And, just for a moment, the sound of it blocked out the moans of the dead; for a cracked fragment of a second it silenced the wind from hell.
"Say it," Ruiz begged, and the words disintegrated into tears. He sagged back, his hands going slack as he caved into his own grief.
I tried to say it. With the burned-up air in my lungs I wanted to say it, just take back those last words. But my throat was all wrong. It was junk. The air found only a tiny, convoluted hole in the debris. I could hear the hiss of it. A faint ghost of a sound, a wind from my own hell.
Ruiz was crying openly now, his sobs louder than anything in the world. In my world.
I'm sorry, I said. Or thought I said. I take it back.
Ruiz didn't hear me. All he could hear was the moan of the dead.
But me?
I couldn't hear it.
Not anymore.