by S. M. Butler
She sighed. That was a lifetime ago and over the past ten days Grann had come to realize the truth about Deolina.
“She is the sister I had.” Gran’s lips twitched. “Back off, you old hairy wolf! I won’t let you take her. Deo’s not moving on until I say so.”
Pushing herself up, Grann did her best to move concrete and steel.
*
Luke had been making pretty good time before the sun went down. Now he was in the dark, running through streets littered with glass, and sharp, jagged pieces of broken buildings. Worried about breaking his legs and not being able to get to Ysabeau, he slowed his pace to a jog, and at times a fast walk. To avoid falling debris, he steered clear of the sidewalks and tried to run in the middle of the streets. It was a dangerous proposition, as the few cars that came down the road were driven by madmen. Twice he had to jump out of the way to keep from getting run over. He didn’t fault the crazy drivers speeding to the hospital, or off to find loved ones. The earthquake had changed everything.
More and more people clogged up the streets not wanting to go back inside their busted homes. He didn’t blame them. There were deep fissures in the pavement and huge cracks in foundations, walls, and up the sides of buildings. Corners had been ripped off multi-story apartment buildings and tossed aside like a kid does his bread crust. He could only guess about the walls and supports, but he suspected that no building was safe to be inside.
He saw a group of five or six men and women warming themselves around a trash fire, sharing comfort. That sight warmed his heart as he jogged by. The fire was a flicker of light in the dark, vibrating night.
On every street he witnessed a man or woman, young or old, wailing their grief and screaming their anger. Luke felt special kindred with them. If he had time to slow down, he would howl too. He’d curse at the universe and demand retribution for these people. He’d rant and rave and beg and plead, but there was no time. Ysabeau needed him, so he kept his heavy feet and even heavier heart going.
And when another body was placed on the side of the road with a sheet over its head?
Luke would creep over and check the person’s shoes. When he was sure the dead body wasn’t wearing Ysabeau’s sandals, he’d swallow the bile in his throat, say a little prayer of thanks, and whisper, “Rest in peace, my friend.”
And move on.
The night was a living hell. An endless, test of…who knew what? But he felt like he was being tested and failing miserably. God, if he could just get to Ysabeau’s home already, he would be forever grateful.
He came to a nasty spot in the road. He uttered a string of curses when he realized he was going to have to “rock climb” over a building that had tumbled all the way across the street. There was no getting around the thing. He started climbing, digging his toes into questionable toe-holds and clinging to concrete rocks that shifted under his weight. He cut his hands and took a slice to his cheek, but finally he made it over and eased himself down the other side. Once there, his heart plummeted. Tangled up in the rubble was something he never wanted to associate with all this death and destruction—a swing set.
He opened his eyes wide, trying to peer through the dark and make out the spooky shapes. Next to the swing set was the mangled remains of a jungle gym very similar to the one Sunny used to climb on at the park in San Francisco. The metal slide had been twisted like a used piece of aluminum foil. Toys were strewn in the gutter. A Tonka dump truck, a yellow bucket, a plastic shovel…
This had been a preschool. Now it was leveled.
With his heart in his throat, he wandered around the demolished building yelling, “Hello? Anyone here?”
There weren’t any answers.
Suddenly, he remembered his iPhone. Last month he had downloaded the flashlight app. and was impressed by how much light it produced. He turned on the light and pointed it at the rubble.
He was sick to his stomach. Were children inside the flattened building? If his daughter’s preschool looked like this one? He’d want some foreign guy to do everything in his power to ensure no one was trapped inside. Everything.
“Please, if you are here make a sound!” he yelled.
He pressed his flashlight phone into nooks and crannies, searching for…an arm, leg, clumps of hair…any part of a person, living or dead.
He cupped his hands and yelled directly into a hole. “Hello? Anyone?”
Into every crack he flashed his light and yelled, over and over again. He stepped back and slowly swept his light over the horrifying landscape. No one moved. No one answered his calls.
He was torn. Part of him wanted to rip this building apart with his bare hands to search for survivors. The other part reasoned that in all likelihood no one was inside. He didn’t know anything about the preschools in Haiti, but remembered Sunny had come home by lunchtime. Surely, three and four-year-olds in Port-au-Prince would have been home long before the quake unleashed its fury at four fifty-three.
Taking the picture of Sunny out of his wallet, he shone the flashlight on it. He sucked in a breath and found strength in his daughter’s eyes. He kissed the picture and put it back in his wallet. It was time to move on. Ysabeau might need him and Lord knew he needed Ysabeau. He wanted nothing more than to hold her in his arms, breathe in her tropical sweetness, and tell her how much he loved her.
The earth rumbled under his feet.
“Another aftershock?” He yelled toward the stars. “Can’t you give it a rest already?”
He was angry and tired and so damned afraid. Glancing at the houses, toppled trees and smashed cars, he realized nothing looked familiar. He had the sinking feeling he wasn’t making any headway. How far had he gone? How much further to go? He had no idea. He identified with Sunny’s gerbil. The stupid creature would run his furry legs off while the ball under his little toes spun in place, trapped and going nowhere.
Luke kept running too.
He hurtled over a downed tree and almost landed on an old woman squatting by the roadside. “Dear God…sorry! I didn’t see you.”
The old woman’s sunken eyes met his in the glow of his iPhone flashlight. She was far too thin and looked ill. Reaching for him with tooth-pick arms she opened her hands and uttered a string of words. Luke noted that she owned very few teeth. He didn’t understand her words, but he recognized hunger when he saw it. This old woman was starving.
“Hold on,” he told her.
Earlier he’d decided that keeping his hands free from encumbrances was a good idea in order to lift junk out of the road and protect his head from falling objects. He’d ripped Talitha’s homemade bread into two chunks and shoved them into the back pockets of his jeans. Now was as good a time as any to break bread. He reached into his left pocket and pulled out a large hunk. “Here. Please take this.”
The woman’s eyes widened as if she’d never seen anything more amazing. He had to smile. Making a starving old woman gleeful ranked way up there as the best part of this miserable day.
“Merci.” The woman’s old teeth worked the bread.
“Yeah, you bet.”
He held up his hand to say goodbye and started running again.
A few minutes later, a moped sped around the same toppled tree. Luke waved his arms over his head at the guy. “Hey! Hey, wait!”
The guy on the moped pulled up next to him. “You okay, chief?”
Luke flinched at hearing the stranger use Tico’s name for him. Maybe it was a common nickname for an older guy. Or maybe all Americans were “chiefs.” He didn’t know, or care at the moment.
“Can you give me a ride?” Luke asked.
“I dunno. Gran’s been calling and I’ve got to go.”
His jaw nearly came unhinged. “Gran? The High Priestess of Light?”
The man nodded. “You heard her calling too?”
He checked his iPhone. No messages. “No. No one called.” Ysabeau, his heart squeezed.
“Huh. She’s asking for help. Someone’s trapped at her granddaugh
ter’s house and—”
Luke swung his leg over and hopped on. “Go! Go!”
The man shrugged and opened the throttle.
Chapter Twenty-Five
‡
Everything was dark. Not black, but a dusty gray. Ysabeau couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Terror flooded her senses.
The bad man is here!
Pinning her down…twisting her leg behind her…jabbing a hot knife into her ankle…can’t see his face…he’s coming…from behind…
“No!”
Ysabeau woke up screaming and choked on dust. No, the bad man’s dead. Grann and Deolina blew him straight to Hell.
Suddenly, she remembered where she was and how much trouble she was in. How much time had passed? An hour? Days? Impossible to know.
She tried to move and pain exploded up her leg as if there really was a knife lodged in her femur and a caiman was trying to saw her leg off. The sheer violence overtook her pain sensors and she cried out in agony. Whimpering, she curled into her folded arms. She wasn’t going to survive this.
After several long minutes, the pain subsided to a dull throb and her brain started to think again. She had to get out of here. “Help! Help.”
No one answered her call.
Moving very, very slowly, she opened her arms. An ocean of pain flooded through her. Holding still, she waited for the waves to pull back and spread her fingers to touch the edges of her cave. She decided to call it that, letting her mind imagine a big open cave complete with waterfalls and ancient cave drawings, which was better than calling it a tomb.
Letting her fingers be her eyes, she touched all she could reach. Slowly. Carefully. At the edges of her pain threshold, she pulled back before she blacked out again. Over her head, she found she could spread her arms all the way out and not touch the edges of the cave, which meant she had at least four or five feet of space in front. Hopefully, more. Above her head was something like three feet. This she knew because she’d smacked the top when she tried to sit up. As she stretched her arms out behind her, she realized her space was hip-wide plus two feet on both sides. The cave narrowed down considerable after that until she got to the spot where her left leg was pinned.
Her right leg was free and didn’t seem to be injured at all. This was a blessing and a curse. Immobility had caused that leg to tingle and shoot pins and needles as it fell asleep. She knew what she had to do, but didn’t relish the thought of awakening the resting caiman with the sharp teeth around her leg.
She panted for a few seconds and braced for the pain. Tentatively, she began lifting her right leg. Finally, she had bent it until her foot touched the top of her cave. It was more like two feet to the top, than three.
Ah, that felt good to stretch her right leg and her lower back. She relaxed her forehead on the floor of her cave and rested. She’d been taking yoga classes on and off for a few years and wondered what this pose would be called. Dying dog?
A strange sound rumbled through the cave. She was laughing? Clearly, she was losing her mind, or worse. Maybe hysteria was a bad sign that there wasn’t much oxygen left. She reminded herself to hurry.
Her fingers felt along the floor, searching for anything she could use to support her little cave, maybe lift it up enough to pull her leg out. She touched…
“My purse!”
Dragging it up toward her face she dug inside it hoping, praying for a tool to get her out of here. Her fingers encircled a water bottle. She opened it and gulped down half the bottle. Then she realized she should be thinking about rationing the water and reluctantly put the lid back on. She continued searching through her bag, trying to put names to all the objects she touched.
Granola bar, banana, thank you Deolina, vial of…wait! Her hands fingered the vial.
“Luke’s pain meds!”
Sweet Lord, she forgot she had them in her purse. When Luke had been obstinate about taking drugs, she threw the vial in her purse to take it back to the clinic. There had to be a couple of days’ worth of Vicodin in there.
Thanks to my American!
It was nearly impossible to get the lid off in the dark, especially with the pain pounding through her body. Holding the vial in her mouth, she felt in her purse again. The cell phone.
Why didn’t she think of it earlier?
She flipped the phone open and her cave filled with a beautiful blue light. Excitement nearly exploded out of her heart. The vial fell out of her mouth when she yelled “Yes! Thank God!”
She was laughing and crying all at once.
Dialing Gran’s number by heart, she held the phone to her ear and waited to hear, “Child, where’ve you been? De cards are ominous.”
But she didn’t hear a thing.
With shaking hands, she turned the cell around and saw that there was no signal. Why should there be? She was buried under a five-story building.
“Oh, Gran.” She cried in earnest.
What if she never heard Gran’s voice again? Or anyone’s voice again?
Pain ripped through her, tearing her to shreds. Her heart, leg, soul, everything hurt. With the blue light from her phone, she found the vial and opened it. She swallowed two pills without using her precious water and put her head back down on her arms to rest. Soon the pain meds would kick in.
Maybe she’d survive this after all.
*
The moped pulled up in front of Ysabeau’s house. Luke jumped off before the guy stopped the thing.
“Ysabeau!” he yelled and ran toward the house.
The house was still standing with the exception of the caved-in entryway and the section of ceiling that had collapsed into what Luke knew to be the living room. He had a flashback of sitting next to her on the couch. If Ysabeau had been sitting on the couch when the quake hit…
“Ysabeau!” he screamed, terror ripping through his throat with the word.
There were several people using shovels, hammers and their hands to move the debris. Jumping into the thick of things, he lifted a piece of rubble that had to weigh over a hundred pounds. He went for the next chunk, which was even larger and heavier than the last, dug his fingers into grooves and pulled. He grunted with the effort, but the thing wouldn’t budge. He needed a jackhammer, or a—he glanced at what the guy next to him was using—crowbar.
“Help me!” he yelled at the guy working beside him.
The man turned around. To Luke’s great surprise, he was staring at Tico’s ugly mug.
“Chief! When did you get here?” Tico asked.
“Five minutes ago. Help me move this thing.”
Tico shoved the end of the crowbar in and the two of them heaved together. The concrete moved, a little.
“Again!” Luke commanded.
The concrete moved and creaked.
“Don’t…stop!” Luke grunted. His arms felt like they were tearing off his shoulders, but he kept on. Ysabeau was under there. He’d never quit.
Finally, they got it out.
“That was some amazing shit,” Tico said, rubbing his aching arms. “What are you smoking? You’re a rock, man. I’ve never seen anyone that strong.”
Luke frowned at him. “Why are you stopping? Ysabeau needs us.” He attacked the next block of concrete.
“Ysabeau? Where is she?” Tico scratched at his scalp, looking bewildered.
Suddenly, Grann came up behind them. “Mr. Carter! I did not get inside your head. I gave you my word.”
It looked like Gran’s face had fought the side of the house. Her nose was broken and swelling like a horror movie. “Gran? Are you all right?”
“I’m as good as I get right now. Can’t be worrying about me. Let’s get dis rescue done.”
He agreed. “Have you heard Ysabeau?”
“No, not yet. I keep hoping. For now, we are listening for Deolina. She’s trapped inside de house, Mr. Carter.” She pointed toward where the living room used to be. “We’ve got to get her out.”
Luke blinked. “Deolina?”
&
nbsp; “Yes. She was sitting on the couch when it hit.” Tears streamed down her face. “Dat darn fool was having a vision about Ysabeau and wouldn’t move. I got out. She didn’t.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll rescue her.” Tico continued jabbing his crowbar into the rubble.
Realization hit. Ysabeau was not trapped inside. “Where’s Ysabeau?” Luke asked.
Grann made a strangled sound unlike anything he’d ever heard.
He put his hands on her shoulders. “Please, tell me.”
“She was…going…to see you. I gave her the check. She wanted to give it back.”
“Damn.” His heart sunk. That was the reason she was trying to find him? To give back the check? She must really hate him if she wouldn’t take the money to save the clinic.
“Gran!” A man yelled. Was it Gochi?
Suddenly, there was a lot of whooping and hollering.
Grann pressed her hands to her chest. “Praise God and all the Saints. I knew dat old devil wolf was no match for her. No match at all.”
Luke watched her hustle off toward the exuberant men. He had no idea what just happened.
Tico clapped him on the back. “They’ve got, Deolina. They’re pulling her out now. She’s alive!”
Luke swiped the sweat out of his eyes. He should be bone-tired, or dead. Hearing the great news had buoyed his spirits. Deolina was alive. He said a prayer of his own and ran after Gran.
It took three men to lift Deolina out. Her large body looked like it had been rolled in flour. White dust clung to her skin and chunks of plaster were ground into her cornrows. Dried blood stuck to a gash in her forehead.
“Deo! Are you all right?” Grann took her hand. Her other arm hung limply by her side. “She’s not breathing!”
“Put her down,” Luke ordered.
The three men eased her onto the grass. Luke pressed two of his fingers against her neck. No pulse. He got down on his knees and put his ear to her chest. No sound. Tipping her chin up, he gave her two quick breaths and then started the chest compressions.
