Michael sprinted down Fourth Avenue, the debris cloud roaring behind him. There would be no outrunning it. He turned right onto Eighth Street. At the ends of the block, both in front and behind, the cloud roared past with a tornadic whoosh, then, as if suddenly recalling his presence—Oh, Michael, sorry I forgot you—turned the corners, barreling toward him from two directions.
He dove through the nearest door and slammed it behind him. Some kind of clothing shop, coats and dresses and shirts hanging disembodied on the racks. A wide window with mannequins propped upon an elevated platform faced the street.
The cloud arrived.
The window burst inward; Michael’s hands shot up to protect his eyes. Dust engulfed the room, blasting him backward. Pricks of pain announced themselves all over his body—his arms and hands, the base of his throat, the parts of his face that had been exposed—as if he’d been attacked by a swarm of bees. He tried to rise; only then did he discover the long shard of glass embedded in his right thigh. It seemed strange that it didn’t hurt more—it should have hurt like hell—but then the pain arrived, annihilating his thoughts. He was coughing, choking, drowning in the dust. He scrambled back from the window and crashed into a clothing rack. He yanked a shirt from its hanger. It was made of some kind of gauzy material. He wadded it in his fist and pressed it to his mouth and nose. Breath by hungry breath, oxygen flowed back into his lungs.
He tied the shirt around the lower half of his face. With stinging eyes, he looked out upon the dark street. He was inside the cloud. Everything was silent except for a faint pattering: the sound of airborne particles falling upon the pavement and the roofs of abandoned cars. His hands and arms were slick with blood; his leg, where the long piece of glass was buried, screamed with the slightest motion. He drew his blade and cut, then tore, the leg of his trousers away. The glass, a long, narrow splinter, irregularly edged and slightly curved, had entered at an angle; the wound was roughly halfway between his groin and his knee on the inside flank of his leg. Good Christ, he thought. Another few inches higher and that thing would have sliced my nuts off.
He reached over his head to yank another shirt from the rack and used it to wrap the exposed end of the shard. He supposed it was possible that removing the glass would open the wound wider, but the pain was unendurable. Unless he removed it, he wouldn’t be going anywhere. To do it quickly: that was the best way.
He took the wrapped shard in his fist. He counted to three. He pulled.
All up and down the block, man-sized figures, moving in the dust, halted in their tracks and swiveled their faces toward the sound of Michael’s scream.
“This was a temple!”
Fanning’s hand caught her across the cheek. The blow sent her careening backward.
“You do this to me? To my city?”
She raised her hands to protect her face. Instead Fanning yanked her by the collar, hauled her up until her feet left the pavement, and tossed her away.
“I am going to take my time with you. You’re going to want me to kill you. You are going to beg.”
He came at her again, and again. Tosses, slaps, kicks. She discovered herself lying facedown. She felt detached from everything. Her thoughts possessed a lazy, unmoored quality. They seemed on the verge of some permanent and final severing, as if with the next blow they would sail up and away from her body, swallowed into the sky like a balloon cut from its string.
Yet, to yield, to accept death: the mind forbade it. The mind demanded, against all sense, to go on. Fanning was somewhere behind her. Amy’s awareness of him was less as a physical presence than an abstract force, like gravity, a well of darkness into which she was being relentlessly sucked. She began to crawl. Why wouldn’t Fanning just kill her? But he’d said so himself: he wanted her to feel it. To feel life leaking out of her, drip by drip.
“Look at me!”
A crack to her midriff lifted her off the ground; Fanning had kicked her. The wind sailed from her chest.
“I said, look at me!”
He kicked her again, burying his foot below her sternum and flipping her onto her back.
He was holding the sword over his head.
“We were supposed to meet at the kiosk!”
We?
“You said you would be there! You said we would be together!”
What was he seeing? Who was she to him? The transformation: it had done something to his mind.
“I never should have loved you!”
She rolled away as the sword came down. It struck the pavement with a single-noted clang. Fanning howled like wounded animal.
“I wanted to die with you!”
She was on her back again. Fanning had raised the sword above his head, ready to swing. She raised her arms in forbearance. One chance was all she had.
“Tim, don’t.”
Fanning froze.
“I wanted to be there. To be with you. That was all I ever wanted.”
His arms tensed. At any second, the blade would fall. “I waited all night! How could you do that to me? Why didn’t you come, why?”
“Because … I died, Tim.”
For a moment nothing happened. Please, she thought.
“You … died.”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”