Loss Of Reason by Miles A. Maxwell (reading list TXT) 📖

“Come on!” she shook the white-haired man.

His eyes opened and he smiled faintly. There was wet blood matted in his hair. “Hi. My name’s Victoria. We’ve got to move up to the other end. The water’s getting higher.”

“I know who you are, Miss Hill. I’ve seen you on TV before.”

A dark-skinned man in a baseball cap with StreetNews! on the front, and another man who spoke no English, pulled her up, while the transit engineer helped the old man. Arms across their shoulders, she hobbled on her one good leg. The screaming pain rolled up in waves: calf-knee-thigh-pelvis-calf — almost more than she could bear.

They eased her onto one of the plastic seats in the upper third of the car.

“I normally wouldn’t do this —” the guy in the green baseball cap muttered, “I have to buy these but —” He pulled out several folded newspapers from a large black bag.

“Ahhhh, thank you,” she said as he eased them gently beneath her knee.

“I don’t expect to have a lot of customers right now,” he said.

She spotted her black purse floating in the dark water. “Look in there, will you? There should be a couple of twenties. My phone too.”

But he didn’t go for the purse. “That’s okay, lady,” he said, an uncomfortable stress in his voice. And then she realized the half-submerged lump floating nearby was a body, a gas-bloated man in a dark suit.

“We can’t just sit here waiting for the water to take us,” Victoria told the others. There were six of them. The only other woman was shaking her head, pointing at her cellphone, speaking to the man with her in a language Victoria didn’t recognize.

“Someone will come for us soon!” said a portly man with a high, annoying voice.

“But how soon, man?” said the newspaper vendor. “Before the water rises over our heads?”

“What about opening the front door by your compartment up there?” Victoria pointed. “Maybe we can walk up the tunnel. If you —”

The engineer shook his head. “Cave-in, lady. I can’t tell how much of the tunnel’s blocked that way. My flashlight’s dead. We’re safer in here.”

They turned back to the rising water, already inches higher in the minute or so they’d spent debating.

I wish I could look for myself, she thought. I need something to bind my knee. She looked at the newspapers. Her scarf. The lining of her coat. “Does anyone have a knife?”

The newspaper vendor had a knife.

She talked him out of a couple more newspapers from which she rolled tight paper tubes on a diagonal three pages thick. Using them like splints, she tied off four above and below her knee with strips of scarf and coat lining. She probably still couldn’t walk on her own, but it did feel better.

Something cold licked Victoria’s heel and she jerked her swollen leg away. Water! Already? The pain shot right into her pelvis. She gritted her teeth, clamping hands around her thigh again. Not quite as bad. The splints were helping. They’d work for a while. Until they got wet.

She pulled herself up on one of the train’s vertical steel hand poles and slowly worked her way to the train’s front door. It was locked. She peered through the glass. The engineer’s right. You can’t see anything. She turned to see him watching her. They were all watching her.

“Do you have the key?”

“I don’t know if we should —”

“I know we shouldn’t!” the high-pitched guy interrupted the engineer.

She held out her hand insistently, waiting, until the transit engineer produced a silver key from his pocket, stepped around her and thrust it into the lock.

The door slid back with a whooosh! A breeze flowed. And another sound. Behind them. Water pouring in. Fast. The door had been acting as an airlock. Now there was nothing to hold the water back. And just outside, a wall of dirt.

“Close it! Close it!” the portly man screamed as the transit engineer thrust the door closed and locked it again.

The breeze was gone. But the water in those few moments had risen a good six inches higher up the low end of the car.

“Well I guess we know not to try that again,” said the engineer.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be sorry,” said the old man. “It was a good idea.”

“Yeah,” said the news vendor. “But how the hell they gonna get us out?”

Desperation

At the jet Franklin introduced Chuck to Andréa and began to tell her about the Red Cross clearance. She held up a hand, shaking her head, “I have some bad news for you. I know you guys wanted to go into the city.”

“What?” Franklin’s breath caught.

“Everon lost the helicopter.”

“The one he rented?” Franklin asked.

“The Army took it.”

“Damn military just let us in!” Chuck said fiercely. “Doesn’t sound like our clearance will do us much good now, does it?”

Franklin’s lips silently formed a swear word he didn’t use anymore. He stared at the ground. All he could see was Cynthia, Steve, Melissa — trapped beneath burning beams, surrounded by fire that raged like pain, through the veins of his wrists, the tendons of his palms.

“At least I was able to get you back in to your jet,” Chuck said. “I’ll leave you some iodine drops.” As he flicked the latches on his case he spoke to Andréa. “You should both take some right away. Protects the thyroid.”

“Hey!” Andréa pointed over Franklin’s shoulder. “Look at that!”

Far down the street, in the control tower lights a tree tilted. Its angle slowly increased, picking up speed until it fell behind the tower.

“Wonder what that’s about.” Chuck said.

A minute later, a young guy in a shaggy green coat ran up carrying a chain saw, checking numbers on aircraft, breath pumping out clouds of white steam. “Who’s Franklin Reveal?”

“I am.”

He threw a thumb over his shoulder, “Your brother’s looking for you. Third building down. He said to tell you: Grab your stuff, and hurry!”

Franklin quickly threw the straps to his bags over his shoulders, too rushed to notice that airport security guard Vandersommen was back, watching from the shadows.

The old Coast Guard bird was as ready as Everon could make it with the tools he had available. He gave the starter a try. No less cranky than its owner, the exhaust ports coughed out blasts of thick black smoke. But he kept at it, turning the big turbine over and over. He could hear the starter grinding down as its batteries ran out of juice.

Hopeless, he thought.

He switched over to engine number two. It turned over more slowly than the first —

The old engine made a rattling sound, belched out more of the black stuff and cleared. The big blades began to turn. Their speed increased. The old Pelican was running!

With the second engine to draw on, he tried the first turbine again. This time it spun up quickly and lit. The rotor turned faster now. Everon pushed up the RPMs until both engines smoothed out. He slid a gnarled old headset he’d found back in the crew compartment over his ears and from the floor between the seats pulled the collective arm gently upward with his left hand, testing the ability of the spinning blades to grab air. Nothing! He cranked on the arm’s motorcycle grip and pulled again. He felt the old rattletrap lighten until he’d lifted her off a few inches. His spirits rose with it.

A crackly voice came over his headset. “Helicopter near the museum, this is Teterboro Tower. We show no clearance granted to any aircraft at this time.” Apparently the old radio was working too.

“Engine run-up only,” Everon answered as he put the chopper’s wheels back on the ground.

The Pelican was giving the impression it might just