Meridian. Part 25

The world seemed to move in slow motion, like the frame-by-frame feature on DVDs. I saw. I stepped. I moved in fragmented moments of time.

I swallowed against fear. This is what war must look like, smell like. Sticky smoke clung to me. Surveying the devastation. I couldn't imagine anyone surviving.

Cries got louder as I drew closer to the pa.s.senger cars. I tried to peer through a window.

Coughing. I felt a malevolent presence behind me.

'Yet ye have forsaken me, and served other G.o.ds: wherefore I will deliver you no more. Go and cry unto the G.o.ds which ye have chosen; let them deliver you in the time of your tribulation.' I like that one, I should use it more often."

I knew that voice. I turned to confront Reverend Perimo's chuckling face. He had a hand in this disaster. I don't know how I knew that, but I did. I felt it with every breath. "Did you do this?"

"'Moreover all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed; because thou hearkenedst not unto the voice of the Lord thy G.o.d.' It's catchy, isn't it? The Almighty delivers swift punishment to those who don't do what they're told. More people should keep that in mind."

"You did this, didn't you?" I felt the inexplicable tug of energy. Behind me, somewhere in that train car, was a dying person. More than one. The feeling that someone needed me was 144an becoming more and more recognizable.

i *Perimo gripped my arm and feverishly whispered. 'The thoughts of the wicked are an abomination of the Lord: but the words of the pure are pleasant words. ... The Lord is far from the wicked.' Does the Creator hear you when you cry, Meridian?"

"Let go of me." I shoved him, throwing my full weight into him, and turned away, not stopping until I reached the entrance to the car.

"I'll have you yet!" he screamed into the night.

Several volunteers were breaking the windows out of train cars. I climbed up the side of one car using debris as stairs to get to an entrance on the top, since the car lay on its side. I saw shapes in the yawning depths below.

Using the handrail like a fireman's pole, I slid down the stairs into darkness and smoke.

Burnt rubber and the stench of human waste sucked the breath out of me.

Immediately, wave after wave of longing hit me. More souls than I could count pushed at me. It was like a rock concert and the front row was trying to touch the star. Me.

I closed my eyes and made sure the window I envisioned was wide open. Wind billowed through the curtains with the force of a hurricane. The landscape outside the window spun furiously as each soul tried to make it their own. I opened my eyes quickly before I got too dizzy to move.

The screams and yells were m.u.f.fled. "Help me, please?" A hand reached up out of the darkness and a lady's fingers wiggled as if waving.

Instinctively, I grasped her hand, unable to see where the rest of her lay beneath the piles of wreckage. The contact sucked at me like an undertow. She was afraid, terrified of dying.

She didn't want to go. I didn't know what to do or say. Auntie hadn't told me what to do with uncertain souls. I felt as if the woman wanted to push me through instead. We grappled in my room because she wouldn't let go. I kept fighting her off long enough to catch my breath, until she tugged again and I went under.

145ani *

Chapter 28.

I shook her off and caught my breath. I spoke quiet rea.s.surances, struggling to keep myself together. The other volunteers were wrapping survivors in blankets and trying to staunch the bleeding of open wounds. I focused on the dying since that was my supposed specialty.

Another mortally wounded person grabbed my leg, my vision blurred, and vertigo hit me at the speed with which the man leapt through the window to his favorite beach in Hawaii.

Viscous liquids dripped on me; the smell of human urine and sulfur overpowered me. I bent and heaved nothing but air. I felt woozy and disoriented. I visualized the window and tried to feel a fresh breeze on my face.

"Get my baby out. Please."' I moved in a careful crawl because I couldn't stand upright in the capsized car. My hands were slimy with what I was sure was a mixture of blood and other fluids I didn't want to think about. I wrenched a suitcase off a woman. She was impaled on a large wedge of metal that might have been a door, but she was conscious and aware. She held an infant who seemed long past dead, limp and lifeless in a T-s.h.i.+rt and diaper. She tried to lift the little body toward me and her breath hitched. "Please ..."

I was in one of the gla.s.s-domed viewing cars -the gla.s.s was webbed with cracks, but not smashed completely. I leaned back and kicked against the panes-the shatterproof gla.s.s groaned. I kicked again. Fresh air and help was on the other side of that window. I kept my visualization going as another soul pa.s.sed through me.

Finally. I made a hole. Smoke and heat poured out as clean, cold air roared in. I grabbed a coat and wrapped it around my arm to widen a hole big enough for a person. For me. I grabbed the baby, my hand touching the mother's.

"Thank you," she said, and was gone, leaving me with the fleeting impressions of cinnamon and Bob Marley's music.

The baby's energy was also gone, though I felt peace as the woman was met by a young man in uniform on the other side. I coughed and crawled out, shards of gla.s.s poking and cutting. Carefully. I wrapped the baby in another coat and placed it on the ground, away from the car. Shouts and sirens, screams and the roar of fire filled my ears to overflowing.

I tried to catch a glimpse of Tens. I wondered where he was, what he was doing. I gasped the clean air. I wanted to wander until I felt unsoiled and whole again, but I didn't.

Firefighters and neighbors were doing the same thing in other cars around me; a few even worked side by side with me. There was so much immediate need and too few to help.

There weren't enough of us for me to pause for long. I turned and went back in through the hole I'd made in the window. Of the people in this car, many were dead, others gravely injured.

I don't know how many trips I made. Enough that my pile of coats and blankets covering the dead began to take on a shape and life of its own. A small mountain mimicking the larger Sangre de Cristos Mountains around us. I shoved aside luggage and debris so I could clearly see the pa.s.sengers who still needed help. The train must have been full to capacity 146ani with post holiday travelers.

*"My leg is broken. Get me out of here." A man grabbed me, and for the first time since I'd gotten there, I felt only his desperation and fear, not a need to transition. He had to weigh two hundred pounds and he was over six feet tall. He continued, "I'll help you. I can use one leg. I can push off with it. Please, I'm claustrophobic; I don't know how much more I can stomach. It's so dark in here."

I nodded. "I don't know how to make this not hurt."

He tried to smile. "Pain means I'm alive. Just help me get out of here."

I hugged him tight, my chest against his back. "Okay, on three you push and I'll push and we'll get out of here."

He nodded.

"One." I wedged my feet against what solid surface I could find and made sure there wasn't anything in my way to the hole I'd been widening with each trip. "Two."

He braced himself and inhaled a substantial breath. "Three." We said it together and fell out onto the snow and mud, my back and head absorbing the brunt of the landing. Gla.s.s shards tangled in my hair like ice crystals and I felt warmth dripping down my back. I wasn't sure if it was sweat or blood. Probably both. The man's moan poured the pain out around us, but he was strong and full of life.

With the help of adrenaline, I hauled him over to a clear spot, grabbing coats that moments ago had been s.h.i.+elding the eyes of the dead from those of the living. I balled one up and put it under his head, then draped another over his torso and around his legs. I wished for medical training. "This is all I can do,"

"Find my wife? Please?"

I nodded. My legs felt like waterlogged noodles. I coughed, then turned and dove back into the chaos.

Over the course of the next few hours, I was joined by more helpers. They found the man's wife, three teenagers, and several kids. Paramedics were putting the living on backboards and getting them out of there as fast as we brought them out, but the dead vastly outnumbered the survivors. Reverend Perimo leaned over several of the wounded. He appeared to be praying, but the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I couldn't feel them die, but he closed their eyes and moved on. To the next victim?

A single tanker truck battled blazes that crept closer and grew larger each time I lifted my head to check them.

"Are you hurt?" It took me a moment to realize that a face was peering into mine with concern. A fireman whose face was blackened with soot and blood leaned over me.

"No," I croaked out.

"Can you walk? You need to get out of here. See those vehicles? Move toward them." He 147ani pointed a football field or farther away.

*"There are more people." I said. I felt heat waves, one after another, pulsing like a heartbeat, from the tail of the train.

"I know. We're moving back for now, though; a couple of tanks could blow any minute.

You have to get out of here." The fireman's face reflected the pain that I felt. I was sure he wasn't used to walking away from the needy.

In the distance, I watched Reverend Perimo disappear deeper into the smoke. He wasn't stopped by anyone.

"We can't leave them!" I cried, struggling against the fireman's strong grip.

"We have to." He picked me up and threw me over his shoulder, carrying me away from the wreckage.

Upside down, I saw the churned-up earth, red and dark. Then the world went black and I faded with it.

"Meridian! Meridian!" Etta's voice came to me against the roaring backdrop of Armageddon. We were in h.e.l.l, and a sea turtle was telling me her secrets. But I kept hearing my name and it confused me.

I opened my eyes to see Tens inches from my face.

He smiled. "You're awake."'

I nodded, dragging off the oxygen mask that covered my face.

"You needed oxygen because of all the smoke you inhaled."

"I'm fine. Let's go home." I wanted s.p.a.ce to think about what I saw.

"There's gla.s.s everywhere. Do you need me to carry you?"

"No." I stood. The adrenaline crash carried me into an abyss and I started s.h.i.+vering. "We should get back in there."

"They're not letting anyone near it. There's a chemical spill. We won't do any good waiting at the periphery." Tens helped me into the Rover. "Stay with me. Meridian. We don't know how that many souls will affect you yet. Just stay awake. Talk to me." I heard Tens slide into the driver's side and start the Rover. "Talk to me!" he commanded.

"Etta. Said to learn the lesson," I mumbled.

"Uh-huh. What else did she say?" He accelerated into a turn so fast that I pressed against the door. I couldn't hold back a groan.

148.

"Sorry. What'd she say?"

a ni *I struggled to keep my eyes open, but my brain felt drugged and woozy.

"A gift. Take fear away."

"Really? What else?" he shouted. So loud.

"Trapped between without me."

"Uh-huh?"

"Hug." My words didn't keep up with my thoughts.

"Hug?"

"No, 'brace."

"Embrace?" He slapped my cheek, jerking me back.

"Yeah. Perimo is bad. Stole Celia.

"Hang on, we're almost home." Tens must have been speeding like a race car driver.

He slammed to a stop and apologized when I cried out. "Sorry, sorry." He carried me into the house. "Let's get you cleaned up."

"Fine. I'm fine." The words came in mumbles and sputters.

I felt pain and gentle hands, but the rest of the night slid by in an oblivion of hot water and rea.s.surances.

149ani *

Chapter 29.

Memento te mortalem esse sed vim in perpetuum durare. Remember you are mortal but energy lives forever.

-Luca Lenci I stretched like a chicken in the sun without opening my eyes. My head was clear and my heart light. I sniffed, smelled the smoke, and grimaced at the stench.

"Sorry, no shower yet." Tens brushed the hair from my face. "You're awake."

I blinked up at him. "I am. Did you stay with me?"

"You slept over a full day."

"How's Auntie? What day is it?"

"She's sleeping. It's New Year's Eve." I sensed there was more behind his words.

"What aren't you telling me? She's alive, isn't she?"

"She's breathing."