A roar filled the air like nothing that had been heard in that church before — half ironic cheer, half wolf’s snarl at sighting red meat.
James gestured to Matt and Caitlin. “Put these where you kept the others. And no foolin’ around with ’em! We want them all in one piece for when we need them.”
Matt and the others were marched down the aisle to the rear of the church, and Matt thought they were going out. But before they reached the church doors, the lead guard turned aside, to the gaping entrance of a dusty stairwell.
Are they sticking us in the choir loft? Matt wondered. But the stairs kept going up, until Matt realized they were climbing inside the church’s steeple. Then they came to a moldy wooden ladder leaning drunkenly against the lip of a trapdoor overhead.
Matt climbed, and found himself in a space a little larger than his bedroom — but a lot taller. Once bells had hung here, rung on feast days and to celebrate marriages. They were gone now, probably taken when the church was deconsecrated. A bell was a valuable thing, even if it was only melted down for its metal.
This space was empty, except for dust, the remains of a couple of bird nests, and what looked like mouse droppings on the floor. Four reasonably clean folding chairs were scattered around. Apparently, they’d been brought up for the comfort of the prisoners.
Caitlin, Luc, and Serge had all reached the upper story now. From below came a scraping sound. Their guards were removing the ladder!
“Y’all just sit quiet up there,” Willy’s voice echoed up the steeple. “We’ll come fetch you when we’re ready to move.”
As soon as the guards were out of sight, Matt snatched up one of the chairs and pushed it against the wall. The belfry had no windows, but above their heads, the enclosure was open to the air. This was where the sound of the bells had rung out in the old days.
At some point, though, there must have been a problem with intruders. Iron bars, spaced five inches apart, wouldn’t have blocked the tolling of the bells. But they’d keep anyone out of the belfry — or in.
The bars didn’t block the view, though, as Matt pulled himself up on his improvised step stool. He looked out — upon a vista of empty, crumbling buildings. The roofs of the surrounding stone and wooden row houses seemed to sag as if the weight of too many years pressed down on them. Paint peeled off the siding boards like diseased, scabby skin, revealing the gray of moldering wood. Obviously, it hadn’t been a great neighborhood even when people lived there. Scattered among the houses were square, raw brick buildings. They’d housed auto-body repair shops, chemical warehouses, all the parts of a city that get shoved into out-of-the-way corners where nice people didn’t have to look at — or live with — them.
It did keep the rents down, of course. Poor folks were expected to put up with the noise and the corrosive smells. This was a neighborhood that had been hard-used. And once it was deserted, the buildings, both old and new, began quickly falling into ruin.
To Matt, it looked like a town abandoned in the face of an enemy army’s advance. No-man’s-land. But where would you find such a desolate area in the middle of a teeming cityscape like greater Washington?
No-man’s-land! The words seemed to echo in Matt’s thoughts as he scampered down from the chair and dragged it to another wall. Nearby, he saw a similar blasted landscape. But farther off, he saw apartment towers rising over the rooftops. And right in front of the church steeple ran an elevated expressway with cars zipping along. Rays of late afternoon sunshine streamed between the bars. That way had to be west.
Matt dropped to the floor and hauled the chair so he was facing south. More devastated buildings, and a muddy scar where old houses had been bulldozed. Beyond that, however, rose a wall of rosy brick, enclosing expensive-looking brick and paneled buildings that looked like they’d escaped from colonial Williamsburg. Expensive cars stood in driveways surrounded by brilliant green lawns.
Letting go of the bars, Matt dropped back to the belfry floor again.
“What did you see?” Caitlin demanded.
“Bunch of pig-houses,” Serge replied in his broken English.
“Slums,” Luc Valery translated.
The Balkan boy nodded. “Like Cernograd after the shelling. Nowhere I seen before.”
“Well, I know where we are,” Matt said. “Remember that map Rob Falk showed us? We’re in the middle of the orange splotch, the houses waiting to be knocked down and turned into expensive condos. Back that way”—he jerked a thumb over his shoulder—“is the Gardens at Carrollsburg. In the other direction, if we go far enough, is the Mall and all the museums. To the west, once you get past the parkway and the dead neighborhood, are the luxury high-rises along the Potomac. East of here—” Matt frowned, trying to recall the maps he’d seen of the area. There’d been a large blank spot….
Then he remembered. “The Washington Navy Yard. They haven’t built a boat there in seventy years, but they use the land for offices and stuff.”
“How nice,” Luc said in a snotty voice. “Now we know exactly where we’re going to die.”
Matt shook his head. “Only if we let that happen.”
“Let it?” Luc said. “How do you expect to stop it? It’s not like we can call your cops. Those pigs took our wallet-phones. I don’t think we’ll find any phone-kiosks out there.” He gestured to the desolation surrounding them. “Besides, we’re trapped at least four stories off the ground with no way down and bars around us—”
He was interrupted as Matt’s hand shot out to grab his tie. “Real silk?”
“W-what?” The French boy sputtered. “My cravat? Yes, it’s silk.”
“Heavy silk,” Matt said, yanking at the knot in the tie.
Luc said nothing. He only stared at Matt as if the American had gone out of his mind.
Matt yanked the tie free of Luc’s collar, then turned to one of the chairs. He brought it up over his head and smashed it against the wall.
“What are you doing?” Caitlin yelled. She, too, had become convinced that Matt had gone out of his mind.
Matt grabbed another chair, and the other prisoners cringed back. But this one he leaned against the east side of the bell tower and began climbing.
Carrying the tie and a broken leg from the first chair in one hand, Matt hauled himself up. He looped the tie around two bars, tied it tight, then stuck the wooden stick into the loop and began twirling it. The heavy silk wrapped around the stick, making the loop tighter and tighter. Something had to give — and it wasn’t the tie. With a deep, rasping creak, the two bars of old iron began to bend together.
A second later, Serge was pulling a chair up beside Matt. He tucked another broken chair leg under his arm while he undid his belt. “Real leather from the homeland,” he said, looping it around the bars next to where Matt was working.
The work didn’t go quickly or easily. Matt’s face was streaked with dust and rust as he levered against the raw wood, trying to twist his loop tighter. Serge’s belt broke from the mistreatment of the leather, and they had to replace it with Matt’s.
As they worked at bending the bars, the prisoners also argued over the next part of their escape. At least it helped pass the time. Luc had friends in the Gardens at Carrollsburg, and had visited the area several times. “The hovercraft does not run all day,” he said. “Last boat is at eight o’clock.” He glanced from the setting sun to his wrist-watch. “Which is not so far away. We must get to the guards at the gate and warn them!”
“If we run that way, we’ll be stuck right where Rob and his pals want us,” Matt objected. “All they have to do is move up their timetable, and we’ll be trapped with all the other people in the development.”
“We should be trying to get out on the other side,” Caitlin said. “Get the attention of the people driving on the parkway.”