I kneel over the woman, stanch the bleeding on her head first, and then get a bandage on it. I examine the wound on her bicep. The shard of wood is a good foot or so long, a couple inches thick, jagged, as sharply pointed as a knife. Straight through her arm, protruding from her tricep.
Greta does her best to soothe the woman as I remove the shard. We don’t have any morphine, so the process is slow and excruciating. She screams, writhes off the grass as I pull the shard free. That, unfortunately, was the easy part. Now I have to search the interior of the wound for splinters.
I feel shade go up overhead, providing relief from the heat, but I don’t spare a glance. It’s Lock, I know, erecting a tent. More of an awning, really, just a tarp and some poles staked into the ground, kept taut with some lines. He has it up quickly, efficiently.
I can’t breathe for the tension. For the desire to glance around me, looking for Ollie. He should be here, tending to victims.
But he’s not.
It’s just me.
I feel Lock behind me. When I finish with the woman, I rise to my feet and turn to face him. He hands me a bottle of water.
“You’ll need tables, probably,” he says. “I spoke to the pastor of the church here, and he’s going to bring some out.”
“How bad is it out there?”
He winces. “It’s bad. Really bad. Some of the older fellas are going to take over setting up the tents here. I’m going to start looking for people.”
“Be careful,” I say, because I can’t help myself.
I’m still mad at him, but beneath that lies a thick, undeniable layer of need and affection, and tenderness.
He wipes the sweat off his face, nods at me. “I’ll be okay. I’ll be checking in when I bring people up here. Let me know if you need anything.”
A four-wheeler arrives just then, towing a slab of corrugated tin, on which are several bodies, all of which are injured. There’s no more time for talk, then. Lock, looking pale and shaken, helps the driver of the four-wheeler lift a victim off the piece of tin and onto a table, which the pastor just finished setting up. Another pair of women arrive from the church, carrying a long folding table between them. They plop it into place, rack open the legs, and tip it upright. Immediately, another injured person is set onto it.
The nurses scurry into motion, assessing, bandaging the more minor wounds.
I see Lock lurch to his truck, pull open the door, lean into the opening, bracing himself. Heaving.
The man I’m working on doesn’t look good. I don’t think he’ll make it. A wall fell on him, crushing his chest, turning his torso into a gory, mangled mess. He’s barely breathing, and those breaths are labored and whistling. It’s not pretty, so it’s unsurprising Lock would vomit at the sight.
He’s got blood on his shirt. On his hands.
He glances back at me, and I try to give him an encouraging look—he can do this; it will be okay.
He nods, straightens. He visibly strengthens himself. Hops into his truck, and then he’s gone, heading into the residential section.
I lose track of time after that.
Someone brings in another few crates of supplies at some point, flats of water bottles, more bandages, more medical tape, thread, needles, hemostats, even some morphine ampoules. I see Lock every now and then, but only in passing. Every time I see him, he’s dirtier. Blood is caked on his shirt, making it dark and stiff. Same thing with his shorts. He’s wearing yellow leather work gloves, has a green and white bandana tied around his neck, which he can tug up over his mouth and nose if need be.
People are pouring in, brought in by truck and off-road vehicle, carried, walking on foot, however they can get here. There’s a fire truck somewhere, ambulances finally. A swarm of cop cars.
The paramedics find me. Somehow, I’ve been left in charge, because everyone seems to find me and ask for directions. It’s too much, too much. But I can’t stop. I can’t shirk it off.
I keep seeing Ollie. A tall man with black hair going gray at the temples…he looks just like Ollie from behind. And then he turns, and it’s not him. Not my Ollie. And my heart breaks all over again.
Ollie…god, Oliver. How do I do this without you? I don’t know how. But I have to.
No thoughts. No feelings.
I try to shut it all down, push it all down. Numb. Efficient. Wound to wound, patient to patient. Assess, treat, move on—assess, treat, move on. Repeat, and repeat, and repeat.
Repeat.
Hours go by and I have no idea what time it is.
Someone sets up klieg lights, citronella torches against the mosquitos.
I’m exhausted. My hands ache from suturing and bandaging and compressing.
I’ve lost count of how many I’ve lost.
Lost count of how many I’ve saved.
They just keep pouring in.
I heard talk between treating one victim and another that the tornado hit another town a few miles away first, before hitting this one. Apparently, it was flattened even more completely, so those residents are being brought here.
I have no knowledge of anything beyond the tent. I see Lock a few times. Dirtier and dirtier. His face above the bandana is nearly black with dirt and grime. His eyes find me, and we exchange a long look.
I feel tears boiling inside me, deep down. But I shove them away. No time for that.
Lock sees it, though. He nudges the bottom of his chin, tipping his head up. A gesture to me: keep your chin up.
I’m trying. Fuck, I’m trying.
Everyone else shines out but me
I don’t know which fucking way is up anymore.
I’m beyond exhausted, but I have a new appreciation for the work that disaster relief professionals like Niall do on a regular basis. There’s no way to describe it, and there’s no way to describe how utterly done I am. I’ve set up tents, transported the injured and the dying, jury-rigged plumbing and electrical systems, and about a million other things. I’ve been around this town so much I know it like the back of my hand.
But I’m not done.
That much is obvious.
There are still houses and buildings to be cleared, but at least there are plenty of emergency personnel on site now, professionals. Firefighters with gear. The electrical company is busy re-wiring the power lines. A wrecking crew showed up, hauling cars out of the way. An old farmer named Earl showed up with a bulldozer to push and haul heavy wreckage out of the way. Plenty of good ol’ boys with pickups and tow chains. We move in teams from building to building, house to house, pick through it all, looking for bodies, dead or alive.
And there are a lot of both. I’ve never encountered this many dead bodies before, and I don’t know how to handle it except to stay numb and do the job. Numb is easier said than achieved, though. When you see people crushed under walls and impaled by limbs of trees, you lose the capacity to stay numb after a while. Many, if not most, had shelters. And there was enough advance notice that the storm was coming that a lot made it into their shelters. But there’s always the stubborn, the ignorant, the unlucky. The ones who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, take shelter.
Right now we’re nearing the end of a street, on the second to last house. We’ve cleared the other side already, so when we’re done on this side we’ll turn the corner and start all over again.
We are trying to pull down a wall. I’ve managed to yank part of it away and a guy named Bill, on the other side, is pushing against it for all he’s worth. I’ve been working with Bill for hours, now. Big dude, a few years younger than me. Faded green John Deere ball cap on, dirty blue jeans, Budweiser T-shirt, shaggy blond goatee. Strong as an ox, and just as silent. Utah is with us. She trots around, sniffing. Sometimes she’ll paw at a spot, and usually there’s someone under the rubble. Smart dog, she is. Not trained for this, but good at it nonetheless. We let the wall fall away with a crash, pull chunks of drywall away and toss them aside. Cinderblocks, bricks, and two-by-fours. Siding. This house is flooding, a w
ater pipe having burst somewhere we can’t find or reach yet. We clear the entryway to a bedroom, or what was a bedroom less than twenty-four hours ago. Shreds of posters, ripped bedding, a mattress lolling halfway over the destroyed portion of exterior wall. A dresser, clothes hanging out of the drawers, is toppled onto its side. Smashed TV.
Water trickles and pools and laps cold around my ankles. Fortunately, hours ago, I was able to borrow a pair of rugged, waterproof CAT workboots and some thick Carhartt socks from the ruins of the hardware store, so my feet are staying dry and warm for now. I’ve got a portable headlamp around my forehead, the kind of thing nighttime cyclists use to light their way.
The bedroom seems empty. The closet is just one of those shallow things with bi-fold doors. I peek inside, just to be sure.
We look through the kitchen. Bathroom. Another bedroom.
I hear shouts and then some banging. Utah barks, a high, sharp yip, scrabbles with her paws at a heap of bricks, shingles, and two-by-fours in front of a door to the basement. I call for Bill who lumbers over to where I’m standing. The door is completely blocked by rubble. Chunks of roof, piles of cinderblock. There’s too much here to move by hand.
“I’ll go find Earl with the ’dozer,” I say.
Bill just nods, grabbing cinderblocks in each hand and tossing them aside, grunting—which is the most I’ve heard from him since we started working together. I run off and find Earl with his bulldozer just a few doors down, condensing a pile of rubble between what had been two houses.
“Earl! Need a hand over here,” I shout.
Earl just waves, finishes what he’s doing, and then swivels the big machine in a circle and trundles noisily toward me. I hop up onto the tread as he stops next to me.
“Got a blocked basement doorway. Big piece of roof I need you to move so we can get down there. I hear voices.”
Earl gestures behind his seat with a jerk of his thumb. “Get that there chain around the piece you need moved. Get it fixed on there good.”
“Got it.”
I grab the chain, which is long and heavy as hell, and it’s got a thick hook on the end. It’s grimy with grease, brown with age. I loop the chain around a large chunk of the roof, secure the hook back around onto the chain, and then secure the end of it to the plow of the ’dozer.
I yell for Bill to stand clear, and then give Earl the go-ahead. The machine beeps loudly as it reverses, and the massive engine groans as Earl applies the throttle. The piece of roof grinds and scrapes and shudders, and then slowly drops down as Earl hauls it backward. As soon as it’s clear of the footprint of the home, I unhook the chain, coil it, and pile it back in place behind Earl’s seat.
By this time, Bill is breathing heavily and has the pile of cinderblock mostly cleared. I lend a hand and we can finally get the door open. It almost comes free with a good yank, but it is still stuck shut. Bill, impatient, rips the hinges right out of the frame with one big heave, and tosses the door aside.
We shout down the stairs, hear voices call back, panicked, terrified, screaming. Utah is barking like mad.
“We’ve got ’em, girl. Good job. Good girl, Utah.” I pat her head, and then tell her to sit. She immediately quiets, sits on her haunches and watches us.
I’ve got a pocket LED flashlight, which I shine down into the darkness of the basement; the beam reflects off rippling water, and then illuminates a woman’s face, a man, two children who are no more than ten or twelve years old, a boy and a girl. Huddling on the steps, holding onto ceiling beams and exposed pipes, running out of air and out of space as the basement fills with water from the burst pipe.
“Jesus,” I breathe, and then call out to them. “Swim this way. We’ve got you!”
They haul themselves toward the doorway. I grab a hand and pull hard. It’s the mother, sputtering, whimpering, her arm locked in a death-grip around her daughter. She pushes her daughter up to me first, splashing as she fights to find the stair treads in the frigid, murky water. I hook an arm around the girl’s middle and haul her bodily up and out. Bill takes her and sets her on her feet. Someone, Earl probably, has caught on that we’ve found survivors, and now there’s someone here to take the girl, wrap a towel around her and speak to her in soothing tones. I pull the mom up and out, and repeat the process for the dad and son.
As all four are piled into the bed of a pickup they slump back with relief, shivering and huddling together, weeping, clinging to each other. The pickup flashes its brights as a signal, and then bumps down the curb to the street and away to HQ.
Bill and I are trudging heavily to the next house when a two-ton truck, painted in brown and green camo, full of National Guardsmen, squeals to a noisy stop. The rear gate slams open, and young, fresh-faced Guardsmen disgorge and spread out. A middle-aged man emerges from the passenger side of the cab, sees Bill and me, and makes a beeline for us.
“Lieutenant Brian Markson,” he announces, warily eyeing Utah, who is standing at my side. “National Guard. You boys part of the recovery effort?”
Bill and I exchange glances. No shit, bro. We’re both filthy, obviously exhausted, wearing work gloves and headlamps and face masks—hours ago someone handed us proper surgical face masks, the sort surgeons wear, and I got rid of my bandana. So…what else would we be?
Neither of us answers. We’re too damned tired.
The lieutenant doesn’t seem to notice our lack of response, or else he assumes it’s an affirmative. “We’ll take over from here, gentlemen. You looked peaked. Hit the HQ and get some grub, there’s a food station set up.”
Yeah, I know—I helped set it up. Back when it was still broad daylight and it didn’t hurt to be awake.
“Which way is it?” I ask. “I’m not from around here, and I’m so tired I can’t remember.”
Bill nudges me with an elbow, grunts and gestures—the klieg lights around the HQ are visible from here, a clear beacon.
“Oh. Right.” I try to laugh it off, but nothing’s funny anymore. I try to take a step, but I trip and almost fall.
Bill’s massive hand closes around my elbow, and he keeps me upright.
“Thanks,” I mumble.
I get another grunt in reply. Dude is seriously taking taciturn to a whole new level, in that he has literally not spoken a single word in something like six hours. But he’s a workhorse, tireless, and powerful. A good man to have at your side in this kind of situation. Or any, really, except those that might require even a minimal level of verbosity.
It’s not far from where we are to the HQ, a mile at most, maybe a mile and a half. But getting there feels like running a marathon, each step requiring concentration and determination, and the distance never seems to get any shorter. Even Bill seems to be dragging, his big, heavy feet plodding even more loudly against the asphalt of the road. We’re almost out of the residential area. Passing between the ruins of two houses, which have already been cleared. Or so we thought.
Bill halts abruptly and flings his huge arm against my chest, barring my way. He holds a finger to his lips, cocks his head, listening. I strain to hear. It’s not silent, not by a long shot. The ’dozer groans and beeps in the distance, voices shout, rubble and wreckage crunches and grinds. But I hear it, too. A nearly inaudible mewling sound. A little girl, maybe, buried somewhere.
Despite our fatigue, we strain, trying to locate where the sound is coming from.
“Hello?” I call out. “We hear you. Where are you?”
The mewling gets louder, but there are no words. Just…louder whimpers. My gut sinks. Utah goes into a mad barking frenzy again, the high sharp bark she uses when she’s trying to communicate something. She trots to a pile of wreckage, the ruins of an outbuilding of some kind, a barn or a shed. Tin and wood and old bricks, all jumbled together in a jagged heap. The sound is coming from deep inside the pile. Bill, suddenly energized, attacks the rubble with renewed zeal, tossing bricks and two-by-fours aside like so many handfuls of confetti. Utah is barking like crazy and I go to
work beside Bill, and soon we have the top of the heap exposed, the start of a hole. The mewling is louder, now. I angle my headlamp, shine my flashlight down the hole. This was a sizable structure—the heap of rubble is a good twenty or thirty feet across, piled some eight or ten feet high. I’m up on top, peering down. The LED beam slides across a little leg. A scrap of blue fabric. A jelly shoe, the kind little girls have worn for decades.
“Hey there, honey,” I call down, trying to sound comforting. Not my strongest suit, being tender and comforting. “I’m coming down, okay?”
A low, coughing moan echoes in response. I tug my face mask into place against the swirling dust and examine the hole. Decent sized pocket created by the way the wreckage fell, just enough space for a little body. I won’t fit, but I’ve got to find a way to get down there. I grip the edges of the opening, a jagged two-by-four, some cinderblocks, a scrap of tin roof, and lower myself down carefully. My feet touch something relatively solid, and I slowly let my weight down, making sure the heap won’t shift or give. I have to crouch, as the space is maybe four feet high and less than three feet across. By a sheer miracle of luck, the tiny space protected this little girl. She’s young. Five? Six? Fine blond hair, matted with blood, pale skin. Blue sundress with white flowers on it. Torn, dirty, bloody. One foot bare, one foot with a pink jelly shoe on. She’s curled up, pinned under a slab of tin roof, the whole weight on her right arm and part of her right leg.
She’s facing me. Curled oddly.
I crouch and shuffle closer to her, and brush the hair out of her eyes. Blue eyes, terrified, agonized, weak. Fluttering. Searching me.
“Hey, I’m Lock. I’m gonna get you out of here, okay?”
“Unnnhhh.” She blinks hard, a tear trickles out. “Stuck….” She’s so weak she can barely get the word out.
“I know. But I’m gonna get you free, okay? You’ll be okay.” I examine her more closely, looking closely at the rubble pinning her. “Can you wiggle your toes and fingers okay?”
Yours: A Standalone Contemporary Romance Page 21
