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 told 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.