Loss Of Reason, Miles A. Maxwell [electronic reader txt] 📗

“What is that thing?” Franklin asked as the old red and white helicopter climbed above the fireball.

“I’ve seen one before,” Everon yelled back. “With Cyn and Steve, one night, having drinks on the eighth floor of the Marriott Marquis. Down Broadway, at 41st Street was this flaming ball of fire maybe five stories high. The three of us took a walk after dinner. It was still burning. Roaring up out of the street. The buildings acting like a chimney. A cop at the barricades said a major gas main was broken.”

“Gas main?” Chuck said, looking back out the side windows. “This one’s a lot more than five stories.”

“Yeah,” Everon nodded. “The whole city’s underlain with hundreds of ’em and the pressure’s on.”

The city flattened out before them. Through the smoke over middle Manhattan, the fire and destruction, was a vision of Hell on Earth. Building tops appeared bowled over. As if a giant’s hand had slewn across them sideways.

“Oh my God!” Chuck gasped. “It’s gone!”

The top half of what had once been the tallest building in the world, the symbol of the city, was missing. Like dozens of other skyscrapers around it, the Empire State had been cut in half like a broken saguaro cactus, leaving only the nubs of uneven girders sticking up above lower ragged concrete floors and shell.

The U.S. had weathered all kinds of things — civil war, world war, financial collapse. Can it weather this? Are we at war now? Franklin wondered. Some countries rose and fell in a matter of years. The U.S. was unique. Of all the places he’d traveled to, he’d seen no other country founded for the purpose of protecting the individual. Something that strong had to corrode first on the inside.

South of 20th Street or so, not even steel frameworks remained. The giant’s hand had swept out, destroying everything in its path from somewhere near the bottom tip of Manhattan Island. Until up around 42nd, where a kind of transition zone appeared.

While Times Square was a flaming wreck, just blocks north, less than half were on fire. There was a new pattern. Those close to street corners were gone — but structures in blast-shadows of what had been taller buildings remained standing. But for their missing window glass, some looked completely untouched.

“Crossing one thousand feet,” Everon said loudly.

“Look at Broadway,” Franklin said. “The blast must have been channeled by the open spaces —”

“Like the avenues were rivers,” Chuck said. “The lower end of the city is gone. The damage up here is selective.”

“Overpressure decreases with the cube of the distance,” Everon yelled.

“Maybe there’s a chance that Cynthia —”

“Of course there’s a chance,” Everon yelled back. “But let’s not start painting false pictures like you do on Sundays.”

Franklin hung a piercing blue stare on his brother, sucked his lips inward, taking deep breaths. “That way,” he pointed. “Straight across the bottom of the park.”

Everon softened. “Sorry, Bro.”

Bro. He hasn’t called me that in a long time and it’s the second time today, Franklin realized. He and Everon were step-brothers. Not bro, but Bro. Like he’s trying to connect himself, bond more tightly to the family. He’s as upset as I am —

Cynthia’s chances were slim. Franklin knew it. The likelihood of anyone still alive on the Upper East Side — he closed his eyes and hallucinated finding Cynthia’s building completely blown away — nothing but rubble. He could smell the burning drywall, hear the flames. The hallucination became stronger as he saw in his mind the corpses — his sister, Cynthia’s husband and daughter — lying there, sightless eyes staring up at him.

“At least the smoke helps block the sun,” Chuck yelled over their shoulders.

Everon nodded back.

Across the far east sky, the poisonous anvil-headed radiation cloud stretched even farther and darker — out across Long Island now where snow and rain were likely to bring death to thousands.

“Hey! Another helicopter!” Chuck pointed.

A Bell Executive flew into view from behind the broken frame of the Empire State. Its doors bore a huge logo, a gold crown. Underneath in three-foot gold letters was a single word: KING.

“Nathan King,” Everon said. “He bought the Empire State Building last year.”

Before Everon could push the stick over to bank them toward Central Park, out of nowhere an F-18 fighter flashed past their windows. A moment later, a fast-attack Cobra gunship rose to hover along their right side, its single machine cannon targeting the old Sea Pelican.

Beneath the ready emotion, Nathan King’s deep coolness was missing, mutated into a profound sorrow mixed with rage. It twisted his jovial features.

“Fuck!” he said softly, shoulders slumped, watching his city burn from the side window of his private helicopter. “There’s nothing left!”

“How is this different?” those who knew him so well — friends, employees, business associates — might have asked. His moods, so volatile — one day intense, the next, wild — sadness, joy, whatever — it doesn’t matter. As long as it entertains! Oh, yeah — and get the hell out of my critical path!

But anyone could have guessed the answer: “How often does a man lose everyone he cares about, everything his life is built on — in a flash of light?” Everything he loved, even his parents, killed during a night he’d been doing business in London.

To confirm their deaths King rushed across the Atlantic, came up here to see for himself. The eight sky-piercing buildings he’d created — his parents’ penthouse in one of them — gone.

He straightened. Louder and with a touch of vehemence, asked, “What do we know, John?” John Mayhew, his executive assistant, had lost people too.

“Well, Mr. King, the information we have so far from the military shows two to three hundred kilotons. The blast —”

“No, not that stuff, John. What does the government say? What do our contacts say? Goddammit! I want to know who did this! Don’t you?”

From the gunship’s open side cargo door, a soldier held up a whiteboard penned with thick black numbers. FREQ 121.5. A clipped military voice over a megaphone echoed the same thing. “Go to frequency 121.5! Now!”

Chuck leaned up between the seats and Everon handed him the microphone. “Looks like you’re on deck.” Everon dialed the frequency into the helicopter’s radio display.

“This is Chuck Farndike with a Red Cross mission out of Teterboro.”

The response was immediate. “You have no authorization to be here, Mr. Farndike. All traffic is restricted.”

“We’re on an emergency Red Cross mission.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Farndike, your tail number’s not listed as authorized. You’ll have to return to New Jersey.”

Everon asked over the radio, “What’s the King helicopter doing in here?”

“That is not your concern!” the military pilot responded. “Follow us back across the Hudson. Now, please.”

The pilot’s tone offered no options.

Franklin held out his hand. “Let me give it a try.” Chuck handed over the microphone.

In a smooth calm voice half an octave lower than he usually spoke, Franklin said: “We have on board potassium iodide and other medical supplies. People down there are waiting for our help. Our mission was a last-minute Red Cross addition. Please check with Teterboro and allow us to continue.”

“I’m sorry, you’ll have to —”

“Let them do what they can,” a new voice said. “At least call it in.”

“This is an emergency channel. Identify yourself!”

“Nathan King.”

The radio went silent.

“King!” Everon said.

Seconds ticked by, both helicopters hovering over 59th Street, fifteen hundred feet in the air.

“The tower people have my backup radio,” Everon said. “I fixed their generator too.”

“Let’s hope your friends in the tower back us up,” Franklin nodded.

The radio crackled. “Uh — your flight has been authorized. Non-military personnel are not allowed south of Forty-Second Street. Radiation levels are too high. For your own protection.”

“Understood. Thank you,” Franklin said.

Everon banked the aircraft left and began descending on a northeasterly course toward Central Park.

Cheri And Johnny

As fear gave way to sleep, the pretty Latina woman held her child where they lay on the carpet. Until the dim gray light filtered through the front window. And now Cheri remembered:

Cheri Enriquez’s house shook.

“Mommy!”

The roaring wave of pressure had cut off Stevie Wonder on the stereo, singing to the penalties of superstition. Pounded Cheri and her three-year-old Johnny down to the floor. “Mommy!” he’d cried again as they held onto each other, rocking together on the carpet, eyes closed — waiting for the scary hurricane sound to pass.

As quickly as it began, the howling noise dropped off until it was replaced by a dead and eerie silence.

For the longest time Cheri had been afraid to move.

She looked at the small boy in her arms. His eyes stared silently up at her. He was awake now too.

She rose and carried Johnny to look out the front window. The sky over east Brooklyn was so dark she could barely make out the tree-lined street. Something overhead was blotting out the light.

She tried the news. The television screen stared back blankly. She lifted the phone. Nothing. She played with the dial on their portable radio. Only static.

Cheri had gone along with her husband Jáime’s wishes: “Better to bring Johnny up away from gangs and drugs!” And for three years they had saved every spare dollar for a deposit. Until they were able to move to the mainly Jewish area of southeast Brooklyn. Today she wished they still lived in the old neighborhood. Where she knew everybody. Where she could still go next door to the Gonzalezes or across the street to find out what Francie Lopez