Her Name Will Be Faith (53 page)

It wasn't like Bill to
talk like that! Nancy hurried into the room to see what the fuss was about… and
slowly her jaw dropped as she gaped in horror, speechless until Bill Naseby was
finished. Then her knees turned to jelly. "For God's sake let's get out of
here," she gasped, untying the strings of her pinafore. "Kids, quick,
get your raincoats."

"Just hold on a
minute," Bill suggested. "Let's just talk about it for a moment.
There's your job..."

"Talk?
Don't be a nut. We'll talk about it when we're in Yonkers. As
for my job, my job can go..."

The phone bleeped, and
Bill reached it first. "Yeah?… oh, hi, Ernie. What's up?… Yeah, we were
just watching it. What are you and Marge gonna do?" There was a long pause
during which Bill's ever cheerful face
grew
longer and more serious. "Okay," he said at last. "That sounds
best. Just let me check with Nance." He
turned to his wife. "Ernie says
the
streets really are jammed and do we want to go up-river with him
and
Marge and their kids on the Glory
of Liberty?
It'll mean walking down
across Eleventh but he's got her moored at the end
of the 54th dock, so
it won't be too far."

Ernest, Bill's brother,
was mate on one of the tourist pleasure boats that toured the harbor.

"But
where'll we go on her?" The blonde curls were shaking with
fright.
"What'll we do for wheels when we get ashore? I'll bet the river's
real nasty already and the
storm's not due here till this afternoon. That poor old tub can't take rough
weather – she'll sink." She remembered a
Sunday afternoon trip on it last year, the stink of oil, the way the
bulkheads
creaked and groaned as the
boat nosed the current back up to her berth,
layer after layer of thick
paint, soft as putty in the sun, covering the crumbling areas of rust.

"The
Glory's
got to be a better bet than the streets," Bill said.
"Come
on, if you're worried about staying..."

"Worried?"
Her eyes filled with tears. "Of course I'm worried, Bill. “
I'm shit scared. We gotta
get out, quick."

"Then
grab your coat, sweetheart, throw some clothes in a bag, and
get the kids moving. I'll
lock up."

The three children soon
reappeared in raingear and the young family huddled together on the sidewalk,
heading for the docks on the Hudson
River.
Nancy was clutching the little silver swimming trophy she'd
won fifteen years ago, before she'd ever met Bill.
She'd always treasured
it.

"I'm standing on the
Battery," Rod Kimmelman shouted into his microphone. "And boy,
is it blowing out here!"

The camera moved away from
the close-up of his face to show him
huddled
in the shelter of the huge mobile NABS camera van; even the
van was
trembling in the gusts.

"I reckon there are
wind speeds here of well over 100 miles an hour,”
Kimmelman said. "Certainly no man could stand up to them. Look
there..."
Once again the camera tracked, to where trees were bending almost to the
ground; one or two of the smaller ones had already been uprooted.

"This
is where," Kimmelman continued, "the real brunt of the storm will
first be felt here in Manhattan. It is expected that within the next
few
hours the wind strength will increase dramatically as the eye of
the storm approaches, and
the water level is going to rise even more dramatically, as the tide starts to
come in. In fact, the experts say that where I am now standing may be under
several feet of water. They could be right; the sea has already risen some
three feet above normal for the
state of
tide, which is dead low at the moment." The camera tracked
away to
show large wavelets lapping at the shore, clearly only inches beneath the park
itself.

"Over
there..." another point, and the camera moved again, "there
are the Narrows, leading
out into Lower New York Bay and then the
Ambrose
Channel. That cut normally protects the harbor from the worst
effects of
gale force winds. Well, no one knows for sure what is going to happen later on
this morning and this afternoon. Reports from Sandy Hook, Crookes Point,
Rockaway and Coney Island already indicate
considerable
flooding; if the tidal surge does reach something like 40 feet,
as some experts are predicting, it is going to
come pouring right over
there, pushed
by maybe 200-mile-an-hour winds. It's already pretty rough
out
there." The camera focused on the Narrows; the Bridge was some six
miles of water from where the van was standing,
but even at that distance
the surging
whitecaps could be seen, and the zoom lens revealed that
spray was being
tossed higher than the deserted bridge itself.

"What do you think of
the Grand Old Lady, then?" Kimmelman asked. Another track, to reveal the
Statue of Liberty, standing as proud as ever amidst the sweeping clouds and the
forked lightning. "I tell you, folks, I wouldn't want to be on top of her
right this minute. This is Rod Kimmel-man, reporting for the National American…
Holy Jesus!"

The screen went blank.

"He's lost
power," Jayme said, grabbing Richard's arm as they stood before the
monitor.

"The
van's been overturned," Richard snapped. He had warned Rod
not to go out there, but
Rod had his reputation, as the man who always
reported
the unreportable story, to protect. He picked up his phone. "Jay,
Alan…
okay, but you'd better make it quick." He put the phone down.
"They're sending out a rescue team. I don't know if they'll get through.
Christ, the crazy fool."

"Here's
the latest update from the Hurricane Centre," Julian said,
pulling
the sheet of paper out of the teleprinter and handing it across the
desk.

Richard
looked at it. Faith was now holding an absolutely steady course
and
speed, northwest at 20 knots. But she was still nearly 120 miles
away,
and yet already the winds were strong enough to knock over a
heavy television van. And
Atlantic City was only just within the 100-mile
arc – the normal maximum distance for hurricane winds to reach out
from the center – and they
were recording 150-mile-an-hour gusts. There
could no longer be any
question in anyone's mind that they were on the edge of a catastrophe. Even the
double-glazed windows in the office were buckling, and a variety of noises
penetrated the supposedly soundproof room from the outside world. But it was
the window, all the windows in
the building,
that were principally worrying him. He would have liked
to evacuate the weather room, but it was their
duty to send out the news
for as long as there was power, and it would
be impossible to move and re-site all the computer equipment into the
windowless studios.

He stood looking down into
the streets, still clogged with vehicles, scattered every which way now, but
mostly abandoned by their drivers and passengers, who had sought shelter,
either returning home or wher
ever
seemed safest; scattered around the vehicles, or on top of them, was
all
manner of debris, from shattered billboards to television aerials and the
branches of trees.

The lights flickered, went
off, and came back on again.

"What
the hell...?" Julian demanded, staring in outrage at his
computer
screen, which had promptly returned to the 'please wait'
display.

"Power outages," Jayme announced, returning from
down the corridor, where she had taken a copy of the weather update to Hal
Waring. "Seems
it's pooping out all
over the place. Greenwich Village is blacked out."

"So thank God it's daylight," Julian said,
having got his data back
again.

"The whole lot is going to go before too long,"
Richard warned. "There
doesn't
seem too much point in us all staying here. Why don't you try to
get home, Julian?" Julian lived in the city, and well
above the 50-foot
mark. "Take Jayme
with you."

"And
you? Who's going to do the next update?" Julian demanded.

"I'll do it." Richard grinned. "I shouldn't
think JC will be watching.
And
if he is, there's damn all he can do about it now." He could, and
should, of course, leave the updates to Julian and get out
himself – and
get
to Jo while he could. But this hurricane was his baby, the one he had
foretold, and which was behaving so much more
horrifically than he had
ever
supposed it could. He wanted to be involved with it in more than a passive way,
for as long as he could – which meant for as long as there
was
power.

Jayme and Julian looked at each other. "We'll stay,
too," the girl
decided.
"Heck, I don't really want to go out into that; it was bad enough
this
morning."

"Okay," Richard agreed. "Just remember
that the time is going to
come when you won't be
able to go, even if you want to."

"So we'll set up house for the duration. I'll grab
us some lunch from
the canteen."

"Here's your spiel." Julian tore the sheet of
paper from the printout
and placed it on
Richard's desk. "Not a lot to add, really. It's just..."

"God Almighty!" Jayme screamed. She had just
opened the door and
had
glanced at the window as she did so, to see a television aerial, swept
off
the roof of one of the neighboring buildings, come straight at them.

"Down," Richard shouted, and hurled himself
across the desk at the
girl,
taking her round the thighs in a football tackle and sweeping her to
the floor, skidding round Julian's desk as he did so. The
noise of shattering
plate
glass was enormous. The flying metal actually only smashed the
outer pane, but it also cracked the inner one; that was
sufficient to give the wind a target. The room seemed to swirl around them,
papers, pens,
computer screens,
printers, even chairs being lifted into the air. The TV monitor crashed to the
floor and dissolved into flying splinters. Richard
had to force Jayme and himself into the knee well of the
desk to stop them
being
lifted too, but even the desk was moving, being driven across the
floor, and the wind was searing through the open door and
down the
corridor, bringing a chorus
of screams and shouts of alarm from the other
offices.

"Get through it," Richard yelled into
Jayme's ear, pushed himself off
her, and shoved her
towards the door. She tried to crawl, her shoes coming
off, the wind seeming to inflate her trouser legs so that she looked
like
Michelin woman, then dropped to her stomach as a fresh
gust sent
furniture again whirling around the
room. She rolled and screamed in
sheer horror as the front of her white
shirt became covered in blood.

"Oh, Jesus Christ!" Richard groaned, forcing
himself up, and leapt at
her
again. They went rolling over and over, through the doorway, helped
by the wind now. Men were running up the corridor, being
checked and
forced back by the
enormous force thrusting at them, but grouping
together
in an attempt to push the door shut.

"Julian,"
Jayme moaned. "Julian!"

Richard dragged her to her feet against the wall, hastily
checked that
the blood was not
hers; she was actually unhurt except for scratches and
bruises. He shouted at the men to wait, hurled himself
back into the
stricken office. Two
others came with him, and they seized Julian's arms
and half pulled him, half fell with him, through the door.
Then the door
was slammed shut,
and Richard knelt beside the injured man, his heart
seeming to slow; Julian's throat had been cut by a jagged
piece of flying
glass.