The Obsidian Blade (12 page)

It all felt so real.

One, two, three . . . He would count to ten.

At the count of seven, Tucker became aware of a distant roar, growing rapidly louder. He opened his eyes and ran to the railing. An airplane, coming in low and astonishingly fast, was heading directly for the other building. Tucker watched it disappear behind the building. For one splinter of an instant he thought the plane had missed, then came a ripping, thudding explosion. A ball of flame blew out the side of the building. Less than a second later the shock wave hit, knocking Tucker back from the railing. The flames were followed by tremendous bloated cauliflowers of black smoke writhing and twisting skyward.

Tucker jumped up and ran, following the railing around the edge of the platform, getting as far away from the burning building as he could. The choking black cloud quickly overtook him. He stopped running, pulled the neck of his T-shirt up over his mouth, and forced himself to think. He was sure about where he was now, even though it was impossible. The World Trade Center. Nine eleven. Tucker was too young to remember that day, but he had seen the videos.

He had to get off. There had to be an elevator or a staircase someplace. Maybe he had time to get down before the second plane hit. He plunged forward, slitting his eyes against the stinging smoke. A clearing in the haze appeared; Tucker used the momentary respite to take several deep breaths. The platform turned to the left. He spotted an exit sign with an arrow pointing straight ahead. Another wave of dense smoke rolled over him, but he kept running, blinded — until he collided with something.

Something big. Tucker bounced off and fell back, hearing a gruff, startled exclamation.

Through the smoke, Tucker could see a large figure dressed in black standing over him. Tucker jumped up, relieved to find he was not alone.

“We have to get down!” he shouted.

“Tell me something I don’t know, kid,” the man said.

Tucker knew that voice.

“Kosh?”

The smoke thinned. Kosh Feye stood before him, his bright-blue eyes glowing in the smoke-muted sunlight.

“You know me?” Kosh grabbed the front of Tucker’s T-shirt. “Who are you?”

“You
know
who I am!”

Kosh stared hard at him for three heartbeats. He looked different. Younger. His nose wasn’t all pushed to the side, and his eyebrows were solid, thick, and jet black.

“I’ve seen you someplace,” Kosh said.

“Yeah, like this morning.”

Kosh let go of Tucker’s shirt and shook his head. “Yeah, right. Whatever. Listen, kid — whoever you are — the elevators are shut down, and the doors to the escalators are locked. I’ve been trying to get out of this nightmare for ten minutes.” Another cloud of oily smoke rolled over them. Tucker crouched, getting down low so he could breathe. Kosh stared at him, unaffected by the smoke. “How’d you get here?”

“I don’t know. I was on your roof —”

“
My
roof? What were you —?”

“And I saw this, like, fuzzy place in the air, and it slurped me up.”

“Slurped?”

“That’s what it felt like.”

“I thought it felt more like being shot out of a cannon.”

“You went through too?”

“I was putting up my new weather vane. And
pow,
I end up here. You know where we are, don’t you?”

“The World Trade Center?”

“Right. September eleven. But that’s impossible. The towers fell last week.”

“Last week? It was
years
ago.”

“Years? You got a pretty weak grasp of recent history, kid. It happened last Tuesday.”

“If it happened last Tuesday, then how can we be standing here now?”

“You got me. All I know is, if we don’t wake up from this nightmare soon, we aren’t going to wake up at all. There were two of them, you know. Two planes. The second plane hit about twenty minutes after the first one. How long you figure it’s been? Ten, fifteen minutes?”

“Maybe we’re here for a reason,” Tucker said. “Maybe we can do something. Warn everybody to get out?”

“Kid, there isn’t a single person in either of these buildings who isn’t already trying to get out.”

“But — we can’t just have come here to
die.
”

“Maybe we’re
already
dead.”

“Not yet,” Tucker said, thinking about the disk. Maybe it was still there. Maybe it worked both ways. “I might know a way off.”

“What, jump? No thanks.”

“We can go back the way we came,” Tucker said. “That thing that brought us here, if we can find it, maybe it’ll take us back.”

“Thing? I didn’t see any
thing.
”

“It’s like a disk. I saw it. Come on!” They followed the railing around the observation deck. The wind had shifted, blowing the smoke across the far side of the building. Tucker was walking with his head tipped back, looking for the disk. He stopped.

“There.”

“Where?”

Tucker pointed up.

“I don’t see anything,” Kosh said.

It was faint, but Tucker could see it: a disk-shaped slice of thicker, denser, fuzzier air.

Tucker grabbed Kosh’s sleeve and pulled him to a spot directly beneath it. “Reach straight up, as high as you can.”

Kosh raised his arm. The tips of his fingers came to within a few inches of the bottom of the circle.

“You’re almost touching it,” Tucker said.

“I feel —” Kosh jerked his hand back. “Something grabbed at my fingers!”

“Can you see it? You have to focus on it just right.”

Kosh backed up a few steps, squinting. “Like a big fuzzy circle?”

“That’s it.”

“And you think that’s how we got here?”

“All we got to do is get up there and go through. I think.”

Kosh was gazing off to the west, across the Hudson River, where a silver speck glittered just above the horizon.

“Flight 175, right on schedule,” he said.

“Your stepladder!” Tucker said.

“Stepladder?” Kosh’s eyes were fixed on the approaching jetliner.

“You got a stepladder in the barn, right?”

“So?”

“Lift me up. I’ll send you back a ladder so you can get up there.”

“You’re talking to a dead man,” said Kosh. “Say your prayers, kid. Once that plane hits, it won’t be long before this thing goes down.”

“How long?”

Kosh shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe half an hour?”

Tucker grabbed Kosh’s arm. “Then we don’t have much time. Boost me up!”

Kosh looked down at him.

“Come
on
!”

Kosh lifted Tucker onto his shoulders.

“Higher,” said Tucker. He got one foot on Kosh’s right shoulder as Kosh pushed up on his buttocks. He stood, shakily, one foot on each of Kosh’s broad shoulders, looking directly into the circle of mist.

“Here it comes,” said Kosh. “Hang on, kid.”

“Look for the ladder,” Tucker said.

There was an ear-crushing roar, the building shuddered and swayed, and Tucker dove headfirst into the disk.

T
UCKER HIT THE BARN ROOF AND FELT HIMSELF
start to slide. His right hand closed around something — one of the support brackets for the weather vane. He hung on, waiting a few seconds for his heart to slow. His eardrums felt as if they had been pierced by needles. Tucker swallowed, and his ears popped as the pressure equalized. He pulled himself back onto the ridge. The surface of the disk wavered and swam hungrily. The ghosts he had seen before were gone. He ducked under the disk and ran along the ridge. Seconds later, he was scrambling down the rungs.

After being on top of the World Trade Center, forty feet up the side of a barn was nothing. He hit the ground running. Kosh’s extension ladder was leaning against the south wall. That wouldn’t work — he needed the stepladder, which could stand by itself, so Kosh could use it to reach the disk. He ran inside and climbed the spiral staircase to the top floor, and found the six-foot aluminum stepladder next to a pile of studs.

The ladder wasn’t heavy, but it was awkward. He felt as if he was moving in slow motion as he dragged it down the spiral staircase. Once outside, he started up the iron rungs with the stepladder digging painfully into his shoulder. Halfway up, his leg cramped. He rested the bottom of the ladder on a rung and held it there with one hand while he shook out his leg, willing the calf muscle to relax.

Plenty of time,
he told himself, not knowing if it was true. He continued up the side of the barn, the ladder clanking over the iron rungs.

Once he reached the top, he had to get the stepladder over his shoulder and onto the roof. It had seemed so light when he first picked it up; now it weighed a ton. He tried to lift it over his head one-handed but couldn’t. He needed three hands — one to hang on to the ladder, and two to pull himself onto the roof.

Tucker spewed out a string of expletives he had recently learned from Kosh. It didn’t help. He took his right foot off the rung and tried to swing the ladder between himself and the barn, his idea being to somehow hang it from one of the rungs, but the ladder slipped from his grip, hit his left ankle, and left him dangling by one hand as it crashed to the ground.

Grabbing the railing with his other hand, Tucker found the rungs with his feet. His heart was banging so hard, he could feel it in his throat. He tried to move, to unclench his hands from the rails. It took some time — seconds that felt like hours — but eventually he was able to climb back down.

The aluminum ladder was bent, but not too badly. It was still usable. He ran to Kosh’s workshop and located a coil of nylon rope. He tied one end to the ladder and the other to his belt, then again scaled the side of the barn — just like dragging the heavy rope up the cottonwood at Hardy Lake. When he reached the top, he pulled the stepladder up hand-over-hand, then dragged it over the edge and onto the roof. But the disk was gone.

How could it be
gone
? He ran along the ridge to where the disk had been. Had it moved? He looked around frantically but saw nothing.

“No!” he shouted.

As if someone had heard his cry, the air before him wavered and thickened. Tucker jumped back. He could feel it tugging at his shirt front. He backed along the ridge to where he had left the ladder. The disk shimmered and pulsed. He dragged the ladder over, set it upright, and tipped the top end toward the disk. The instant it touched the surface, there was a brilliant orange flash and the ladder was ripped from Tucker’s hands. He shouted with pain and surprise. It had been snatched away with such speed and force that strips of skin were torn from his palms.

Pressing his injured hands together, Tucker stared fiercely into the disk. All he could do now was hope. If the ladder had reached Kosh in time, he should come popping out of the disk any second. But if the towers had already collapsed, the ladder would materialize in midair and fall onto a pile of burning, smoking wreckage.

He backed away, making room for Kosh’s arrival.

He waited.

After a few minutes, he sat down, trying not to think about the pain in his hands.

If only Kosh would hurry.

Tucker thought about all those people, the unseen thousands within the tower. He had been a toddler back then. He had no real memories of the disaster. It had always seemed like a piece of history to him, as distant as World War II or Elvis Presley. When he had watched videos of the attack it hadn’t felt much different from watching movies where things get blown up every ten minutes. Not real. But now it was a part of him forever. Because he had been there.

He had never felt so alone, not even when his parents had left him.

Tucker stayed on the roof until the sun was low in the sky and all hope had drained away. He had been too late, too slow. The towers had collapsed. Kosh was dead.

As he climbed down the side of the barn, gripping the iron rungs gingerly with his torn palms, a vast, poisonous emptiness filled his gut. Each rung seemed to make Kosh’s death more certain, more real. He had failed. If only he had not dropped the ladder. If he had been stronger. Faster.

Tucker was squatting at the hose spigot, running cool water over his injured hands, when he heard the rumble of an approaching motorcycle. He looked up and saw a Harley coming up the driveway. Kosh!

He forgot about his injured hands and ran to meet him. Kosh pulled up, put down his kickstand, dismounted, and took off his helmet. Tucker threw his arms around his uncle, then immediately realized what he was doing, let go, and backed off a few steps. Kosh stood gaping at him.

“You okay, kid? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Tucker’s mouth was moving, but no sound came out.

Kosh leaned in close and sniffed. “What did you burn down this time?”

“Where . . . ?” Tucker shook his head, staring at Kosh, trying to make sense of the impossible. Kosh’s eyebrows were missing again, and his nose had returned to its flattened, off-center appearance. “Where’d you come from?”

“I told you. I was up in Eau Claire,” Kosh said. “You sure you’re — wait a sec.” He leaned in to take another sniff, stepped back, and looked up at the barn roof. “You’ve been up there, haven’t you?”

Tucker nodded.