Storm Surge - Part 2

Chapter Five

"OKAY, SO WHERE are we." Kerry blinked into the pallid dawn light coming in the window, half distracted by the scent of coffee nearby. "Mark, your three guys are here in the hotel with the rest of us."

"Cool, yeah," Mark answered. "I got an email from Shaun last night," he paused. "He sure was glad to put his head down on a pillow."

"Me too," Kerry agreed. "So, what's the status right now? Who's here, who's on the way here, and what kind of gear is everyone bringing."

There was a soft knock at the door. Kerry went to mute the mic, but stopped when Dar appeared from the bathroom and waved at her,heading over to answer it. "Who the hell is knocking this early?" She grumbled under her breath.

"What was that, boss?" Mark asked.

"Nothing. Go on." Kerry sighed. She leaned forward a little, grimacing as a cramp gripped her.

"Anyway," Mark cleared his throat, "so we've got six guys and me in the truck, and we're like one, maybe two hours out. I left a bunch of guys there, a half dozen showed up from different accounts yesterday to help out so I thought it was okay to take off from there and head over."

He sounded a touch nervous. Kerry half smiled, understanding the feeling from her first weeks working for Dar, and having to lay out her own decision making. "Great plan," she said. "We need you here badly."

Mark didn't answer for a moment, and then he chuckled. "Thanks boss. So we've got the camper, and we'll pick up the SAT units and the power trucks on our way down there. Where do we go?"

Ah, good question. "For now, come here...well, to the Rock," Kerry clarified."We have to find out where the best place is to start working. I know we'll need stocks of cable and patch equipment, do you know if we've got that on the truck?"

"Hang on, lemme check."

Kerry muted the mic and hissed a small curse as another cramp hit.

Dar came back over to the desk where she was seated and emptied the contents of a packet on the table. "Ah. I'm legal again." She flicked her slim billfold with one finger and pushed the folder of identification cards around. "You don't have to worry about me being deported."

"That's a relief." Kerry managed a smile. "Though I have to admit razzing the admin at the office was pretty funny."

"It was." Dar sat down and extended her long, mostly bare legs across the floor. "Gut still hurting?"

"How'd you guess?" Kerry made a face, resting her chin on her hand. "I feel like dog poo."

"Been there."

"No kidding." Kerry turned her attention back to the phone as she heard rustling against the remote microphone. "I'm surprised we haven't gotten called from Alastair or anyone yet this morning."

Dar picked up her newly reunited cell phone and opened it, triggering it on and watching as it obediently started up. After a quiet moment, it started buzzing and rattling loudly, making her jump."Yah!"

"Holy crap!" Kerry blurted.

Dar dropped the phone and it danced across the table in truly spectacular fashion. "Any ideas how to bulk delete voice mail messages?"

"Okay, boss." Mark came back on the line and paused as he heard the noise on the other end. "What the heck's going on there?"

"Um--not much." Kerry grabbed the phone and tossed it to its owner. "So what's the scoop?"

"Let me put it this way, you got any pull with those guys at ADC?We used all the stuff they sent rebuilding the space at the old P, and we ain't got any more."

"Ugh," Kerry uttered. "So we don't have patch panels or anything like that, right?"

"Right."

She sighed. "What do we have?"

"Got some routers, some little switches, a couple spools of STP, couple spools of UTP, another big roll of that fiber the guys used last night, and a handful of RJ45 plugs."

"My mother could probably do a three dimensional art project with that," Dar commented, her eyes fixed on her now rattle free phone as she thumbed through the alerts and messages. "Want some coffee?"

"Well--I'd say let's get ordering, but you know what Mark?" Kerry sighed.

"We got no idea what to order," Mark supplied. "I know. I thought of that when I got up this morning and took over the driving again. I think we gotta get eyeballs on it then figure it out."

Kerry muted the mic. "Coffee sounds great, except it's going to make my stomach ache worse." She moaned.

"Figured you'd say that. I had them bring tea too. Want blackberry or honey lemon?" Dar didn't even look up from her phone. "Mark's right Let's wait for him to get here, then we will all go down to the Trade Center and see what we've got to work with."

"I love you."

Now Dar looked up, and smiled. "Blackberry?" Her eyebrows lifted. "And we've got some warm muffins. You up for that?"

Kerry merely rested her chin on her fists and gazed at her partner.

"Take that as a yes." Dar set her phone down and sauntered back over to the room service tray.

"You hear that, boss?" Mark queried. "Hello?"

"Sorry." Kerry wrenched her attention back to the phone. "That sounds like a plan, Mark. Dar was just saying we should wait for you to get here then all go down together. You think you'll be here by eight?It's just ten past six now."

"We can probably do that unless we get held up nearer to where you are," Mark replied. "They going to let us in there?"

"We've got passes." Kerry didn't elaborate. "All right, you guys head on up here. We'll meet you at the office." She waited for the line to drop then closed her phone. "What else do we need to do? Why do I feel like I'm so damned behind the eight ball today?"

Dar came back over with a plate containing a buttered muffin and a steaming cup of tea. She set them down next to her partner's laptop and leaned over, giving her a kiss on the top of her head. "I love you too."

Kerry leaned against her. "Oh honey, I sure know that," she murmured. "Thanks for breakfast."

"No problem." Dar straightened up and went to retrieve her coffee, pausing to watch the silent television screen full of frenetic activity and destruction. More people. More rubble. More talking heads. The scroll at the bottom spat a never ending series of numbers that she had to force herself to realize meant human beings either missing or dead.

It was strange. The whole thing had started to take on a surreal glaze and it was hard to concentrate on the facts that seemed to come at her from the screen in so many different directions. She watched shots of the president down near the still smoking rubble yelling into a bullhorn, an American flag flapping in the wind nearby.

Behind him a fireman sat on a flat, twisted piece of iron, his head down and his elbows resting on his knees in exhaustion.

Dar nodded to herself a little, then went over to the small table and picked up half a corn muffin, taking a bite of it as she tried to focus her mind on the task at hand. She glanced at her new laptop, open on the table, and watched the network metrics, a slowly healing graph of yellows morphing to greens rather than blotches of solid red.

The company was recovering. Things were starting to move back into normal patterns, and along with that her list of tasks shunted aside for the emergency were starting to build.

The world had held still since that morning. Now, she had a sense,that her world, if not everyone else's, was starting slowly to turn again and she had to admit a trace of impatience that she found herself tied up here, working a problem not remotely her own, heading toward a hopefully successful end that probably would get little notice and less credit.

Uncharitable, probably. Dar chewed her muffin and turned to watch the television screen again with a thoughtful expression. "Ker?"

"Hm." Kerry looked up from her laptop.

"Can we get a list of our customers who are still out of service here?" Dar asked. "Let's see what synergy we can get with restoring services to them at the same time we're relieving our obligation to the government."

"We don't have enough to do?" Kerry's tone was, however, rather than accusing. "Sheesh."

"Let's just say we have a responsibility to them, and I'd like to walk out of here with a sense of accomplishment beyond some rubber chicken," Dar replied. "Getting the job done for the markets, but leaving our own customers high and dry ain't my way of doing business."

Kerry smiled. "I want to be you when I grow up." She stood up and popped the last of her muffin into her mouth. "Well, the day's not getting any younger, so I guess I'll go get my shower and start getting ready."

"Be right there with you." Dar sat down to finish her muffin, leaning back and watching the dawn light slowly growing in the window, turning her back to the TV screen.

KERRY LEANED BACK against the driver's partition in the courtesy bus, watching the street roll by outside the window. "At least the traffic hasn't built up so much again."

"You got that right, ma'am," the driver agreed. "People are still in shock, I think. I was talking to a man who came by the bus earlier. His son worked in one of those investment offices up near the top of one of the towers, and he kept saying he was going down there to visit him real soon now."

Kerry grimaced a trifle. "It's hard to take it all in," she murmured.

"Can't imagine it myself," the driver agreed.

They were traveling east, heading toward the disaster site. Kerry eased forward and knelt, resting her arms on the front console as she started to see a dusting of ash on the streets, and the cars, and the buildings.

It was not that strange to her eyes. It resembled a light coating of snow more than anything. As they passed, she could see some shops open, some closed, some in an in-between state where the rolling garage doors were half open and people were standing outside, talking or sweeping the ash.

The bus stopped at a stoplight, and she watched one man carefully sweeping his sidewalk clean of the stuff and putting it into a tiny pile. He then knelt and pulled out a dustpan and hand brush, and whisked ash into a small plastic bag, standing when he was done and looking at it.

Would he throw it away? Save it as a memory of the horror? Or sell it on Ebay? Kerry watched him put a twist tie around the top of the bag and take it inside, ducking under the half drawn door and disappearing.

Could go any of the ways. Kerry sighed. The bus started moving forward again, and on the right hand side they passed a fire station. The big doors were wide open, and she looked inside only to find it completely empty of either trucks or people.

A prickle ran down her spine. She looked at the sign above it. "Ladder 11. Hope they're all okay."

The driver glanced at the empty station then looked at her. "Ms. Stuart, beg your pardon, but no one here's okay," he said. "No matter if they walked out of that mess or not."

True. Kerry saw the coating of ash getting thicker as they turned left on to Houston Street. "What insanity."

Dar came up behind her and looked over her shoulder. "Mess," she said succinctly. "Are we going to end up east of the site?"

The driver nodded, as he turned the big bus right. "Yeah, that's what the cops told me to do. Take the FDR around the end of the island and come up from there. Too much destruction on the west side, and besides, they've got Battery Park there wide open."

Now through the walls of the bus, they could hear sirens, though as yet all they could see was the outline of Staten Island across the water. A pensive silence fell over the bus as everyone picked a window and stared out of it.

"Mark still behind us?" Dar asked in all that quiet.

The driver glanced in his mirror. "Yeah, he's there."

Dar watched out the window at the thick plume of smoke rising from between the buildings and the debris that was starting to line the road. "Jason, break out the case of radios, please," she ordered quietly. "And the masks."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Everyone stay calm. This is going to be hard," Dar added, after another brief pause. "Stay focused, and remember that everyone here has been through a hell of a lot worse nightmare than we're about to experience."

Alastair came up behind Dar and gazed past her, his face quietly grim."Know something, Dar?"

"Wish you'd turned the White House down?"

Alastair's lips pressed into a humorless smile. Then he turned and went back to the side window, seating himself on a stool and staring outside.

Kerry slowly stepped down from the bus, the third one out after Dar and Alastair had exited to deal with the gun toting guardsmen who had flagged their convoy to a halt. She stood quietly for a moment, the wind at her back as she slowly scanned the area around them.

They had been pulled to a halt on State Street, just across from Battery Park. The roads were eerily silent covered in thick white gray dust and debris with cars and trucks parked every which way. She could look right up Broadway and see more automobiles, more dust, and windows blown out with curtains being sucked out and fluttering in the breeze.

She could smell burning rubber, diesel oil, and the strong scent of the water. Fireboats and barges were churning offshore and a ferry was passing by, its decks packed with uniformed figures.

Small groups of police, firemen, and other workers were clustered around. Some were sitting in the grass of the park; a few resting against trees facing away from the city and toward the water.

Mark came up next to her, his arms folded over his chest as he stood and looked around. "Man."

"Yeah." Kerry half turned, as a car with a siren blaring turned the corner and headed up Broadway, the sound echoing between the buildings and then fading.

"We going all the way up there?"

"Depends." Kerry leaned forward slightly to watch Dar and Alastair with the guard. Dar's body posture was still relaxed, so it didn't look like the situation was getting confrontational. "Let's see where they'll let us go. I told our telecom friends we'd be trying to get over here before we left the Rock."

"It's like a ghost town down here," Mark commented grimacing."That was tacky bad. Sorry."

"Don't worry about it." Kerry walked across the street and into the park, carefully skirting around a pair of firemen sitting in the grass.

One of them looked up at her as she passed. "Hey," he called out. "Where'd you come from?"

Kerry stopped and went over to him, kneeling down in the grass and letting her hands rest on one knee. "That bus over there." She indicated the waiting caravan. "What about you?"

"Me?" The fireman looked exhausted, and his face was coated with the gray dust outlining red rimmed eyes. "I'm from Connecticut. What's the bus for?"

"It's our company bus. We're going to try and help get communications back up and running down here," Kerry readily explained.

The fireman snorted. "Good luck." He picked up his radio lying beside him and let it drop. "Hear more static than talk on these things."

"All these tall buildings," Kerry agreed.

"Ker?"

Kerry turned to see Dar motioning her over. "Well, time to go back to work. Nice talking to you."

"Same here." The fireman nodded.

Kerry got up and crossed the grass glancing both ways in reflex before she crossed the road. The dust under her boots felt like a light, powdery sand. She joined Dar and Alastair who had moved closer to the bus. "We set?"

"Not quite," Dar said. "They're trying to move heavy construction rigs in--cranes, whatever--we can't pull the trucks down yet. They told us to park them up here until we can move closer."

"Nice fellah," Alastair commented. "Thought we were going to have a dust up again, but this guy seemed like good folk."

"Okay," Kerry said. "So we walk up from here? Is that what you're saying? I know John and the telcom folks are up nearer the site."

"We walk." Dar turned and faced the bus, lifting her hand and waving. "We should pull the sat and power trucks up on that side street there. Get them out of the way." She stared at the bus as Andrew appeared from behind it and headed her way.

Alastair put his hands in his pockets and regarded the scene. "I have a feeling this is the most pleasantness we're going to see today," he said giving Kerry a sideways look. "Shall we go get our togs? This stuff looks nasty." He kicked a bit of the dust with his boot.

"Sounds like a good idea." Kerry turned and cupped her hands around her mouth. "Everyone get your overalls and masks! Sync up radios!"

A swarm of activity started around the bus as the driver got out and popped open the underneath storage and techs started to drag big cases out and open them. Kerry joined Dar near the door to the bus waiting their turn to pick up equipment.

"Dad's getting the trucks parked," Dar said. "You ready for this?"

"Dar." Kerry leaned briefly against her. "How in the hell could anyone be ready for this? I've already got a knot in my gut that has nothing to do with having my period."

Dar looked around and grunted.

"Ma'am, I think this one will fit you." One of the techs approached Kerry with a coverall and handed it and a mask to her. "We didn't have many this small."

"Thanks." Kerry smiled wryly. "I think."

Dar eased past him and rummaged through the bin on her own, removing a set of the clothing. "On the other hand, I have to fight the wolves for mine." She came back to where Kerry was standing, leaning back against the bus and starting to pull the coveralls on. "Someone get the tool belts out! " she added in a loud yell.

Kerry picked a spot against the bus next to her and got her first boot into the leg opening of the thick, dark green garment. The fabric was tightly woven and tough, and it reminded her a bit of a military flight suit.

Not tremendously attractive, even with the company logo bold on the chest and across her back. She snapped the wrists closed that thankfully were, in fact, her length, and bent to unlace her boots tucking the legs into them and lacing them back up again.

She stood up and examined the mask Dar had handed her, a full face unit with lavender filter cartridges poking out both sides of the bottom. She fitted it to her face and found it relatively comfortable.

"Not bad." She removed it and let it hang around her neck, as Dar handed her a smaller, mouth only mask. "What's that for?"

"Wind's right," Dar said. "I figure we can leave these big ones off until we're pretty close, but it doesn't pay to take chances. You see that stuff? Ten bucks it's full of silica particulate." She pointed at the dust in the streets.

"Powdered glass?" Kerry remembered the fireman and his red rimmed eyes. "Ouch."

"Not to mention asbestos." Alastair had come up next to them, clad in his own green outfit. "Nasty stuff."

Andrew circled the bus from the other side already draped in a tool belt and bearing a pack on his back. He had a mask gripped in one big hand, and to all appearances absolutely knew what to do with it. "You gals." He addressed Dar and Kerry seriously. "Keep them damn masks on. Hear?"

Dar had just finished clipping a utility belt around her, and fastening her radio to it. "Got it," she said. "You too." She adjusted the radio and clipped the transmitter to her lapel. "Check." She keyed it. "Check. Mark?"

"Here." Mark's voice crackled back. "I did a radio scan. We're clear on this frequency. Most of the rest of them are using lower band. I've got the base repeater up and going."

"Run radio checks with everyone." Dar looped her credentials around her neck and settled them under her collar. "Then let's meet up near the head of that street there." She pointed.

"Broadway," Kerry supplied.

Dar looked at her. "Really?"

Kerry nodded. "It's where it starts. Kind of like where US 1 begins in Key West."

"Huh," Dar muttered. "Okay, we'll go try and find your Telco folks and see what we can do in that area, then we can come back and see what's left of our technical office down here. It's just south of the Exchange."

"Sounds like a plan," Alastair said. "I told the gals to see what they could offer those poor guys out there after they get set up." He indicated the firemen. "Can't be easy."

They started toward the edge of the park, as Mark's voice crackled and echoed doing his checks. The guardsmen glanced at them and waved as they went by. They paused at the end of the park for the entire group to gather.

Dar gazed down the street and acknowledged the sense of nervous dread in her guts. This was something past her experience.

Something past all of their experience, save maybe her father. She looked at him as he came up to stand next to her, pale eyes flicking back and forth as he watched everything around them. "Dad?"

He focused on her. "Yeap?"

"Glad you're here."

Andrew reached out and clasped her shoulder, but didn't say anything in response.

"We all here?" Dar asked, assuming the leadership role. "Everyone geared up and got radios? Listen up." She turned to face them. "Stay together. No one goes wandering around anywhere. This is a dangerous place"

Everyone sobered and regarded her seriously.

"I don't know what we're going to have to do. If it's something I think is too dangerous, we're not going to do it. Everyone understand me? No one is risking their lives for someone's stock options."

Everyone nodded. Even Alastair.

"We're not heroes." Dar pointed past them. "Those guys over there? They're heroes. They went into those damn buildings while they were falling around them to try and get people out. A lot of them are missing. We're not here for that. "

One of the techs raised his hand. "Ms Roberts?"

"What?" Dar put her hands on her hips.

"We get the point," the tech said. "And that's really cool. But we all saw you on television hanging out of a ten story window putting kids in a basket." He looked past her. "So can we go see how we can help out?"

Kerry scratched her nose to give her an excuse to muffle the smile on her face.

Dar sighed. "Let's go." She turned and started up the street, with her little army behind her, walking carefully around lumps in the road that could have been anything.

KERRY DECIDED AFTER a few minutes of quiet walking that the settling of dust over everything reminded her not so much of snow, but of the underwater landscape she and Dar so often explored together.

The dust had that kind of silt, grungy appearance to it. It draped over everything--the sidewalk, the cars, anything on the sidewalk--just like it did underwater over discarded concrete blocks, and forgotten anchors.

The odd gust of wind from behind them stirred it just as an errant fin would. She'd only gone half a block before she'd put her smaller mask on, convinced she could taste the stuff on the back of her tongue.

There were workers and firemen, an isolated few, walking the other way, but they all looked exhausted and none of them paid attention to either their surroundings or the passing techs. Some had breathing masks, some had full face units like they did, a few had nothing at all protecting them and were rubbing at their eyes with the backs of their hands.

It was quiet. Far off, she could hear the sound of heavy machinery,the faint hoots of a big truck or something backing up, and the sudden, unexpected sound of metal against metal that rang in the middle of her ears, making them itch.

It was surreal. If she looked behind her, she could see the clear blue sky of an autumn day with wind riffling over the waters of New York Harbor. But ahead of her, she felt like she was going down into a dungeon as the air seemed to be getting thicker and more hazy, and the ravaged building fronts rose high on either side of them.

"Put your masks on," Dar ordered her voice startlingly loud.

Kerry removed her small one and replaced it with the full face mask, adjusting the straps as it put a surprisingly comfortable veneer between her and the scene. The constriction of her vision almost seemed welcome, and after a minute she realized it wasn't really very different from putting on her diving mask.

They turned a corner and headed west. Rising up in front of them were fire trucks and cars, beaten and half destroyed.

"Wow."

Kerry glanced to her left to see Nan with her mask on. "Hey."

"This is unreal," Nan said. "I feel like I'm in a sci-fi film."

The sunlight filtered through the haze outlining the destruction in a peculiar beauty. Kerry pulled her small camera from her pocket and paused, focusing and snapping a quick shot of it. "It's definitely unreal."

They walked along the center of the small cross street and at the corner turned right and faced north.

Everyone stopped in their tracks. The people in front only barely avoiding being crashed into by those following until their eyes could take in what they saw and freeze their steps too.

"Holy shit," Mark said, after a few moments of silence.

DAR FOUND IT hard to absorb what she was seeing. The entire end of the street was blocked by a huge pile of twisted debris. Heavy smoke was coming out of its depths and chunks of ruin tumbled down toward her amidst the wreckage of cars, trucks, and vans.

Kerry put a hand on her back, easing closer. "I saw this on television but my God, Dar."

"Yeah." Dar looked around. "Don't think we can get through that way. I guess we better...well, hell. I have no idea where we should go.Want to give your buddies a call, find out where they are?"

"Sure." Kerry unclipped her cell phone and opened it, finding the number and dialing as she switched her headset to the phone from her radio.

Andrew and Alastair had walked a little further down the street and now had stopped next to an ambulance that had been flipped on its side and burned almost past recognition. They studied it and shook their heads.

"This is fucked up," Mark finally commented. "This is really, really fucked up."

"Yeah," Dar said. "It is."

"This is crazy," Mark said. "They should just move all the freaking banking stuff out to Wyoming. We've got lots of power and bandwidth there."

Dar pondered that. Could they?

"Look at this place. Holy shit." Mark shook his head. "Man. I can't believe it."

Dar mimicked the motion and studied the scene.

The shops on either side of the street were blown out. Windows had imploded, driven inward by the blast of roiling debris the tall buildings had funneled down away from the collapse--no where to go but out and down--scouring the area raw.

It smelled. Even through the mask and the filters she could smell rot mixed with electrical burn, and garbage from the surrounding areas that hadn't been touched since Tuesday. Bags, covered in dust were on the sidewalk, buzzing with flies.

A puff of air brought a stronger scent to her--one of death--and she barely stifled a gag.

She realized she didn't want to be here. Dar never minded reality and considered herself a straightforward person, but there was such a thing as being too much in the moment, and she thought this might be one of those times.

"This is one bad thing."

Dar turned to find her father at her shoulder. His voice was slightly muffled by the mask, but the somber look in his eyes wasn't. "It's hard to take in," she admitted. "It's like a bad sci-fi movie."

"Yeap," Andrew agreed. "Real bad things are hard to look at and take serious." He went on reflectively. "Cause your mind says, nah, that can't be. Can't be so."

"But there it is." Dar studied the smoking, twisted debris. "And the more I look at it, the more I wonder what the hell we're doing here."

Her father snorted a bit.

"We can't fix any of this, Daddy," Dar told him. "This is broken past my ability to make it right."

Andrew studied her. "So what're you all doing here?"

Dar folded her arms over her chest. "Good question."

"Dar." Kerry came back over. "Okay, they're one street back down and further in front of 2 World T--" She paused. "Where 2 World Trade Center was. There's a damaged subway entrance there." She pointed to the street they'd just come from. "There, and then the first left."

"Lead on," Dar told her.

They trooped back down to the corner and headed back the way they'd come, turning again at the corner Kerry indicated and walking down this wider street full of wreckage.

The building faces here were ravaged. Parts of the brickwork had been scoured off, and the fronts were crumbled in and sagging. One of the roofs nearby was draped in metal debris, dripping down into the street and forcing them to circle it to get past . The metal stained in a dark rust color made Dar's guts shiver.

Once past that, she could see a group of men clustered at the corner near a set of stairs going underground. As they approached, the men at the edge of the group turned and shuffled, splitting apart to allow two figures through from the center.

The one in front headed right for Kerry. "Kerry Stuart, you're a welcome sight."

Kerry extended a hand. "Hello, Charles." She could see his red rimmed eyes behind the shield of his mask. "Did you find your brother?"

He hesitated then shook his head. "They're still looking at the hospitals in Jersey. A lot of guys were found over there today," he said. "Glad you could come down here. We were going to see how far we can see underground. Maybe there's clearance enough to get to the line pipes"

"Okay." Kerry half turned. "I brought some help."

Charles nodded briefly. "Any help's welcome." He gave the rest of them a distracted look. "Do you have--oh, yeah, you do have flashlights. Great. We can get going then." He gestured toward the half wrecked staircase downward. "See what we can see."

Another man walked over in a vest with Verizon on it. He had a small breathing mask on his mouth, but no other protection. "You people ready?" he asked. "We got a lot of other things to do, y'know? I got people chewing my ass right and left here."

"Let's go." Charles motioned them all forward. The group by the stairs was a mix of Verizon staff, his own staff, a few people in different color protection suits with Sprint's logo, and one with MCI World Com on the shoulder.

They all looked at the newcomers in question. Charles gestured vaguely at them. "ILS sent a team to see what they could to do help," he said. "I figure the more help the better." They started carefully down the steps that were full of dust and debris, the railings half collapsed."Be careful folks."

"Took them four hours to clear them this good," one of the other men said. "We're crazy to be going down here."

Everyone turned on their flashlights and the space erupted into a dancing, bobbing light show as the beams reflected against all the dust in the air, and what they were walking down into. Kerry felt like she was descending into some cave, and she felt Dar's reassuring hand rest on her shoulder as they picked their way downward.

One of the Sprint techs was right in front of her and he turned as they slowed waiting for the people in front to continue. "Jake Davies." He offered a hand. "Thanks for coming down. We got some cell sites up and running on generator, but it's tough."

"Kerry Stuart." Kerry returned the grip. "We've got some satellite trucks and generator vans with us."

The men closest to her half turned, their ears perking up. "Yeah?" one asked. "We could sure use those."

"Everyone could," Dar answered. "Once we finish seeing what the needs are, then we can talk about who gets what." Her voice indicated

lack of debate on the subject.

The men looked at Kerry then looked up at Dar.

"She's the boss," Kerry remarked. "Want to go on down? I think they're waiting for us."

The men turned and headed down the steps with Kerry and her group behind them. It was very dark, and the ground was very uneven.She reached the bottom of the stairwell with a sense of anxiety as the flashlights danced around the dark interior.

"Holy shit," one of the men said, as they moved a little further inside. His light shone on the walls that had big, gaping cracks in them, tile scattered all over the floor and sliding around with a brittle sound as boots kicked them.

They moved past the turnstiles cautiously. "We sure this ceiling's all right?" one of the men from Sprint asked. "There's a ton of concrete over our heads."

"Look at that!" another man said, shining his flashlight down the second set of stairs. A huge metal column was piercing the ceiling extending down and bisecting the steps halfway down.

"Wow." Charles shook his head. "I don't know about this."

"Aw, c'mon you little girls." The Verizon man headed down the steps.

"Now there's a right jackass." Andrew started to push past Dar and Kerry, only to have his daughter casually block him with one arm. "Scuse me, rugrat."

"Dad. Relax." Dar started down the steps. "If asses need kicking, I'm capable of that."

Kerry was glad of the banter, since the area around her was giving her the severe creeps. Aside from being dark, it stank, and, despite the filters, her eyes were watering from the smell. Her imagination was painting almost anything in the corners, and she was halfway afraid of looking too closely in the glare at what might be there.

She instinctively edged closer to Dar, hooking one finger in her partner's belt as she followed her down the second set of stairs deeper into the earth under the collapsed tower, down to the platform that was the subway.

There she had to halt, as Dar had halted, because everyone else had.

The flashlights couldn't do the scene justice. "Hang on." One of the Verizon men went over to one side and worked a latch on something,accompanied by a long, screeching sound that made everyone jump.

A floodlight flickered on, dim with age. "Shit for batteries," the man muttered. "But it's better than nothing."

The light blared down the tracks showing the destruction. A subway train car was at the end of the platform, its top crushed in, the tunnel ceiling collapsed on top of it.

They were all silent for a moment. "Hope that was empty," Kerry murmured.

On the other side of the tracks, the entire tunnel was collapsed on top of the platform blocking any further travel in that direction. The tunnel leading east, away from the towers, was still intact, but a light shown down it displayed debris covering the tracks as far as the eye could see.

A rain of debris suddenly came down from the ceiling, rattling down on the tracks.

"Shit," the Verizon man said. "This ain't going nowhere. We can't even get to the intake blocks." He ran his flashlight along the back wall. The concrete and steel pylons were cracked and bent and somewhere, a faint hissing noise was going off.

"No," Charles said. "Dead end."

Another silence. "Probably a lot of them," the Verizon man finally muttered."Let's get outta here. Waste of time." He took a step backwards, as another rain of debris came down. "I tolja it would be. We should get back to the damn work site and do something productive."

Rude or not, Kerry was totally in sync with the idea. She kept thinking she heard things moving in the distance, and she could feel her heart racing as the shadows seemed to move closer. She backed up and got on the steps, swallowing hard to keep her stomach down.

The upper level was almost bright by comparison. Hazy sunlight was coming down the steps to the outside world, and Kerry made a beeline for it, relaxing only when she knew her head was out from under the cracked ceiling and she could see sky above her.

"You okay?" Dar asked, climbing up the steps at her back.

"Yeah," Kerry answered after a brief pause. "Just freaked me a little."

Dar patted her back in comfort, as they exited onto the street, faced with the pile of wreckage and the sound of sirens blaring suddenly.

They both jumped. Dar turned in a circle, her eyes scanning the area.

"Shit. Now what?" The Verizon man hauled up out of the stairwell after them, looking quickly both ways. On the next street, a police car growled by, it's lights cutting the dusty air as the officer inside aimed a high beam light on one of the building fronts.

The Verizon man relaxed. "Looter." He guessed. "Bastards." He looked around again. "We should get the hell--"

"Away from here? I agree." Dar turned and counted quickly, making sure all her team had come out from the subway. "Tell you what. We've got a tech office a block or so over. No lights but we can sit and talk about what we can do there."

The group gathered around her, most looking a bit shaken, and even Andrew assuming a somber expression on his face.

"You said you had sat trucks?" Charles asked, finally. "I thought I heard you say that, Kerry." He turned to look at her. "Right?"

"We do," Dar answered for her. "So let's go put our heads together and figure out a plan," she suggested. "Maybe we can start from the other end, at the Exchange, and see where that takes us."

After an awkward pause, Charles nodded, though the rest just looked at Dar. "Sounds like a good idea," he ventured. "Sorry, I didn't--I don't think we were introduced."

"My manners are slipping." Kerry shook herself out of her funk."Sorry, Charles. This is Dar Roberts. Dar, this is Charles Gant, the technical executive on our account." She paused, as she took in Charles' wide eyed expression and the sudden, startled looks from the other men.

It would have been funny, if it had been any other situation. Kerry couldn't appreciate the humor at the moment. "Let's go folks. You can gawk later," she said. "We need to get out of here."

"Git." Andrew started herding them toward the cross street. "Just git."

Another siren started screaming behind them, and they retreated around the corner, just as a second joined it, and then a third, rending the air as though the sound were chasing them.