Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [95]
An ambulance crew appeared and took the man away. Matthew and Detta moved to the next person, an old woman lying in the rubble, broken-legged and helpless.
“Don’t!” Detta said sharply as Matthew bent to lift her. “We’ll have to tie those legs or the jagged ends could cut an artery.”
Matthew understood immediately, and wondered how he could have been so stupid. But what could they use?
Detta was balanced on one leg. “Here,” she said, handing him her stockings. He bent to work. Another man came to help, hands trembling, sobbing under his breath. The noise around them was sporadic, shouts, sirens, more rubble falling, and above it all, what sounded like the crackle of gunfire. The air was full of dust and smoke, but it was beginning to settle.
Fire engines pulled up, horses tethered, eyes rolling, and another ambulance. The heat subsided as the water hit the flames with a roar of steam. Matthew returned from helping to carry the last injured person to find Detta filthy, her dress torn at the shoulders and her ankles bare beneath the hem of her skirt. There was a kind of triumph in the angle of her head, and weary and bruised as she was, she stood with grace. She smiled at him.
He gave her a half salute. It was not meant in mockery, it was the acknowledgment from one fighter to another. For once they were on the same side, and there was a sweetness he wanted to remember through the long loneliness ahead.
She looked into his eyes and saluted back.
The fire was nearly out inside the house. Somewhere beyond sight another wall collapsed, but with a thud, not an explosion.
“If we get out to the main road we might find a cab,” he said, looking down at her feet. He had never thought of feet being beautiful before, but hers were: neat and strong, high-arched. “Where are your shoes?”
She grimaced. “Under that wall,” she replied, gesturing toward a heap of shattered brick a dozen yards away.
“I’ll carry you as far as the pavement,” he answered, picking her up before she could argue. It felt good to hold her; she was lighter than he had expected.
He reached the end of the street and reluctantly put her down, slowly, so she was standing close to him and he could still feel the warmth of her. Then he saw the airplane. It was a tiny thing, double-winged, like a truncated dragonfly. It crossed the beam of light and disappeared. Then there was another one, climbing upward, veering right and left again. Gunfire tore into the silver ship, not the sturdy lower part carrying the bombs and the crew, but the huge, bright balloon.
There was a moment’s silence. He and Detta stared upward as the searchlights crisscrossed the darkness, catching the planes like angry insects. Tracer bullets arced through the night. And then it happened—an explosion of flame in the air as the gas caught fire and billowed up, lighting the sky.
“Oh, merciful God!” Detta said in horror. “What a terrible way to die!” She huddled closer to him, clinging onto his arm. Without his jacket he could feel the warmth of her fingers.
Matthew wasn’t thinking of the men in the zeppelin, but of the fireball sinking more and more rapidly, new explosions ripping it apart as the bombs left in it went off. He was realizing as it loomed above him that it would come to rest on the streets below in an inferno of destruction.
“Who?” he said hoarsely. “Them or us?”
She turned to look at him. Then she understood and her face went sheet-white. She started to say something and stopped. They stood close together, arms around each other, as the funeral pyre in the sky sank closer to the rooftops. It stretched out, an eternity—and no time at all—too little to escape. The glare increased. It was seconds away. They could feel the heat from where they were. What irony. Perhaps the parting he dreaded would never happen after all.
Everyone was transfixed, staring upward. A man in a long black coat crossed himself. An old woman was shaking her fist. A small dog barked furiously, racing round and round in circles, terrified