Loss Of Reason - Miles A. Maxwell (best books to read all time TXT) 📗

“What is that thing?” Franklin asked as the old red and white helicopter climbed above the fireball.

“I’ve seen one before,” Everon yelled back. “With Cyn and Steve, one night, having drinks on the eighth floor of the Marriott Marquis. Down Broadway, at 41st Street was this flaming ball of fire maybe five stories high. The three of us took a walk after dinner. It was still burning. Roaring up out of the street. The buildings acting like a chimney. A cop at the barricades said a major gas main was broken.”

“Gas main?” Chuck said, looking back out the side windows. “This one’s a lot more than five stories.”

“Yeah,” Everon nodded. “The whole city’s underlain with hundreds of ’em and the pressure’s on.”

The city flattened out before them. Through the smoke over middle Manhattan, the fire and destruction, was a vision of Hell on Earth. Building tops appeared bowled over. As if a giant’s hand had slewn across them sideways.

“Oh my God!” Chuck gasped. “It’s gone!”

The top half of what had once been the tallest building in the world, the symbol of the city, was missing. Like dozens of other skyscrapers around it, the Empire State had been cut in half like a broken saguaro cactus, leaving only the nubs of uneven girders sticking up above lower ragged concrete floors and shell.

The U.S. had weathered all kinds of things — civil war, world war, financial collapse. Can it weather this? Are we at war now? Franklin wondered. Some countries rose and fell in a matter of years. The U.S. was unique. Of all the places he’d traveled to, he’d seen no other country founded for the purpose of protecting the individual. Something that strong had to corrode first on the inside.

South of 20th Street or so, not even steel frameworks remained. The giant’s hand had swept out, destroying everything in its path from somewhere near the bottom tip of Manhattan Island. Until up around 42nd, where a kind of transition zone appeared.

While Times Square was a flaming wreck, just blocks north, less than half were on fire. There was a new pattern. Those close to street corners were gone — but structures in blast-shadows of what had been taller buildings remained standing. But for their missing window glass, some looked completely untouched.

“Crossing one thousand feet,” Everon said loudly.

“Look at Broadway,” Franklin said. “The blast must have been channeled by the open spaces —”

“Like the avenues were rivers,” Chuck said. “The lower end of the city is gone. The damage up here is selective.”

“Overpressure decreases with the cube of the distance,” Everon yelled.

“Maybe there’s a chance that Cynthia —”

“Of course there’s a chance,” Everon yelled back. “But let’s not start painting false pictures like you do on Sundays.”

Franklin hung a piercing blue stare on his brother, sucked his lips inward, taking deep breaths. “That way,” he pointed. “Straight across the bottom of the park.”

Everon softened. “Sorry, Bro.”

Bro. He hasn’t called me that in a long time and it’s the second time today, Franklin realized. He and Everon were step-brothers. Not bro, but Bro. Like he’s trying to connect himself, bond more tightly to the family. He’s as upset as I am —

Cynthia’s chances were slim. Franklin knew it. The likelihood of anyone still alive on the Upper East Side — he closed his eyes and hallucinated finding Cynthia’s building completely blown away — nothing but rubble. He could smell the burning drywall, hear the flames. The hallucination became stronger as he saw in his mind the corpses — his sister, Cynthia’s husband and daughter — lying there, sightless eyes staring up at him.

“At least the smoke helps block the sun,” Chuck yelled over their shoulders.

Everon nodded back.

Across the far east sky, the poisonous anvil-headed radiation cloud stretched even farther and darker — out across Long Island now where snow and rain were likely to bring death to thousands.

“Hey! Another helicopter!” Chuck pointed.

A Bell Executive flew into view from behind the broken frame of the Empire State. Its doors bore a huge logo, a gold crown. Underneath in three-foot gold letters was a single word: KING.

“Nathan King,” Everon said. “He bought the Empire State Building last year.”

Before Everon could push the stick over to bank them toward Central Park, out of nowhere an F-18 fighter flashed past their windows. A moment later, a fast-attack Cobra gunship rose to hover along their right side, its single machine cannon targeting the old Sea Pelican.