The men looked at each other dumb-founded, choosing not to speak of the incident, quickly dressed, and climbed back into the truck to fetch their next consignment of bodies.
Sophie let out a sigh of relief as the truck disappeared, but moments later, a yellow dumper truck replaced it. The driver lowered the shovel and scooped up the corpses like firewood, and added them to the top of a funeral pyre, then repeated the procedure.
Luke wiped the slime from his face as best he could, when the odor of burning flesh reached him and he gagged. “Come on, we’re nearly at the docks.”
“We’ll get caught. We need a disguise,” she told him. “Got any more brilliant ideas?”
He smirked and nodded. They waited for a break in the activities, and then sneakily entered a trailer that was doubling up as a changing room and donned camouflaged hazmat suits. They lumbered from the trailer and walked anonymously amongst the soldiers, who were too busy robbing the carcasses of their jewelry, to notice them.
Sophie shuddered as they passed the burning human remains, glad that the suit has breathing apparatus so that she did not have to smell roasting flesh ever again.
09:00 AM
General Malloy made it two floors down from the roof when he felt the building tremble. The hastily rigged string of emergency-lights attached to a portable generator flickered. A soldier behind him lost his footing and fell onto him pushing him face first into the wall. Goddamn it, son!” he snarled.
“The stair came loose. I tripped, sir,” he mumbled in apology.
“How in hell can a concrete stair come loose? Lemme see it, gimme that flashlight, son,” He shone the beam onto the concrete stairs and sure enough one of the steps had eroded away. He scratched his head pondering the implication and followed a hairline crack up the wall and sighed deeply.
The sergeant crossed himself. “You ain’t thinking, 9-11, General?”
“That was a one off, son, but we ought to keep moving.” He signaled for the small group to continue their downward flight, when a muffled explosion from below rocked the very foundations, the building trembled and Malloy held onto the wall. He shone the torch back at the crack, which had widened considerably. A dust cloud billowed up the stairwell, “get going,” he instructed.
“What if that’s a fire down there, General? asked a young private nervously.
“It’s dust — not smoke. Get moving, that’s an order, on the double,” the soldiers made hast as they ran and jumped the stairs to get to the bottom and fresh air. With a mighty roar the ceiling above them collapsed, large slabs of concrete dropped down killing some outright and blocking the passage of the rest. The dust swirled upwards clogging the general’s throat, and stinging his eyes. He choked on the dust, filling his lungs and drying his mouth. “Goddamn terrorists, they are going to pay for this,” he croaked.
“What now, General?” the private asked.
“We continue—” He paused as the hotel groaned and trembled, loosening more debris upon them. Dust poured through the newly formed fissures, like sand in a never-ending hourglass. The poor lighting flickered, and the private whimpered.
“Man up.” Snapped the general. “And start digging — all of you. We’re getting out of here, one way or the other. All construction these days has to withstand the impact of aircrafts, and stairwells are the designated escape routes, therefore — safe. Now stop you’re whimpering and get moving!”
The soldiers moved the slabs of masonry blocking the stairwell, teaming up to heft the heavier chunks. Sweat poured down the private’s face, he heaved and grunted to move a door-sized reinforced concrete block, but it wasn’t happening. The general looked around and shone the flashlight beam on the ceiling above, noticing cracks spidering across, a rumble from below brought more dust and debris down upon him. “Hurry, you useless grunts, put your backs into it, or you’ll be on a charge!” The soldiers re-doubled their efforts, more scared of the general, than the impending collapse of the building. They grunted, groaned, and managed to lift the slab a few feet up in the air. “Go, General!” the private shouted through gritted teeth. The general did not need telling twice, he ran towards the newly formed gap and slid through on his side, Indiana Jones style, and it slammed down behind him with a deafening roar, trapping the others.
He brushed himself down and made a mental note that he would send troops to find them when he reached the safety of the ground. He smiled to himself and his constant good fortune; he had a knack of getting out of sticky situations unharmed. He took the stairs two at a time; he rounded another floor, twenty more to go, he thought, when with an ear-splitting screech the walls started to tremble, and the floor moved as if suffering from an earthquake, making him fall through the gap to the floor below. He tried to stand, as parts of the ceiling dropped around him, and dust billowed up the stairwell engulfing him in a choking dirt cloud.
CHAPTER 24
09:30 AM
On the video screens in the Pentagon War Room, a wobbly picture from a hand held camera showed images of the Four Points Hotel collapsing like a deck of cards, “Oh…my…God,” whispered Vice Admiral Reed. The dust cloud appeared to topple the cameraman and dust obscured the screen. The forty-story building fell down on itself as if demolished with controlled explosions set by experts.
The men stared in wide-eyed amazement. Hamilton Parker asked; “Any news on General Malloy?”
A high-ranking air-force officer said, “Our latest reports have him in the building, his last message from on top of it.”
“Any chance he could have survived that?” the President asked.
“There’s always hope, sir. The troops will do their best to find him.”
The President took the news badly, looking decidedly ill, seeming to have lost all his former vigor. He said no more, leaned forward and switched off the monitor filming him, leaving a black screen and the men in the room looked to one another wondering what to do next without the President to make executive decisions.
09:31 AM
A rumbling of what Luke first thought might be thunder drew his attention back behind him, he watched in disbelief as the forty floor structure, that had once been a shining example of how wondrous a skyscraper could be, collapsed in on itself. The soldiers ran to hide from the approaching dust cloud. Luke felt the vibration through the pavement beneath his feet. A cloud of billowing dust swirled towards him at speed. He instinctively knew they could not out run it, especially in the hazmat suits. He signaled for Sophie to follow him in taking refuge behind a truck and sit low as the dust cloud whooshed past them. Once again, the hazmat suit’s breathing apparatus saved them, but is was still a claustrophobic, disorientating feeling as the dark cloud obliterated the sunlight.
“Where did that come from?” Sophie asked, wiping a film of dust from her visor.
“I’m guessing it’s what’s left of the communications post.”
“Yes!” she said triumphantly. She smiled brightly. “Strike one for us!” They high-fived.
He grinned widely. “We’ve gained ourselves a few hours grace while they regroup,” he told her. “And more importantly, it’s a perfect diversion; all eyes will be on the military bases and installations, expecting more attacks. They’ll go into defensive mode.”
“Thank God, maybe someone will break through the cordon and get news to the outside world of what is going on down here.”
“And I’m gonna make sure that ‘someone’ will be us.”
09:35 AM
In the war room, the intelligence came in fast and furiously and without exception each new piece contradicted the last. The heads of the divisions promoted their own intelligence as being correct and the most accurate information. Without the President to oversee the chaos and make decisions it resembled an all out knock ‘em down and drag ‘em out schoolyard scrap. Each division putting their latest predictions onto the giant monitors, each one inevitably predicted a dire future, not one had a glimmer of optimism.