firefighter returns, with help. Three more first responders, all wearing dust msays, have joined him. Two of them swear when they see me while one of them turns away.

  Wincing, the firefighter crouches down and looks me in the eye. “How do you feel?”

  “Like I got hit by a train.”

  The firefighter smiles. “My name’s Marcinkiewicz. We’re going to get you out of here.” He motions for his buddies to spread out. “You’re underneath a piece of the train. These guys are going try lifting it up and I’ll pull you out. The moment something hurts, you let me know, okay?”

  I nod my head as I look at him through the train’s open window.

  When Marcinkiewicz helps lift the train’s fuselage, the men grunt and groan as the metal comes off of me, releasing its pressure. Then, with the train’s casing a mere foot above me, Marcinkiewicz places his forearms under my arms and pulls.

  “Can you push with your legs?” he says, straining. I nod and use my Nikes to push off the rubble at my feet. “C’mon, c’mon. Push, push, push,” he says as I inch from underneath the train’s captive sliver.

  Inch-by-inch, the other responders afford me more space, raising the metal three feet above my body. Eventually, Marcinkiewicz and I fall backwards, out in the open with the firefighter breaking my fall.

  Finally able to move my body, pain starts rushing to certain areas of my body. My right knee and kidney, my left foot—the same one I hurt escaping my townhouse—left hand, and the left side of my face. My shirt is bloodied and my pants are filthy.

  “I got you,” the firefighter says. “Here, hold this.” He presses a towel against the left side of my face, holding it in place until my hand meets the towel.

  “What happened to my face?” I say.

  “Just keep pressure on it. You should use it to cover your mouth, too. There’s all kinds of dust down here. God only knows how old it is.”

  The other responders eventually manage to turn the sliver over, exposing two more bodies, both of which lie face down. They aren’t as fortunate as I am.

  “Can you stand?” Marcinkiewicz says.

  “Yeah.” Against a jagged terrain, I place pressure on both feet, standing with the firefighter’s help. I eventually place all my pressure on my left leg—my knee hurts a lot worse than my foot.

  “What’s your name?”

  “C—Kevin Newsome. I mean, Kevin Stewart.” I feel a gap on the left side of my mouth. I’ve lost at least two teeth.

  “Kevin,” he says as he places my right arm on his shoulders, “we need to get you to a hospital. Quick.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Center City. Suburban Station.”

  With my left hand holding the towel, I start hopping away on one leg with the firefighter’s help.

  I take an inventory of my surroundings. The landscape around us is comprised exclusively of rubble and the atmosphere is filled with ash and dust. In front of us, one of the station’s old stairwells leads to nothing. Some of the station’s rounded columns still stand, holding up what remains of the level above us. Other columns, and the parts of the level above us they once supported, have fallen.

  I look up to the next level and find the carcass of the station’s concourse. Some of its news vendors and ticket offices still remain. High above the concourse are some of the city’s skyscrapers and the night sky. The opening through which the moon shines into the train station is nearly the length of a football field. At the other end of the station, the tunnels of the station’s eight tracks are blocked by debris.

  Behind me, the ill-fated train lies on its side, lifeless, and strewn across what was two of the station’s five platforms. The train’s foremost cars are covered in rubble while the aft cars are debris-free. The bright light that nearly blinded me illuminates the wreckage as it sits atop a pole connected to a transformer up on the surface.

  “You find anyone else down here?” I say.

  “Two others living. Everyone else was dead.”

  “Who were the people who lived?”

  “A little girl and her mother.”

  I suddenly feel lightheaded again and my headache returns. The pain on the left side of my face intensifies. I take pressure off my leg and onto Marcinkiewicz. “Where are you taking me?”

  “We’re going to lift you back up to the surface and take you to the hospital.”

  “I don’t—I don’t want to go to the hospital.”

  The firefighter laughs. “You’re funny.”

  We come to two EMTs. One holds a harness while the other holds a cable. The cable leads up to the surface.

  “Oh my God,” says the EMT with the harness, a female. “Are you okay?”

  I nod my throbbing head.

  “Okay. Lift your legs, sir. Like you’re putting on pants.”

  I lift my right leg and then my left, allowing the EMT to slip the harness up my sweatpant-covered legs. The second EMT attaches a hook at the end of the cable to a loop on the front of my harness.

  “Just hold on to the cable,” the second EMT, a man, says. He reaches for my towel. “I’ll take that.”

  I notice the large auburn-colored stain on the towel before looking over at Marcinkiewicz. “Thank you.”

  The firefighter nods his head before turning back to the wreck.

  “Up!” yells the male EMT.

  Soon, with both hands firmly on the cable, I feel myself rising out of the station. I pass through the darkened concourse where, as though nothing happened, candy bars, soft pretzels, newspapers, and magazines sit firmly in place at the front of the closest newsstands. Those items wait for a morning rush that isn’t coming.

  Upon reaching the surface, my eyes are met with the flashing strobes of police cruisers and ambulances. Two more EMTs, both of them men, stand on the precipice of the opening, aghast as I hang on to the cable.

  “Stop!” one of them says.

  Behind the two EMTs, the motorized pulley is silenced by the operator at its controls. When I stop rising, the two EMTs pull me away from the chasm. I place my feet on the dust-covered ground before the two men help me shed the harness.

  “Here,” one of them says, placing another towel on my face. “Let’s get you to a hospital.”

  “I don’t—”

  The EMTs roll a gurney in my direction and motion for me to sit.

  “No,” I say, shaking my head.

  “Sir, you’re badly hurt,” one of them says. “Get on the gurney. Please.”

  I comply and sit on the gurney. The EMTs raise its head, allowing me to sit up as they usher me toward an ambulance.

  “Other than your face, what hurts?” one of them says.

  “What’s wrong with my face?”

  “Just keep putting pressure on it.”

  To my left, Suburban Station’s twenty-one-story office building has been completely leveled. Across the street, on my right, the city’s adored Love Park sculpture, once red, is now covered in brown soot. The paramedics lift me into the ambulance.

  “Don’t worry,” one of them says, “we’ll get you all fixed.”
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  “We got another!” screams the first responder back at the motorized pulley. The two EMTs secure my gurney before looking back toward the chasm. One of them turns back to me.

  “Hang tight. We’ll be right back,” he says.

  As the two EMTs walk away from the ambulance, I hold the towel to my face and look around, observing the vehicle’s entrails, hoping to find a solution. Then, I remember how I got caught in this situation to begin with.

  Swoosh!

  With caramel-colored skin and in full police uniform, I sit up and place my good leg on the floor. While the two EMTs are fixated on the chasm as they await the next survivor, I swing my bum leg off of the gurney and place that foot on the floor. Careful not to apply too much pressure on that leg, I reach for a shelf which hangs over the vehicle’s equipment. I pull myself up and limp to the end of the ambulance. Facing a four-foot drop off of the chassis, though, there’s no getting around the pain I’m sure to suffer.

  Much like I did when I escaped my townhouse earlier this morning, or yesterday—or whenever the hell it was—I close my eyes before leaping out of the ambulance. As I land, the pain shoots through my right knee and up my leg. With a groan, I crumble to the ground behind the ambulance.

  “Are you okay?” I hear a deep female voice ask.

  On my stomach, I look up and find a cop standing over me. She’s androgynous with dark hair tucked under her cap.

  “I’m good,” I say, struggling to get back on my feet.

  “Lopez,” she says, looking at my name tag. “Which district you from?”

  I dust myself off. “Fifteenth.”

  “Really? I used to work there.”

  Okay, this lady’s nice but …“I need a cruiser.”

  “Where’re you going?” she says. I look at her nametag. Her name is Wolfe. “I’ll drive you.”

  “I forgot my gun and badge back at the precinct. I can go by myself, though.”

  She wears a smile behind the dust mask on her face. “How are you going to get those by yourself, dumbass? You don’t have a cruiser.”

  The two EMTs help the next survivor out of the harness. I take the cue and limp away from the ambulance with Wolfe. “Lend me yours.”

  She shakes her head.

  “Oh, c’mon. No need for both of us to go.”

  Her eyes scan the scene. “Yeah, we need as many bodies down here as possible. Only because you’re from the Fifteenth …” she grabs her keys off her belt and hands them to me. “Hurry up. My LT will be back in an hour.”

  “No problem.” I fully intend on not being here.

  Wolfe directs me to her cruiser. With a wince and a grunt, I climb in, close the door, and turn the ignition. Meanwhile, the two EMTs are dumbfounded as they bring their blanket-covered survivor to the ambulance. As I drive past them, I glance at the wreck’s fourth survivor, hoping to catch a glimpse of Ronni.

  It’s not her.

  For the first time since my rescue, I begin to count what I’ve lost; thus far, two teeth and the thing I held closest to my heart. I look at the car’s digital clock: 10:38.

  With City Hall around the corner, I drive away from Suburban Station, utilizing the city’s now-empty throughways on my trek back to FDR Park.