And he could see now that the jib didn’t touch the building beyond. It ended in mid-air, in dead space. He couldn’t tell how far it stopped from the side of the other building.
He tried to reach for something that would stop him and Hope from flying out into the void, but they were moving too fast. The bars and braces of the crane’s lattice-like supports whipped by so fast they were a blur, and the only thing that happened when Ken reached out once was that there was a light bwang that was swallowed up instantly in the enormity of the crane’s structure, and he felt his arm go numb with the impact.
He couldn’t stop them.
They flew toward the end of the jib.
And off into nothing.
31
The building that the jib leaned toward was the One Capital Center.
Or rather, what was left of it.
The building had been hit by an Air Force stealth fighter in the first minutes after the change had coursed through fifty percent of the world’s population. The jet had hit the building and exploded, blowing the upper floors clean off the building, shooting them – virtually intact – into the air.
Ken hadn’t seen any of that. He and his friends only surmised it when they saw pieces of the stealth fighter, and had come across the top three floors of the One Capital Center sitting across the street several blocks over from where they belonged. The building had proved to be a necessary escape route, though it had also cost Ken the two smallest fingers of his left hand to use it.
And now he was headed back to the rest of the ruined building. Not walking, but flying. Screaming through space, shot off the end of the crane’s jib like some bizarre human cannonball.
He and Hope fell, forward and down, in a short flight that ended faster than Ken was expecting. They hit and rolled, Ken cupping his body around his daughter, trying hard not to crush her. He felt glass bite his arms; felt other, harder things push into his flesh as well. But he didn’t see anything – his eyes were screwed shut so tightly his head ached. As though his body were convinced that if he saw what was happening, it would be the end of their momentary reprieve.
They stopped rolling.
Ken opened his eyes. He didn’t want to, but he knew that to lay wherever they were with his eyes closed would amount to a particularly stupid kind of suicide.
He opened his eyes, and saw a pair of cowboy boots about to slam right into his face.
Ken jerked to the side, and the boots slid past him, followed by the rest of Aaron. Dorcas, too, the older woman clinging to the cowboy.
Ken got to his knees. He saw that he and the others had been catapulted into the remains of one of the floors of the One Capital Center. Everything was rubble, the effects of a building that had been hit by a plane carrying some serious weaponry. No way of telling what floor they were on, but it wasn’t the first one.
“Help!”
Ken’s hand shot out. He grabbed the newest person sliding across the detritus-coated surface of this place. He felt fingers curl around his palm, and realized that it was Maggie. She had slid into range, still on her back, little Liz lolling on her chest.
He caught his wife.
Hauled her to her feet.
And held her. The horde was coming, but for a moment he didn’t care. He needed to hold onto Maggie. To remind himself she was here, she was really here. Without thought, another hand went around Hope, pulling her to him. The family.
“Derek,” she sobbed.
“I know,” he said.
Then they were silent. Not long. Just a second. Just long enough to be. Just long enough for the world to take note that it hadn’t won. Not completely. The family – part of it, at least – was still alive. Bruised, fragmented, but still holding on.
“Guys…,” said Christopher. Ken looked over. The kid had appeared as though by magic. He was probably the most sure-footed of the group, so no surprise that he would have made the leap across the gap with the least trouble.
Ken sighed internally. Ready for Christopher to point to the crane, to where the hordes would be screaming across.
But he didn’t. He was looking the other way.
There was something behind Ken.
Something already there with them.
32
Fear surfed electric waves up and down Ken’s back. The hordes had come in behind them. It must be that. They were surrounded.
Then he heard Aaron curse. Not a fearful curse, more a resigned one. The sound of a soldier dealing with tragedy, not terror.
“Cover the girl’s eyes,” said Aaron. His voice a reverent whisper.
Ken did, putting his hand across Hope’s eyes even as he turned.
It was Buck. Sobbing, kneeling on the floor before a pile of wreckage whose once-purpose Ken could not even begin to guess at. No doubt once an integral part of this room, this building, now it was just a tangled collision of steel and trash and concrete; wood and plaster and melted bits of plastic.
And flesh.