Eye of the Storm

Chapter

Forty-one

ANDREW LOOKED AROUND as they rested, reviewing the battered hallway. A few minutes was all they could take—he could already see smoke clustering at the ceiling a little ways back.

What a damn mess. He glanced at Ceci, who was seated at his side resting her head on his shoulder. “How you holding up, pretty lady?”

“Well,” she replied thoughtfully. “On the one hand, here I am, in a burning building, covered in the goddess only knows what, scraped and dented like a 1960 Ford truck, and wishing like anything for a big bottle of mineral water.”

“Huh.” Andy examined a nasty looking scrape on his arm, then brushed a bit of ceiling tile off his wife’s shoulder.

“On the other hand, you’re here with me,” Ceci went on, exhaling lightly. “So I think I’m doing just fine. How about you?”

Andrew cleared his throat. “That’s a damn frilly thing to say in front of these kids, ain’t it?”

Ceci glanced at where Dar was seated, with Kerry curled up in her arms. “They’ll survive.” She watched her daughter in bemusement, remembering all too clearly a teen’s angry insistence on pristine person space. When was the last time she’d hugged Dar? Grade school, probably.

Those last few years of innocence—well, relatively—before puberty had kicked in and ended any shreds of closeness they’d clung on to.

Kerry seemed the touchy feely kind though, and apparently Dar had adjusted to that, not grudging the fair-haired woman the comfort her physical presence provided. Certainly, Kerry soaked up the affection, as Dar kept up a light rubbing on her back, collecting herself visibly with a few deep breaths.

Adjusted? Ceci covertly noted the look of weary contentment on Dar’s face as she rested her cheek against Kerry’s pale head. Maybe I should have tried a few more hugs to start with. Kerry definitely was showing her an unexpected side to her daughter—that was for sure. A warm, gently affectionate, playful facet she frankly hadn’t thought Dar possessed.

Ah well. Hindsight was a very frustrating thing, especially for a parent.

You just really never knew if you were doing the right thing, the wrong thing, or whatever, and by the time you figured it all out, it was too late.

“Guess we’d better get going,” she murmured, with an apologetic look in Eye of the Storm 385

Kerry’s direction. “You doing any better?”

Kerry nodded. “Just needed to catch my breath, I think,” she murmured, then she tilted her head up and gazed at her quiet protector.

“Thank you.”

Dar’s head cocked to one side. “For being a backrest? No problem.”

“That too.” Kerry folded her fingers around Dar’s longer ones and brushed her lips over their knuckles. “I always seem to be getting you into trouble.”

“Keeps life interesting,” Dar assured her with a faint smile, as she hauled herself to her feet and tugged Kerry up with her. “C’mon.” She kept an arm around her lover’s shoulders as they made their way down the hall, climbing over obstacles together in silence.

They’d gotten most of the way down towards the end of the building, when Andrew paused and put his hand against the wall, looking around carefully. “Damn.”

“What is it?” Ceci asked.

“Ain’t no way down from here. Stairs were up behind that part.” He pointed at a pile of wreckage. “Looks like that whole damn section fell in on top of itself.”

Dar watched the smoke fill the end of the corridor back the way they came from. “Well, let’s get to an outside room then. Must be people trying to get folks out of this damn place.” She took the lead, scrambled over an overturned mobile bed and turned the last corner, then stopped short.

The end of the hallway was full of huddled, frightened people, who stared at them with wild eyes. Kerry’s parents were there, against one wall, the senator caught in mid-word.

“A disgrace.” His eyes fell on them and he paused. “No one to help, no one who knows anything. You can bet something will be done about it after this.”

“If we get out of here,” a woman sitting on the floor with a young boy cradled in her arms responded. “No one even knows what happened.

It was like a bomb went off.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the senator snapped. “Probably some inferior imported gas heater blew up. This place is known for cutting corners.”

“With this amount of damage?” Dar snorted. “It’d have to be a water heater the size of the Titanic.” She started around the area, examining any possible way out. “It probably was a bomb.” She gave the senator a dark look. “Someone probably got tired of your hate policies.”

“Shut up.”

“Kiss my ass.”

“Dar.” Kerry looked from face to face, closing her eyes when she didn’t see the one face she was looking for. The end of the building was open and had large windows and there were perhaps a dozen people there, some injured, some patients, and some, about a half dozen, children.

Then she realized the room was full of colorful furniture and toys, and guessed they were in the pediatrics area. Two of the children were in 386 Melissa Good wheelchairs and they looked scared. Kerry smiled at the closest one and tried not to think of her sister.

Surely, Angie had gotten out. Maybe she’d been on her way to the delivery room. Maybe she was on the other side of the damage and already outside.

Maybe Kerry was already an aunt again.

Maybe it was a little boy. She stopped, and fought the tears down. I am not going to give up on you, Angie. I know you made it.

“Does anyone actually know what happened?” Dar finally asked, as Andrew went to the window and peered out.

“Hell if I know,” one man answered, holding a dirty piece of cloth to a cut on his face. A little girl clung to him, evidently his daughter. The child was pale and wearing a hospital jumper and she looked frightened and uncomfortable. “One minute we were watching the television, the next…the whole place blew apart.”

Dar glanced behind her. “We should block off that hallway.”

“Are you crazy?” A woman seated against the wall objected. “That’s the only way they have of getting to us. We’re in a cul de sac.”

“It’s also the only way the fire has to get to us,” Dar replied. “And it’s gonna get here before help does.”

A murmur of fear greeted her words. Against the far wall, Kerry’s parents simply turned their heads and ignored her existence. Over near the entrance, a small kitchenette had been mostly spared and readily plundered. There was a five gallon bottle of water sitting on the counter half empty and Kerry went for it, aware of being desperately thirsty all of a sudden.

A dull explosion threw her against the wall and she grabbed on, as debris fell all around her. After a few tense moments, though, the creaking stopped and they all coughed in the film of plaster dust fogging the room. Part of the drop ceiling collapsed, throwing broken tiles everywhere, and the already stuffy air seemed to thicken around them.

Then with a halfhearted flicker, the faint emergency lighting went out, and they were in darkness, broken only by the city lights coming in from the windows that ringed them.

Kerry stopped with her hand on the counter. Meager though it had been, the light had served to at least give them some idea of what was happening. Now anything could come out of the dark. She jumped as she felt a touch on her back and gasped.

“Easy.” Dar’s voice tickled her ears. “Let me get that for you.” The dark haired woman rummaged in the scattering of debris near the lop-sided refrigerator and retrieved a cup, then lifted the bottle carefully and poured some water into it.

Kerry gulped the liquid gratefully, draining the cup, then stared at it in the gloomy half light. “Could you…”

“Sure.” Dar poured her another cupful, then she took a deep breath.

“I don’t think blocking the hall is gonna help.”

“Prob’ly not,” Andrew, standing next to her invisibly, agreed.

Eye of the Storm 387

“Think we need to get that there winder open.” He glanced at the dimly seen profiles against the glass. “Dar, let’s you an me go check that out.

Cec, keep by here, all right?”

“All right.” Cecilia leaned against the counter next to Kerry and exhaled, as she turned her head. “Mind if I steal a sip of that?”

Kerry offered her the cup. “Least I could do after getting you into this.”

“Kerry?” Ceci gave her a sideways look, taking a sip of the water. “If you don’t cut out the blame game, I’m going to be forced to get maternal on you and that could get ugly.”

Kerry blinked at her, then smiled against her will. “Sorry. I babble when I’m nervous.” She rubbed her eyes tiredly. “My brain’s running on empty right now.” She was achingly aware of her parents watching from across the room.

“I can tell. You know what Dar does when she’s antsy?”

“Pulls things apart,” Kerry responded, with a wan grin. “Paper clips especially. She shapes them into little figurines.”

Ceci chuckled. “I’m glad some things didn’t change. I used to keep a collection of the damn things.”

Kerry studied her for a moment. “I bet you still have them,” she stated unexpectedly. “Don’t you?”

The older woman pursed her lips, then glanced down at the counter they were leaning on. “You caught me. Yes, I do,” she agreed softly.

“Along with a couple pairs of tiny shoes and a first grader’s efforts at spelling.”

Kerry absorbed that, her gaze unconsciously drifting over to her parents. “I had to do all of my own saving.” Her voice was low and quiet.

After a moment of pensive silence, she turned her head towards Ceci.

“Mrs. Roberts, you can get maternal on me any time you want.”

Incredible. Cecilia drew a breath in. Someone who thinks I’m parenting material. I must be getting ancient as the hills for that to happen. “Well then,”

she answered reflectively, “you’d better stop calling me Mrs. Roberts.” In the gloom, she could just barely see Kerry smile.

Incredible.

The children were starting to cry, frightened to an even higher state by the darkness. Dar and Andy made their way across the crowded floor, pressing up against the glass windows as they reached them and looked down.

“Jesus.” Dar’s eyes widened, at the huge collection of lights, emergency equipment, and people swarming about below. “Guess they are working on getting people out.” She watched as a fireman tugged a wrapped form out a window two stories beneath them. They were on the seventh floor, almost near the top of the building, and from what she could see whatever had happened had ripped out almost half of the side of the structure.

Andy pushed his hands against the glass. “Ain’t gonna be easy.” He shook his head. “Thing’s made not to break. But them folks down there 388 Melissa Good ain’t gonna know we’re here less we tell ’em.” He lifted his sledge hammer and paused, looking for a place to start. “Damn lousy time fer you to lose that cell phone of yours.”

“Mmph,” Dar muttered, annoyed at herself for that very fact. “Came off my belt.” Kerry had left hers charging in the room and she wasn’t really sure what kind of reception she could expect inside the chaotic wreckage anyway. She cleared a space for her father to work, then realized there were some living obstacles there in the half light. “You’d better move back,” Dar told the watching Stuarts coldly.

“Go to Hell,” Roger Stuart answered, then jerked as he was suddenly face to face with a sledge hammer head and a pair of icy cold eyes behind it.

“You will move your carcass out of mah way, sir,” Andrew rasped.

“Because I have about run out of my patience with you.” He poked the senator with the hammer handle. “Now take this little lady of yours and go back of there fore I throw you head over buttocks.”

“Do you know who the hell I am?” the senator growled.

“A right jackass. Now move.” Andrew poked him again.

“Listen here, you stupid hick.” Stuart stood up, then stopped speaking as he was lifted and pushed against the wall, the hammer handle cutting off his wind. “Jesus,” he rasped.

“That would be Commander Hick to you, useless excuse fer a gov’ment paycheck.” Andy released him, then gave him a shove, sending him sprawling into a pile of roof tiling. “Waste of mah good tax dollars, that’s for damn sure.”

“Just wait until we get out of here,” Kerry’s father threatened. “I’ll slap lawsuits on the lot of you.”

Andrew turned his attention back to the window. “Jackass.” Kerry’s mother hurried to her husband’s side and knelt by him, brushing the pieces of plaster off his stained and burned jacket. “Those who can, do, those who can’t become lawyers. Those who ain’t got no use at all, run fer gov’ment.”

Dar almost laughed at the look on the senator’s face, but she was too tired. Instead, she forced her attention on the glass. “Dad,” she ran a hand over the surface, “try here, near the frame.”

“Not in the middle?” Andrew drawled, cocking his head at her in question.

“No. I think its designed to flex there. It’ll be more rigid, and have a higher tendency to shatter here, at the edge.”

Andy gave her a look. “All right.” He lifted the hammer and faced the glass, concentrating on it carefully. “Make sure everybody’s staying back. This stuff’s gonna fly.”

Dar took a quick look around, ignoring the glares. “Everyone cover up. We’re going to break this window.” People scrambled to get out of the way and the frightened children were gathered into the corner.

“Okay. Go ahead.” She held her arm over her eyes and stepped back, stifling a cough as the air seemed to thicken again with smoke.

Eye of the Storm 389

It would be such a relief to breathe fresh air. Just the thought of it made her dizzy.

Andrew took aim, then swung the hammer back, and launched it forward, getting his entire body into the swing as it hit the edge of the window. With a spectacular crash, it shattered into millions of tiny bits, exploding in both directions.

Andy threw himself backwards to avoid the flying glass, then felt himself picked up and slammed against the frame as the air pressure sucked the heated air out of the building, bringing a hot, roaring explosion down the hall and heading right for them.

“GET DOWN!” KERRY yelled, pulling herself and Cecilia painfully to the floor as a superheated rush of fire and air exploded over her head and out the window, its crashing roar slamming against them like a physical force. Then the flames licked at the ceiling. She got to her feet and bolted forward regardless of the falling chunks of burning material.

Three people had been caught in it. She tried not to look at them and panic as she dove over a smoldering chair in the smoky darkness and was caught up abruptly by a pair of hands. “Let me…” Then she realized it was Dar.

“C’mon!” Dar yelled. “Everyone get over to the window!”

The heat was increasing quickly and now it was anything but silent as the chaos outside filtered in. The children screamed and the survivors scrambled over to the opening, clinging to the frame as smoke poured out of it.

“You almost got us killed!” Roger Stuart raged.

Dar ignored him as she peered back into the smoke, shading her eyes. Outside, the firemen had spotted them and were working to get the huge basket cranked up to their level, shouts of alarm and encourage-ment echoing up to them. Andrew pushed the last of the glass out of the way, one hand protectively curled around his wife, and Kerry helped a young woman over the fallen furniture.

The two wheelchairs. Dar grabbed Stuart by the arm. “Give me a hand with those kids.” She pointed, realizing only then she could have made a better choice of assistants.

Well. No time. Stuart stared at her, half his face lit in fire, half in shadows, and for a long moment Dar thought he was going to refuse. Then he wrenched his arm free and shoved her away from him.

“Go there,” he ordered Cynthia, pushing his way past a fallen book-case and towards the frightened children, who were unable to maneuver their chairs through the debris. It was very hot as they got to them, and Dar felt like she was breathing the fire itself as she touched the chair, then jerked her hands back at the heat. “Hang on.” She unbuckled the petrified little boy and picked him up in her arms, ducking as a burning part of the ceiling fell, and almost stumbled as the flaming chunks hit her shoulder.

She shook them off and plowed forward, the child shivering so vio-390 Melissa Good lently his teeth chattered in her ear. “Take it easy. We’re gonna be fine,”

she told him, as small hands clutched desperately at her. The fire bucket was just reaching their level when she staggered to the edge of the window and the two firemen inside yelled orders almost impossible to hear over the roar of the fire and the noise of the crowd outside.

One had a hose, and he yelled something, then he opened a valve, and a jet of water exploded past them, hitting the fire behind them and making it hiss in protest. Someone screamed next to Dar and she realized it was Kerry’s mother. She looked back, but nothing was visible through the smoke, then she searched the survivors huddled nearby and didn’t see the senator among them. “Shit.” She started to put the child down, intent on going back when her mother caught her arm. “Can you watch him for a minute?”

“Where are you going?” Ceci asked.

“See if I can…” Dar watched a ball of black smoke billow forward, stopping her speech.

Then a coughing, soot covered form stumbled out of the darkness, soaked from the hose’s spray but carrying the other crippled child.

Dar felt Kerry lean against her, and she glanced towards her partner, whose soot covered face was almost unrecognizable in its weary tension.

Her eyes, with an indescribable expression in them, were on her father, as the man came up to them, staggering under his load as a gust of wind from the circling helicopters washed in.

A spotlight hit them from above, and Dar shaded her eyes, blinking back spots as the firemen came closer to the building. They threw ropes over and Andrew caught one, tugged it back and tied it off around the steel window frame. “We got kids here!” he yelled. “We’ll hand ’em over to you.”

“Tie that to yourself!” the fireman hollered. “Don’t want you falling out the window while we’re doing this.”

Andrew nodded, hastily fastening the heavy rope around his waist and tying it with an efficient knot. “All right. C’mere, squirt.” He held out a hand to the nearest of the children and caught the boy around the waist and hoisted him out over the open space between the edge of the window and the bucket. The fireman grabbed him and lifted him in, then handed him to another fireman who had climbed up the long ladder zig zagging behind them.

The crowd clustered closer, nervously edging away from the fire at their backs, momentarily dampened by the fireman’s efforts. They started to push and Dar braced her legs to keep her balance. “Stay back. Let’s get the kids out first.”

“She’s right,” Roger Stuart yelled. “Pushing won’t help. Stay where you are.”

An explosion sent the floor shuddering under their feet and people screamed, trying to keep their balance. One man panicked and jumped for the basket, his feet slipping on the wet floor and making him miss his hold, leaving him hanging from one arm. Andrew leaned out, grabbed Eye of the Storm 391

the back of his pants, and yanked him up with a single, powerful heave into the basket head first.

The fireman pulled him in, then looked over. “Better hurry up. We can’t hold this.”

Two more people pushed to the front, clawing blindly at Andrew’s arm. “Get back.” The ex-SEAL pushed them gently. “C’mon now. Let the kids out. Dar, gimme that little boy.”

“I’ve got him.” Dar had tied the end of the second rope around her and now she leaned out and handed the child carefully to the fireman hanging on the front of the basket. “Careful. He can’t walk.”

“You be careful, ma’am,” the fireman warned, as he passed the child back.

Kerry got between the panicked survivors and Andrew. “Okay. Just take it easy. We’re all going to get out of here,” she yelled to be heard over the noise. “There aren’t that many of us…and look, the fire’s not getting any closer for now.” She pointed with her good hand. “Don’t start rushing the window. You’ll fall out and then you’ll really get hurt.”

They passed three more children out, then Roger edged forward, ignoring Andrew’s offered hands and getting to the very edge of the opening before handing out the little girl he was carrying. “Watch the braces,” he warned the fireman, then stepped back. “All right, women next.”

Two women made it out, then a rumble filled the building and part of the ceiling collapsed behind them, sending a wash of heat out the window. The remaining glass crackled and popped, and Dar shielded her face and turned her back to it. “We’d better hurry.”

Kerry’s mother went next, with Andrew taking one arm and her husband taking the other. “You next, Cec.” Andrew turned, to see a stubborn look crossing his wife’s face. “Now, c’mon.” He grabbed her bodily, lifted her, and passed her slight weight to the fireman over her half spoken protests. “Careful with that one. She bites.”

The fireman let a brief grin cross his tired face. “Yes, sir.”

“You be careful, damn it!” Ceci yelled back, then her voice dropped.

“Please?” Their eyes locked and Andrew smiled at her, giving her a reassuring wink that didn’t seem to work.

Kerry started to untie the rope around Dar. “Guess we’re next.”

“Go on.” Dar gently removed her hands and nudged her towards the opening. “I’ll be right there.”

Andrew held a hand out and she took it, pausing to glance at her father as she stepped into the glare and backwash of the endlessly hover-ing helicopters. The fireman reached out just as a gust of wind knocked her off balance and she wavered, then felt a steadying hand on her back as the rescuers took a secure hold on her and lifted her over the gap. Once in the bucket she turned immediately and met three sets of eyes watching her.

The hand, she realized, had been her father’s.

She felt a guiding touch and started carefully down the ladder, keep-392 Melissa Good ing her eyes always on that dark, smoke filled gap.

“You next.” Dar exhaled, motioning to the senator, the last one left besides Andy and herself. She thought he was going to argue with her for a second, then he merely stepped forward and accepted the fireman’s arm clasp as they sprayed again into the opening. Smoke billowed out contin-uously and now, at last, Dar moved towards the window.

She and her father exchanged glances. “G’wan,” Andrew said quietly.

Dar quirked her eyebrow. “You first.”

Andrew’s eyebrows lifted. “Paladar, get yer butt into that bucket before I whup it.”

Dar shook her head. “Not this time. You’re about to keel over. So move it.” She folded her arms and met his eyes with an inflexibly stubborn look. “C’mon, c’mon. We don’t have all day.”

Andrew untied his rope and chuckled, shaking his head as he moved to the opening and paused, then jumped across on his own, disregarding the fireman’s helping hand. Then he turned and took hold of Dar’s arm as she crossed, out of the smoke and heat at last.

“Okay. Pull her back!” The fireman spoke into a walkie talkie. “Let’s get the hell—oh, shit!”

The low rumble warned them. “Get down! Get down!” The fireman slammed them both into the bottom of the bucket and threw himself over them as a ball of superheated air and flame came roiling out of the hole in the glass, melting it and sending shards of concrete flying towards them.

The bucket reeled wildly, then swung away from the building, sway-ing as the engineers fought to keep it upright. The hapless survivors clung to the ladder desperately, until it finally steadied.

“Son of a bitch.” The fireman exhaled, hauling himself off the two rescuees in the bottom of the bucket. “Oh. Sorry, ma’am.”

Dar slowly straightened and gazed over the lip of the bucket to where the fire now shot out of the wall, raging up the side of the half collapsed building. Then she looked at her father, who gazed thoughtfully back. “I’ve heard people say being on the edge is a big rush.”

“Mmm.” Andrew rocked his head.

“They’re full of shit.” Dar sat down in the bottom of the bucket, where she could see nothing but plastic and the clouds overhead.

Andy patted her knee comfortingly, then leaned an arm on the bucket edge. “We need to get climbing?”

“Hell no.” The firefighter sat wearily on the edge of the contraption.

“We get a ride down. It’ll just take a few minutes.” He glanced at them.

“You two deserve it. You saved those people’s asses. We were about to back off and let the building blow out.” He held a hand out. “Josh Beard.”

Andy took it. “Andy Roberts. And this little sprout’s my daughter Dar.”

Josh looked quizzically at the six foot plus woman sprawled at his feet and grinned. “You musta used a decent fertilizer.”

It struck Dar as funny and she laughed softly, too exhausted to oth-Eye of the Storm 393

erwise move.

“Hey. Was that really Senator Stuart and his wife?”

“Yeap.” Andrew nodded. “How’d you know?”

“Oh, they’re turning the place upside down looking for him. You kidding? When they pulled his kid out and she said he was still—”

Dar grabbed his leg in a vise grip. “What? Are you saying his daughter Angela got out?”

“Ouch.” He winced. “Yeah. About to pop. She was on the west side of the building and they got her out first thing.” He took off his helmet and scrubbed his hand through short, curly hair. “Probably a momma by now.”

Dar felt a wave of relief flow through her and she let her head drop back against the plastic. “Thank God.” Then she pulled herself to her feet and peered over the basket edge, towards the slowly approaching ground.