She turned and looked back at the side street she had come from. Churned earth, tilted pavement, the car was now gone. Farther down the short hillside that had appeared, the public square seemed extinguished. Water had formed in the middle of the square and ran away to the north, probably toward the Black River, Pearl thought. To the west, everything appeared to be intact. To the east, Franklin Street stretched away, untouched by the park in the distance. Close by, someone screamed, calling for help. She took a few more calming breaths and then walked toward the screams: The west, angling toward the opposite end of the square.
The screams cut off all at once, and a second after that, the sound of a motor straining came to her. Cycling up and then dropping. She paused in the middle of the road, listening, wondering where the sound came from. As she stood, something ran into her eye, stinging, clouding her vision. She reached one hand up and swiped at it and the back of her hand came back stained with a smear of blood.
She stared at it for a second. The ground seemed to lurch, shift suddenly, and she reached her hands to her knees to brace herself once more, expecting the shaking to start again, but her hands slipped past her knees and she fell, her legs buckling under her. The ground seemed to rise to meet her, and she stared down the length of the roadway, her face flush with the asphalt. The coldness of the ice and slush felt good against her skin. As if she were overheated; ice wrapped inside of a dishrag at the base of her neck on a hot day. She blinked, blinked again, and then her world went dark.
She floated, or seemed to, thinking of London. A hot day. She was a child again: Standing in the second-floor window and looking down at the street far below. The dishrag dripped, but it felt so good against her skin. The memory seemed to float away. She was rushing headlong through a never-ending stream of memories. All suddenly real again. Urgent, flying by so fast, but sharp in every detail.
Pearl had grown up on a council estate in London. When her mother had died, she had come to the United States only to find herself in the Maywood projects on the north side of Watertown. From one pit to another. Just different names, she liked to tell herself. Until a few weeks ago, she had still made the trip back and forth every day, but she had found a place, a small walk-up, near to the mission on the other side of the public square. It seemed extravagant to have her own space, but living in the downtown area suited her.
She seemed to be in both places at once. Back in her childhood, staring at the street below the window, yet hovering over her body, looking down at herself where she lay sprawled on the winter street. She wondered briefly which was real, but nearly as soon as she had the thought, she struggled to rise to her knees from the cold roadway, her eyes slitted, head throbbing.
In front of her, a shadowed figure had appeared staggering through the ice and snow, angling toward her. She blinked, blinked again, and her eyes found their focus. The man from the car, suddenly back from wherever he had been. One hand clutched his side where a bright red flood of blood seeped sluggishly over his clasping fingers. Her eyes swept down to his other hand, which was rising to meet her. A gun was clasped there. Probably, her mind told her, the same gun he had been going to shoot her with before. The gun swept upward as if by magic. She blinked, and realized then that the sound of the motor straining was louder. Closer. Almost roaring in its intensity. The gun was rising, but her eyes swiveled away and watched as a truck from the nearby base skidded to a stop, blocking the road from side to side only ten feet from her. She blinked, and the doors were opening, men yelling, rushing toward her.