Bücher online kostenlos Kostenlos Online Lesen
Dead Man's Footsteps

Dead Man's Footsteps

Titel: Dead Man's Footsteps Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Peter James
Vom Netzwerk:
later he heard a dull thud, like a sack of potatoes falling. He felt a wet slap on his face. Then he saw something white and ragged roll across the ground towards him and stop inches from his feet. It was a human arm. Something wet was sliding down his cheek. He shot his hand up to his face and his fingers touched liquid. He looked at them and saw they were smeared in blood.
    His stomach heaved liked wet cement in a mixer. He turned away and threw up his breakfast where he stood, almost oblivious to another thud only a few feet away.Sirens wailed, sirens from the pit of hell. Sirens from all around. Everywhere. Then another thud, another spatter on his face and hands.
    He looked up. Flames and smoke and ant-like figures and sheet glass and a man, in shirtsleeves and trousers, tumbling in free fall from the sky. One shoe came away, flipping over and over. He watched it all the way down, end-over-end-over-end-over-end. People the size of toy soldiers and debris, indistinguishable from each other at first, were raining from the sky.
    He just stood and stared. A set of postage stamps he had once traded, commemorating the Dutch painter Bosch’s vision of death and hell, came into his mind. That’s what this was. Hell.
    The foul choking air was thick with noise now. Screams, sirens, cries, the overhead chop of helicopter blades. Police and fire officers were running towards the buildings. A fire truck bearing the words ‘Ladder 12’ pulled up in front of him, blocking his view. He moved around the far side of it as helmeted firemen poured out and broke into a run.
    There was another thud. Ronnie saw a plump man in a suit land on his back and explode.
    He threw up again, swaying giddily, then dropped to one knee, covering his face with his hands, and stayed there for some moments, shaking. He closed his eyes, as if somehow that would make everything go away. Then he turned in a sudden panic that someone had taken his bag and his briefcase. But they were there, right behind him. His smart fake Louis Vuitton briefcase. Not that anyone was going to care at this moment who the hell had made it. Or whether it was fake or real.
    After some minutes, Ronnie pulled himself together and stood up. He spat several times, trying to get the tasteof vomit out of his mouth. Then a flash of anger turned in seconds to a burning rage inside him. Why today? Why not some other fucking day? Why did this have to happen today?
    He saw a stream of people, some of them covered in white dust, some bleeding, walking slowly, as if in a trance, out of the entrance of the North Tower. Then he heard the distant honk-honk-honk of another fire engine. Then another. And another. Someone in front of him was holding a video camera.
    News , he thought. Television . Stupid bloody Lorraine would be panicking if she saw this. She panicked over everything. If there was a pile-up on a motorway she would instantly call to make sure he was all right, even when she must have known, if she’d only thought about it, that he couldn’t have been within a hundred miles of it.
    He pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket and dialled her number. There was a sharp beep, then the message on the display:
    Network busy .
    He tried again, twice more, then put the phone back in his pocket.
    He would come to realize just a little while later, when he reflected on it, how lucky he was that his call did not get through.

16
OCTOBER 2007
    You are meant to be bloody luminous! In the pitch, bitumen-black darkness, Abby brought her watch right up to her face, until she felt the cold steel and glass against her nose, and still she could not see a damned thing.
    I paid money for a luminous watch, damn you!
    Curled up on the hard floor, she had a feeling she might have slept, but she had no idea for how long. Was it day or night?
    Her muscles felt as if they had seized and her arm was dead. She swung it through the air, trying to shake circulation back into it. It was like a lead weight. She crawled a couple of feet and swung it again, then winced in pain as it struck the side of the lift with a dull boom .
    ‘Hello!’ she croaked.
    She banged again, then again and again.
    Felt the lift swaying at her exertion.
    Banged again. Again. Again.
    Felt the urge to pee once more. One boot was already full. The reek of stale urine was growing stronger. Her mouth was parched. She closed her eyes, then opened them again, brought the watch up close until she could feel the coldness on her nose.

Weitere Kostenlose Bücher