Cold Fire

Besides, she was drawn forward by the haunting cries of the child, driven by that instinctive understanding that children were always to be saved first: one of the major clauses of nature's genetically programmed triage policy.

Sirens rose in the distance. She had never paused to think that professional rescuers would be on their way. It didn't matter. She couldn't O back and wait for them to handle this. What if reaching the child a minute or two sooner made all the difference between death and survival? As Holly inched forward, now and then glimpsing anemic but worrisome flames through gaps in the web of destruction, she heard Jim Ironheart behind her, calling her name at the opening where the fore part of the plane had been amputated from the rest of it. In the chaos falling from the mid-section of the DC-10, they had apparently emerged from the smoke at different places, heading in opposite directions, for she had not been able to find him even though he should have been right behind her.

She had been pretty sure that he and Casey had survived, only because he obviously had a talent for survival; but it was good to hear his voice.

"In here!" she shouted, although the tangle of devastation prevented from seeing him.

"What're you doing?" "Looking for a little boy," she called back. "I hear him, I'm getting closer, but I can't see him yet.”

"Get out of there!" he shouted above the increasingly loud wail of approaching emergency vehicles. "Paramedics are on the way, they' trained for this.”

"Come on," she said, pushing forward. "There're other people in here who need help now!" Holly was nearing the front of the first-class section, where the steel of the fuselage had broken inward but not in such profusion as in the area behind her. Detached seats, carry-on luggage, and other detritus had flown forward on impact, however, piling up deeper there than anywhere More people had wound up in that pile, too, both dead and alive.

When she shoved a broken and empty seat out of her way and paused to get her breath, she heard Jim clawing into the wreckage behind her.

Lying on her side, she squirmed through a narrow passage and into a pocket of open space, coming face to face with the boy whose cries she had been following. He was about five years old, with enormous dark eyes.

He blinked at her in amazement and swallowed a sob, as if he had never really expected anyone to reach him.

He was under an inverted bank of five seats, in a peaked space formed by the seats themselves, as if in a tent. He was lying on his belly, looking out, and it seemed as if he ought to be able to slither into the open easy enough.

"Something's got my foot," he said. He was still afraid, but manageably so. He had cast off the greater part of his terror the moment he had seen her. Whether you were five years old or fifty, the worst thing always was being alone. "Got my foot, won't let go.”

Coughing, she said, "I'll get you out, honey. You'll be okay.”

Holly looked up and saw another row of seats piled atop the lower bank.

Both were wedged in by a mass of twisted steel pressing down from the caved-in ceiling, and she wondered if the forward section had rolled once before coming to rest right-side up.

With her fingertips she wiped the tears off his cheeks. "What's your name, honey?" "Norwood. Kids call me Norby. It don't hurt. My foot, I mean.”

She was glad to hear that.

But then, as she studied the wreckage around him and tried to figure out what to do, he said, "I can't feel it.”

"Feel what, Norby?" "My foot. It's funny, like something's holding it, 'cause I can't get loose, but then I can't feel my foot-you know? — like it maybe isn't there.”

Her stomach twisted at the image his words conjured in her mind.

Maybe it wasn't that bad. Maybe his foot was only pinched between two surfaces, just numb, but she had to think fast and move fast because he might be losing blood at an alarming rate.

The space in which he lay was too cramped for her to squeeze in past him, find his foot, and disentangle it. Instead, she rolled onto her back, bent her legs, and braced the soles of her shoes against the seats that peaked over him.

"Okay, honey, I'm going to straighten my legs, try to shove this up a little, just a couple inches. When it starts lifting, try to pull your foot out of there.”

As a snake of thin gray smoke slipped from the dark space behind Norby and coiled in front of his face, he wheezed and said, "There's d-ddead people in here with me.”

"That's okay, baby," she said, tensing her legs, flexing them a little to test the weight she was trying to lever off him. "You won't be there for long, not for long.”

"My seat, then an empty seat, then dead people," Norby said shakily.

She wondered how long the trauma of this experience would shape his nightmares and bend the course of his life.

"Here goes," she said.