«All right?»
«I think so,» came back from outside.
«Good. Help's going to be along pretty soon, so don't wander off. If you have to move, watch out for fallen wires.»
«All right.»
Blade turned to the next victim. This was an older woman, well dressed, unconscious, and with a trickle of blood from one corner of her mouth. Moving her would definitely be too risky. But there was a third person down there, visible under her feet.
Blade gently lifted the woman's feet and saw a small boy held upright among the twisted metal plates. Blade saw no blood, but a twisted length of steel bar was pressing into the boy's back, trapping him in the wreckage. Blade bent down, discovered that he could just reach the bar, and took a firm grip on it with both hands. Then slowly he heaved.
Blade stood more than six feet tall and weighed two hundred and ten pounds. He had both enormous strength and great experience in using that strength. He needed all of both to pull the bar away from the boy. A fraction of an inch at a time, the bar gave, as sweat popped out on Blade's forehead, as sharp stabs of pain flared in arms and shoulders and chest, as his shirt split down the back with a sharp ripping sound that he barely noticed. Then the space was wide enough for the boy's shoulders. Blade put one hand under each of the boy's arms and lifted slowly. Easily and effortlessly, the boy rose to freedom.
Blade lifted the boy in both arms and carried him outside. He laid him on the damp grass, made sure he was still breathing normally, then returned to the car.
There might be other people, trapped still farther down in the twisted metal of the car's forward end. If there were, they were either dead or beyond Blade's helping. He clambered back up the dark corridor, looking into each compartment for people he could help. He found them.
An older man, sprawled helplessly and apparently choking to death. Blade bent over him and used mouth-to-mouth breathing until the choking stopped and the thin chest began to rise and fall normally. Then he pulled a blanket from the rack overhead and spread it over the man.