Dead Man's Footsteps

if someone had hit the freeze-frame button on all the people in the street. Just the cars kept moving, then a red light stopped them too.
    People stared. It took him some moments to see what they were staring at. At first he looked at ground level along the street, past a fire hydrant and trestle tables outside astore that were stacked with magazines and tourist guides, past the awning of a shop where a sign advertised BUTTER AND EGGS. He looked beyond an illuminated DON’T CROSS! red hand a little further on, and the gantry supporting a stop light suspended over the junction with Warren Street, and the row of backed-up traffic and glowing tail lights.
    Then he realized that they were all gazing up.
    Following their line of sight, at first all he saw, rising above the skyscrapers just a few blocks ahead of him, was a dense plume of black smoke, as thick as if it was coming from the chimney of a petrochemical refinery.
    A building was on fire, he realized. Then, through his shock and horror, his heart sank as he realized which building. The World Trade Center.
    Shit, shit, shit .
    Chilled and confused like everyone else, he stood rooted to the spot, still not able to believe his eyes or comprehend what he was seeing.
    The stop light turned green and, when the cars and vans and a truck started moving forward, he wondered if maybe the drivers hadn’t noticed, that perhaps they could not see up above the tops of their windscreens.
    Then the plume thinned for a few moments, the smoke fanning out. Through it, standing tall and proud against the brilliant blue of the sky, was the black and white radio mast. The North Tower, he recognized, from a previous visit. He felt a flash of relief. Donald Hatcook’s office was in the South Tower. Good. OK. He would still be able to have his meeting.
    He heard the wail of a siren. Then a whup-whup-whup, getting louder, deafeningly louder, echoing all around in the silence. He turned and saw a blue and white NYPD patrol car with three occupants, the guy in the back leaningforward, craning his neck upwards. It hurtled urgently past on the wrong side of the road, roof spinners showering red sparks on the doors of three yellow cabs in a row. Then, braking hard, tyres squealing, its nose dipping, it wormed its way through the intersection, between a bakery delivery truck, a halted Porsche and another yellow cab.
    ‘Oh, my God! Oh, Jesus! Oh, my God!’ a woman somewhere close behind him was saying. ‘Oh, my God, it hit the tower! Oh, my God!’
    The siren receded into the distance, just audible above another long silence. Chambers Street had fallen quiet. It was empty, suddenly. Ronnie watched a man walk across. He was wearing a baseball cap, lightweight anorak and workman’s boots, and carrying a plastic bag which might have contained his lunch. He could hear the man’s footsteps. The man stared warily down the empty street, as if worried he might get run over by a second cop car.
    But there was no second cop car. Just the silence. As if the one that had gone past was enough and could deal with the situation like it was some minor incident.
    ‘Did you see it?’ the woman behind him said.
    Ronnie turned. ‘What happened?’
    She had long brown hair and eyes that were bulging. Two bags of shopping lay on the sidewalk either side of her, cartons and tins of stuff spilled out.
    Her voice was quivering. ‘A plane! Oh, Jesus, it was a fucking plane! It hit the fucking tower. I can’t believe what I saw. It was a plane. It hit the fucking tower!’
    ‘A plane?’
    ‘It hit the tower. It hit the fucking tower.’
    She was obviously in shock.
    There was another siren now. Different from the cop car, a deep honking sound. A fire tender.
    This is great! he thought. Oh, this is just so bloody great! The morning I have my meeting with Donald, some fucking jerk crashes his plane into the fucking World Trade Center!
    He looked at his watch. Shit! It was almost 8.55! He’d left the deli just after a quarter to – giving him plenty of time. Had he really stood here for ten minutes? Donald Hatcook’s snotty secretary told him he needed to be punctual, that Donald only had an hour before he needed to leave for the airport to catch a plane to somewhere – Wichita, he thought she’d said. Or maybe it was Washington. Just one hour. Just a one-hour window to pitch to him and save his business!
    He heard another siren. Shit . There was going to be fucking chaos, for sure. The bloody emergency