The Last Nightingale Read online

  But soon, in spite of all the distraction, he noticed a new smell in the fouled air.

  Smoke. Oily and thick, the source was somewhere nearby. He resumed digging, but within moments, the screams of the other trapped victims began rising higher. By now these people smelled the smoke too, and they grasped what it meant for them if they failed to get out of the path of the fire. Every breath that he took held less usable air. He began to go light-headed. His body started to fail him, in spite of his determination. His hands became clumsy paws. His thoughts ran thick. He tried to force his memory to tell him what he was supposed to be doing. He got no answer.

  It was the feel of a tiny hand that brought him back. He had opened up a pocket of space that held two small girls, perhaps six and seven years old. They pounced on him, crying out in a language he couldn't identify while they grabbed at his uniform sleeves to pull themselves free.

  He saw that both girls were bleeding, but before he could think of how to help them, they scrambled over him and scurried away, hand in hand, shrieking in panic. There was nothing else he could do for them. More trapped victims were calling out everywhere around him and his strength was quickly draining away. His only choice was to get to clearer air, and to gather reinforcements at the station: men, tools, water. Water most of all.

  When he finally made it far enough up Market Street to a spot where random air currents had carved a trough of better air, his thoughts began to clear. He felt some of his strength return. But when he stared through the faint light at the place where he knew City Hall was supposed to be, the sight stopped him in his tracks.

  Only a few days before, a fellow officer named Leonard Ingham told of a nightmare that had kept him up for hours; the entire city was wiped out in one massive conflagration. Blackburn remembered laughing at Ingham and chiding him for spending too much time around the Gypsy fortune-tellers down on the waterfront.

  But here he was, staring at the spot where the high-domed City Hall was supposed to be, and most of it was reduced to rubble. The great dome's steel frame remained standing, but it had shucked most of its limestone covering, just as Ingham described. Worse, with all of the early morning cooking fires that had been burning at the time that the quake struck, the massive blaze that Officer Ing-ham's dream had predicted was certain to be close behind.

  Blackburn hurried over to the ruined building. A dozen or so able-bodied officers were clearing space for a makeshift command center out on the broad front steps. In their midst was Police Chief Dinan, pacing back and forth, bellowing orders at anybody within earshot. The chief had already spotted him.

  "Sergeant Blackburn! Thank God you're alive!”

  “Yes sir, I was almost back here when it—”

  “We need a man with your strength!”

  “I'll do whatever I—”

  “Most of the City Jail inmates are still under the building! We've opened a passage down to their cells. Check ‘em out one by one. If they're dead, leave them. Any that are injured too bad to work, leave them, too. Round up everybody else at gunpoint and march ‘em all down to Portsmouth Square!”

  “Portsmouth Square? Sir, that's a long way from—”

  “Shoot any man who breaks ranks!”

  “Sir, there are already fires. Maybe we could draft the prisoners to work the hoses?”

  “What are they going to do with the hoses, Sergeant? Use ‘em to beat the flames out?”

  “What?”

  “A runner from the waterfront just came up—every water main in the city is busted. There's not gonna be any water for these fires. But you can bet there'll be bodies to deal with. There are exactly two graveyards on this peninsula, and both of them are full. So you march those men down to Portsmouth Square and start digging trench graves!”

  The chief grabbed Blackburn by the lapels and drew him close enough to blast him with a hoarse whisper. "We've got plague down in Chinatown, you understand me? And now the rats will be coming up out of every busted sewer line! Think about that, will you? You want to know how important this is—even though we've only got one motorized patrol car, it's not gonna do anything but ferry bodies down to you. That means our rescue work is all gonna be on horseback or most likely on foot, hear me? Just so you can get the bodies we send you into the ground, fast as you can.”

  The chief dropped his voice again. "And make sure to cover them too deep for the rats. We can rebury everybody later. Somewhere off the peninsula. Oakland, maybe.”

  Blackburn felt a flicker of worry that Dinan had gone over the deep end. "Chief, if you mean the Black Death, I've never heard about any plague in San Fran—”

  “You weren't supposed to hear!" the chief bellowed. He forced his voice back down to a croaking whisper, "Nobody was, except a few of us! We've been hoping that those few cases that have come up were brought directly in, but that the plague itself isn't really here. Nobody knows for sure. And now you can keep quiet about it too, or I swear I'll bury you right along with the—”

  “Yes, sir! I'll go right now!”

  “You sure as hell will if you want to stay upright, Sergeant! And mark me, now—these inmates, tell them you've got orders: If any man even looks like he might try to run, you're gonna shoot him down).”

  Blackburn hurried to comply. But there was hardly time to get down into the cell area and holler for the attention of the captive men before the next big aftershock struck, thirteen minutes after the initial wave.

  Just when he announced to the inmates that he had a proposition that could get them out of their cells, the earthquake rolled through with a force that dropped all of them to the floor. The basement area was claustrophobic, making this second quake feel much more powerful than the first. Blackburn was sure that if it didn't subside within twenty or thirty seconds, the rest of City Hall would collapse into the basement and make a grave for all of them.

  Luck gave them a nod; this shock wave faded quicker than the first, and when he was able to pick himself back up and peer through the dust, he realized that his sales pitch to the men could not have had a better opening. He saw the same death panic in their eyes that he had felt inside of himself. There was no need to use force. He asked for volunteers and got a general show of hands.

  They all smelled the thickening smoke.

  He and his two officers were so heavily outnumbered that they had to move with great care in hooking up their chain gang. It used up valuable time to get the men organized by height, for equal stride length, and then shackled into teams on long leg bindings improvised with sections of wagon harness. The sun was well over the horizon by the time the big sergeant and his young patrol officers marched away with their twenty-five conscripts.

  By now massive smoke columns were rising up in every direction, joining together high over the city in a ruinous pall that blocked out most of the daylight. The three officers marched their charges into what was becoming artificial twilight, armed only with a rifle and a double set of sidearms for each man. Blackburn had instructed them to make it a point to look like they were itching to use their guns, and for a while at least, the simple theatrics worked. The trembling "volunteers" felt less fear of marching deeper into the burning city than of the bullet in the back they were convinced any man would receive if he attempted to escape.

  At 8:14 A.M.,another powerful aftershock set everything to rattling, and this time it was too much for dozens of the city's brick and stone buildings; they finally shattered and crumbled into the streets. Block after city block began to take on the appearance of a rubble-strewn artillery field.

  A score of major fires now burned unchecked in every direction. Full daylight barely penetrated the shroud of smoke swelling over the ruined city. Blackburn lost large chunks of time in guiding his men around the worst of the damage and the emerging fires. The streets were so choked with obstacles that a hike which should have taken less than half an hour consumed nearly three. They only sustained that modest speed because they were marching under a firm order not to stop
for any rescue work, no matter how vital it might appear to be. His confidential order from Chief Dinan was simple:

  Nothing gets priority over saving the city from a rampaging outbreak of the Black Death.

  The desperate focus of that order became plain when the same sea breezes that were feeding the fires began to lift the smoke clouds. Blackburn hated what his eyes told him. As far as he could see in all directions, the city's large buildings were in various states of collapse. The few that were still standing amid the billowing smoke swayed with every new aftershock.

  Some of the city's able-bodied survivors had recovered enough of their humanity to begin working to rescue trapped survivors, but there were others who made no attempt to disguise their looting. From time to time, Blackburn fired over their heads to scatter them, but it was clear that they would only move on and strike again.

  There were three different occasions when he actively interfered with events by ordering one of his armed men to chase and shoot at gangs of looters. But each time, he remained within his orders by keeping the group of inmates moving while his assigned officer made sure that the perpetrators either took a bullet or were frightened away.

  It never slowed the group down. When he marched his men past one half-buried victim who stood trapped below his waist among twisted iron beams, the young man begged to be shot before the advancing flames could reach him. The approaching fire proved that his fears were true. Blackburn didn't even have to issue the order—his corporal quickly stepped forward and shot the man through the back of the head. The convicts watched, astounded, and felt themselves reminded that the penalties today were swift and harsh. They fell into step with added determination.

  In the absence of recognizable landmarks, Blackburn's group lost direction several times. They were picking their way across the crumbled remains of the Emporium Building before he realized that they were at the corner of Market and Powell streets. He ordered the men to take the slight left turn onto Powell, and corrected their course whenever he spotted something familiar. Still, by the time they reached the intersection at Jackson Street, a stone's throw from Portsmouth Square, it was already a quarter past ten—and they were off course again.

  He glanced around at the beautiful neighborhood's simple houses. The modest family homes were still standing, built with flexible wood beams instead of rigid bricks and mortar. He found himself hoping that the prevailing winds would change, just so these simple homes might be spared the swarming fires.

  But just after his men rounded the corner and began to head down Jackson Street, he heard a woman's screams. The sounds stopped him cold. Piercing, deathly screams were coming from inside one of these peaceful-looking houses. The screams were as primal and intense as anything he'd heard yet that day, an equal mix of terror and pain. The unreal aspect of it was that they were coming from somewhere inside an untouched house. No motion could be seen in the home, and the neighbors either did not hear or were choosing not to react. The entire neighborhood was otherwise silent.

  But Blackburn had already marched his men past so many other miseries, there was no time to investigate this one. Portsmouth Square was getting close, and the sour-faced inmates were starting to look as if they realized how heavily they outnumbered their captors.

  He took a last glance back at the peaceful-looking house. Exhaustion pulled at him, and the main work detail hadn't even started yet. There was nothing else to do but make a mental note to come back to that place later on, and try to check into the source of those terrible, out-of-place screams.

  If he ever got the chance.

  CHAPTER TWO

  10:15 A.M.

  FIVE HOURS AFTER

  THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE

  AT THE SAME TIME that Blackburn marched his men away from the house on Jackson Street, twelve-year-old Shane Nightingale was inside, curling his thin frame tighter inside the small kitchen pantry. He tried not to listen to what was going on just a few feet outside, but the words stabbed into him like nails.

  “It's the end!" the stranger's voice hissed. "A day of atonement for you. You're starting to appreciate that now, aren't you? My job is to empty you out! But don't worry. We'll take all the time we need.”

  The sounds coming out of Shane's adoptive mother had mostly dissolved into infantile shrieks and babbling, while the madman responded to Mrs. Nightingale with icy precision, mimicking the sounds of her deathly terror. He did it with such energy and skill that he seemed to be playing to an audience.

  To Shane, it felt as if the killer somehow realized that there was a terrified and helpless twelve-year-old boy hiding only a few feet away, and was taking additional pleasure in his torments by drilling the event deep into Shane's mind, toying with him until the moment came to throw open the pantry doors and drag him out to suffer with the others.

  Then abruptly, Mrs. Nightingale went quiet. The room took on a silence as thick and sour as old buttermilk. It was several long moments before the stranger began to speak again. This time he kept his voice to a reverential whisper.

  “Ah! Now you're perfect! Safe from any more sin! The sins of that arrogant man you people call husband and father.”

  All of the horrors laid upon Mrs. Nightingale were still not enough to satisfy the maniac, even though he had surely killed her. Shane felt a vague sense of relief that she had finally come to the end of her suffering, and that the lovely lady who adopted him out of St. Adrian's would endure no more of it. Shane knew that she had been the one who influenced the family's decision to rescue him from that place. Her husband and daughters would have passed him by and left him there. Even though she didn't allow any real closeness, he had always loved her for saving him.

  His relief sank under an overwhelming flood of guilt. Shane knew perfectly well that even a scrawny kid of twelve was expected to find the strength to fight off such a monster. Instead, from the moment that the brutal attack began, his terror had owned him. His legs went numb and useless. His throat seized shut. He couldn't even control his bladder.

  How long had it been? He could barely see inside of that darkened place, but the pocket watch that he won by pitching pennies now hung from a little hook on the back panel. He had placed it there when he moved in because he could read it by a thin beam of light that penetrated the slight warping of the door frame. Now when he craned his neck to see it, the watch showed that it was almost ten-thirty

  Early that morning, when Father Nightingale saw that nobody in the family was injured, he ordered everyone to get out of the house and into the safety of the front yard, just in case another aftershock rolled through. Then he shouted that his dry goods store was at the mercy of looters, and he hurried away in the family's four-seater buggy, carrying his shotgun and a sack full of 10-gauge shells. The last that they heard from him was when he called over his shoulder for everyone to stay outside until he returned.

  The family obeyed him for a while, but eventually both girls convinced their mother to go back in and set about putting away the toppled things in the parlor and kitchen. It was as if they all agreed that the earthquake was the worst thing that could happen that day; the rest was simply a matter of cleaning up. Once they finished, Shane had persuaded them all to return to their rooms and rest, then he had gone straight into the kitchen and crawled back into his makeshift retreat in the pantry, where he fell into an exhausted sleep.

  He awoke to the sounds of the girls screaming and Mrs. Nightingale hollering in protest, and of people being brutally dragged downstairs. The intruder sounded like he was searching through the house, bellowing, "Where's your husband? Where is he?" Mrs. Nightingale cried over and over that her husband was out guarding his store, but the intruder was determined to search the whole house himself. Shane could only lie paralyzed. He knew that his grim hiding place was sparing his life.

  Early on, Mrs. Nightingale had screamed Shane's name twice. She kept herself mercifully quiet about him, after that. The killer made no reaction to the name, as if he either had not heard
her or was already convinced that nobody else was around.

  Shane wondered if perhaps she hoped that he had somehow escaped and run for help. Maybe she thought that by keeping quiet, she was giving herself and her girls a chance at rescue.

  The girls never had the chance to put up any defense. When they were dragged into the kitchen in the first place, each one had only managed a couple of wordless screams before they were silenced. But he recognized those brief sounds. He knew them from his days at St. Adrian's. There, unsuspecting children who got themselves targeted for punishment frequently had the experience of a Helper coming up from behind and grabbing them—snatching them up off of the ground by an arm or leg, pulling them like a sack of grain. Sometimes the Helpers would yank so hard that the child made the same kind of involuntary yelp of shock and fear that Shane heard from both of these two girls.

  Back then, there was never anybody around to help either.

  Amy and Carolyn had grown up in a loving household and had no powers for battling such cruelty. Shane wondered if mere shock had sealed their lips; his own terror, after all, was keeping his voice silent and holding him as still as cold plaster.

  The intensity jumped higher when the perpetrator began a nonstop diatribe about his motives, to explain and justify his actions. Since there was no way for Shane to ignore the dreadful harangue, he was a captive audience at a demon's lecture.

  The hanging watch told him that it had been nearly three hours since the invader took Mrs. Nightingale and her girls captive. Obviously, the killer felt no concern about making a quick escape. In the general chaos that was surely going on all over the city, he was gambling that help was unlikely. It went on and on, long after the woman of the house stopped making any sound. When Shane finally realized what the madman was actually talking about, he had to bite his teeth into his tongue to silence himself. The man was actually asking his two surviving victims to agree with him, to tell him that what he was doing was all right. He wanted to hear them concur that his reasons were sound.