It was like looking down at ants in an anthill calamity. He could see what was happening, both in the mass and to individuals. He saw a woman in purple clothes fall flat and he saw a man use her body, an instant later, as a steppingstone to cross the radiator of a truck.
Then, suddenly, the siren was still. It dropped its brazen voice, rattled death in its own throat and fell silent. But silence did not follow.
From the streets below came the most bloodcurdling sound Coley had ever heard or dreamed of, the sound of thousands upon thousands of people—men and women and children—
in absolute panic, in total fear, in headless flight, being trampled, being squeezed to death, having ribs caved in and legs broken, screaming, trying to escape. The combined tumult of that agony came up the building sides, up the concrete cavern walls, to Coley’s ears, as one sound.
He could not reckon with it in his mind.
It was so awful he wanted to stop up his cars.
It was such a shriek, wild and incessant, as made him want to end it by some act of mass assassination—or to plunge into it, down the long stories, so as to perish with it, simply to avoid hearing it more. He jerked his eyes away from that inhuman scene.
And thus he was one of the few, one of the very few, to see it coming. He would not even have seen it, so tremendous was its speed, had it not approached almost straight toward him, though at a higher level.
There it is, he thought strangely.
It was quite long, dark, but with a flare of fire at the tail end that shone palely against the winter sky. It had a place to go to, he supposed, and it must be near its place. The nose end was thin and very sharp.