In Death 09 - Loyalty in Death

climbing over seats as people leaped for safety. Above, she could see one of the emergency team efficiently putting out several small fires. The nosebleed seats were in smoking splinters.
    "Malloy!" she shouted into her communicator. "Anne Malloy. Give me your location."
    Static hissed in her ear, words hiccupping through it. "Three -- cleared... scanned ten..."
    "Your location," Eve repeated. "Give me your location."
    "Teams spread..."
    "Goddamn it, Anne, give me a location. I'm helpless here." Helpless, she thought, watching people claw their way over each other to get out. She saw a child shoot out of the crowd like soap from wet fingers, feet tripping over him as he slid out and bounced facefirst on the ice.
    She swore again, viciously, and leaped over the rail. She hit the ice on her hands and knees, skidding wildly until she slammed in with the toes of her boots. She grabbed the boy by the collar of his shirt and dragged them both away from the stampeding crowd.
    "Up to five." Anne's voice came through, clearer now. "We're clicking here. Update on evacuation."
    "I can't tell. Shit, it's a zoo." Eve pushed a hand over her face, saw blood smeared on her palm. "Fifty percent clear, up here. Maybe more. I've got no contact with the team in Penn. Where the hell are you?"
    "Moving toward sector two. I'm under the floor in Penn. Get those civilians out."
    "I've got a kid here. Injured." She spared the boy under her arm a glance. He was sheet white with a lump the size of a baby's fist on his forehead, but he was breathing. "I'll get him clear and be back."
    "Get him out, Dallas. Clock's ticking."
    She managed to get to her feet, skidded, grabbed clumsily for the rail. "Move your men out, Malloy. Abort and move out now."
    "Cleared six, four to go. Have to stick. Dallas, we lose it down here, we take out Penn and the Garden."
    Eve dumped the boy over her shoulder in a fireman's carry and pulled herself onto the steps. "Get them out, Anne. Save lives, fuck property."
    She stumbled through the seats, kicking aside the bags and coats and food people had left behind.
    "Seven, down to three. We're going to make it."
    "For God's sake, Anne. Move your ass."
    "Good advice."
    Eve blinked the sweat out of her eyes and saw Roarke just as he plucked the boy off her shoulder. "Get him out. I'm going for Malloy."
    "The hell you are."
    It was all he managed before the floor began to tremble. He saw the crack in the wall behind them split. Eve's hand was caught in his.
    They leaped off the platform and ran for the door where cops in full gear were pushing, shoving, all but tossing the last of the civilians through. She felt her eardrums contract an instant before she heard the blast. The wall of sizzling heat slammed them from behind. She felt her feet leave the ground, her head reel from the noise and heat. And the tidal wave force of air shot them through the door. Something hot and heavy crashed behind them.
    Survival was paramount now. Hands gripped, they scrambled up, kept moving blindly forward while rock and glass and steel rained down. The air was full of sounds, the shrieks of metal, the crash of steel, the thunder of spewing rock.
    She tripped over something, saw it was a body trapped under a concrete spear as wide as her waist. Her lungs were on fire, her throat full of smoke. Diamond-sharp fists of glass showered down, propelled by vicious secondary explosions.
    When her vision cleared, she could see what seemed to be hundreds of shocked faces, mountains of smoking rubble, and too many bodies to count.
    Then the wind slapped her face, cold. Hard. And she knew they were alive.
    "Are you hurt, are you hit?" she shouted to Roarke, unaware that their hands were still fused together.
    "No." Somehow, he still had the unconscious boy over his shoulder. "You?"
    "No, I don't think... No. Get him to the MTs," she told Roarke. Panting, she stopped, turned, blinked. From the outside, the building showed little damage. Smoke billowed from me jagged opening where doors had been, and the streets were littered with charred and twisted rubble, but the Garden still stood.
    "They got all but two. Just two." She thought of the station below -- the trains, the commuters, the vendors. She wiped grime and blood off her face. "I have to go back, get the status."
    He kept her hand firmly in his. He'd looked behind as they'd flown through the door. And he'd seen. "Eve, there's nothing to go back for."
    "There has to be." She shook him off. "I have