What phantasms dance in a man's head while clutched in a morphine dream? Does he witness what never happened? Or does he redream what he otherwise wishes he'd forget? Does the mind billow florid sweetness or release its darkest horror? Do the most recent images (Richie, dead before him) and thoughts (I could have saved him) and smells (blood) find their antecedents within his memory? Does one nightmare recall another? It must be possible… Do the sounds come back… the roaring above them as they searched the subbasement for anyone trapped behind fire doors? Wickham in front, Ray shining his flashlight along the dark corridors, all electricity turned off, walking in their heavy boots and unbuckled bunker coats and helmets in the sub-basement looking for people trapped behind jammed fire doors… those sounds of footsteps always in his mind, the last footsteps before everything, before Wickham had stopped, cocked his head…
Hear that?
No. Wait. I do.
A roaring had begun.
Let's get out of the footprint.
Wickham nodded. He shined his light down a long hall filled with pipes. That way.
The roaring increased. The concrete ceiling was cracking.
It's collapsing!
They ran as fast as they could in their heavy, clinking equipment, their flashlight beams bouncing crazily up and down. The horizontal pipes on the ceiling started snapping like sticks, water bursting from them. A wave of dust hit their backs, then smoke. They pulled on their air masks.
Ray followed Wickham. They turned a corner. It was blocked with concrete.
The header had collapsed. Wickham swore behind his mask.
They stopped. Ray switched on his radio.
Company Ten, Team Alpha, we're trapped down in the service hall running west on the sublevel.
No answer.
Now a wave of dust and debris was blowing steadily at them. Somewhere above them was enormous downward compression.
Wickham said something in the noise… pulled him close and yelled in his ear.
Under a T joint. Reinforced.
Ray nodded. They trained their lights along the ceiling. The dust was so thick that both flashlights were necessary. Ray grabbed Wickham and they held each other close until they found a T joint in the corridor. They squatted under it. Ray turned on his radio. All he could hear from it was roaring. No voices. Just an open mike somewhere.
The ceiling collapsed ten yards away, right where they had been standing, pancaking flat against the floor. Then five yards away the ceiling collapsed and hit the floor with such force that debris spat at them like shrapnel. They lay flat on the floor under the beam.
It's coming!
They could hear the roaring above them, the tremors shaking the floor. Then the floor collapsed beneath them and Ray grabbed for Wickham and they fell together, holding each other, spinning as they dropped through the darkness. Ray landed on something hot that burned away his overalls and T-shirt. The hot thing slid along the muscles of his stomach, instantly charring his flesh. He moaned in shocked agony, as did Wickham, and they fell off the hot thing and tumbled another six feet, Ray landing flat on his back, Wickham facedown on top of him, heavily, crushing him nearly, pinning him, Ray's nostrils filling now with the smell of burning rubber and burning flesh, his belly a flank of torment, the pain of a thousand knives hammered into him.
Atop him Wickham writhed. Oh! No! No!
A hissing sound.
A groan. Panting. Groaning. No. No, please, no.
Wicks…
Ray was pinned with his left arm under his back, Wickham on top of him.
Something burning in the darkness, hissing.
Meat burning.
Oh, God, please, please… No more, please, God. Mother of God
… I'm begging!.. No, no… Molly, I'm-I'm sorry… oh.. oh.
Wickham's head lay on Ray's chest, his body jerking. Ray moved his right hand down to Wickham's head, felt for the helmet, the visor, then slipped his hand down the neck, found the shoulder, ran his hand along Wickham's upper arm, and pulled on his arm. Ray squeezed Wickham's hand.
Molly!
I'll tell her, I promise. Don't worry.
He let go of Wickham's hand and tried to feel what was pinning them. His ribs hurt. He worked his gloved hand down over Wickham's back until he came to the metal pipe that had crushed Wickham's backbone. It was so hot it seared through Ray's insulated glove just at the touch, and he yanked away his hand even as his fingertips began to burn. He worked his hand back to his torso and found the flashlight jammed beneath him. Then he switched it on, only to see a cement girder four inches from his face. By crooking his neck he could see the top of Wickham's helmet, his shoulder, and beyond that, the pipe, which wasn't a pipe at all but a heavy-duty electrical cable that had fried off its insulation and was still burning downward into Wickham's back, cooking the bone and flesh as it sank through him.
Every movement an agony, back, ribs, stomach, Ray brought his hand to Wickham's. He squeezed it again.
No response.
Oh, Wicks. What will I tell Molly?
He realized his goggles were dusted over. He brushed them off. He found the flashlight again and lifted his head just enough to see that he and Wickham were trapped between two giant cracked slabs of concrete sandwiched atop one another. Sweeping the beam back and forth, he saw an immense horizontal landscape of debris: what looked like part of a car, electrical wiring and panels, popped and flattened drums of unknown content, dripping water pipes, all compressed within the irregular two-foot gap between the slabs. Anything higher than two feet had been crushed to that depth, a depth that, when you thought about it, would just about accommodate the thickness of one man lying atop another.
He found his radio using the flashlight and turned it on.
Company Ten, Team Alpha.
No response. He switched it off. What is left of my stomach? he wondered. He closed his eyes. A tightness in his lungs. Ribs hurting. The air was bad, filled with dust. He wiggled his right foot, then his left. He couldn't feel his left arm pinned behind his back, though the pain in his left shoulder told him the joint was being stretched beyond capacity. The pressure of Wickham… he couldn't get a deep breath. He felt himself get cold, the onset of shock. He might have internal organ damage that he couldn't feel yet.
Had he passed out?
It seemed so. He felt wetness between his legs. He had urinated while he was unconscious.
Wickham was soft now on top of him. Ray felt down toward the hot cable, touched it with his glove. It had cooled.
He tried to wriggle out from beneath Wickham, but it was no good. The space was too tight. He wasn't quite getting enough air. He could not fully expand his chest; he wasn't getting full use of his lungs. If the rubble above them settled another inch, Wickham would crush him to death. His flesh would split. Well, maybe that was already happening. He felt a claustrophic anger toward Wickham now, a fury to survive. The other problem was that the circulation in his left arm was impeded; eventually this would cause swelling and even tissue death.
He had to assume that part of the tower had collapsed from the plane hitting it, which was surprising; the building was engineered to take a direct hit. The squad had gotten there right away, helped the thousands streaming down the fire stairs dazed and panicked. The women who had taken off their pumps and were walking through glass. Then the bodies had started to land on the street.
That seemed like a long time ago now.
It would be many hours, perhaps days before they dug him out, if they ever did so.
He realized that he was dehydrated. There was a water bottle in the pocket of his bunker coat, but it was trapped beneath him. Another reason he had to get out from beneath Wickham. He worked his left arm free then hugged Wickham upward, like a man lifting a sagging dance partner, and after many minutes of effort, dragging the weight inch by inch against the resistance of the cement beam above, he was able to shift the heavy, nearly severed torso to the side, where there was enough room to slide it wetly a few feet away. The flashlight showed Wickham's open eyes, their surface already glazed dull by dust.