The Power of the Dog

by Don Winslow

  One floor, two, she tries to count by the landings, then gives up. Is it three floors, four, five? She knows she has to go seven. Idiotically, she can’t remember how they number their floors in Mexico. Do they start on ground and go first, second? Or is the ground floor the first, then second, third, fourth . . . ?

  What does it matter? Just keep moving, she tells herself, then an awful lurch, like a ship rolling, slams her into the left wall. She keeps her balance, gets her feet under her again. Just keep moving, just keep moving, get out of this building before it comes down on top of you. Just keep going down these stairs.

  She thinks, oddly, of the steep stairs going down from Montmartre through the Place Willette, how some people take the cable car but she always takes the steps because it’s good for her calves but also because she just enjoys it, and if she walks instead of rides it justifies a chocolat chaud at that pretty café at the bottom. And I want to go back there again, she thinks, I want to sit at a sidewalk table again and have the waiter smile at me and watch the people, see the funny cathedral, the Basilique du Sacré Coeur at the top, the one that looks like it was made from spun sugar.

  Think about that, think about that, don’t think about dying in this trap, this crowded, swaying, rolling deathtrap. God, it’s getting hot in here, God, stop screaming, it doesn’t do any good, shut up, there’s a breath of air, now people are jammed in front of her and then the jam breaks up and she moves behind the people in the lobby.

  Chandeliers drop from the ceiling like rotten fruit from a shaken tree, falling and shattering on the old tile floor. She steps over the broken glass toward the revolving doors. So jammed—she waits her turn—she gets in. No need to push, it’s being more than pushed from behind. She gets a scent of air—wonderful air, she sees dim sunlight, she’s almost out—

  Then the building comes down on her.

  He’s saying Mass when it hits.

  Ten miles from the epicenter, in the Cathedral of Ciudad Guzmán, Archbishop Parada holds the host above his head and offers a prayer to God. It’s one of the perks and privileges of being archbishop of the Guadalajara Archdiocese, that he gets to come out here to say the occasional Mass in the little town. He loves the cathedral’s classic churrigueresque architecture, Mexico’s unique adaptation of the European Gothic into the pagan Aztec and Mayan. The cathedral’s two Gothic towers are rounded into pre-Columbian polyforms, flanking a dome decorated with a panoply of multicolored tiles. Even now, as he faces the retablo behind the altar, he can see the gilded wood carvings—European cherubs and human heads, but also native scrolls of fruit and flowers and birds.

  The love of color, of nature, the joy of life—this is what makes him revel in the Mexican brand of Christianity, the seamless blending of indigenous paganism with an emotional, unshakable faith in Jesus. It is not the dry, spare religion of European intellectualism, with its hatred of the natural world. No, the Mexicans have the innate wisdom, the spiritual generosity—how shall he put this?—arms long enough to wrap themselves around this world and the next in a warm embrace.

  That’s pretty good, he thinks as he turns back toward the congregation. I should find a way to work that into a sermon.

  The cathedral is crowded with worshippers this morning—even though it’s a Thursday—because he is there to celebrate the Mass. I have, he thinks, enough of an ego to enjoy that fact. The truth is that he’s an enormously popular archbishop—he gets out among the people, shares their concerns, their thoughts, their laughs, their meals. Oh, God, he thinks, how I share their meals. He knows that it’s a village joke in whatever town he visits, and he visits all of them: “Widen the chair at the head of the table—Archbishop Juan is coming to dinner.”

  He takes a host and starts to place it on the tongue of the worshipper kneeling in front of him.

  Then the floor bounces beneath him.

  That’s exactly what it feels like, a bounce. Then another and another until the bounces blend into one constant series of jolts.

  He feels something wet on his sleeve.

  Looks down to see wine hopping out of the cup held by the acolyte beside him. He puts his arm around the boy’s shoulders.

  “Move first under the arches,” he says, “then outside. Everyone go now, calmly, quietly.”

  He gently pushes the altar boy. “Go on.”

  The boy steps down from the altar.

  Parada waits. He will wait there until the rest of the crowd in the church has filed out. Be calm, he tells himself. If you are calm, they will be calm. If there’s panic, people might crush one another to get out.

  So he stays and looks around.

  The carved animals come to life.

  They hop and quiver.

  The carved faces nod up and down.

  A frenzied agreement, Parada thinks. On what, I wonder?

  Outside, the two towers tremble.

  They are made of old stone. Beautifully handcrafted by local artisans. So much love went into them, so much care. But they stand in the town of Ciudad Guzmán, in the province of Jalisco, a name that comes from the original Tarascan inhabitants and means “sandy place.” The stones in the tower are fine, strong and level, but the mortar was made from that sandy soil.

  It could hold firm against many things, wind and rain and time, but it was never meant to hold up against a 7.8 earthquake, thirty kilometers deep and just ten miles away.

  So as the worshippers patiently file out, the towers quiver, the mortar holding them together shakes loose, and they collapse on top of the great-grandchildren of the men who carved them and set them in place. The towers crash through the tiled dome and come down on twenty-five worshippers.

  Because the church is crowded this morning.

  For the love of Bishop Juan.

  Who stands on the altar, untouched, in shock and horror as the people in front of him just disappear in a cloud of yellow dust.

  The host still in his hand.

  The body of Christ.

  Nora is pulled from the dead.

  A steel support beam saved her life. It fell diagonally onto a broken piece of wall and stopped another column from crushing her. Left a crack of space, a little air, as she lay buried beneath the rubble of the Regis Hotel, so she could at least breathe.

  Not that there’s much to breathe, the air is filled with so much dust.

  She chokes on it, she coughs, she can’t see a thing, but she can hear. Is it minutes later, hours? She doesn’t know, but in that time she wonders if she’s dead. If this is what hell is—trapped in a small, hot space, unable to see, choking on dust. I’m dead, she thinks, dead and buried. She hears the sounds of moans, cries of pain, and wonders if this will last forever. If this is her eternity. Where a whore goes when she dies.

  She has just enough space to lay her head on her arm. Maybe I can sleep through hell, she thinks, sleep through eternity. It hurts. She finds that her arm is caked with moist blood, then she remembers the mirror shattering and the glass flying into her arm. I’m not dead, she thinks, feeling the wet blood. Dead people don’t bleed.

  I’m not dead, she thinks.

  I’m buried alive.

  Then she starts to panic.

  Starts to hyperventilate, knowing that she shouldn’t, that she’s only using up the small supply of oxygen more quickly, but she can’t help it. The thought of being buried alive, in this coffin under the ground—she remembers some stupid Poe story they made her read in high school. The scratch marks on the top of the coffin . . .

  She wants to scream.

  No point in using up my air freaking out, she thinks. There’s better things to do with it. She yells, simply, “Help!”

  Over and over again. At the top of her lungs.

  Then she hears sirens, footsteps, the sound of feet right above her.

  “Help!!”

  A beat, then, “¿Dónde estás?”

  “Right here!” she yells. Then thinks, then yells, “¡Aquí!”

  She hears and feels thin
gs being lifted above her. Orders being given, cautions issued. Then she reaches her hand up as far as it will go. A second later feels the incredible warmth of another hand grabbing hers. Then she feels herself being pulled, out and up, and then, miraculously, she’s standing in open space. Well, sort of open. There’s a ceiling of sorts above. Walls and columns slanting crazily. Like standing in a museum of ruins.

  A rescue worker holds her by the arms, looks curiously at her.

  Then she smells something. A sweet, sickly smell. God, what is that?

  A spark hits the gas and sets it off.

  Nora hears a sharp crack, then a bass boom that rattles her heart and she falls over the hole. When she looks up again, there’s fire everywhere. It’s like the freaking air is on fire.

  And moving toward her.

  The men yell, “¡Vámonos! ¡Ahorita!”

  Let’s go! Right now!

  One of the men grabs Nora’s arm again and pushes her, and they’re running. Flames are all around them, and burning debris falls on their heads, and she hears a crackling sound, smells an acrid, sour smell, and a man is slapping at her head and she realizes that her hair is on fire, but she doesn’t feel it. The man’s sleeve catches on fire but he keeps pushing her, pushing her, and then suddenly they’re in the open air and she wants to fall down but the man won’t let her, he keeps pushing her and pushing her because, behind them, what’s left of the Regis Hotel tumbles and burns.

  The other two men don’t make it. They join the other 128 heroes who will die trying to rescue people trapped in the earthquake.

  Nora doesn’t know this yet as she trots across Avenida Benito Juárez into the relative safety of the open space of La Alameda Park. She drops to her knees as a policewoman, a traffic warden, throws a coat over her head and pats out the fire.

  Nora looks around her—the Regis Hotel is a pile of burning rubble. Next door, the Salinas y Rocha department store looks like it’s been cut in half. Red, green and white streamers, decorations from Independence Day, are floating in the air above the truncated shell of the building. All around her, as far as she can see through the clouds of dust, buildings lie toppled or cut in half. Huge chunks of stone, concrete and twisted steel lie in the streets.

  And the people. All over the park, people are on their knees praying.

  The sky is dark from smoke and dust.

  Blocking out the sun.

  And over and over again, she hears the same muttered phrase: “El fin del mundo.”

  The end of the world.

  The right side of Nora’s hair is scorched black; her left arm is bloody and studded with tiny shards of glass. The shock and adrenaline are wearing off and the pain is starting to come in for real.

  Parada kneels over the corpses.

  Giving them, posthumously, the last rites.

  A line of corpses awaits his attention. Twenty-five bodies wrapped in makeshift shrouds—in blankets, towels, tablecloths, anything that could be found. Lying in a neat line in the dirt outside the fallen cathedral while frantic townspeople comb the ruins for more. Search for their loved ones, missing, trapped under the old stone. Desperately, hopefully listening for any signs of life.

  So his mouth mumbles the Latin words, but his heart . . .

  Something has broken inside him, has cracked as surely and lethally as the earth has cracked. There is now a fault line between me and God, he thinks.

  The God that is, the God that isn’t.

  He can’t tell them that—it would be cruel. They’re looking to him to send the souls of their dearly departed to heaven. He can’t disappoint them, not at this time, maybe never. The people need hope and I can’t take it away. I’m not as cruel as You, he thinks.

  So he says the prayers. Anoints them with oil and goes on with the ritual.

  Behind him a priest approaches.

  “Padre Juan?”

  “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

  “You’re wanted in Mexico City.”

  “I’m needed here.”

  “They are orders, Padre Juan.”

  “Whose orders?”

  “The papal nuncio,” the priest says. “Everyone is being summoned, to organize the relief. You have done such work before, so—”

  “I have dozens of dead here—”

  “There are thousands dead in Mexico City,” the priest says.

  “Thousands?”

  “No one knows how many,” says the priest. “And tens of thousands homeless.”

  So, Parada thinks, there it is—the living must be served.

  “As soon as I’m done here,” Parada says.

  He goes back to giving the last rites.

  They can’t get her to leave.

  A lot of people try—police, rescue workers, paramedics—but Nora won’t go to get medical help.

  “Your arm, Señorita, your face—”

  “Bullshit,” she says. “There are a lot of people hurt a lot worse. I’m okay.”

  I’m in pain, she thinks, but I’m okay. It’s funny, a day ago I would have thought that those two things couldn’t go together, but now I know they can. So her arm hurts, her head hurts, her face, scorched from the fire like a very bad sunburn, hurts, but she feels okay.

  In fact, she feels strong.

  Pain?

  Fuck pain—there are people dying.

  She doesn’t want help now—she wants to help.

  So she sits down and carefully picks the glass out of her arm, then washes it in a broken water main. Rips a sleeve off the linen pajamas she’s still wearing (glad that she’s always opted for linen over some flimsy silk thing) and ties it around the wound. Then she tears the other sleeve and uses it as a kerchief over her nose and mouth because the dust and smoke are choking, and the smell . . .

  It’s the smell of death.

  Unimaginable if you’ve never smelled it, unforgettable once you have.

  She tightens the kerchief on her face and goes in search of something to put on her feet. Not hard to do, seeing as how the department store has basically exploded its contents onto the street. So she appropriates a pair of rubber flip-flops, doesn’t consider it looting (there is no looting—despite the overwhelming poverty of many of the city’s residents, there is no looting), and joins a volunteer rescue crew digging up the rubble of the hotel, searching for survivors. There are hundreds of these crews, thousands of volunteers digging through fallen buildings all over the city, working with shovels, picks, tire irons, broken rebar and bare hands to get to the people trapped underneath. Carrying the dead and wounded out in blankets, sheets, shower curtains, anything to help the hopelessly overextended emergency personnel. Other volunteer crews help remove the rubble from the streets to clear the way for ambulances and fire trucks. Fire department helicopters hover over burning buildings, lowering men on winches to pluck out people who can’t be reached from the ground.

  All the while, thousands of radios drone a litany, pierced by screams of grief or joy from the listeners as the announcer reads the names of the dead and the names of the survivors.

  There are other sounds—moans, whimpers, prayers, screams, cries for help—all muffled, all from deep within the ruins. Voices of people trapped under tons of rubble.

  So the workers keep working. Quietly, doggedly, the volunteers and professionals search for survivors. Digging beside Nora is a troop of Girl Scouts. They can’t be more than nine years old, Nora thinks, looking at their serious, determined faces, already carrying, literally, the weight of the world. So there are Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, soccer clubs, bridge clubs, and just individuals like Nora, who form themselves into teams.

  Doctors and nurses, the few who are left after the collapse of the hospitals, comb the rubble with stethoscopes, lowering the instruments to the rocks to listen for any faint signs of life. When they do, the workers holler for quiet, the sirens stop, the vehicles turn off their motors and everyone remains perfectly still. And then a doctor might smile or nod, and the crews move in, carefully,
gently but efficiently moving the rock and steel and concrete, and sometimes there’s a happy ending with someone plucked from the rubble. Other times it is sadder—they just can’t move the rubble fast enough; they are too late and find a lifeless body.

  Either way, they keep working.

  All that day and through the night.

  Nora stops once during the night. Takes a break and gets a cup of tea and a slice of bread from a relief station set up in the park. The park is crowded with the newly homeless and with people afraid to stay in their houses and apartment buildings. So the park resembles a giant refugee center, which, Nora thinks, I guess it is.