novelraw Chapter 170: Getting Ready
Chapter 170: Getting Ready
Canvas scraped the floor like sand when they dragged the roll into the hall.
Needles flashed, thread bit through stiff fabric, and the women who worked on the canvas had their jaws set, their fingers raw, and their thumbs taped when the bleeding got to be too much.
Noah watched the line of stitches travel, slow and even, a seam that would not tear when the wind tried to pull it apart.
Kaito crouched beside the pile of poles, lips moving as he counted lengths and couplers under his breath. He tested a knot, shook it hard, and tested again. Roane hovered near the stairwell with three boys and a coil of wire looped over his shoulder. The building leaned around them as if listening.
Noah lifted his hand and warmed the hallway by a few degrees. Not comfort. Just enough to stop breath from fogging the needles. The women worked faster when metal didn’t bite.
"Double layer on the leading edge," he told them, tapping the canvas with two knuckles. "Mylar in the middle if you find it. Tape the seams with cloth, then with plastic. If air can find a path, it will."
Mina passed him a strip of shimmering foil peeled from an emergency blanket. He held it up to the light that leaked around the tarp over the window and checked for holes.
One thin star of day showed through. He folded the foil, heated the fold with his fingers until it bonded, and nodded once.
"Did we do good?" Mina asked, her voice soft as her eyes stayed on his hands.
He did not answer.
Praise had to be rationed like food. Too much and people worked for smiles instead of results.
Roane cleared his throat. "Bolt crew is waiting."
"Bring me a door," Noah told him. "Not a flimsy one. Solid wood or metal. We turn it into a sled and a shield."
Roane disappeared and returned with three bodies and a door taken from an office that would never be private again. Noah traced the hinges, found the screws frozen in place, and warmed each one until the metal softened. The hinges lifted clean.
The Door Shield went to Kaito.
"Handles top and bottom," Noah instructed. "Lash points every eighteen inches. Cross bracing here, here, and here." He tapped the spots with a finger. "Drill through and back it with washers. If you lose this on the ice, you lose the man behind it."
Kaito’s eyes sharpened. "Understood."
The boy with the knit hat sidled closer, hands cupped to catch the heat. Noah let him stay until the work settled and then closed his fists. Cold returned like a habit.
He took the ledger from Mina and flipped to the day’s page. Names packed tight in a medic’s neat writing. Rations out. Tools in. Debts owed. Favors called. He drew a line through Torres and felt nothing.
"Window Crew," he called, voice level.
Three men answered from the far end of the hall. He picked the one with the steadiest knees and the best balance. He remembered the way that man moved on broken stairs at night. He kept the other two for later.
"Test run," Noah told them. "Not outside. Here."
They carried the first finished tarp into an unlit corridor and stretched it from doorframe to doorframe to doorframe, a tunnel inside a building inside a winter. Kaito lashed poles across the top, triangulated stress points, and cinched the lines until the fabric hummed.
Noah stepped into the tunnel and lifted his hands. Heat rolled forward and crept along the seam like breath under a blanket. He watched the fabric lift, settle, lift again. He walked the length and put his palm to the far end. Warmth had crossed the space. It had slowed, but it had not died.
"Again," he told them.
They sealed the edges tighter, stuffed gaps with cloth, taped over tape. He heated. They measured by feel and by faces. When the tunnel held a skin of warm air from one end to the other, he allowed the smallest nod.
Kaito glanced up at him, waiting. "We can hold a lane," Kaito offered. "Not wide. Enough to crawl."
"Crawling is fine," Noah returned. "Crawling keeps bellies low and heads down."
A door banged somewhere below. The noise traveled the lean of the building like a complaint.
Noah looked at Roane.
Roane didn’t need a word. He hit the stairs at a run with two boys behind him. The banging stopped after a sharp shout and the scrape of a hammer. When Roane returned, his hair stood up with frost, and his breath came like smoke.
"Fixed," Roane reported. "Kaito’s knot on the hinge. No more slap."
"Good." Noah pointed at the sled. "Rope earrings through the nose and tail. You tie it, you own it."
Roane’s mouth tugged. "You planning to drag someone with that?"
"Supplies first," Noah returned. "Then me."
He moved to the window they had claimed for planning.
The tarp across it rattled like a thin drum. He unhooked a corner and leaned into the gap. The casino tower stood clean across the white. No flash. No motion. Silence like a wall.
He pictured Sera again. The woman with knife eyes staring through a scope that did not drop when men died. The men around her, hard and loyal and full of food. He pictured rugs. He pictured honey. He pictured fire that didn’t cost pain to make.
He would build a road to it one tarp at a time.
He dropped the tarp back into place and turned to Mina. "Ration packs for Bolt Crew and Sewing. Extra salt for anyone standing in wind for more than an hour. Warm drink at shift change."
Mina wrote without looking up. "Fuel for the drill?"
"Window Crew gets it," Noah answered. "Tell them to drill anchor points into #12 rebar on the sign above the street. They do not lean past their waist. They do not tie off to anything that moves."
Mina glanced toward the stairwell. "Two men puked breakfast. Nerves."
"Send them to Sew," Noah returned. "Hands that shake can still thread a needle."
The boy in the knit hat raised a hand halfway, then dropped it when Noah’s eyes touched him. "Speak," Noah allowed.
"Could we line the floor of the tunnel?" the boy asked, voice small. "If knees slide, heads smash."
"Carpet strips," Noah decided. "Foam if you find it. No thick wool. That holds water and freezes toes."
The boy nodded and ran.
Roane reappeared with a scavenged office chair rug under one arm and a length of pipe over the other. "Found these in 1407."
"Good," Noah returned. "Pipe becomes stakes. Rug becomes floor."
Roane shifted his grip. "We’re going to need hands on the rebar."
"You’ll have them," Noah told him. He lifted the ledger. "No trades until the anchors go in. If someone has energy for peaches and boots, someone has energy for drilling."
Groans rose down the hall and vanished when his gaze moved.
He checked the wind the way men like him learned to check it—by the pitch of wire in an open shaft and the lift of dust near the sill. Not dead calm. Not a knife either. Enough to punish anyone who stood in it and enough to push heat out of weak seams.
He could make his own weather inside a tunnel, but if the wind howled, it would peel even stubborn fabric like an orange.
"Tomorrow at sunup," he told Mina. "Not today."
Mina nodded once. "That keeps us alive."