Anthem's Fall

Final Chapter

Chapter Forty-Two

Kristen

Side by side, Kristen and Madison ran steadily up along the length of the chilly shadow cast by the teetering skyscraper. Plaster and dust spilled off their hair and clothes and billowed behind them as they jogged past shattered storefronts and overturned cars. They were two faces in the indiscriminate mob, though the mass was noticeably diminishing as they crossed the intersections westward and put distance between themselves and the high-rises of Midtown. Out of danger from the collapsing skyscraper, they each still ran as fast as their dust-filled lungs would allow.

A loud rumbling thundered from behind them, and at the same moment the shadow of the skyscraper abruptly vanished. The grand building fell, its lashing supports crashing and hurdling into the heart of Manhattan. Rising from where the skyscraper had stood, a dark pillar of dust ascended high over the city. The cloud of wreckage that sprawled into the sky and surrounding streets, the one of which Kristen and Madison had been so nearly a part, seemed to touch the very ceiling of the clouds. Kristen turned and watched the churning plume in wordless awe. They were now well out of range of the devastation, but she took a few stunned steps backward on the trembling street. The back of her thighs touched the side of a police car, and she leaned back against it and watched the dreamlike cloud of destruction unfurl across the otherwise glittering autumn cityscape.

"Those poor people," Madison said.

Kristen's eyes reflected the ruin, and she quietly said, "Unforgivable."

The sentiment of the people pressing around them was not that of total relief, but certainly that of momentary appreciation for their narrow escape from a grisly death. They were leaving Midtown behind, and their growing distance from the towering skyscrapers placated the fear of an imminent death. Together, Kristen and Madison turned their backs to the towers of the city with a sense of final resolve, and continued at a steady trot toward the Hudson River.

"Someone shouldered that entire building. We both saw it." Madison spoke over the moving crowd as they fell in step. "If it wasn't Vengelis, who was it?"

"I don't know, but I don't like it."

"You don't like that someone saved your life?"

"That's not what I meant," Kristen said. "It's just that, well, I thought I had a grasp on the situation in all of this insanity. Now it looks like things are more complicated, which begs the question: what was Vengelis hiding? And that makes me scared."

Kristen reached a hand back and rested it against her backpack, where she felt the boxy form of the slide case through the nylon fabric. The case felt secure, undamaged. Somehow she had made it out of the disaster with the Sejero blood in her possession. They jogged wordlessly along the street, breathing the clean air deep down. Kristen's chest still felt fiery, the channels of her lungs razor sharp and inflamed. There were cuts and scrapes all over her body from the barrage of falling debris that had engulfed her, and her right ankle was tender from being twisted.

The crowd before them parted as the westward street met with the Hudson River, and they saw the full extent of the grand exodus off Manhattan Island. Kristen had never seen so many people in her life, and could not even venture a guess of their numbers. Countless men and women in military uniform were ushering the endless masses toward the river's edge. Sprawled out for miles and miles along the glistening cement strands, the grayish choppy water of the Hudson was swarming with ships. Though most of the boats were flying Navy and Coast Guard colors, there were also countless private yachts and heavy commercial vessels carrying anyone and everyone across the comparatively narrow body of water. Many of the boats were weighed down to the very brim with refugees throwing buckets of bilge from the sides, hulls lingering inches above the water.