“And by federal law, each one of those cables is required to be strong enough to hold up the entire elevator at full capacity.”
“So?” said Buck. A bit of the haughtiness back in his voice.
“So that’s more than enough to hold each of us,” said Aaron.
Silence.
“How do we hold on?” said Dorcas. She motioned at her broken arm. “We got broken arms, banged-up hands. Kids.”
Aaron grinned tightly. “I happen to know a few tricks.”
“Tricks?” said Dorcas. “For going down a dark elevator shaft using elevator cables with one arm, holding onto kids?”
“Something along those lines.”
More silence. Broken only by the groans filtering up from below. Finally Christopher said what Ken supposed they were all thinking.
“Who are you, man?”
36
Aaron tipped an imaginary hat. “Aaron. Pleased to meetcha.”
“You know that’s not what I meant,” said Christopher. “What do you do?”
“Honest answer?”
“Yes.”
Aaron sighed. “Most recently… and this is God’s truth… I was a rodeo clown.”
No one spoke for the space of perhaps ten seconds. Finally Buck said, “You. Are. Shitting me.”
“Language!” Maggie snapped the word, holding her hands over Hope’s ears. Ken almost laughed. It was absurd. They were fighting over whether or not to climb into a vertical coffin, climbing down – in some cases one-handed – into darkness in order to avoid zombie hordes that to all appearances had taken over the world. And Maggie was worried about Hope’s exposure to profanity.
But then, wasn’t that the point? What was the reason for living, if not to show our children at the very least the possibility of a better world? If life became nothing more than survival, then humanity was already dead. Homo sapiens might go on as a biological classification, but it was only in the expression of our better selves that we could find something beyond existence. That we could find meaning.
He squeezed Maggie’s arm.
“No, sir,” said Aaron. “I was a rodeo clown. Last few years. Good job.”
“That’s not where you learned to do this,” said Dorcas. Her voice was quiet. Intense.
Aaron looked at her, and even in the shaky illumination of the small flashlight, Ken could see the cowboy’s face change. The older man wouldn’t lie to Dorcas. But nor would he tell her everything.
“No,” said Aaron. “But that’s a story for another day.” He looked back into the shaft. “For now, just trust me.” He swung back to stare at them as the growling grew louder. “Please. We don’t have a lot of time.”
Buck shook his head.
“You’re all insane.” He stepped back the way they had come. Toward the waiting corpse of his mother.
Ken thought he might be right. This… how could they do it?
Buck looked at them. “Well?” he said. “Anyone coming?”
And at that moment the world fell in on him.
37
Like everyone else, Ken had visions of 9/11 burnt into his mind from news images, repeat airings of first-person footage, countless ratings-grabbing “special reports” over the years. He remembered seeing people emerge from clouds of dust and ash, covered so completely in the stuff they looked like ghosts. And that was what Buck looked like when he stumbled out of the vast white cloud a moment later.
“What…?” he coughed. “What happened?” He almost collapsed. Christopher caught him, pounding the man’s back as he hacked and spit to clear his throat.
Aaron was swinging his flashlight at the huge cloud that had enveloped Buck. The powder and dust refracted the light weirdly, seeming almost to eat it. “Collapse,” said Aaron.
He turned the light back on Buck. “He all right?”
Christopher nodded. “I think so.” He looked at Aaron. “Any way out through there?”
“Not anymore.”
“You have a helluva way of convincing people to do things your way,” said Christopher. He was grinning as he said it, but the grin looked a bit fractured to Ken.
Aaron nodded as though taking the words at face value. He returned to the elevator doors and disappeared into the narrow crack in the darkness.
Ken could just see him, shuffling around a narrow ledge that rimmed the edge of the shaft. He went to the greave and leaned down, inspecting the cables that trailed off it, pulling on each with his good left hand. Then he nodded to Christopher and the young man joined him out on the ledge.
“Rodeo clown my – uh, butt,” said Buck. Then dissolved into another round of gasping coughs.
Ken didn’t particularly like the bald older man, but he agreed. Whatever Aaron’s story was, there was more to it than dressing up in silly paint and hiding in barrels to keep angry bulls from killing thrown riders.
Christopher laughed inside the shaft. Not a happy laugh. The kind of laugh when you’ve just heard something deeply disturbing. Along the lines of “You’ve got terminal cancer,” or “You should think about getting your affairs in order.”
Then Aaron said, “Buck?”