The tremor continued, rose in rhythmic, undulating vibrations, the walls swaying and groaning, the floor bucking. Distantly, Cal heard glass breaking, the thud and clatter of objects, impacts dull and splintering. Huddled under the table, he felt the warmth of bodies mashed against him, the rise and fall of rapid, shallow breath. There were no screams now, only grunts with each concussion, wordless murmurs of incomprehension, the need for it to stop.
Cal found that he had his arms draped over two others, he couldn’t tell whom, instinctively sheltering them. The intimacy of the dark, the clamor, the proximity of bodies all held an echo, a resonance of his dream.
But it was real. As the blood pulsed in his ears, his bones and flesh and teeth shuddering, all he could think of was his sister.
The shaking began to subside, the cacophony of distant sounds racheted down. The voices about Cal whirled up in sharp whispers, collided, broke upon each other. “Earthquake, my god-” “In Manhattan?” “Explosive device-” “Big gas main over in, my cousin-” “Vertical fault lines, right under-”
The creaking of the overhead fixtures slowed, the glass tubes cooling, extinguished. Cal crawled out from under the table, motioning the others. “Come on.”
They followed, as he shoved open the big doors and rushed out into the bullpen. It was brighter here, daylight filtering from the open doorways of Ledding’s and Bowen’s suites. Paralegals and secretaries were helping each other up, dim shambling forms in the gloom. Somewhere a man or woman-impossible to tell-was sobbing quietly.
Cal grabbed up a desk phone, held the receiver to his ear-dead.
“Who’s got a cell phone?” he shouted.
“Here!” Janice Fishman handed off her Nokia, and Cal punched in the number of St. Augustine, hit send. Nothing.
“Where the hell are the emergency lights?” That was Paul Cajero, panic fracturing his voice.
Cal cast about the room, made out the misty shapes of Bob Williams Jr. and Chris Black holding cell phones to their ears, shaking them ineffectually. By now, Anita La Bonte had fished a portable radio from her desk, and Paul Leonard had retrieved a flashlight from the utility cabinet. Inexplicably, they weren’t working either.
Cal felt a vise tighten around his heart. He had to get onto the street, see how widespread this was, get to a working phone, if there was one, make sure Tina. .
A soft moan issued from the conference room. Cal turned to it. Through the open doors, he saw the figure within, slumped against a wall, alone.
Cal entered and drew near. In the murky light from the doorway, he could see Stern sitting motionless on the floor, face averted. Stern grew aware of him, angled his head slightly, eyes nearly closed.
“Do you need a hand up?” Cal asked. The sight of Stern so still, emptied of his hectic, decisive energy, shook him.
“No,” Stern said languidly, indifferent. Shock? Cal couldn’t see any obvious injuries, but that meant nothing. Stern grimaced, shielded his eyes from the dim light.
“Hey, everybody! Look!” Barbara Claman’s Marlboro rasp sang out from the common room. Stern turned his head away dismissively. Cal withdrew.
He found the rest of the staff massed with Barbara by the window in Russ Bowen’s suite, peering down, strangely subdued. He squeezed through them, squinted at the daylight.
On the street far below, and on all the streets as far as the eye could see, the cars, trucks, cabs and buses were still. Tiny figures emerged from pygmy vehicles, lifted hoods, stood stunned and disbelieving. “They’re not working either,” Janice muttered incredulously, needlessly. Her voice held awe, and fear.
Cal let out a long breath. His eyes lifted to the heavens- and he froze. “Oh, my God,” he whispered.
The others turned to him, saw the dawning horror on his face.
The objects looked almost like toys, so many miles distant, and they were lovely, really, glinting in the sun, all twisting and angling downward.
“The planes,” Cal said. “They’re falling out of the sky.”
WEST VIRGINIA-9:17 A.M. EDT
Fred felt it grab him at the same instant every machine in Bob’s room went dark.
There wasn’t even the steady flamenco of alarms that you saw in TV movies when the hero’s wife or mother or best friend went into seizure in the emergency room. Just no lights, no readouts. Even the backup batteries had gone dark. And Bob’s mind, screaming, screaming for help. .
Bob, I’ve got you! Fred caught him, seized him, reached out into the dark into which he was falling and held on, even as he felt the horrible cold dragging at him. .
They were children again; Bob had fallen into Cherry Creek during the floods of ’63, racing current ripping him away. Fred had managed to grab him, hook his own arm around the remains of the old dock, while the cold water hammered him and icy numbness bored deeper and deeper into his flesh.
I won’t let you go! I won’t let you go!
And the child-Bob pressed into his chest, clutched at his arm with nerveless fingers. He couldn’t breathe or think. He only knew that he couldn’t let go.
Roaring in his ears, in his mind. Weightless swinging over a void, and that terrible, ghastly dragging at him, drawing him back to the Source. Voices screaming, thunder in his brain: Sanrio, Wu, Pollard. Come back here! Come back! We need you. .!
Bob screaming his name.
He’d deserted Bob once before. He would not do it again.
Fred reached out, gathered everything the Source surrounded him with, all that power, all that light, and poured it into Bob’s still heart and still lungs and dying bloodstream and brain. I won’t let you go!
And in his ears and heart and brain and soul, the world screamed.
Roof fall, thought Hank in a second of blind, hideous panic. Floor heave. Explosion. His hands fumbled automatically at the Self-Contained Self-Rescuer-the respirator-hanging at his belt.
“Fuck a duck!” howled Sonny Grimes from the darkness behind him, and for some reason the man’s yowl of protest steadied Hank, centered him. As soon as he yanked the SCSR’s strap tight, he hit the levers of the shearer, though the thing had ground to an instant, shuddering halt already.
Hollow in the respirator’s filters, Gordy Flue’s voice said, “C’mon, Sonny, where you gonna get a duck down here?”
And Ryan, “What happened to the headlamps?”
Silence. A million tons of mountain and darkness deep as the end of the world.
Hands shaking, Hank fumbled the flashlight from his pocket. He heard something clatter, small and metallic on the floor, and Gordy cursed. He guessed the others were doing the same.
He switched over the toggle, and he might as well have flipped a tiddly-wink for all the light it summoned. “Son-of-a-bitch batteries,” said Roop McDonough as Hank shook his own flashlight, took the fresh batteries from his pocket, tried again.
Zip.
Hank felt himself trembling, sweat on his face and bile in his mouth. The smell of coal dust was thick in his nostrils, his lungs. Every man at the face knew that a flame here could be the last light any of them would ever see. Aftershocks, he thought. Wasn’t that what happened in California and Japan? The earth calmed down and then went on shaking, on and off, for days?
Ryan Hanson spoke again. “How come all the helmet lights went out?”
“Everybody okay?” Hank called into the blackness, and Al’s voice and Tim’s echoed in response. Hank hit the toggle on his radio and got nothing-no surprise there. By the stillness of the air he knew the vent fans had quit working, too. “Anybody hurt?”