D A Novel (George Right) - By George Right Page 0,33

there were neither pedestrians nor traffic...

Now Logan trusted no municipal motor vehicles anymore.

However the danger behind him was more real, and there was no way to turn anyway, so Tony continued to run forward. During the next few seconds, he understood that the garbage truck had been abandoned long ago. Its body, once white, was eaten with rust, its cab gaped with the blackness of broken windows, and tires hung on rims like the rotten flesh on bones of a corpse. More surprising was that nobody had moved this wreck out of the way... however, this did not surprise Logan now. And then he saw that, before turning into garbage itself, the truck had spilled its contents out onto the road. Black plastic bags lay behind it on the street and on the right sidewalk. One bag still hung down behind from the truck. The appeal not to litter on a door–one of the few places on the truck body where the paint had escaped the effects of corrosion–looked in this surrounding especially incongruous.

And having run yet some yards more, Tony understood that these were not the usual garbage bags.

They were twice as long as normal and each was bound by rough ropes from outside. And the outlines of the things inside resembled human bodies.

Logan stopped so sharply that he almost fell. And at the same moment he heard the sound of a police siren behind.

In despair he rushed forward again. The only possible path was through the black bags. Logan hoped that he could jump over them, but in one place they lay too densely, and he had to step his unshod right foot on one of them. Under his foot something soft squelched and the bag made an unpleasant sound, similar to an exhalation of a choking asthmatic. Two more jumps–and Tony darted to the left, trying to hide from a probable pursuit from behind the garbage truck.

And understood that he tried in vain.

Ahead, the street came to a dead end at the brick wall of some huge uninhabited structure–either warehouse or factory. On both sides of the street there were only closed doors of offices and shops. There was no place to run anymore.

But that was not what filled Tony with the greatest horror. He was struck dumb looking not at the wall blocking his way, but above and behind it.

The fog was vanishing, its muslin thinned and torn like a decaying shroud. And, appearing from gloom, over a wall, over jagged silhouettes of roofs behind it, over all Downtown there rose two giant pillars of Twin Towers, their windows glowing in dim, unsteady crimson light.

The sound of the siren again howling behind Tony jarred him out of his stupor. His eyes feverishly swept around. Under the truck? No time to hide in its bed... maybe in the cab–but he wouldn't be well concealed there... But, having darted a glance towards the cab, Logan saw that the truck nose not simply abutted its right corner against a wall, but had pushed through the glass storefront of some shop. And to the right, behind the glass, motionless figures stood and stared straight at Logan.

But Tony wasn't frightened, since he understood at once that they were mannequins. The idea of standing among them was born instantly. During his university days, he and a fellow student once had had a lot of fun in Madame Tussaud's New York museum. In a dimly lit room representing a party, where wax figures were not lined up along walls, but settled down in easy poses around the room near visitors, the young men had posed motionlessly. When some visitors began to photograph them, the students suddenly moved and enjoyed the reaction. Probably, this trick would work now, too–the creatures pursuing Tony wouldn't guess that he stood right before their very eyes. His clothes were not in the proper condition to look like those on a mannequin, but inside the shop it was much darker than in the museum. But the shop door, naturally, was closed. Would it be possible to squeeze through the broken glass storefront, between the garbage truck cab and the rapaciously grinning splinters of glass?

But there was no time to reflect further. He did not hear the siren any more, but the shimmer of police car lights already lit up the street, shining feebly from under the truck. Tony darted to the store's front window and had time to notice that the broken glass had a thick layer of dust.