They were on the steps when the first alarms began to sound. It was a terrible wailing sound, coming from all around them. Outside the walls. It rose and fell like the cries of the damned, and even though Jess knew what it was, he felt a sick, falling sensation in his stomach. He had to resist an overwhelming urge to cover his ears.
“What is that?” Thomas’s shout near his ear was only just barely audible, and he heard the rattle of panic in it.
“High Garda warning signal,” Jess shouted back. “Bombardment.”
He’d been exposed to it in training sessions, but he’d never expected to hear it this close; it sounded like an ancient, eerie thing, like the screaming of gods, and it was meant to warn the citizens of a city that hell was coming down.
And the Philadelphians, he saw, were used to it. No one even covered their ears, except a few small children.
Indira grabbed Jess’s arm in a manacle grip and towed him along at a fast walk. It was the same fast but calm pace of all the other people he could see on the streets. As she pulled Thomas and him, and their guard escort, off toward the right, he saw that a steady stream of traffic was already moving in that direction, toward a doorway. Jess nearly pulled away. Buildings, in a Greek fire attack, couldn’t protect you; they caught fire, burned around you, trapped you screaming.
Indira sensed his hesitation and shouted, “Basement!”
Better. Not great, but better.
They’d just reached the steps that led down into darkness when the sirens cut off with a last warning wail, and the silence that swirled felt heavy and full of dread.
“Wait!” Jess tried to turn back. “The others—”
Indira shoved him forward. “They must fend for themselves, and God defend them now. Move!”
“She’s right,” Thomas said. “We’ll never reach them in time.”
I’m fast, Jess wanted to argue, but what would he do if he made it? Was he fast enough to unlock all the doors, too? Morgan had his picks, but she might not know how to use them under pressure . . .
He still tried to turn back, but Thomas put a huge hand on the back of his neck and moved him on, down the stairs, and there was nothing he could do.
By the time Jess found leverage to break the hold, they were down the stairs, and above, three strong men lifted a massive hinged door and bolted it in place. That, at least, was smart; a door that opened upward might end up buried by debris. This way, at least they could dig their way out, after, if necessary.
They’re alone out there. Locked up.
Jess turned on Thomas. He would have shouted at him, but he saw the other young man’s face. The tears in his eyes. It silenced him.
“We couldn’t have made it there in time,” Thomas said. “I’m sorry.”
Jess no longer wanted to yell, but he couldn’t bring himself to agree, either. He just turned away.
Inside, the place was lit by flickering candles and oil lamps and was crowded with long wooden benches that wouldn’t have been out of place in a pub. Rows of Philadelphia citizens sat in silence, eyes turned up at the blank ceiling.
“Sit,” Indira said, and pushed him down with a firm hand on his shoulder. She crowded in next to him on the bench, with Thomas on the other side and her two men blocking the stairs, though it didn’t seem likely anyone would try to rush for the exit. “Quiet.”
Jess took in the sharp smell of sweat and the rapid, ragged sound of breathing. Everyone stared upward.
Then the world above shuddered with impact, like a giant’s foot crushing down.
Dust sifted from the ceiling, and Jess ducked and coughed out the taste of it. A murmur went through those sitting near him—an old gray-haired European man clutching a carved wooden pipe, a slender native woman with beads braided in patterns in her long black hair, two small African children who held each other’s hands. Frightened but desperately silent.
The people in the bunker clung to their benches as another Library bomb fell, as the cellar ceiling trembled, as Philadelphia ignited above them. Jess thought of the mismatched scraps of timber and brick, stone and metal, that made up homes and stores. What wasn’t burning would be shaken apart. And yet, as he looked around, he didn’t see despair.
He saw determination.
Tomorrow, maybe even within the hour, they’d be scavenging the wreckage and building anew. Jess didn’t like the Burners. Didn’t agree with them in many critical ways. But he knew courage when he saw it. It would have been so much easier if he could see them as just enemies, instead of . . . people.
It took only a few minutes, and then the shuddering barrage stopped. Jess smelled the Greek fire . . . it was impossible not to recognize the sharp, sweetish reek of it. It was warm in the bunker but not, he thought, hot enough for the fire to be raging right above them. They waited. A child fussed and was quieted, but no one spoke.
They all relaxed when they heard a sudden, loud thumping on the overhead cellar door.
“All clear,” Indira said, and as if they’d all been released from some spell, people around them stood and took in deep breaths. No one seemed relieved. Three muscular guards unbolted the door and eased it back on a latch, to allow the public to exit in slow, shuffling steps.
Jess followed, and came out into hell. Philadelphia was a confusion of broken ruins, flames, smoke, and screams.
Part of the city hall had been hit and was a luminously green inferno; a team of people pulling a long wagon thundered past; then two clambered up to work a hand crank as the others unrolled a long hose and trained it on the blaze. The foam that vomited out smothered the flames as water couldn’t; Greek fire was notorious for that, an oily compound that splashed and clung and ignited on its own, and nothing but thick powders or foams could starve it. Once those flames were doused, it was obvious that they’d lost at least a quarter of the building—though not the end where Jess had been meeting with Beck. If the Library had been aiming to kill the Burner leader, they’d missed their shot.
More buildings on the street vomited black smoke—half a dozen ruined, and farther on, what seemed a residential block had half the houses lit by that haunted green. Some were just black, smoldering cinders and boards scattered in the street. People moved quickly, with a purpose, but he also saw the human damage—a woman weeping in the gutter, clutching a child. A man with a burned face staggering away into the smoke. A soldier hauling a body from rubble.
Until that moment, he’d pushed it away, but Jess felt panic hit him as he turned to look toward the prison, because one part of it was a mass of smoking, green-flickering debris.
“Thomas!” he shouted, and pelted away across the soft grass, under the hissing sway of trees. One was burning, and he had to dodge around an orange, ashy rain of flaming leaves. Smoke welled up to smudge the sky. He heard Thomas running behind him, and the shouts of Indira and her fellow guards, but he didn’t wait. A few rescuers had already gathered at the prison, and a tall, brawny man with a wheelbarrow was shoveling thick powder into the flames to quell them.