Her Name Will Be Faith (60 page)

The principal horror was
Julian's body, lying beneath a sheet on the studio floor, with the room around
him packed with frightened people –
even
if the generator kept the air-conditioning going. The Mayor had
said, justifiably enough, that the most acute
danger was that of drowning,
that
those in buildings situated more than fifty feet above water level
would be physically safe, whatever damage their
dwellings or offices
might have to suffer. Julian had been in such a
building, and the storm
had not even
reached its height when he died. If only they had evacuated
the offices
a few minutes earlier – but not even Richard had envisaged such a tragedy.

The thought of that
happening to Jo was unbearable. He had tried to reach her by phone several
times, but without success; now the phones
were
all dead. Then, once he could no longer fulfill his role as a weatherman
he
had thought of attempting to get to her… it was only a few blocks. But he had
known that no one could survive, much less move on those streets. So he had
waited, and now… others had heard it too. Heads began to raise as a huge,
deathly stillness overtook the afternoon; the sudden cessation of the almost
intolerable racket with which they had existed for so long was stunning. People
stared at each other in bewilderment, and when they spoke, they shouted,
as they had had to do all
morning, and then
hastily dropped their voices to whispers. But they
were euphoric
whispers; could the catastrophe be over?

"Not quite,"
Richard told them. "This is the eye of the storm. It was
travelling so quickly last time we had an update
that it's not likely to last
more than half an hour at the outside. Then
the wind is going to blow
again, just as
hard as before, only from the other direction, west, instead of east. But we're
winning. We know the storm is passing through; things
can only get better from here on. And with the wind
in the west that
water level is going
to get pushed back down to normal pretty rapidly.
So just sit tight for another few hours, and we'll
all be able to
leave."

Reassured, they were
chatting now. Richard went over to Jayme, who sat on the floor staring into
space; Julian had been a special friend. "Listen," he said in her
ear. "I'm leaving now. If anyone wants to know
where I've gone, tell them I'm trying to find out what's happening out
there,
and that I'll be back. But keep convincing them they're better off here than
anywhere else, at least until the wind has dropped."

For
a moment she just looked at him, eyes blank. Then her head jerked.
"Going out?
Where?"

"I must get to Mrs
Donnelly. She's alone in her apartment with her children… God knows what they
must have gone through."

"Mrs
Donnelly..." she blinked at him, then gave a faint smile.
"You and her? Well,
what do you know. But you can't go outside. When the storm comes back you'll be
killed."

"I reckon I have time
to make it, just. I have to go, Jayme. So, see you tomorrow."

"Tomorrow!" Her
eyes were wide. That wasn't a thinkable thought.

Richard let himself out of
one of the doors leading into a side corridor.
The utter silence of the building outside the studio was uncanny. He
didn't want to chance the elevators just in case
the generator failed or the
mechanism had been damaged, instead took the
stone stairs, hurrying down, panting less with exertion than apprehension.

At
the bottom the street doors were closed, but he leaned on the bar and stepped
out, blinking in the sudden bright daylight, looking up at
the
blue sky above him, and then gasping at the destruction to either
side. It was some hours
since the breaking of the office window, and he had not looked out since. Now
he gazed at automobiles tumbled one on top of the other, trees down in every
direction; broken glass crackled beneath his shoes, water flowed everywhere
– if the area was above any possible flooding from the sea, it had
certainly been flooded by the fantastically heavy rainfall which had been
unable to run off through the waterlogged sewers.

He hurried along the
avenue, meaning to turn to the right when he got to 48th Street, picking his
way through the debris, listening to sounds of
returning life, windows being thrown open, people calling to each other…
he hoped they knew that this respite was only
going to be of the most
temporary kind. But he could no longer help
anyone, nor did he want to help anyone, save Jo. His mind was clouded with fear
– 48th Street was only just on the 50-foot mark, and although he was
certain that no sea could really have reached it, he could not stop his
imagination doing its worst.

He
was still several blocks short when the daylight faded, and he looked
up in time to be blinded
by a vivid flash of lightning, accompanied simultaneously by an ear-splitting
clap of thunder. The blue sky had disappeared, and instead the black clouds
were back, and with them, sudden teeming rain and the enormous roaring of the
hurricane wind.

Richard
knew he had to reach the nearest street, where he reckoned he
would obtain a lee. But
crossing the intersection was going to be no easy task as the wind picked him
up and sent him sprawling. He made no
attempt
to rise, clung to the sidewalk and began to inch his way to a
pile-up of
automobiles on the corner, only to be caught by another gust and sent rolling,
splashing through the water running out of the gutters. He came to rest against
an uprooted tree, held on to it, and worked his
way once again towards the hopeful shelter of the automobiles. These
were
shuddering and threatening to break loose from each other with every gust, but
for the most part were so tightly crushed together they acted as a windbreak,
although even as he inched his way along beside
them one was picked up and hurled over his head, to land some fifty
feet
farther down the avenue, and the
whole pile threatened to disintegrate
on top of him.

He
got up and made a dash for the street, and was thrown down again,
battered and bruised,
against a bent railing which had once surrounded
a trashcan. He lay there, watching water bubbling out of a sewer hole
only inches
from his face. It would
be damned silly to lie there and drown
on Fifth Avenue, he thought,
pushed himself up, and once again fought his way forward.

"What's in that box,
Mom?" Owen Michael asked, indicating the heap
dumped in the shower stall, topped by an old cardboard box.

"Photos, waiting to
be fixed in those albums."

"Can
we see well enough in this light to do them?" The power had
been gone some while and
they were trying to economize, using only one candle.

"Let's
try." It would help occupy their minds, an alternative to rack
ing her brain to invent
children's stories: no drama could compete with the current destruction of
their city.

Together
they knelt on the bathroom rug and set the photos out
in neat piles.

"That's
an awful one of you skiing, Mom." Tamsin held up a shot of
Jo slithering down a
slope, a flurry of skis and snow in the air.

"What
about this one of you and Owen Michael under water, last
year?"

Owen
Michael grabbed it. "Heck, I don't recall that. What camera
were you using?"

Every few moments they
held their breaths, listening, mentally and physically shaken, even shut away
in their inner sanctum.

The
sudden silence took them completely by surprise. "Holy shit!"
Owen Michael exclaimed.
"What's happening?"

"It's the eye,"
Tamsin said, trying to control the quivering of her lower lip. "We had it
in Eleuthera."

"You
mean it's done? It's over?" Owen Michael shouted, scrambling
to his feet.

"No, it's not
done," Jo told him. "Don't open the door."

"It'll start
again," Tamsin said, her voice containing a sob as she remembered that
terrible night. "Worse than before."

"But..."
Owen Michael looked from her to his mother. "It must
mean something good."

"Sure
it does. It means we're halfway through," Jo told him. "That
has to be good. Now sit
down and relax."

Reluctantly
Owen Michael sat down again. "Do you reckon Marcia
and
Benny will have been flooded out?" he asked. "Greenwich Village
isn't 50 feet above sea
level, is it?"

"No.
They may have been flooded. But they'll have left town. I think
they
must have gone away yesterday." Jo didn't want to think about
Marcia and Benny. They had
to be safe. Surely.

"What about the
cottage?" Tamsin's face was screwed up with worry, looking for all the
world like a little old  lady.

Jo put an arm round her.
"That'll be all right. It's completely shuttered up and, anyway, Bognor is
twenty miles from the sea. And on a hill. No problem there."

"But
they'll have a lot of wind," Owen Michael went on, pessimistically.
"What if a tree falls
and smashes through the roof?"

Jo
gave him a warning frown over Tamsin's head; the poor child
was quite upset enough.
"I'm sure..." she began, then checked, listening.

"That was a knock on
the door," he said. "I know it was."

"There it is
again," Tamsin said. "There's someone there, wanting to come
in."

Jo
leapt to her feet. Richard! He'd come during the eye. Thank God
he was
safe. But she hadn't told the children he might be joining them,
so she said, "I'll
see who it is."

"Are you sure it's
safe, Mom?" Owen Michael cautioned.

"I'll
be careful. But listen, you bolt the door behind me, just in case
the wind gets up before
I'm back."

"Mom..."
he said uneasily, but she had already opened the bathroom
door and stepped into the
corridor.

Everything was amazingly
quiet. "Bolt it now," she called through the door as she closed it
behind her. As soon as she heard the bolt slip into place she hurried eagerly
across the lounge. It was such a relief to know Richard was here; she couldn't
wait to hold him in her arms.

And
he was only just in time. The lounge had seemed startlingly bright
compared with the enclosed
bathroom, but before she could reach the main door the room was darkening and
there was a flash of lightning
which made
her gasp, while immediately huge drops of rain began
slashing at the
window again.

"Richard!"
she shouted, running into the lobby to release the bolts,
pull
the chain free and swing open the heavy, security door… to
gasp
in horror. It wasn't Richard. It was Stuart Alloan. And another
man.

"Hi, there,"
Alloan said with a sneer. "My lucky day. I was afraid you might've gotten
away."

The wind had returned,
whistling up the stairwell and into the apartment. Breathless with shock,
Jo staggered back against the lobby wall,
held
there, momentarily, by the force of the sudden gust. If only she'd had
time to slam the door in their faces… but they
had been blown into the
lobby with her.

"Let's
get this goddamned door closed," the second man shouted, and
it took the strength of
both men to swing it back on to the latch.

It gave Jo a few moments
in which to recover her breath… and her
senses.
She could see at a glance that this new man, small and dark with
a vicious curl to his lip, would probably prove to
be as evil as Alloan.
Her legs felt
weak, but she had to keep her head. "What do you want?"
she
asked, trying to sound calm, praying that the children would remain locked in
the bathroom, no matter what happened out here.