Dead Man's Footsteps

said.
    She peered down a steep, sandy slope overgrown with bracken that was a natural slipway into the river, a good thirty yards below. The water, about twenty yards wide, was as still as a millpond. A few damsel flies sat on the surface, feeding off mosquito larvae or laying eggs, and more hovered just above. Reflections of the brush on the far bank appeared in sharp focus.
    ‘Wow!’ she said. ‘Wowwwwwww! That is amazing.’
    Then she noticed the series of white sticks planted all the way down the slipway. Each of them had precise ruled markings in black.
    ‘When I was a kid,’ MJ said, ‘the water level was up to here.’ He pointed at the top marker.
    Lisa counted eight exposed rulers, all the way down to the water. ‘It’s dropped this much?’
    ‘Good old global warming,’ he replied.
    Then she saw the looped hangman’s rope fixed to the overhanging branch of a tree thick as an elephant’s leg.
    ‘We used to jump off that!’ MJ said. ‘It was just a short drop.’
    Now it was a good five yards.
    He peeled off his T-shirt. ‘Coming in?’
    ‘Let’s put the tent up first!’
    ‘Shit, Lisa, we’ve got the whole day to put the tent up! I’m hot!’ He continued stripping. ‘And the flies hate the water.’
    ‘Tell me what the water’s like – I’ll think about it!’
    ‘You’re weak as piss!’
    Lisa laughed. MJ stood naked, then disappeared for some moments into the undergrowth. Moments later, she saw him crawling along the overhanging branch. He reached the rope, which looked dangerously frayed, rolled over and clung to it.
    ‘Be careful, MJ!’ she shouted, suddenly alarmed.
    Holding on with one arm, he beat his chest with the other, making a series of Tarzan whoops. Then he swung out over the river, his bare feet almost touching the surface of the water. He swung back and forward in several arcs, then he let go and dropped with a loud splash.
    Lisa watched anxiously. Moments later he surfaced andtossed his head, shaking wet hair away from his face. ‘It’s beautiful! Get in here, wuss!’
    He struck out, doing a couple of powerful crawl strokes, then suddenly he raised his head with a pained expression.
    ‘Fuck!’ he spluttered. ‘Shit! Owww! Bloody stubbed my toe on something!’
    Lisa laughed.
    MJ duck-dived. Moments later his head broke the surface and there was a look of panic on his face.
    ‘Shit, Lisa!’ he said. ‘There’s a car down here! There’s a fucking car in the river!’

23
11 SEPTEMBER 2001
    Lorraine stared in numb disbelief. The unlit cigarette between her fingers was quite forgotten. A young female reporter, talking urgently to the camera, seemed totally unaware that the South Tower, just a few hundred yards behind her, was collapsing.
    It was dropping straight down out of the sky, disappearing inside itself, neatly, almost unbearably neatly, as if for one brief instant Lorraine was witnessing the greatest conjuring trick ever performed. The reporter talked on. Behind her, cars and people were disappearing under rubble and swirling dust. Others were running for their lives, running straight down the street towards the camera.
    Oh, Jesus, doesn’t she realize?
    Still unaware, the reporter continued reading off her autocue or from a feed in her ear.
    LOOK BEHIND YOU! she wanted to scream at the woman.
    Then finally the woman did turn. And lost the plot totally. She took a startled, stumbling step sideways, followed by another. People were running past on either side, jostling her, almost knocking her off her feet. The mushrooming cloud was now as tall as the sky itself, and as wide as the city, tumbling like an avalanche towards her. In bewildered shock, she spoke a few more words, but therewas no sound with them, as if the cable had been disconnected, then the image became just a grey swirl of shadowy figures and chaos as the camera was engulfed.
    Lorraine, still in just her bikini bottoms, heard various shouts. The image on the screen cut to a jerky, hand-held shot of a massive slab of steel and glass and masonry crashing on to a red and white fire truck. It smashed through the ladder, then flattened the whole mid-section, as if this was a plastic toy truck a child had just stamped on.
    A woman’s voice was shouting, over and over, ‘Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God.’
    There were cries. Darkness for a second, then another hand-held shot, a young man limping past holding a blood-drenched towel against a woman’s face, helping her along, trying to