Desperation

What remained of Audrey Wyler was still clutching the railing, still attempting to pull itself up enough to dive over the side when the supports let go and the balcony tore away from the wall with a large, dusty roar. At first it slipped outward on a level, like a tray or a floating plat-form, tearing away boards from the edge of the hallway and forcing Steve and the others back as the old carpet first tore open and then gaped like a seismic fault.

Laths snapped; nails squealed as they divorced the boards to which they had been wedded. Then, at last, the balcony began to tilt. Audrey tumbled over the side. For just a moment Steve saw her feet sticking out of the dust, and then she was gone. A moment later and the balcony was gone, too, falling like a stone and hitting the seats below with a tremendous crash. Dust boiled up in a miniature mushroom cloud.

“David!” Steve shouted. “What about David. Is he alive.”

“I don’t know,” Ralph said. He looked at them with dazed and teary eyes. “I’m sure he was when I brought him out of the projection-booth, but now I don’t know. I can’t feel him breathing at all.”

ALL the doors leading into the auditorium had been chocked open, and the lobby was hazed with dust from the fallen balcony. They carried David over to one of the street—doors, where a draft from the outside pushed the worst of the drifting dust away.

“Put him down,” Cynthia said. She was trying to think what to do next-hell, what to do first-but her thoughts kept junking up on her. “And lay him straight. Let’s turn his airways into freeways.”

Ralph looked at her hopefully as he and Steve lowered David to the threadbare carpet.

“Do you know anything about… this.”

“Depends on what you mean,” she said. “Some first aid-including artificial respiration—from when I was back at Daughters and Sisters, yeah. But if you’re asking if I know anything about ladies who turn into homicidal maniacs and then decay, no.”

“He’s all I got, miss,” Ralph said. “All that’s left of my family.”

Cynthia closed her eyes and bent toward David. What she felt relieved her enormously—the faint but clear touch of breath on her face. “He’s alive. I can feel him breathing.” She looked up at Ralph and smiled. “I’m not surprised you couldn’t. Your face is swelled up like an i

“Yeah. Maybe that was it. But mostly I was just so afraid He tried to smile back at her and failed. He let out a gusty sigh and groped backward to lean against the boarded-over candy counter.

“I’m going to help him now,” Cynthia said. She looked down at the boy’s pale face and closed eyes. “I’m just going to help you along, David. Speed things up. Let me help you, okay. Let me help you.”

She turned his head gently to one side, wincing at the fingermarks on his neck. In the auditorium, a hanging piece of the balcony gave up the ghost and fell with a crash. The others looked that way, but Cynthia’s concen-tration remained on David. She used the fingers of her left hand to open his mouth, leaned forward, and gently pinched his nostrils shut with her right hand. Then she put her mouth on his and exhaled. His chest rose more steeply, then settled as she released his nose and pulled away from him. She bent to one side and spoke into his ear in a low voice. “Come back to us, David. We need you. And you need us.”

She breathed deep into his mouth again, and said, “Come back to us, David,” as he exhaled a mixture of his air and hers. She looked into his face. His unassisted breathing was a little stronger now, she thought, and she could see his eyeballs moving beneath his blue-tinged lids, but he showed no signs of waking up.

“Come back to us, David. Come back.”

Joh

“Why would it have.” Steve asked. “She was with the old guy.”

“And you think she’s still with the old guy. After all the yelling. After the goddam balcony fell off the goddam wall.”

“You’ve got a point,” Steve said.

“Here we go again,” Joh

Cynthia took no notice. She knelt with her face in front of David’s, searching it earnestly with her eyes. “I du

Joh

“Yeah. What if you’re not.”

Joh

“Huh.”

“How the fuck should 1 know. Use your judgement. I can tell you this much, Ralph: as soon as we’ve collected Ms. Jackson, we’re totally historical. Come on, Steve Down the far lefthand aisle, unless you’ve an urge to climb Mount Balcony.”

Ralph watched them through the door, then turned back to Cynthia and his son. “What’s wrong with David, do you have any idea. Did that bitch choke him into a coma9 He had a friend who was in a coma once, David did. He came out of it-it was a miracle, everyone said-but I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. Is that what’s wrong with him, do you think.”

“I don’t think he’s unconscious at all, let alone in a coma. Do you see the way his eyelids are moving. It’s more like he’s asleep and dreaming… or in a trance.”

She looked up at him. Their eyes met for a moment, and then Ralph knelt down across from her. He brushed his son’s hair off his brow and then kissed him gently between the eyes, where the skin was puckered in a faint frown. “Come back, David,” he said. “Please come back.”

David breathed quietly through pursed lips. Behind his bruised eyelids, his eyes moved and moved.

In the men’s room they found one dead cougar, its head mostly blown off, and one dead veterinarian with his eyes open. In the ladies’ room, they found nothing… or so it seemed to Steve.

“Shine your light back over there,” Joh

Steve dropped the beam and ran it along half a dozen beer-bottles standing against the wall just to the right of the window.

“The doc’s booby-trap,” Joh

“I didn’t even notice they were gone from the window—ledge. That’s good on you, boss.”

“Come on over here.” Joh

Steve nodded. “Sure. We stacked two crates to make it easier to climb in the window. I pushed the top one off, because I figured if the cop came back here and saw them piled up that way, it would be like a pointing arrow.”

“Right. But what do you see now.”

Steve used his flashlight, although he didn’t really need to; the wind had died almost completely, and all but the most errant skims of dust had dropped. There was even a scantling of moon.

“They’re stacked again,” he said, and turned to Joh

Came and took her was how he meant to finish, but he saw the boss shaking his head and stopped.

“That’s not what this says.” Joh