Southern Cross (35 page)

I
spotted the first explosives at about the same time I spotted the first guards,
posted outside the double doors of an auditorium. I ducked into an unlocked
room, my heart hammering, and crouched low while I worked on an alternate plan.

The
first thing I noticed about the office was the smell. It wasn’t a good one:
human waste and the underlying, sweet metallic scent of fresh blood. The office
was dark, but light filtered in from a window in the upper half of the door. A
wash of pale yellow illuminated a tidy, carpeted office with three desks and a
coffeemaker in the corner. Two bodies lay slumped together in the corner.

In
the corridor, I could hear footsteps approaching. Doors opened and then slammed
shut again. Jenny shouted to me with growing desperation, drawing closer by the
second.

I
ignored the bodies in the corner and sought a hiding place, opting for the desk
in the furthest corner of the room. I bolted for it, nearly there when my foot
caught on something warm and solid and I sprawled forward.

I got
back up on my hands and knees, winded. Beside me, lying on his belly with his
eyes vacant and the color gone from his face, was Dr. Munjoy. His arm was up,
as though he’d died mid-crawl. His fist was clenched. Jenny’s footsteps were
just outside the door. I crawled past the professor and dove under the desk
just as Jenny opened the door.

She
flipped the light on. I sat with my knees up to my chin in the narrow space
under the desk, my heart beating a rhythm I could feel to my toes. From the
small space below the desk, I could see her shoes—boots, actually. Black
leather with a low heel, laced to her knee. Perfect for the psychotic
dominatrix in your life. She stayed at the door for a minute, surveying the
scene.

“Jenny!
If we’re leaving, we gotta go now!” I heard The Giant say.

“I’ll
be right there,” she said. The panic was gone from her voice. I thought she was
leaving.

She
wasn’t.

Instead,
I watched as she walked across the floor. She stepped over Munjoy’s body
without hesitation, walked around the desk, and pushed the chair out of the
way. She leveled her gun directly at my head, her eyes bright.

“Hello
there,” she said softly. There was a grin on her full lips. “I thought I might
find you here.”

“Jenny!”
The Giant called from the doorway. Jenny looked at me one more time, lowered
her gun, and winked.

“See
ya in hell, slick.”

She
turned on her heel and walked back to the door. Turned out the lights.

And
locked the door behind her when she left.

“Now?”
Casey asked.

Danny nodded. He kicked
the seat in front of him gently and Biggie turned around. They exchanged a
quick smile. “Go,” Danny mouthed to him.

“Will
do,” Biggie mouthed back. “Good luck.”

That
set off a chain reaction as everybody got the cue.

Zip
ties weren’t hard to get out of, it turned out—especially if you weren’t alone.
Biggie showed everybody how you just used your thumbnail to shim the locking
piece and slide your partner free. Then you returned the favor, and presto, no
more plastic tearing into your wrists.

Danny
maneuvered himself back-to Casey and they sat up enough to touch hands over the
armrests. He went first, every passing second speeding by like a freight train.

Reverend
Barnel had everybody in their seats praying. All the kids were crying by now,
and it seemed to Danny that the reverend’s plan wasn’t as popular as he might
have thought. Because as far as Danny could see, about half the congregation
was talking about how maybe it wasn’t their time after all, and couldn’t they
just get those fellas with the guns to step off and go about this another way?

“This
is the path the Almighty has set for us,” the reverend hollered.

“This
is the path you set for us, you damn fool,” Sally Woodruff hollered back. A few
of the people in the congregation hollered back at her, but it didn’t look like
everybody thought Sally was so off the mark.

Danny
couldn’t get a grip on the plastic. In front of him, Biggie freed one of the
rednecks, who turned in his seat to help him.

“Now,
I want you all to take these cups representing the blood of the lamb,” Reverend
Barnel said.

Only
about a quarter of the people did. Everybody in the place was crying and
praying. Danny watched a couple of little boys hanging onto their mama, their
faces red from wailing. The reverend stayed strong, ignoring everybody’s
complaints.

Danny’s
finger finally found the tiny hole locking the zip tie in place. He slid his
thumbnail in. They had one minute.

“Drink
it down, brothers and sisters,” Reverend Barnel hollered. “Drink it down, and
know that our pain has ended.”

A man
in the front row sobbed. About twenty people toward the front tipped their cups
up, draining the blood of the lamb.

Casey’s
zip tie came loose. Another dozen people tried to get their kids to drink. A
little girl threw hers on the ground and started screaming, her face pink like
Ida’s used to get when she was throwing a tantrum.

Casey’s
tie slid off her wrist.

She
was free.

My
hands were slick with sweat and blood and shaking as bad as Biggie’s by the
time I got the door unlocked and let myself back out into the hallway.

It
was deserted.

The
music from WKRO had long since stopped. In its place, I could hear Barnel
talking—shouting, actually, in his best fire-and-brimstone tenor. The source
was obvious: It came from behind double doors with a plaque beside them reading
KILDEER AUDITORIUM in bold letters. I could hear children crying and people
wailing through the walls.

I
looked at my watch:

Fifteen
seconds.

I
thought of Solomon; of all the time I’d wasted that I wasn’t getting back.
There were a hundred places I wanted to take her, a thousand things I wanted to
say. When she’s pissed, Erin gets this fire in her eye that undoes me in ways
I’m almost ashamed to admit to. I would have given anything and everything to
see that fire again. I wanted to hear her laugh; watch her sleep... map every
curve, every slope, every delicate detail of her body, until night gave way to
morning and we slept tangled in one another, oblivious to the world.

And
then I wanted to start all over again.

It
didn’t matter what I wanted, though: I’d officially gotten my last chance to
screw things up.

The
end was here.

“No
one’s gotten in there at all?” I asked Juarez. He looked grim. We were flying
over Smithfield now. Below, I could see ambulances and flashing lights, fire
trucks and cop cars. Rick was hanging onto his seat so hard his knuckles were
white.

My
eyes were dry. It felt like I was living in some kind of nightmare—like there
was no way to move, nowhere to go. I watched as the clock struck midnight.

No
one said anything.

Thirty
seconds passed.

Forty-five.

Juarez
held a rosary in his right hand. He looked up. “Maybe they
didn’t—”

And
the world exploded.

The
helicopter canted far to the left from the force of the blast, the pilot losing
control for a second. Orange balls of flame burst into the air, debris falling
in every direction. A second blast followed  maybe five seconds later, rocking
us again. Rick closed his eyes. Blaze swore softly, her eyes haunted in the way
of those who have seen tragedy before, and know all too well what it means.

I
kept my eyes on the ground, watching the chaos below.

“How
soon ‘til we land?” I asked, my voice flat.

No
one answered.

The
heat was the worst part. I remembered interviewing guys in a burn unit in
Fallujah years ago, but I never really understood what they were telling me
until the flames were raging just above my head and I could feel my shirt
melting into my back. I crawled toward the auditorium, screams splitting the
air over the roar of the fire.

The
door was hot to the touch. I took my shirt off, wrapped it around my hands, and
pushed.

Inside
was the stuff of nightmares: images that will never leave me. Boy soldiers lay
fallen by their rifles, some of them already burning. All of them dead, as far
as I could see. Children screamed. The auditorium was ablaze. I spotted Barnel
seated on the floor of the stage, inert, the flames dancing closer. He sat with
his back against the lectern, eyes half open.

He
was smiling.

I
crawled into the fray, searching for a sign of our group, but the smoke was
thick and the noise was deafening and the flames were everywhere.

And
then, I spotted a familiar face.

Three
aisles away, George was crawling beside a little girl. I got to my feet,
staying low, and ran to him. The left side of his face was burned, but not as
badly as I might have expected. And he was alive.

“Danny
says there’s a way out behind the stage,” he rasped. The little girl in his
arms was silent, her eyes wide with shock.

“Where
is he?” I shouted.

“I
don’t know,” George said. He looked frail and terrifyingly mortal. I nodded to
the girl.

“Get
her out,” I said. “I’ll find Danny.”

I
watched him for only a second before I turned back.

I
found Biggie with two little boys clinging for dear life to a burning chair,
trying to get away from him. When he turned to look at me, it was clear why
they were terrified. His face and body were black. Charred.

“Diggs!
Help me.” His voice wasn’t even human. “They won’t go. I can’t get ‘em to go.”

There
was a madness to his eyes, borne of failure and pain and imminent death.

“It’s
all right,” I said. “I’ve got them.”

Biggie
let them go. He smiled at me—another image I’ll never escape. “It’s gotta mean
somethin’, ain’t it?” he asked me. “A lifetime screwin’ up at every turn...” He
lay down, just out of the aisle. “Save them boys, huh, Diggs? Don’t let me
down.”

“I
won’t.” When he made no more to go, I hesitated. “Come on, Biggie—it’s not much
farther. Get up, and we’ll get you out of here.”

He
just laughed. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere. It’s all done. Now, you get the hell out
o’ here with them kids. Save somebody for me.” The boys were screaming in
terror now; there wasn’t a choice. Not really. As I was leaving him, Biggie
looked at me once more with that mad light shining in his eyes. “Pain, boy,” he
said. “It’s all a distraction. Ain’t nothin’ to me.”

He
didn’t get up again.  

I
urged the boys forward, making sure they stayed on their hands and knees. When
we reached the bottom of the aisle, I prodded them to keep going onto the
stage. Which was on fire, so not an entirely easy sell on my part. One of the
boys began to cry. I picked him up and took the other by the hand. The stage
curtains were ablaze, but I could see movement behind them: people. When the
stage door out back was in sight—open, a clear black night shining through—I gave
the boys a little push.

“Go
on!” I said. “You’ll be safe there. Somebody will get you.”

They
ran.

I
remained there for a second on hands and knees, thinking of Solomon, and took a
steady, burning breath.

I
turned around and went back.

“We
can’t send anyone into that,” a fireman told me. We were surrounded by
emergency personnel and at least forty survivors with varying degrees of burns
and injuries. George was among them, as well as more than a dozen kids.

Danny
and Casey weren’t. Neither was Diggs.

The
building was engulfed in flames—they rose high into the sky, the smoke so thick
it was all but impossible to breathe. I thought of Payson Isle and my father;
of Mitch Cameron and Isaac Payson and Reverend Barnel.

But
mostly, I thought of Diggs.

“Danny’s
still in there?” Rick asked. George was on a gurney with an oxygen mask over
his mouth and nose. He nodded, eyes haunted. He pulled the mask away from his
face.

“Diggs
is looking for ‘em,” he rasped. My heart stuttered. 

“He’s
still alive, then?” I asked.

George
nodded. I turned back to the fireman.

“There
are still survivors in there,” I insisted.

“It’s
too unstable. I’m sorry, ma’am, but they did a hell of a job wiring this thing.
They must’ve misjudged something because they missed that one exit, but this
thing won’t stay up for long. The whole building could come down anytime.”

“And
what the hell are we supposed to do in the meantime—let them burn?”

He
looked genuinely tortured. I didn’t care. He shook his head. “I’ll talk to my
men; see what we can do. In the meantime, you might wanna say a prayer.”