Julia was alone again. Dan had said his good-byes and gone straight to the airport. She'd caught a cab down Broadway to Chinatown and made the rest of the journey on foot against the flood of pedestrian traffic rushing away from the bombing. Hundreds of sirens filled the air, and occasionally a city worker would stagger past, covered in soot, clothes singed, coughing and crying.
For Julia it was something akin to deja vu. She supposed if she'd been a bit older, she might have instinctively looked for the old Twin Towers. But the New York she remembered hadn't included them, so the antiquated low-rise buildings-such as City Hall, just ahead of her-didn't seem so out of place. No, the streetscape didn't much affect her, but the victims did. It was their faces.
She'd grown used to thinking of the 'temps as different. Their faces were much more racially homogenous, their bodies oddly shaped. They were neither grotesquely obese nor inhumanly hard-sculpted by drugs and extreme exercise, like something out of one of Spielberg's Draka movies. But running from danger, eyes bulging in terror, they were all of a sudden too painfully familiar to her.
She stopped at the corner of Canal and Broadway, ostensibly to rig her flexipad for the job and to dig out her cardboard press pass, but also to regain her balance. Disorientation threatened to sweep her legs out from under her before she got anywhere near Chambers Street. She took in several long, slow breaths, letting the chill of the early dusk clear her head. Her breath came out in small, quick clouds of steam.
Regaining her center, she pushed on.
Fire trucks and ambulances were gridlocked for a block around the subway station. The approaching night pulsed a deep red from their spinning lights, as though a wound had laid open the city's heart, and the blood was everywhere. Without access to her Sonycam, she had to use the flexipad in its camera mode, taking full-motion video of the scene as she approached.
A block away from the Chambers Street station, hundreds of stretchers covered the grounds of City Hall Park, reminding Julia of the MASH unit she'd visited back on the Brisbane Line. That had been a hell of a lot more organized than this. She couldn't see any sort of system here. There seemed to be four or five competing triage centers. Police, firefighters, and civilian medical teams swarmed everywhere, sometimes rubbing up hard against each other, leading to arguments and even a couple of fights, which she caught on video.
A soldier wandered through, an army lieutenant, a 'temp. His uniform was blackened, and a big, egg-shaped bump had come up on his forehead. But otherwise he seemed fine. Julia grabbed him, identified herself, and got down to work.
"I was going to meet my brother," he said. "He was going to be on the subway-the A train. I was waiting over by the newsstand. I don't know. I don't know what happened. A bomb. I guess. They must have dropped a bomb. I gotta find my brother-"
He wandered off before she could get his name.
She had to get closer to the station, to find somebody who had at least half a clue. So she began to jog over to Chambers Street, stopping to grab a clip of a mother and young daughter-she supposed-dressed for the opera, sitting and hugging each other, shaking violently and not speaking at all. The daughter was moaning.
The pad chimed, and she broke off filming to read an updater from the Times. There were three other bomb sites in Manhattan: at Penn Station, Grand Central, and in Macy's. There were fewer casualties at Macy's, which had been closed when the explosion went off. The bombs at the railway stations had seemingly been designed to hit civilians, rather than to damage infrastructure. They'd gone off in the restaurants.
She heard the musical theme from The Simpsons and experienced a definite shunt in her mind, as it tried to get traction on a very slippery slope. Then she remembered that was Rosanna's call ID tag.
"Hey, babe. God, am I glad to see you," Julia said with enormous relief. "Dan said you guys were toast."
Rosanna looked fine, if a little shaken. It was still daylight in Hawaii, and she seemed to be outside, with a huge fire burning in the background. "We got hammered," said Rosanna. "It had to be a missile strike, Jules. Nothing else looks like this. There was even an EMP. It fried all my stuff that wasn't hardened to mil-grade. Where the hell are you?"
"I'm home," said Julia. "Well, not at home. The city got parcel-bombed. I'm on it right now. Looks like someone's been doing their homework. They've gone for soft targets, high body counts. Easier than hitting guarded facilities. How long has the laser link been up?"
Rosanna shook her head. "Just a few minutes. I figured they'd use the Clinton as a relay soon as I saw how bad it was. I can't say how long it'll stay in place, or how long they'll let us have access. Bandwidth is pretty limited, but I guess they want to know what happened. I've got a highlights package for you. I'm sending it now, compressed in the signal. I've got vision of Pearl, what used to be Hickham, and what's left of Honolulu."
"Hickham? Isn't that where the Raptors are based?"
"Were based. They're fucked."
Julia felt a surge of anxiety in her friend's behalf. "Jesus, Rosanna. Get yourself out of there now. The Japanese are coming for sure."
"I know," said Natoli. "This place is on the edge of a panic spiral. But there's no getting out. It's pure chaos, Jules."
"Is Curtis all right?"
"He's fine. He was with me. And our fat shadow, too."
Julia was going to ask, but Rosanna carried on without a break.
"I'll tell you about that later. Look, I've got to go, Jules. I'll file every three hours, as long as the link is up and I have access. Raw footage. You can produce me for a change."
Rosanna attempted a brave smile, but Julia could tell it was forced. Happiest in an editing suite, her friend wasn't a field reporter. She'd never had embed training. And there she was, stuck in the middle of the ocean, on a small island that was about to become a battleground.
"File every hour," said Julia. "Then I'll know you're okay."
"I'll be fine. I'll see you soon," Rosanna promised; then she cut the link.
Somehow, Julia doubted it.