“Hold on there,” Viondi said. “We ain’t going north. There’s nothing there—we’re miles from the highway or any big towns.”
“There were some farms,” Nick said. “And that restaurant.” There was anger in Viondi’s look. “You want to bet that restaurant ain’t floatin’ down the Hatchie by now? And those farms—whoever lives there ain’t gonna be in any better shape than we are.” He pointed south, across the crevasse and the soybean fields. “Memphis is down that way. It’s a big city. We can find a tow truck there, and people to help us.”
Nick was confused. “How are we going to get over the crack? I can’t jump that.” Viondi slammed the trunk with his big hands. “We got a bridge right here.” Nick was dubious, but Viondi put down his box, put one foot on the rear bumper, and climbed up onto the trunk. Nick held his breath, expecting at any second for the car to pitch nose-first into the crevasse, but all that happened was that the back of the car sank under Viondi’s weight. Viondi crawled onto the roof, reversed himself, then slid his legs down the windscreen and onto the car’s hood.
“There,” he said. “Now pass me the box and the bags.”
Nick put a foot on the rear bumper and passed Viondi their gear, and then Viondi belly-crawled backward down the length of the hood until he could stand on the other side of the crevasse. “Your turn,” he said.
Nick felt his stomach clench. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”
He crawled slowly over the car, his heart giving a leap every time it shifted under his weight. But the bridge remained in place, and when he backed his feet to the broken pavement on the other side of the crevasse, he felt his breath ease.
Viondi handed him his suitcase. “Let’s get moving,” he said.
A shadow fell across the sun. Nick looked up, and was surprised to find how much of the sky was now covered with dark cloud.
“Maybe it’s going to rain,” he said.
And then he followed Viondi down the lonely, broken road.
The interior of the Gateway Arch was airless and musty and at least a hundred degrees. Sweat dripped from beneath Marcy’s Smokey Bear hat, and her thighs ached. She’d been going down stairs forever.
“Careful,” she told the people behind her. She pointed her flashlight. “The rail here is a little shaky.” There were 1076 steps altogether, one of those facts that Marcy had been obliged to memorize as part of her job. She hadn’t bothered to count them as she descended, and she was glad. She didn’t want to walk to the point of exhaustion and realize that there were still 600 steps to go. The monumental skeleton of the arch loomed around her. Massive I-beams, giant stanchions, cross-braces of steel. The stair that wound its way down the arch rested in part on the framework itself, and wasn’t going to move unless the arch itself gave way.
So far the stair had been safe enough. It was the little things that had been damaged. About two-thirds of the light-bulbs had shattered, leaving the stair a passage through gloom and shadow. The handrail had given way in places, and Marcy cautioned her visitors about putting their weight on it. Some of the smaller fixtures had fallen—bits of steel mesh, some cable, the lighter crossbraces. These could be worked around, with care.
“Take your time, now,” she told her people. “We’re not in any hurry.” She’d given one of her two flashlights to the Japanese man, and told him to keep to the rear of the column. Marcy kept the elderly lady right behind her, so that she could keep an eye on her, be certain not to overtax her, and make sure she wasn’t about to drop dead of a coronary. Marcy came to a landing, peered at the next flight of stairs, decided to call a halt.
“Everyone catch your breath,” she said.
Simply catching one’s breath was hard enough inside the stainless steel shaft. The heat was almost overwhelming.
Everyone clustered onto the landing, as supported by massive crossbraces it was clearly safer than the stairs themselves. “How much farther do we have to go?” a man asked.
“I don’t know,” Marcy said. “I’ve never done this before.” An aftershock slammed up through all the girders and beams and almost threw Marcy to her knees. She clapped hands over her ears as the metal around her began to shriek as if in pain. Something fell, somewhere, with a loud clang that echoed forever in the curving metal stairwell.
“I can’t take it! I can’t take it!” Marcy heard the words as though they came from far away. She looked up to see a man’s distorted face, eyes so round that his irises stood out as tiny dots in a lake of white. “I want to take the elevator!”
It was the same man who had panicked just before entering the tram. He lurched on the landing, knocking into people bodily, and then he spun about, shoved aside the Japanese man at the tail of the column, and began to run up the metal stair in the direction of the observation deck.
“No!” Marcy shrieked, and lunged after him. She was not going to lose another one. Her shoe caught on a stair riser and she fell face-first on the metal treads, but her outstretched hand caught the panicked man’s pants cuff. Marcy snarled as she clenched her fist around the fabric and pulled. The man was off-balance on the quaking stairway and fell. “Get back here!” Marcy yelled, and climbed up the man’s body, putting all her weight on him as the man thrashed beneath her.
“I can’t take it! I can’t take it!” the man shouted.
Marcy straddled the panicked man and punched him in the face with her flashlight. “Shut up!” she shouted. He began to scream, a strange, scratchy wailing sound, as inhuman and metallic as the scream of the arch under tension. “Shut up, motherfucker!” Marcy hammered him with the flashlight again, then a third time.
The aftershock faded. The metal shrieking of the arch died away, and the man’s screams faded at the same time. Marcy stared with fury into the panicked man’s bloodstained face.
“I want to go to the elevator,” he said.
“No way, asshole,” Marcy said. “I’m not having another damn deserter.” She grabbed him by his collar and hauled him to his feet, shoved him down the platform. “You walk ahead of me,” she told him. “Now march.”
Ten minutes later they shouldered open a bent metal door and stepped out into the concourse. Marcy gasped in cooler air, took off her hat, wiped sweat from her forehead. She heard moans of relief from her tourists.
The huge underground room was a mess. The glass ticket windows had gone, and the ticket counters leaned at strange angles. Displays had toppled, signs had come down, light fixtures had shattered. The floor was littered with tourist brochures, tickets, guidebooks, maps, and broken glass. Marcy had never been so glad to see a wreck in her life.
She stepped aside and let her visitors file out of the stairwell. The elderly lady stopped for a moment, fumbled in her pocketbook. “I just wanted to say thank you,” she said. Marcy stared in surprise as the old lady held out a ten-dollar bill.
“No thanks, ma’am,” she said. “We’re not allowed to take tips.” Carrying her two flashlights, Marcy found her French party in the middle of the concourse, shouting at each other as usual. The heart attack victim lay on the floor, conscious but showing little interest in his friends. Other casualties lay nearby, maybe thirty of them. Some of them were very bloody, some unconscious. A number were covered in what looked like gray brick dust.
Marcy saw no one in khakis, no Park Service people at all. She glanced around her in shock. Could they all have run away? All of them? Had Evan started a panic?
She turned at the sound of shouts and saw two of her colleagues carrying an unconscious woman down the stairs and onto the concourse. Marcy’s head lurched as she saw blood pouring from a wound in the woman’s lower leg. Marcy ran and helped carry the woman to an empty space on the concourse floor.