Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set (241 page)

By that time, since I’d stolen one of the yellow jackets and one of the hard hats all the rescuers were wearing, I’d gotten close enough to find two vampires, one of whom I knew, in the ruins of the check-in area, heavily overlaid by debris from the floors above. A big piece of wood survived to identify the reception desk. One of the vampires was very burned, and I had no idea if he’d survive it or not. The other vamp had hidden beneath the largest piece of wood, and only his feet and hands had been singed and blackened. Once I yelled for help, the vamps were covered with blankets. “We got a building two blocks away; we’re using it for the vampire repository,” said the dark-skinned ambulance driver who took the more seriously injured one, and I realized it was the same woman who’d taken Eric and Pam.

In addition to the vampires, I uncovered a barely alive Todd Donati. I spent a few moments with him until a stretcher got there. And I found, near to him, a dead maid. She’d been crushed.

I had a smell in my nose that just wouldn’t go away, and I hated it. It was coating my lungs inside, I thought, and I’d spend the rest of my life breathing it in and breathing it out. The odor was composed of burning building materials, scorched bodies, and disintegrating vampires. It was the smell of hatred.

I saw some things so awful I couldn’t even think about them then.

Suddenly, I didn’t feel I could search anymore. I had to sit down. I was drawn to a pile created by the chance arrangement of a large pipe and some drywall. I perched on it and wept. Then the whole pile shifted sideways, and I landed on the ground, still weeping.

I looked into the opening revealed by the shifted debris. Bill was crouched inside, half his face burned away. He was wearing the clothes I’d last seen him in the night before. I arched myself over him to keep the sun off, and he said, “Thanks,” through cracked and bloody lips. He kept slipping in and out of his comatose daytime sleep.

“Jesus God,” I said. “Come help!” I called, and saw two men start toward me with a blanket.

“I knew you’d find me,” Bill said, or did I imagine that?

I stayed hunched in the awkward position. There just wasn’t anything near enough to grab that would cover as much of him as I did. The smell was making me gag, but I stayed. He’d lasted this long only because he’d been covered by accident.

Though one fireman threw up, they covered him and took him away.

Then I saw another yellow-jacketed figure tear off across the debris field toward the ambulances as fast as anyone could move without breaking a leg. I got the impression of a live brain, and I recognized it at once. I scrambled over piles of rubble, following the signature of the brain of the man I wanted most to find. Quinn and Frannie lay half-buried under a pile of loose rubble. Frannie was unconscious, and she’d been bleeding from the head, but it had dried. Quinn was dazed but coming to full awareness. I could see that fresh water had cut a path in the dust on his face, and I realized the man who’d just dashed away had given Quinn some water to drink and was returning with stretchers for the two.

He tried to smile at me. I fell to my knees beside him. “We might have to change our plans, babe,” he said. “I may have to take care of Frannie for a week or two. Our mom’s not exactly Florence Nightingale.”

I tried not to cry, but it was like, once turned to “on,” I couldn’t tell my tear ducts to switch off. I wasn’t sobbing anymore, but I was trickling steadily. Stupid. “You do what you have to do,” I said. “You call me when you can. Okay?” I hated people who said “Okay?” all the time, like they were getting permission, but I couldn’t help that, either. “You’re alive; that’s all that matters.”

“Thanks to you,” he said. “If you hadn’t called, we’d be dead. Even the fire alarm might not have gotten us out of the room in time.”

I heard a groan from a few feet away, a breath on the air. Quinn heard it, too. I crawled away from him, pushing aside a large chunk of toilet and sink. There, covered with dust and debris, under several large bits of drywall, lay Andre, completely out of it. A quick glance told me he had several serious injuries. But none of them was bleeding. He would heal them all. Dammit.

“It’s Andre,” I told Quinn. “Hurt, but alive.” If my voice was grim, I felt grim. There was a nice, long wood splinter right by his leg, and I was so tempted. Andre was a threat to my freedom of will, to everything I enjoyed about my life. But I’d seen so much death that day already.

I crouched there beside him, hating him, but after all . . . I knew him. That should have made it easier, but it didn’t.

I duckwalked out of the little alcove where he lay, scuttled back to Quinn.

“Those guys are coming back to get us,” he told me, sounding stronger every minute. “You can leave now.”

“You want me to leave?”

His eyes were telling me something. I wasn’t reading it.

“Okay,” I said hesitantly. “I’ll go.”

“I’ve got help coming,” he said gently. “You could be finding someone else.”

“All right,” I said, not knowing how to take this, and pushed to my feet. I’d gone maybe two yards when I heard him begin to move. But after a moment of stillness, I kept walking.

I returned to a big van that had been brought in and parked close to the rescue command center. This yellow jacket had been a magic pass, but it might run out any minute. Someone would notice I was wearing bedroom slippers, and they were ripping up, since they’d hardly been intended for ruin-scrambling. A woman handed me a bottle of water from the van, and I opened it with unsteady hands. I drank and drank, and poured the rest of the water over my face and hands. Despite the chill in the air, it felt wonderful.

By then, two (or four, or six) hours must have passed since the first explosion. There were now scores of rescuers there who had equipment, machinery, blankets. I was casting around for someone who looked authoritative, intending to find out where the other human survivors had been taken, when a voice spoke in my head.

I’m so sorry.
I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

What?
I probably didn’t sound very interested.

That’s what I’ve been doing,
I told him.
But you’re right, together we’ll be stronger.
At the same time, I was so tired that something inside of me cringed at the thought of making further effort.
Of course we can,
I said.

If this pile of debris had been as horrifyingly huge as the Twin Towers, we couldn’t have done it. But this site was smaller and more contained, and if we could get anyone to believe us, we had a chance.

I found Barry close to the command center, and I took his grimy hand. He was younger than me, but now he didn’t look it, and I didn’t think he’d ever act it again. When I scanned the line of bodies on the grass of the little park, I saw Cecile, and I saw what might have been the maid I’d accosted in the hallway. There were a few flaking, vaguely manlike shapes that were disintegrating vampires. I could have known any of them, but it was impossible to tell.

Any humiliation would be a small thing to pay if we could save someone. So Barry and I prepared to be humiliated and mocked.

At first, it was hard to get anyone to listen. The professionals kept referring us to the casualty center or to one of the ambulances parked nearby ready to take survivors to one of Rhodes’s hospitals.

Finally, I was face-to-face with a thin, gray-haired man who listened to me without any expression on his face at all.

“I never thought I’d be rescuing vampires, either,” he said, as though that explained his decision, and maybe it did. “So, take these two men with you, and show ’em what you can do. You have fifteen minutes of these men’s valuable time. If you waste it, you might be killing someone.”

Barry had had the idea, but now he seemed to want me to speak for us. His face was blackened with smears of soot. We had a silent conference about the best way to go about our task, and at the end of it, I turned to the firemen and said, “Put us up in one of those bucket things.”

For a wonder, they did, without further argument. We were lifted out over the debris, and yes, we knew it was dangerous, and yes, we were prepared to take the consequences. Still holding hands, Barry and I shut our eyes and
searched
, flinging our minds open and outward.

“Move us left,” I said, and the fireman in the bucket with us gestured to the man in the cab of the machine. “Watch me,” I said, and he looked back. “Stop,” I said, and the bucket stopped. We searched again. “Directly below,” I said. “Right below here. It’s a woman named something Santiago.”

After a few minutes, a roar went up. They’d found her alive.

We were popular after that, and there were no more questions about how we did it, as long as we kept it up. Rescue people are all about rescuing. They were bringing dogs, and they were inserting microphones, but Barry and I were quicker and more articulate than the dogs, and more precise than the microphones. We found four more live people, and we found a man who died before they could get to him, a waiter named Art who loved his wife and suffered terribly right up until the end. Art was especially heart-breaking, because they were trying like hell to dig the guy out, and I had to tell them it was no good. Of course, they didn’t take my word for it; they kept excavating, but he had passed. By that time, the searchers were really excited about our ability and wanted us to work through the night, but Barry was failing and I wasn’t much better. Worse, dark was closing in.

“The vampires’ll be rising,” I reminded the fire chief. He nodded and looked at me for further explanation. “They’ll be hurt bad,” I said. He still didn’t get it. “They’ll need blood instantly, and they won’t have any control. I wouldn’t send any rescue workers out on the debris alone,” I said, and his face went blank with thought.

“You don’t think they’re all dead? Can’t you find them?”

“Well, actually, no. We can’t find vamps. Humans, yes. But not undead. Their brains don’t give off any, ah, waves. We’ve got to go now. Where are the survivors?”

“They’re all in the Thorne Building, right down there,” he said, pointing. “In the basement.” We turned to walk away. By this time, Barry had slung his arm around my shoulders, and not because he was feeling affectionate. He needed the support.

“Let me get your names and addresses, so the mayor can thank you,” the gray-haired man said, holding a pen and clipboard at the ready.

No!
Barry said, and my mouth snapped shut.

I shook my head. “We’re going to pass on that,” I said. I’d had a quick look in his head, and he was greedy for more of our help. Suddenly I understood why Barry had stopped me so abruptly, though my fellow telepath was so tired he couldn’t tell me himself. My refusal didn’t go over big.

“You’ll work for vamps, but you don’t want to stand and be counted as someone who helped on this terrible day?”

“Yes,” I answered. “That’s just about right.”

He wasn’t happy with me, and I thought for a minute he was going to force the issue: grab my wallet out of my pants, send me to jail, or something. But he reluctantly nodded his head and jerked it in the direction of the Thorne Building.

Someone will try to find out,
Barry said.
Someone will want to use us.

I sighed, and I hardly had the energy to take in more air. I nodded.
Yeah, someone will. If we go to the shelter, someone will be watching for us there, and they’ll ask for our names from someone who recognizes us, and after that, it’s only a matter of time.

I couldn’t think of a way to dodge going in there. We had to have help, we had to find our parties and discover how and when we could leave the city, and we had to find out who had lived and who hadn’t.

I patted my back pocket, and to my amazement, my cell phone was still in it and still had bars. I called Mr. Cataliades. If anyone besides me had come out of the Pyramid of Gizeh with a cell phone, the lawyer would be the one.

“Yes,” he said cautiously. “Miss St—”

“Shhh,” I said. “Don’t say my name out loud.” It was sheer paranoia talking.

“Very well.”

“We helped them out down here, and now they really want to get to know us better,” I said, feeling very clever for talking so guardedly. I was very tired. “Barry and I are outside the building where you are. We need to stay somewhere else. Too many people making lists in there, right?”

“That is a popular activity,” he said.

“You and Diantha okay?”

“She has not been found. We were separated.”

I didn’t speak for a few seconds. “I’m so sorry. Who were you holding when I saw them rescue you?”

“The queen. She is here, though badly injured. We can’t find Andre.”

He paused, and because I couldn’t help it, I said, “Who else?”

“Gervaise is dead. Eric, Pam, Bill . . . burned, but here. Cleo Babbitt is here. I haven’t seen Rasul.”

“Is Jake Purifoy there?”

“I haven’t seen him, either.”

“Because you might want to know he’s at least partially responsible if you do see him. He was in on the Fellowship plot.”

“Ah.” Mr. Cataliades registered that. “Oh, yes, I certainly did want to know that. Johan Glassport will be especially interested, since he has several broken ribs and a broken collar-bone. He’s very, very angry.” It said something about Johan Glassport’s viciousness, that Mr. Cataliades thought him capable of exacting as much vengeance as a vampire would. “How did you come to know there was a plot at all, Miss Sookie?”

I told the lawyer the story Clovache had told me; I figured now that she and Batanya had gone back to wherever they came from, that would be okay.