The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [156]
And with that hope came a sense of finality, as if McVey had already been found and pronounced dead. Someone he’d only just begun to know and would have wished to know better. The same way a boy, as he grows, might come to know his father. Suddenly Osborn realized there were tears in his eyes, and he wondered why that thought had come to him now. McVey as his father. It was a whimsical, curious thought that just hung there. And the longer it did, the more a feeling of enormous loss began to overtake him.
It was then, while he was trying to break the spell, he realized he’d been staring off for some time, looking down the hill, away from the rescue activity, his attention focused on something in a cluster of trees near the bottom of the embankment. In daylight, because of the thick foliage and the flat light of an overcast sky, it would have been easily missed. It was only now, in darkness, that the spill from the worklights above created the angular shadow that defined it.
Quickly, Osborn started down the steep of the hill. Slipping and sliding on the gravel, grabbing onto small trees for; support, moving from one to the other, he worked his way toward it.
Reaching bottom, he saw the thing was a piece of railroad car, a section of passenger coach that had somehow been ripped intact from the train. It was sitting backward in the brush, the inner part facing out and directly up the hill. Moving closer, he saw it was a complete compartment and the door to it was jammed closed, creased by a massive dent. Then he saw what it was. The car’s lavatory.
“Oh no!” he said out loud. But instead of horror in his voice, there was hilarity.
“Not possible.” Moving closer, he started to laugh. “McVey?” he called as he reached it. “McVey, you in there?”
For a moment there was no reply. Then—
“—Osborn?” came the muffled, uncertain reply from within.
Fear. Relief. Absurdity. Whatever it was, the pin had been stuck in the balloon and Osborn burst into laughter. Roaring, he leaned against the compartment, banging on it with the flat of his hands, then pounding his thighs with his fists, wiping the tears from his cheeks.
“Osborn! What the hell are you doing? Open the damn door!”
“You all right?” Osborn yelled back.
“Just get me the hell out of here!”
As quickly as the laughter came, it vanished. Still in his fireman’s jacket, Osborn rushed back up the hill. Moving purposefully past French troops patrolling with submachine guns, he went to the main salvage area. Under the glare of worklights, he found a short-handled iron crow-bar. Slipping it under his jacket, he walked back the way he had come. At the top of the hill, he stopped and looked around. Certain no one was watching, he stepped over the side and went back down.
Five minutes later there was a loud snap and a creak of steel as the staved-in door popped off its hinges and McVey stepped out into fresh air. His hair and clothes were disheveled, he smelled like hell and had an ugly welt over one eye the size of a baseball. But, other than a silvery five o’clock shadow, he was amazingly sound.
Osborn grinned. “You wouldn’t be that guy Livingston?”
McVey started to say something, then, through the darkness, he saw the giant salvage cranes working what was left of the destruction backlit farther up the hill. He didn’t move, just stared.
“Jesus Christ—” he said.
Finally his eyes found Osborn. Who they were, why they were here, meant nothing. They were alive while others were not. Reaching out, they embraced strongly, and for the longest moment clung there. It was more than a spontaneous gesture of relief and camaraderie. It was