Jack turned to David and Les. "C'mon."
The other boys had slipped away north along Park Row, obviously opting to take their large group to the Remington offices by a more circuitous route, bypassing the crowds as much as possible. Jack weighed his choices, took the chance and led the brothers straight up Duane instead, headed for Broadway.
Two blocks north along the deserted street to where Duane met Centre and abruptly turned west, and suddenly all was seething humanity again: wagons and carriages and hundreds on foot, cries of fear and shouted orders and the shrill blast of whistles. Jack reached back and clamped his fingers around a fistful of David's shirt-front.
They pushed their way forward, every step harder than the last. A trio of men hauling bulging sacks slammed into Jack's side as they staggered past, and it was only because he didn't let go and David braced his weight at the last moment that they were able to keep each other from falling. Everywhere, people were fleeing, but there was nowhere to go.
Jack halted, jumped up onto the side of a momentarily-stalled wagon. From above the bobbing heads of passers-by he sorted through the pedestrians and spotted what he was looking for, on the other side of the roadway and a little behind them. The wagon-driver took a swipe at his head with a metal-tipped stick, but Jack ducked it easily, dropping back down to the cobblestones.
He tugged at David's shirt. "Over here."
With Les' small form sandwiched between them, they cut as best as they could across the width of Centre. It was like trying to swim across a swift-churning stream. Just outside the wide glass window of a bookshop he managed to intercept the man he'd picked out earlier, a tall heavy-set individual who was plowing his way determinedly up the street, roughly throwing aside anyone who happened to be in his path. Indignant cries sounded in his wake. Jack slid up behind him and pulled the other two boys close.
David opened his mouth as if to protest, but shut it without saying a word. Jack, for his part, was relieved that he didn't have to explain himself. The man would probably wallop them if they tried to stop him, they didn't have the time for a confrontation anyway, and if the going was a little easier now with someone else breaking the wave of people in front of them...well, who were they to question it?
Broadway was now two streets away. The three of them moved along in the trail of their unwitting benefactor, their progress slow but reasonably steady. He could feel David's palm against the small of his back, counter-balancing Jack's own pull on David's shirt so that Les wouldn't get crushed in the middle.
Shouts of alarm and pain from up ahead sent them scrambling for the curb. A loose carthorse, wild-eyed and foam-flecked, barreled down the middle of the roadway. As it passed them, Jack could see that it trailed snapped harness lines and crimson spatters behind it. Its gait was unsteady, and even as he watched, it stumbled to its left and crashed into a knot of pedestrians. Fresh cries arose as two thousand pounds of horseflesh collapsed like a brick wall. Several men sprang to its head, heaving on its bridle to get it up again while others dragged the fallen away from its thrashing hooves.
It was no use. Blood flew from the corners of its mouth as it tossed its head, but it would not regain its feet. At least no one was still trapped beneath it. Despite the barking of gunfire up ahead, no-one nearby had bullets to spare for the suffering animal. When a man stepped up to it with an iron crowbar, Jack hastily reached out and turned Les' face away.
As they started up the street again, there was a gruesome wet crunch and an equine shriek. "Oh, christ," Jack groaned, sickened by the botched killing. Behind him, he could hear Les stifle a sob.
There was the sound of a second blow, and this time, nothing followed it.
In the rush to get out of the bolting horse's way, they'd lost the large man they'd been tailing. Vehicles and people surged back into the temporary gap that had opened for the animal, and now the boys found themselves just as hemmed in as they had been before.
Jack shouldered a young couple aside, trying not to jostle them too hard. They were almost at the next intersection, where Duane and Elm crossed each other. Surely, at the junction, the buildings to either side wouldn't feel like they were closing in so tight, and maybe they'd be able to pause just for a breath, and figure how they could get to—
He felt it almost before he heard or saw it, a giant presence in the sky. Not directly overhead, but farther downtown, above what he guessed must be the fish markets. Around him, screams were starting up.
Then—a blast of flame that could be clearly seen from this distance, as high up as the beast was. It was a long burst, so sustained that it seemed as if time itself had stopped, as if nothing else existed or would ever exist again except for a dragon shooting down fire from heaven.
There was an entire city block ablaze down at the Fulton Market. The tide of mass traffic turned sharply north.
"We can't cross this!" David hollered in his ear.
Getting to the Jacobs' home meant traversing Broadway at some point. It ran the length of Manhattan, and there was no getting around it. It might be easier to cross the farther uptown they went, but the longer they waited to do so, the more Broadway angled away to the east. It would stretch out their route, and time now was of the essence.
Nevertheless, it was clear that they had to give up the shortest course for now. They could force their way through it from here if they tried, but it would leave them stranded on the wide open space of the huge street, too exposed to the sky. "We'll go up Elm when we get to it!" Jack hoped he could be heard over the din. "Then cross when we can!"
Somehow they made it to the corner and joined the crowds on Elm. Their progress grew a little faster as they were now traveling north along with most of the rest of the throng. The dragon was staying to the south, but that made things no less calm. People still elbowed and swung at each other, and carriage-drivers cursed and cracked their whips with increasing indiscrimination.
"Help me!" It was a desperate cry from overhead. Snapping his head up, Jack saw a young woman clinging to the outside of a second-story window on his side of the street, a bundle clutched tightly to her breast in one arm. "My baby...please!"
"Dave!" Jack pointed upwards.
"Oh, god," David said. "Is she jumping?"
"Ma'am!" Jack waved his free arm at her.
David's eyes darted over the building. "She can't get out! The door downstairs's probably jammed with all the people around—"
"Ma'am!" Jack tried again.
They were right underneath her now. The woman was shouting something down at them, her voice lost in the tumult. "...can't hold...baby... and climb..."
Terror seized him as he saw her let the bundle fall. Mind a blank, acting purely on instinct, he pivoted to his left, let go of David and caught the plunging toddler in both arms, dropping to one knee to cushion the impact.
Breath roaring in his ears, seeing nothing but the tiny warm and moving body he held, he was only peripherally aware of the fact that she had clambered halfway down the grooved facade of the building after, and that David had reached up to help her as she jumped the remaining distance. She knelt in front of him to take her child back, tears streaming down her young face. "Oh, thank you," she choked, "thank you, sir..."
He couldn't say a word. He allowed her to take the toddler, who was wailing but seemed otherwise unhurt. By the time David pulled him to his feet and let Jack lean against him a little, woman and child had disappeared into the crowd.
"You're shaking," David told him.