Her Name Will Be Faith (61 page)

"That
depends what you have, sister," Garcia leered at her before
staring
about him, mentally assessing her material as well as her physical
worth.

Alloan
stared at her, unsmiling. "We want you, for a start," he said.
"I owe you plenty,
remember?"

Jo licked her lips and
looked right and left. But now she was helpless; even the statuette was out of
reach. And anyway, there were two of them this time.

"I'm
gonna fuck the ass off you, you bitch," Alloan continued. "And
I promise you, it won't be
an act of love. I been dreaming of fucking you, ever since last time I was here
and you turned nasty on me. You feel like fucking her, too, Domingo?"

"Sure,"
his friend replied from the lounge. "But I feel like a drink,
more. Bring her in
here."

Alloan advanced on Jo.

"All
right," she said, trying to reject the blind panic clawing at her
brain. She was about to be
raped, twice, by these men. But she could
stand
that if it would save the children. As for what Alloan meant to do
to
her afterwards...

He caught her as she went
through the door, slid his arms round her waist, began to squeeze and fondle
her breasts. She wanted to kick him
but
didn't dare, watched Domingo at the bar, pouring himself neat
whisky, draining the glass in two gulps.
"Christ," he said, "I needed
that." He turned,
"You got food, sugar?"

"Yes,"
Jo nodded. Anything to keep them busy. "Let go of me." She
tried to shake off Alloan.
"Let me go."

His fingers scraped across
her flesh, but he released her.

"It'll have to be
cold," she told them. "There's no power."

"So
it'll be cold; just get it," Garcia said, sitting down. "You watch
her."

Jo
went into the kitchen, Alloan at her shoulder. She opened the icebox
, and he began to touch
her again, at her waist now, playing with her belt. "Let's get these pants
off," he said. "I want to look at your ass. I remember it, you know.
The sweetest little ass in town."

"Leave me
alone," she muttered, taking out ham and tomatoes and lettuce, opened the
kitchen drawer to find a knife, and had her wrists seized.

"Forget
it, baby," he said. "I know you. We'll eat with our fingers.
You got bread?"

"In that bin. If
you'll let me go..."

Still
holding her wrist, Alloan opened the bin and took out a loaf of
bread. "Take the
plates," he said.

She
took both plates into the lounge, and Garcia grabbed one and
started cramming food into
his mouth. "Christ!" he said. "I was hungry. And hell, we only
just made it, kid. Listen to that."

The
wind seemed even louder because now it was blowing directly at
the building instead of
coming from behind.

"Yeah."
Alloan grinned, and finished eating. "But I told you we'd be
snug here, Domingo.
Right?"

"Right."
Garcia stretched. "That feels better. Now what d'you say we
play with the dame a
little."

"Yeah," Alloan
said. "Yeah."

Jo had stood between them,
trying to make up her mind what to do, hoping that maybe they would fall asleep
after their meal – they certainly
looked
sufficiently beat up, with their wet clothes torn and disheveled,
to
need sleep. She was taken by surprise when Alloan threw his arms round her
waist and stretched her across his knees on the settee. She
cried out and struck at him, and he laughed and
caught her wrists. "She's
a fighter," he said.

"I like them best.
You hold her arms." Garcia got up.

Jo strained and twisted, but Alloan merely moved from
beneath her
and
then knelt, one hand on each wrist, pinning her to the settee. Her
legs flopped away from it, and she kicked at
Garcia, but he laughed and
knelt beside her
to unfasten her belt. "Let's see what you got in there,"
he
said, and then jerked his head. "Holy shit!"

The outer door had burst
open before the force of the wind, and as the
lobby
door had been left ajar, an almost solid mass of air rushed into the apartment.
Jo heard a tremendous crack from behind her and knew that
the picture
window had at last gone. She also knew what was going to happen next,
instinctively.

Garcia
had released her and got to his feet. "Shut that goddamned..."
he was shouting, when the
wind picked him up and lifted him right over the back of the settee. He gave a
despairing shriek as he was carried to the huge, empty window and gazed at
nothing but space.

Alloan
had released her wrists to turn and look at the door and the
wind caught him in turn.
He fell over the back of the settee with a shout of dismay. Jo, already half on
the floor, lay against the heavy piece of furniture and felt it move, even as
she flattened against it, all the breath being crushed from her body. She heard
Alloan scream again and again, the last scream being a despairing wail. But now
the settee was moving
with increasing
speed, carrying her with it as she threw her arms around
as much of it
as she could hold. She shrieked, and again as she left the floor, and then the
gust slackened and the settee crashed into the wall beneath the window, causing
her to release the springs and fall on her back, gasping and weeping.

"Mom!" Owen Michael was
shouting from the bathroom. "Mom!"

"Get back inside," Jo shouted. "Bolt
the door."

She
struggled to her feet; the wind was still strong, but she could move
against
it until the next big gust. She drove herself forward, into the
lobby.
The outer door had only been slammed to, not bolted. The Yale
lock
had been torn from the wood, as had the ordinary lock. But the three
bolts and the chain were
still intact, and the door looked solid enough. Exerting all her strength,
moaning and crying, she slowly forced it shut,
shot the bolts, fixed the chain. The apartment was still a turmoil of
wind, gusting in through the broken window; bottles were swept out of the bar,
furniture thrown left and right, pictures torn from walls; from the kitchen
she again heard the sound of shattering glass and
crockery. But she could
move, and regain the inner corridor, shutting
every door behind her. She
banged on the
bathroom door, and Owen Michael let her in. She collapsed
between the two children, and they gazed at her cut
lip and bruised
hands.

"Who was it,
Mom?" Owen Michael asked.

"Nobody," Jo gasped. "He went out
again."

Tootsie
and Lila sat on the kitchen floor huddled against the cooker.
During the lull they had
managed to crawl back from the lounge door to
the
archway into the kitchen where they were slightly more protected
from the wind and the rain and the flying debris.
Tootsie sobbed occasion
ally while Lila swore, complaining that she
had pulled a muscle in her
chest trying to
open that damned door. They had draped dishtowels over
their shoulders
but that didn't stop them from shivering. They were both soaked to the skin.

Then
the wind started again, louder than before with the window gone.
It was impossible to speak
above the continuous deafening noise, and neither had any idea how long they
had sat there – it seemed like forever.

Lila started to pant and
gasp. The pain in her chest was spreading, tightening, clutching her throat and
sending rivers of agony into her left
shoulder
and down through her elbow. She hugged Tootsie as close as
she could.

The
younger sister stared in horror as air rattled in Lila's throat and
her
back arched in agony. She gazed helplessly at the struggle for breath,
put both arms round her
sister and tried to comfort her.

She
held her for several more hours – long after the body had gone
limp
and cold. Lila was her only companion, even if she was dead. Tootsie
continued to hold her
while the cracks, which had commenced in the
basement
as the tidal surge had smashed its way in, spread slowly
upwards, while the already weakened building was
struck time and again
by lightning
and the 200-mile-an-hour winds rocked it on its foundations,
until, finally, it all came crashing down,
disintegrating into a massive pile
of rubble.

Jo could hardly believe
her ears. Having actually fallen into an exhausted sleep on the bathroom floor,
she awoke with a start when the shrieking, howling, crashing, faded; the noise
of the wind was still tremendous, but
the
thunder was only a distant growl, and the drumming rain had ceased.

The children were still
asleep, even more exhausted than herself. Cautiously she opened the bathroom
door, stepped into the corridor and
made her
way through the darkness into the shattered shambles that had
been her
lounge… able to see the damage because the room was fantastically illuminated
by a magnificent full moon which dipped in and out of the thinning clouds
racing across the sky above Manhattan. She
saw
that the apartment door had been blown open again, the bolts forced
out
of the wood, the entire structure torn from its hinges – yet in the
bathroom they had survived. She clung to the
lounge door, still intact,
and
allowed the wind, now blowing something above gale force but
seeming no more than refreshingly cool, to play
over her, while she looked out through the shattered picture window, shuddering
as she remembered
those traumatic moments only a few hours before. The
flickering moonlight did not reach below the rooftops, and at this level
the city appeared almost normal.

But it would never be
normal again. And perhaps, for her less than anyone.

She returned to the
bathroom, poured herself a cup of coffee from the last of the many vacuum
flasks they had filled earlier, returned to the
lounge, listening, to slowly rising sounds, as other people realized
they
had also survived. They were
mostly unhappy sounds, wails and screams,
cries for help, drifting up
from the street. She even thought she heard several gunshots, to suggest the
police were already having trouble with looters.

Then she heard a noise
closer at hand. There was someone in the
corridor
outside the apartment, moving slowly, laboriously, and cau
tiously
towards her.

Her
blood seemed to freeze – there was no way she could keep an
intruder out, and this
time there would be no wind to save her. She ran into the kitchen to find the
carving knife, any knife, but the kitchen had
been
gutted by the wind, and she could find nothing in the gloom. She
turned,
panting, and watched a man's frame in the doorway.

"Jo?" he
whispered. "Jo, are you alive? For God's sake, Jo!"

"Richard!" she screamed,
and hurled herself into his arms."Oh,
Richard!"

He hugged her close. "Sorry I
took so long to get here, darling," he
said.
"I've been trying… God, I've been trying."

She stood away from him,
stared at him in the moonlight. His jacket had been torn off and his tie, his
shirt was buttonless and open to the
waist.
His hair was scattered and there were cuts and bruises on his face as well as
his chest; his left arm hung awkwardly where he had fallen on it. And there was
blood, all over him, but mainly on his torn trouser legs:
"Oh, my
God!" she cried. "You're hurt!"

"Broken
glass, mainly," he said. "The street is ankle deep in it. After
I
was blown down the avenue and knocked out, I crawled part of the way
on my hands and knees
– I think there's still quite a lot in there."