had happened more than once upstairs, we might suddenly be inundated by
whatever oceans of liquid or toxic gas had pumped through these tubes,
whereupon we would either drown or suffocate in poisonous fumes.
One cat, four kids, one dog, one deejay-songwriter, one animal
communicator, one Viking, and the poster child for Armageddon that’s me
ran, crawled, squirmed, ran, fell, got up, ran some more, along the dry
beds of steel rivers, brass rivers, copper creeks, one white light
flaring off curved walls, brightly spiraling, feathery darkness whirling
like wings everywhere that the light didn’t reach, with the rumble of
invisible trains all around, and a shrill shrieking like the whistles of
locomotives, the iodine smell now chokingly heavy, but now so faint it
seemed the previous density had been imagined, currents of the past
washing in like a mushy tide, then ebbing out of the present.
Terrified by a periodic sound of rushing water, water or something
worse, we came at last to the sloping concrete tunnel, and then into the
alcove by the elevator, where Bobby lay as we had left him, still alive.
While Doogie reconnected the wires in the elevator control panel, and
while Roosevelt, carrying Mungojerrie, shepherded the kids into the cab,
Sasha, Orson, and I gathered around Bobby.
He looked like Death on a bad hair day.
I said, “Looking’ good.” Bobby spoke to Orson in a voice so weak that it
barely carried over the sounds of clashing times, clashing worlds, which
I guess is what we were hearing. “Hey, fur face.” Orson nuzzled Bobby’s
neck, sniffed his wound, then looked worriedly at me.
“You did it, XP Man, ” Bobby said.
“It was more a Fantastic Five caper than a one-superhero gig, ” I
demurred.
“You got back in time to make your midnight show, ” Bobby told Sasha,
and I had the sickening feeling that, in his way, he was saying goodbye
to us.
“Radio is my life, ” she said.
The building shook, the train rumble became a roar, and concrete dust
sifted down from the ceiling.
Sasha said, “We have to get you in the elevator.” But Bobby looked at me
and said, “Hold my hand, bro.” I gripped his hand. It was ice.
Pain cramped his face, and then he said, “I screwed up.”
“You never.”
“Wet my pants, ” he said shakily.
The cold seemed to come out of his hand and up my arm, coiling in my
heart. “Nothing wrong with that, bro. Urinophoria. You’ve done it
before.”
“I’m not wearing neoprene.”
“So it’s a style issue, huh?
” He laughed, but the tattered laughter frayed into choking.
Doogie announced, “Elevator’s ready.”
“Let’s move you, ” Sasha suggested, as tiny chips of concrete joined the
fall of dust.
“Never thought I’d die so inelegantly, ” Bobby said, his hand tightening
on mine.
“You’re not dying, ” I assured him.
“Love you … bro.”
“Love you, ” I said, and the words were like a key that locked my throat
as tight as a vault.
“Total wipeout, ” he said, his voice fading until the final syllable was
inaudible.
His eyes fixed on something far beyond us, and his hand went slack in
mine.
I felt a whole great slab of my heart slide away, like the shaling face
of a cliff, down into a hateful darkness.
Sasha put her fingertips to his throat, feeling for a pulse in his
carotid artery. “Oh, God.”
“Gotta get out of here now, ” Doogie insisted.
In a voice so thick I didn’t recognize it as my own, I said to Sasha,
“Come on, let’s get him in the elevator.”
“He’s gone.”
“Help me get him in the elevator.”
“Chris, honey, he’s gone.”
“We’re taking him with us, ” I said.
“Snowman”
“We’re taking him with us! ”
“Think of the kids. They” I was desperate and crazy, crazy-desperate, a
dark whirlpool of grief churning in my mind, sucking away all reason,
but I was not going to leave him there. I would die with him, beside
him, rather than leave him there.
I grabbed him by the shoulders and started dragging him into the
elevator, aware that I was probably frightening the kids, who must