Dark Zone

95

Karr pushed at the plastic lump, then felt his balance give way. He groped wildly in the air; before he could grab onto anything he smacked hard against a metal bar and began to fall in the other direction. But the cord he’d twisted around his arm pulled taut and held him.

Only for a moment. He slipped down two feet as the light it was attached to pulled away from the structure, socket and all. Tommy grabbed a cross member but lost his grip, swinging against one of the other girders and smacking his head. Blood ran down the side of his face. Dizzy but still managing to hold on, he realized the wire was now taut again. He gave it a gingerly tug, then a much stronger one, and pulled upward. He got his head even with the bomb sacks, but as he reached for them he slipped or the wire slipped and he spun into a thin ladder used by workmen when replacing the lights and doing other work. He grabbed at it, so disoriented that even with the solid foot-and handholds he thought he was falling.

The explosive packs were a few feet away to his left. When the world stopped spinning a little, Karr reached toward them, lost his balance, and slipped off the ladder. He became a disembodied head and unconnected arms, grabbing at wires and the air, pulling and punching and screaming.

One of the explosive vests flew downward, bounced off a post, and then sailed below, where it exploded. Tommy Karr saw the explosion in slow motion, gray and black particles steaming up toward him. He thought he was flying, then realized he was on the beam with the bombs. He took another package and this one he was able to heave, sending it far into space toward the gold dome. It disappeared there, and then there was another explosion from the ground, far away and yet close enough to shake him so violently he thought he was flying through the tangled steel.

The next vest sailed down but failed to explode for what seemed like hours. He grappled with a fourth and flung it, and somehow this one looked as if it exploded nearly in his hands.

Had it? The pain that had pulsated through his body left him. He felt a tickle in his neck, the light touch of a girl’s fingers stroking him — Deidre, he thought. For a moment he thought of nothing and saw nothing and felt nothing.

The moment stretched into an hour and then collapsed back on itself. When he managed to clear his head he saw he was upside down, his legs jammed against the ladder, the last explosive pack on the girder above him, just out of reach. He grabbed it on his second try and flung it as far as he could.

It burst open into a cloud of dust.

His head weighed five hundred pounds. His heart thumped like the heavy whoop of a helicopter blade.

A helicopter was five or ten yards away, hovering there.

Somebody yelled at him in French.

He vaguely understood that they were telling him not to move.