"Let's get this damn thing off him," Blink said.
Skittery swiftly backed up to the doorway to stand guard, while Garrs approached the door to the inner office, twisted the knob and threw it open, axe at the ready. He gave them a nod. "Clear."
Soot, sweat and dried blood stained Jack's skin. How he'd lost his shirts Race couldn't even begin to guess. There was, at least, no pool of blood beneath him. Running his hands over Jack's arms, Race could find no broken bones, though there was a sizeable gash at the left elbow which thankfully didn't seem too deep. The blood on Jack's right palm revealed no cuts beneath, so it had hopefully only come from that. He quickly slid his fingers over Jack's scalp. The only bump there was a small one at the back where Jack must have struck his head when he'd gone down. They might not need the antiseptic-soaked needle and thread after all.
Good so far. Dutchy was trying to carefully clamber over the beam so he could check Jack's legs, but the way the ceiling had collapsed, the various beams and slabs of plaster had formed a complex tangle. It was like a giant game of jackstraws, each piece resting upon another, and Dutchy could not find a place to safely step without the pieces shifting and putting dangerous pressure on Jack.
Dutchy shook his head, joined the rest as they sprang to the fallen beam and heaved at it. It refused to move. Reluctant as he was to give up monitoring Jack's shallow breaths, Race got up and added his strength to theirs, but it did not seem to help. What the hell was this thing made of, Race thought frantically, lead? They could barely get their arms around it. Garrs left his post guarding the inner office door to assist; it made no difference.
"On three," Blink panted, and they made another straining attempt, but—
"Quiet!" Skittery hissed.
They froze. Skittery was leaning back out into the hallway, gone very still; then he re-appeared. I heard something, he mouthed at them.
Race could hear nothing himself, except the sound of the boys trying to suppress their harsh breathing.
Skittery looked back in after another glance out the door. "Go on," he muttered. "But keep it down."
They shifted their grips, their footing, and had no better results than last time. Even if they did manage to raise it an inch, Race wondered, how the hell were they going to make sure it didn't fall back down onto Jack?
"Stop," Specs whispered suddenly. "It ain't just the weight. Look at the way the beam's lyin'."
They looked. The beam had landed with such force that one end was jammed into the broken floorboards; the other end had gouged a nearby wall with the impact and was jammed against it as well. It had caused the huge piece of wood to form a shallow triangle, with barely enough room for Jack underneath.
"Heavy as this thing is," Specs said, "falling all the way from the ceiling like that, it's a miracle it ain't crushed him. It's caught and it's wedged tight. It ain't going nowheres."
"We have to cut it off him then," Race said. "We—"
"There it is!" Skittery broke in sharply.
This time they could all hear it, too: a very distant growling, from elsewhere in the building. It was a distinctly canine sound.
There was a chorus of oaths from around the room. Dogs usually avoided any place a dragon had recently been. But it had been two hours since the dragon attack, and the boys' passage across the lawn and through the building was fresh. It must have emboldened the dogs, and led them to hunt where they otherwise wouldn't have.
Mush snatched up the butcher's saw with its eighteen-inch blade and tried it against the wood, but no matter how much the other boys tried to steady the beam, the vibrations still set Race's teeth on edge. They couldn't afford to subject Jack to it. Mush quickly set the saw down with a mumbled apology to Jack, and Garrs hefted the axe.
"Gonna make a hell of a racket," Blink warned.
"Don't matter," Skittery said, "they'se dogs, they've smelled us out already. Just hurry."
The rest of them braced the beam as much as they could in case it started to fall, and Garrs swung the axe—not down, but sideways and slightly upward, to lessen the impact on Jack. The thunk of the curved blade against solid oak sounded impossibly loud in the chamber. The sharpened edge bit in slightly, not nearly far enough.
Garrs swung again. Thunk. Again. Again. Race set his shoulder harder against the wood, willed it to split. The necessary chopping angle was awkward and inefficient. The beam was two feet thick.
Skittery abruptly jumped all the way in and slammed the door, leaned his back against it forcefully. "Hurry, hurry!"
The rapid clicking of curved nails against stone tiles came even though the closed door, and then shortly after there was the sound of rough snuffling and jostling, shockingly near, just on the other side.
"They'se found us—" Mush gasped.
Another swing. This time the sound of blade meeting wood was followed by a duller thud as the door was jarred inward, almost pushing Skittery off his feet.
"Holy—!" Specs glanced back and forth from the beam to the door, then leaped over to add his weight to Skittery's. Just in time, as another blow rattled the door.
Another swing. Another. The ancient oak, put up nearly a hundred years ago, finally began to substantially crack. One more swing, and the boys were staggering under the sudden free weight of part of the beam. The other smaller part smashed to the floor. Garrs dropped the axe and stooped to drag Jack out from under.
"Careful!" Race hissed at him, and the second Jack was clear, they let the beam down as quick as they safely could.
Specs was scrabbling at the brass knob. "Lock's busted."
"His legs seems all right," Dutchy said.
Mush was probing hastily but gently at Jack's bare midsection, which was badly bruised and swollen. "Can't feel nothing."
No sliding broken ribs, Race knew he meant. "We'll check more when we'se home," Race told them. "Go."
Mush and Dutchy carefully lifted Jack and took him to the inner office. Garrs caught up his axe again, ready should the dogs get in. Blink and Race grabbed the largest movable thing in the room—a broken walnut desk, even the smaller piece of the beam was out of the question—and pushed it in front of the door. Since Skittery and Specs were up against it, there had to be a gap left until the two of them could jump out of the way; and the moment they did, the door banged inward half a foot, and they caught a glimpse of pointed muzzles and sharp teeth before they gave the desk a final shove into place.
Blink grabbed up an armful of loose timber and piled it atop the desk, but there was no time to do more. They scooped up their dropped weapons and supplies, rushed into the inner office and slammed that door as well.
No lock here either. There wasn't even a knob left.
This room, unlike the outer one, was smaller and essentially empty. Jack had been set down on the tatters of a once-blue Oriental rug, with Mush hovering over him. Dutchy had opened the window and was leaning out.
"That ain't going to hold 'em for long," Skittery said grimly. He and Garrs had their backs against the door.
Race pointed to the window. "That's our only way out. Dutchy?"
"It's at least fifteen feet down," Dutchy said. "Maybe eighteen."
"Couple of us go down first," Specs said, uncoiling one of the lengths of rope they'd brought. It had been knotted every few feet. He slung one end over the edge, tied the other end off to the thick windowframe.
Hearing it spoken aloud, though they'd all known it was the only possible plan, brought them up short. Whichever of them descended first or even second would be the most vulnerable, since he couldn't hold a weapon, much less defend himself, while he climbed. And it was a long climb down, into unguarded territory.
There was a moment of taut silence, broken only by the sound of increasingly louder thumping and scraping from the outer chamber.
"I only gots one good eye," Blink spoke up, though his knuckles were white around the crowbar he carried, "so fifteen or eighteen feet, looks all the same to me. I'll go first."
"I'se second," Mush said.
Some of Blink's bravado faded. "Aw Mush, I don't think—"
Mush shook his head firmly. "You goes, I go."
Blink closed his mouth, and that seemed to settle it. Dutchy and Specs were tugging at the buttons on Dutchy's outer shirt, pulling it off and slipping it onto Jack to protect him from further scrapes.
Specs traded places with Skittery, taking his turn against the door with Garrs so that Skittery could cover the window with his shotgun.
Blink flung his crowbar over the ledge. It hit the pavement below with a metallic clang. He took a breath, gave Mush a grin and a squeeze on the shoulder, saluted them all and went over the ledge himself. They'd all become more or less proficient at climbing up and down ropes, as it was in many cases the only way in or out of a ruined building. Skittery kept the shotgun trained on the area below them, while the rest closely scanned the streets and sky, watched the top of Blink's head as he made his way down.
It must have only taken a few moments, but it felt like forever until they saw him reach bottom. The rope wasn't quite long enough, but he easily jumped the last couple of feet and spun around to grab the crowbar. He flashed them a thumbs-up.
Mush leaned out and motioned Blink to step back, then dropped his claw hammer outside before nimbly scampering down the rope in turn. Blink clapped him on the back, and the two of them took up defensive positions at the base of the rope while Skittery and Race kept watch from above.
The commotion in the other room had gone quiet, save for little rapid clicking sounds.
Specs had left the door again; he and Dutchy were kneeling by Jack, Dutchy propping Jack up against himself in a half-sitting position while Specs finished carefully winding another length of rope around their still-unconscious leader. It was Jack himself who had taught them that one, and it had proved eminently useful on their scavenging runs, when staircases and floors didn't always exist where they ought to and you needed your arms free to carry things. They had never thought they'd have to use it on him while he was out cold; in addition to wrapping it high on his chest beneath his arms, Specs had also looped it under his legs for stability before securely knotting the whole thing all together in back.
More snuffling and low growls at door—this door, now. The dogs must have gotten past the barriers in the outer office. Race exchanged a glance with Skittery and went to stand against the door with Garrs. There were no furniture or even any sizable objects in this room, only bits of debris. They'd have to rely on brute force to keep the door shut.
Specs and Dutchy were painstakingly maneuvering Jack through the window and over the ledge, keeping a tight grip on the rope the entire time. It was clearly difficult for them to balance against his inert weight while lowering him slowly and Race wished he could help them out, but just at that moment another blow shook the door and there was no going anywhere. From his vantage point across the room, he watched as Jack vanished below the sill, and all he could do now was dig in his heels hard and hope that the rope and knots held.
The growling and jostling were getting more intense. Dutchy and Specs let down their burden hand over hand until Dutchy announced, "They got him," and Skittery waved them out the window as well. The door jolted open a few inches—the largest dogs could be close on ninety pounds, and there sounded like plenty of them. One huge, fanged muzzle thrust its way through the opening. Without thinking, Race doubled up his fist and punched downwards onto its nose. The rough fur and hard bone underneath was a shocking sensation against his unprotected skin, but it worked and the dog withdrew.
He and Garrs shoved the door back. As first Dutchy, then Specs, disappeared over the ledge, Race snatched his awl from his belt, thrust it into the nearest crack in the hardwood floor and stomped on it with his bootheel—once, twice—until the steel spike was fully buried up to the round wooden handle.
"You too!" Skittery said. "Go!"
As they relaxed their pressure on the door it crashed open with a flurry of snarls and snapping jaws, but the awl and its sturdy handle held and the dogs only managed a gap of a few inches.
The axe and shotgun would not survive the drop to the pavement; Race and Skittery knotted them to the rope that Jack had been freed from, wide-eyed but steady in spite of the loss of their last weapons. They sent Garrs down first. He was not as skilled as the Manhattan boys in climbing, but what he lacked in technique he made up for in physical strength. To the accompaniment of banging and snarling, the remaining two lowered the weapons down as hastily as they dared, then Race scrambled onto the climbing-rope, followed closely by Skittery. Race had no love for this himself, but it was a skill acquired through necessity and he moved from knot to knot, bracing his boots against each and no way in hell was he going to look down.
The shotgun was waiting for Skittery when they reached bottom; Garrs already had the axe back in his hands. Mush and Dutchy had Jack in their arms, ready to go. Race tried not to wobble as he touched down. Solid ground had never felt so good under his feet.
He took the claw hammer that Mush had been carrying and they set off, staying close to the building as long as they could until they had to strike out across the lawn. Thankfully, their escape out the window had severed their scent trail and evidently stymied the dogs, and they made it all the way back to the grating without further pursuit.
Bumlets was still waiting for them just inside. He swung open the bars at their approach, his irrepressible smile a welcome in itself. "I knew you'd find him." He faltered a little. "Is he...?"
As if on cue, Jack began to stir. Being out in the fresh air seemed to have revived him, and as much as Race wanted to shout with triumph at the sight, he'd hoped Jack would be spared the difficult trip down the narrow shaft.
They slid their way in, one by one. Jack's eyes fluttered open from time to time, and he let out occasional grunts of pain, but he did not seem to fully realize where he was or what was happening. The walls of the shaft were still warmer than normal, close and stifling and dark after their run across the lawn.
By the time they made it down to the tunnel proper the word had spread. Boys swarmed this end of the tunnel, whispering excitedly among themselves, craning their necks for a look at their leader. The sight of him, motionless and wan, stopped them in their tracks. The whispers stilled.
Just before the crowd closed in, Race caught a glimpse of David as they'd left him—kneeling, his wrists roped together in front of him and tied to the pipes that ran waist-high along the length of the tunnel. Race gritted his teeth. Jack was going to be unhappy about that, but it had been the only way to keep David from bolting out with them on their uncertain rescue mission. Boots and Snitch had stayed with him, trying to keep him calm.
One of them must have cut him loose, because as Mush and Dutchy laid Jack down, there was a commotion among the gathered boys and suddenly David was there, breaking through the circle, face ashen, breathing hard. Blood streaked his forearms but he didn't seem to notice; he had eyes only for Jack.
"Don't—!" Race shouted as David flung himself at Jack. Watch his ribs! he nearly snapped, but to his amazement David seemed to realize it even in that frantic split second, because even though he slammed to his knees next to—practically on top of—Jack, not once did he touch him.
He only stared at him, bent low, hands braced to either side of Jack's shoulders, until Jack blinked, flicked his eyes up to David and murmured almost inaudibly, "Hey."
The terrible strain visibly drained from David at the sound of Jack's voice, his arms starting to shake until Race feared he'd actually collapse on top of the injured boy. Jack reached up unsteadily to pull David's head down to his shoulder, and gradually some of the shaking started to ease.
That single syllable was magic. Dozens of held breaths were released, tense stances relaxed. Race felt almost giddy with sudden relief.
Jack's disoriented gaze took in Race, took in all of them, the surroundings, their home. His expression was bewildered, as though he hadn't expected to regain consciousness back here at all. "You..." He coughed. "You came to get me..."
Race finally allowed himself a crooked grin, for the first time in a very long day. "We'se always gonna come get you, Cowboy."