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

“We didn’t know how much stuff was above us,” Clarence said as they worked. “We should have tried.”

And then it slowed. The dirt had taken space where the water had been. The water was rising even faster now.

More chunks of loose rock rolled down. Franklin could hear Everon digging above. The casual refrain of a familiar tune floated down, Everon’s voice off-key, “I’ve been diggin’ on the railroad, all the livelong day . . .”

A couple of people smiled.

Franklin used the short claw of his rock hammer between the door seals and wedged them an inch apart. The Russian guy splashed into the water, grabbed one side of the rubber strip, the engineer’s hands above his. Clarence and Franklin slid their fingers onto the opposing side.

Slowly they forced the doors wide open. As more dirt poured in, they shoved it to the sides. The pile rose above the seat bottoms, then even with the water. Hands began to bleed. They kept at it until they had a slot up through the dirt, large enough that even Kone could slide through easily.

They stood on the seats, water to their knees and coming in fast.

“Normally I’d say ladies and injured people first,” Franklin rushed now, “But we’ll need some muscle up top.”

Figuring the Russian guy would want to stay until his lady had gotten clear, he looked at Clarence.

“We’ll take Victoria here up next. Can you help my brother, guide her?”

“Okay, okay — let’s go!”

“Okay — his name’s Everon — tell him I’ll give three short tugs when we’re ready then take it really slow. Since he’s got the grate cleared, you’ll want to take her straight up to street level. Do you need the winch to pull you up?”

Clarence glanced at the opening. “No way, man.” Like a mole, the StreetNews! guy scrambled up through the chute, shooting loose dirt into the water behind. His feet disappeared as if he’d been grabbed from above.

While Franklin tightened a harness strap just below Victoria’s gold skirt, the Russian sloshed through the stomach-high water to the doors, lifted his woman up and shoved against the bottoms of her shoes. She surprised them all, darting upward nearly as fast as Clarence. Victoria watched the woman’s mobility with something like envy. Embarrassment flashed across her face. She wishes she could do it herself, Franklin realized.

When he moved around to her other leg, the strap was already on, the buckle tightened down. He looked up at her.

She shrugged. “It seemed the right way to do it.”

She looped an arm around Franklin’s neck and the transit engineer helped her across the rising water, around the pile of brick and wet gray dirt to the car’s other side. Franklin gave the rope three sharp pulls and its slack was taken up.

Victoria Hill watched the wiry, dark-haired man as he guided her head carefully upward to the hole. Just before the train car’s interior dropped away, she saw what the lack of light had hidden. His irises. Electric cobalt blue.

Water rose above the seat backs, touched the lower edge of the train’s windows.

Kone coughed and scratched at his nose. For someone in a hurry to go — now Kone didn’t want to leave the train car! Making an odd superstitious kind of motion, touching opposite shoulders several times — as if to even himself out somehow. Water halfway up his chest, Franklin ignored it, gave the rope a tug.

Kone halfway up the hole, the engineer looked at Franklin as they strained against the little bureaucrat’s bulk. “Feels like the chub’s pushing back!” the engineer grunted.

Finally Kone’s weight left their hands and his shoes disappeared.

Walter van Patter followed quite quickly, spry for someone so old. The Russian went next. Franklin pushed the engineer up into the hole right on the Russian’s heels.

By the time the engineer was up, Franklin’s chest was completely submerged in the freezing water. He felt with the toes of his right climbing shoe onto the top corner of the plastic seat back and pushed off to propel himself up into the chute.

The dirt around him was loose, turning to mud. He couldn’t get a grip. The mud shifted. He slid backward as he clawed against it. The earth offered no support at all.

The hole’s sides were loosening. He could feel the loose gray mud pressing inward on his waist, his shoulders. He scrabbled faster, trying to grab onto something, anything, cupping his hands like scoops.

The mud grew softer, washing backward without any purchase at all. The water was to his neck, closing the hole around him, squeezing his legs, freezing water rising over his chin. He kicked desperately, trying to dig forward with his knees.

His right knee found a sharp object, an embedded brick or something in the muck and he pushed against it. But it sloughed backward. He was going down. Water closed over his chin, his mouth, his nose, his eyes. He could see nothing but a gray milky white.

Even that disappeared in darkness.

Losing Franklin

Everon and the Russian pulled the transit engineer from the hole. The portly guy, Kone, was in the second harness, already riding the winch to the street. The old man would go up next, the engineer after him.

Everon glanced at the hole alongside the train. “What’s taking so long?” he asked. “How many more are there?”

“The rescue guy’s the last,” the transit engineer answered.

The hole suddenly filled with water.

Down below, Franklin reached up blindly for anything. There was nothing to grab onto. He couldn’t breathe.

He reached again and felt fingers take hold of his right hand — then slip away. He was being sucked down, deeper now, backward into the train.

Something caught the left sleeve of his leather jacket. It was a grip of iron and it shocked him to know who it had to be, to know the water had to be not only over his own head but over his brother’s too — startled to remember what Cynthia once told him, how frightened Everon was of having his head submerged.

He slid his other hand onto the hand that pinched his leather sleeve. Another hand reached down attaching itself to his arm. Slowly, he moved upward. But the suction tried to hold him. He was drowning, running out of air.

He was jerked forward — violently!

His head burst clear. He saw Everon’s determined face, eyes big, covered with wet gray slime. They both gasped, sucking in huge gulps of the smoky Manhattan air.

The Russian, kneeling down next to Everon, must have been holding Everon’s legs for he scrambled forward and pulled at Franklin’s arms too, helping Franklin crawl his own legs out of the sucking muck.

Franklin’s feet came free and he made his knees, breathing hard. He rose to one foot, bent over, his muddy sleeve taking a swipe across his face, then hugged his brother. “Thanks — Bro!” he breathed out.

Everon let out a long exhale. “Nothing better to do today.”

“Except find Cynthia.”

“Exactly.”

Standing in toe-deep water as it rippled over the train car top, Franklin and Everon watched the rope help the Russian rise to the street. The others were already up.

“Climbing out from here would have been impossible for them without the hoist.” Franklin looked up. “Nice job getting rid of the metal grate.” He turned to Everon. “We can’t just ditch them, you know.” Rising water sloshed over their boot tops.

“I know.” Everon’s forehead held a puzzled frown. “That old guy looks familiar.”

“Victoria — the dark-haired girl — she called him Mr. van Patter.”

“Walter van Patter? What the hell? You’re kidding!” Everon nodded. “I thought I’d seen him somewhere. That guy’s a multibillionaire, Bro. They call him The Runner.”

“The Runner? Him?”

“Well, he doesn’t actually run much. It’s a nickname. Did you see those gold and white running shoes he wears? He walks everywhere. Probably the only billionaire in the city who never uses a driver.”

The harness was coming down. “How long to get the helicopter started?” Franklin asked.

“Just a few minutes, I hope.”

Franklin held the harness out to his brother. “Then get up there and get going.”

Everon got his legs in the straps and yelled up. A moment later he began ascending the tunnel wall very slowly. “Looks like the battery’s nearly out of juice . . .”

Chuck was handing each person a bottle of water and a snack bar as they reached the street. He pulled out a blanket for Victoria to sit on.

“Dislocated,” he said. “Nice job somebody came up with for splints,” carefully undoing them. “Franklin?”

“I did it.”

“Really!”

When he probed her bulging knee with a gentle fingertip, she barely reacted. “Not bothering you like you’d think it would,” he said puzzled, rubbing backs of fingers across red muttonchops. “I can’t reduce it by myself though.”

The Russian woman said something unintelligible and knelt down behind Victoria’s head. She slid her arms to the elbows under Victoria’s armpits and said something else to Chuck.

“Do it!” said the Russian man.

“She wants you to try to put it back in,” Victoria said.

“Yeah. Okay,” Chuck pushed her skirt up a few inches, and with a meaty hand massaged her thigh, pulling on her heel, straightening her leg.

Now the pain came back. Her leg was three-quarters straight when her kneecap popped over and her leg straightened. “Ahhhh . . .” Suddenly the world felt a whole lot better.

Chuck replaced the newspaper splints with a clear blow-up plastic cuff. He wound another cloth around her head.

“You should check out Mr. van Patter,” she said, as the white-haired man came from the ditch. “I think he had a pretty bad crack.”

Chuck used some alcohol on a gauze pad to clean the blood off the side of van Patter’s forehead.

“No big deal,” the old guy winced.

Chuck peeled open a large flesh-colored adhesive bandage and applied it just below the scalp line. Probably a concussion, Chuck thought.

“Who are they?” Victoria asked. “The two guys who got us out of there.”

“Who, Franklin and the blond one?” Chuck smiled. “Just met ’em myself. They’re brothers.”

“Brothers?” van Patter said. “They don’t look anything like brothers.”

As the hoist walked Everon slowly upward, he wiped sweat from his eyes, more of the gray cement mud from his forehead. The sun was out. Getting warm. Or is it that gas blasting up out of the street?

As soon as he made the edge, he immediately got out of the harness and signaled the train engineer to send it back down for Franklin.

The smell seemed worse than before. Everon looked down 59th. “The military’s been here? HAZMAT people?” he asked, frowning.

Chuck shook his head, “Not yet.” The others agreed. A low hum permeated the air.

“Those body bags,” Everon pointed out two, a hundred feet up the sidewalk.

The Russian woman watched where he was pointing. She began speaking rapidly, hands suddenly animated. Her agitation spread to the Russian male.

“What are they saying?” Kone asked.

“I don’t know. You can ask Franklin when he gets up here,” Everon said. “Something about body bags. I’ve got to —”

“Look kinda rough,” Clarence frowned at the two nearest ones. “Uneven, somehow, aren’t they?”

“Oh my God!”