LOWER MANHATTAN
He had fallen into a routine. Climbing stairs, breaking down doors, clearing rooms, and occasionally finding a survivor, always unconscious. Ray would hoist the victim over his shoulders and head back down as many flights of stairs as necessary—typically below the sixth or seventh floor. There, he would pass the victim to one of the growing number of rotating first responders in shiny yellow vinyl suits. And then it was back up again, using the Halligan and the fire axe now as walking sticks.
His thighs burned.
His lungs could barely keep up with an effort that grew steadily more difficult with each passing hour.
He had already vomited twice. The last time blood mixed in the bile.
It was happening. As large and muscular as he was, molecular cells were no longer reproducing. His body was no longer replacing the ones that perished to the radiation. And the symptoms would only get worse—much worse.
But he persisted.
Floor after floor.
Apartment after apartment.
Hour after hour.
He pushed all other thoughts aside except for saving one more soul.
Just one more.
An elderly woman collapsed on her kitchen floor; a kid unconscious in bed; a man who’d fallen down the stairs and knocked himself out.
One by one Ray carried them down to a safe floor, depositing them in the hands of the other first responders, their eyes meeting briefly across clear plastic masks. They all knew what he was doing and why. And they let him because no one else really could—at least not without knowingly or willingly signing their own death sentences.
He only had one floor left—the penthouse level on the thirty-eighth floor.
But he passed out just as he was about to reach it.