Her Name Will Be Faith (56 page)

Chief Grundy stood at his window, watching the streets.
"Christ," he
remarked.
"Listen to it howl. Look at that rain; it's coming at us
horizontal."

"It's gonna be salt in five minutes," McGrath
told him. "Naseby says
out. So let's go."

They put on their hats and coats, headed down the stairs;
the elevator
had ceased
functioning when the electrics had gone. Their desks had
already been cleared and everything loaded into the
waiting fleet of vans.
Now
these too started to move. The streets down here had been completely
cleared, all abandoned vehicles pushed on to the
sidewalks, and had been
patrolled
all morning to make sure they stayed clear. But now the outflow
of vehicles from City Hall joined those from Police
Headquarters to create
a new jam.

"For Christ's sake," McGrath muttered, staring
through the door. "Sort it
out.
I'd better get out there..." He checked as one of the vans, caught by a
gust
of wind, slewed round and crashed over on to its side; the rear doors burst
open and papers flew everywhere. "Oh, hell. Well, that's it."

"Get it moved," Grundy snapped. McGrath pushed
open the door,
followed
by a squad of policemen, and other staffers, and ran into the
teeming rain to join the blue clad crowd already around
the overturned
vehicle.
Even sheltered by the buildings standing up was next to imposs
ible; McGrath found himself on his hands and knees, and
up to his elbows
in
water. "Jesus Christ," he gasped, and struggled up, to be thrown down
and sent rolling and
splashing several feet further up the street. He
realized that they might have left the evacuation just a
little too late,
looked
up and saw an entire roof, it seemed, sailing through the air to
crash into the building opposite, demolishing the front
wall as if it had
been
cardboard. Then the wind got inside, blowing out the windows,
tearing doors off their hinges, picking up desks and
filing cabinets as if
they had been toys and
tossing them out into the street.

A police sergeant landed beside him with a splash; he
carried a
megaphone. "We
gotta go," he bellowed. "Files or no files. Those vans
don't
stand a chance in this wind."

McGrath wondered how he figured human beings could stand
a chance,
either. But he
snatched the trumpet. "Clear out!" he screamed. "Forget
the
vehicles. Clear out while you can. Rendezvous at the Plaza Hotel."

Nobody heard him above the shrieking of the wind, the
roaring of the
water, which was now racing through the streets as if they
had all been
rivers. But people were making their
own decisions, staggering and
floundering to where
they supposed safety to be, or clawing their way
back into the buildings in search of at least temporary shelter. Chief
Grundy, on the headquarters ground floor, stamped his feet impatiently
as he watched a trickle of water come in the door and make its way across
the
lobby. "Where the hell is Harmon?" he bawled.

"Those guys down there don't want to come out,"
Luther gasped at him
from the stairs to the
remand cells. "They reckon they're safer in the cells."

"Are they nuts?" Grundy himself ran down to the
lower level. The cell
doors
were wide open, and the remand prisoners were free to leave –
indeed, they were being implored to do so, but none of
them looked anxious
to
take advantage of the offer. "For God's sake," Grundy bellowed.
"Use
force, Harmon. Throw them out."

Harmon turned to the policemen with him. "You heard
the Chief," he
said. "Get those
guys out."

Stuart Alloan scrambled on to his bed, dragging Domingo
Garcia with
him; he reckoned staying close to the
monster was his safest course.

"You trying to drown us?" Garcia yelled. He was
a sallow little man,
but
he had a loud voice. "You leave us right here. You..." His voice
trailed away as he stared at the stairs. Grundy and
Harmon turned
together, to watch a four-foot high wall
of water rushing towards them.

When the phone went dead, Jo decided it was time to take
shelter. She
had tried calling
Marcia and Benny again, eventually asking the operator
for help, only to be told that all communication with
Greenwich Village was cut – as if it had been a defaulting spaceship, she
thought. Then she
tried
Connecticut, and Richard, but with no more success. At least
she had been able to see his face on TV from time to
time. Amazingly,
the
windows in the apartment were holding – fortunately the plate glass
in the lounge faced away from the worst of the storm
– but judging by
the
noise outside, and the heavy debris she could see flying past the
apartment block, added to the howling of the wind inside
the building as
it
blew through the broken street-doors, she didn't reckon they would
stand
up to much more. So she herded Owen Michael and Tamsin into
the bathroom, bolted the
door, and they sat together on the mattress drinking hot soup out of mugs.

"I don't think I
could eat a burger as well, Mom." Tamsin eyed the
steaming plateful that Jo had hastily prepared while the electricity
lasted.

"Do try, sweetheart.
It may be a long time before I'll be able to cook
again." She could see that both the children were frightened; each
determined
not to reveal the fact to the other.

"I wonder where Dad
is now?" Owen Michael said.

"Probably
in sight of Newport," Jo told him. "Having the time of his
life."

"I wish I was with
him."

"Well, I wish you and Tamsin were with Granpa and
Granma."

"And you too, Mom," Tamsin added.

Jo
wasn't sure what to reply to that. She still wanted to be near Richard,
even though in the
bathroom the roar of the wind and the crashes of
thunder were terrifying… as was the thought that he might try to reach
her.
Oh, no, my darling Richard, don't do it, she prayed silently. Nobody can get
through this.

But all the same, she
realized she was constantly straining to hear his voice calling his arrival
above the din, imagining that each unidentifiable crash or bang was his knock
on the door.

"Fucking hell,"
Al Muldoon remarked. "Oh, fucking hell!"

It had taken him two hours
to drive from Kennedy to the entrance to Queen's Midtown Tunnel –
somebody had told him all the bridges were
jammed,
but nobody had said anything about the tunnels. If only he had a radio; when
next he saw that asshole of a mechanic he was going to wring
his neck.

Two hours! It hadn't
mattered that the traffic was almost all going the other way… they were driving
on both sides of every street. He'd kept
having
to pull off on to the sidewalk to avoid being rammed, and even so his
cab had been hit several times. The first time
he'd jumped out, despite the
rain
which promptly poured down his neck, and wanted to beat the hell out
of the stupid moron who'd sideswiped him –
it was clearly the other guy's
fault
as he was on the wrong side of the street. But immediately he'd been grabbed by
two soldiers. Fucking MPs! He could as well have been back in
Vietnam.

"Cool it, buddy boy," they told him.
"You're going against the stream."

Muldoon had supposed he
was about to have a heart attack. "Me?
Against
the stream?" He had pointed at the street signs in impotent
anger. These guys had to be stupid or something,
or the whole world had
gone mad. And who the hell were they to tell him
what to do? He was a civilian now. "Look," he said, as reasonably as
he could. "You guys get off my back. This ain't the goddamned army."

"It
is to you," the first MP said. "Ain't you heard this city is under
martial law?"

Muldoon was speechless for
a moment. "On whose say so?" he demanded when he had got his
breath back.

"On the say so of the
Governor and the President of the United States. Now, you all finished
arguing?"

Muldoon fell back on
defense. "That guy was breaking the law. Driving the wrong way."

"No,
you were driving the wrong way, buster," said the second MP.
"All roads lead out,
right now. Where the hell are you going, anyway?"

"I'm going home,
that's where I'm going," Muldoon shouted, resisting
with some effort the temptation to call them what
he was thinking.
"Where the fucking hell would I be going?"

"Where's home?"

"Manhattan. Where the
hell do you think it would be?"

"Let
me get this straight," the MP said. "You're out here in Queen's,
and you want to go in to
Manhattan?"

"Look,
fella," Muldoon said. "I don't know what the shitting hell is
going on, but I have a
home, and I have a wife, just on the other side of
that river, and if there's something happening, I aim to be with them.
You
guys gonna try to stop me?"

The MPs had looked at each
other. One had shrugged. "We don't have orders to stop nobody going into
the city," he said.

The
other had nodded. "Okay, buster. You can keep going. Just keep out
of
the way of any vehicles coming this way; you're driving up a one-way
street."

"Jesus Christ, the
whole fucking world has gone mad," Muldoon
commented, and got back into his cab. He was sopping wet, and the
inside
was all misted up. And there seemed to be automobiles coming at him from all
directions. And he hadn't had any breakfast and was as
hungry as hell. But he made progress, until he got to the tunnel entrance
itself, having been side-swiped half a dozen times by other crazy
drivers. And here, suddenly, there was a complete absence of traffic, although
it continued to roar by on the next street.

Instead, there was a
roadblock.

Muldoon
braked, put his head out of the window. "This is the first
sanity I've seen today.
Now move that goddamned barrier."

'Yeah?" This time he
looked at policemen, bending against the wind. "No one's allowed through
that tunnel."

"Why the hell not?"

"It ain't safe, that's why not."

"Ah,
for Christ's sake. Look, I've been trying to get home for two
fucking hours. I have a
wife waiting for me over there. I can be through that tunnel in ten
minutes."

"No one is allowed through this tunnel," the
policeman said again. "Oh, Jesus . ."

"Well,
if it ain't Muldoon," the sergeant said, splashing towards him
and
holding on to the automobile to avoid being blown away; his cap was
tightly strapped under his
chin. "You crazy or what?"

"Oh, Jesus,"
Muldoon repeated. He'd been on the wrong side of this
character before. "Listen, Mac, I gotta get home. The wife has a
weak
heart. You know that. I gotta get home."

The sergeant pulled his wet nose.