The Watchman of Ephraim (Book Club Edition) Read Free Page B

What’s your name?”
    “… Cris.”
    “ Cris, my name is Keith. Cris, it’s time you thought about your kids. What’s your wife’s name?”
    De Niro couldn’t hold back his tears as his emotions overtook him, “… Lisa.”
    Tompkins leaned over and spoke right into his ear, “What do you think Lisa would want you to do?”
    De Niro turned and looked back up the stairs. Blood from the bruises on his head dripped into his eyes as tears fell from them. He bit his lower lip to try and stop it from quivering as he pictured Lisa in that moment, smiling as she always smiled at him, with glittering eyes and her dimpled cheek. Every moment they spent together from the first moment they met, all flashed through his brain. For an instant, everything went quiet and time stopped. He felt his heart beating, pounding … then breaking. As his wife’s image faded, he mouthed the words, I love you!
    De Niro knew he couldn’t make it all the way up to the 104 th floor in his condition, but he was content to die trying. That is, until he was reminded of Richard and Louis. He turned back to Tompkins, standing patiently a step below him and nodded in defeat. Understanding, Tompkins discarded the fire hose and put his arm around De Niro’s waist to aid him down the stairs.
    Thoughts raced through De Niro’s mind, too fast for him to make any sense of them as he felt himself descending, mostly being carried by the fatigued fireman. By the twentieth floor, both men were worn out but they pressed on, and by the tenth they were stumbling down the stairs as the last of the people behind them pushed past them. It took them over twenty minutes to reach the lobby. When they finally did, the fireman let go of De Niro and both men collapsed to their knees.
    De Niro noticed Tompkins look over to the far corner of the lobby as they both caught their breath. After a moment, the tall man shot to his feet with a look of grave concern on his face. It occurred to De Niro also that something was very wrong. There was no one in the lobby, not a single living soul and it looked like a dust storm had blown down the corridors since he was last there. Tompkins observed that even the temporary command center had been abandoned. He reached down and lifted De Niro from under his arm.
    “ Come on, we got to get out of this building now!”
    Using the last remnants of his will power, De Niro got to his feet and staggered after his rescuer. As they made it to the front doors of Tower One, it was apparent that something very bad must have happened while they were in the building. There was no way for them to know that the South Tower had already fallen.
    De Niro didn’t know if his eyesight was blurry and causing everything to look ghostly, but the chalky taste in his mouth made him know it was all too real. It looked like a nuclear bomb was detonated outside! In the distance, people were wandering aimlessly like those who survive a plane crash sometimes do. You couldn’t tell the color of their skin because they were all covered with a thick white powder. As far as the eye could see … the ground, the cars, everything was coated in a dirty, pallid ash.
    De Niro and Tompkins started to exit the building when a fireman standing across the street waved his hands and yelled, “GET BACK!”
    The two men scrambled back into the revolving doors just in time to hear two loud, horrific thuds. Unsure of what caused them, they wandered out to investigate and realized the situation had turned gruesome. As if in a nightmare, they discovered they were standing amidst the mutilated, flattened corpses of men and women, who had either fallen or jumped to their deaths from high up. Their badly mangled bodies now lay contorted in shallow craters created by the impacts from their fall. De Niro felt sick. He could see that the ghastly site deeply affected Fireman Tompkins too; a man who witnessed his share of horrific things.
    Every one of them was someone’s husband or wife,