Natural Disaster (Book 3): Storm

by Lou Cadle

  “I can’t leave until I find Tinker!”

  “Sure, sure,” said Greg.

  Massey had schooled his expression again and said, “Best of luck to you. We have to look for survivors.”

  They continued into the heart of the tornado zone. Beyond the woman’s house, the totality of the destruction made it impossible to tell how many homes there had been. Only his knowledge of the size of a lot in town helped him pick out one property from the next.

  “Damn,” said Massey, stumbling over something.

  “Be careful.” If there were only six police officers available in a town of 42,000, they couldn’t afford to have one down with injuries.

  “I’m fine.” Massey looked around and lowered his voice. “Do you think anyone in these houses survived?”

  Greg shook his head. “I don’t see how.”

  “What the hell can we do here, then?”

  Greg shook his head again, more slowly. “Let’s get close to where the basements might have been, call out, see if we hear anyone calling back for help. If we don’t hear anything, we move on to the next street.” Ahead of them, for about a half a block, everything had been flattened and blown up, or blown out. Then just blown around. A file folder detached itself from the mess ahead, opened up, and papers skittered out. “Is the wind picking up again?” he said.

  “Maybe. Feels like it might be.”

  Greg looked down the line of destruction toward the west. Because all the buildings had been mowed down, he could see a long way. A high, vast cloud was coming this way. It had flattened out high up, but over that, a puff stuck out over it, like a mushroom cloud, white in the sun. At the bottom of the cloud, everything was black. “We’re going to get more rain. Look.” He pointed.

  Massey breathed, “Shit. That’s not going to help at all.”

  “It’s still a few miles off. There was a line of squalls on TV. Could be that we’ll get a lot more, storm after storm.” He checked his watch. “I think we should call in and get a weather report.”

  “Let’s finish here.”

  They called out to anyone who might need their help. Then they were quiet for thirty seconds after each round of shouting. Not a sound came back. There was a siren in the distance, but nothing else.

  “Back to the car. Next street, I guess,” said Greg. He felt utterly useless in the face of all this destruction. When they passed the dog woman, Greg called to her, “Ma’am? I’m sorry, what’s your name?”

  “Rowena Baker.” There was a Baker on the city council—maybe she was related.

  “It’s going to rain again, Ms. Baker. It’d be best if you got under cover.” And were sitting down someplace when the dimension of her loss hit her—not just the dog, but her whole house and everything inside—in case she went into shock. “Sure we can’t drop you someplace?”

  “I have to find Tinker,” she said.

  Greg gave it up and they went back to the car to radio in for a weather update. On the way, the woman with the gutters hailed him and brought him a pair of pink gardening gloves, small-looking, but better than nothing.

  “Love the color,” said Massey, when she had left. “You can have those.”

  “I like the color more than the red of my blood.” They climbed in the car and Greg got on the radio while Massey fired up the engine.

  “We’re still under the tornado watch,” said the dispatcher. “But no news of another tornado sighting. We’re going to send you addresses from the 911 calls we’re getting in your section of town. The chief is prioritizing them, and you’ll get the top ones only. Chief says, use your judgment on them from there, unless you get an order from her or a call from the fire chief.”

  “Is there any chance of power coming back? If people start to drive around, trying to get to family, we won’t have traffic lights. And it’s going to be dark sooner than we want.” He imagined dozens of fender benders complicating his job.

  “They’re on it.”

  “You’ll tell us if there’s any more weather alerts, right?”

  “Roger that.”

  “We’re moving on to Hickory.” He signed off and said to Massey, “I don’t envy the power workers up on poles in a storm.”

  “I don’t envy us out in a storm.”

  “Or the people, digging through the scraps of their homes, out in the storm, as night falls.” His mind turned again to Holly. It was hard to keep it from doing so, even though he had seen with his own eyes that she was safe. He asked Massey, “Have you called your wife?”

  “She works in Springfield. I’m sure she’s fine.”

  “But she doesn’t know you’re safe. The news will have this by now, she’ll hear about it, and she’ll be worried.”

  “Right. Good point.” He stopped the car, lights still flashing but siren silent, and dug out his phone. “I’m getting no service.”

  Greg checked his again. Also nothing. “Text her.”

  “I’ll do it later, when I get some bars.”

  Greg though about offering to do it for him, but kept his mouth shut. No reason to nag and antagonize the man he had to work with. “Do you think we should split up, each take a different street?”

  “No. I want you to watch my back. And what if we have to pick up something heavy to get it off a victim?”

  “True.” Greg stifled a sigh as they turned up the first clear east-west street then turned right again, back toward the damage zone. “I still don’t know what we’re doing to help. What we can do.” Getting up close to those destroyed houses had shaken him, made him feel too small and useless in the face of such a power.

  “I don’t know either until we do it.”

  The next block had similar damage to Central. They found an older man and a woman, sitting on the curb, among the wreckage of their home. The man’s shirt was off, and he was pressing it against the woman’s head. The shirt was red with her blood, soaked nearly through. She was leaning heavily on the man.

  Massey muttered, “I’ll get the first aid kit and radio in the injury. It looks serious.”

  Greg bent down. “Hey. I’m Officer Duncan. What can I do to help?”

  “Can you call an ambulance?” said the man.

  “Already done.” The woman’s eyes were closed. “Is she conscious?”

  “In and out,” said the man.

  “Which house is yours?”

  “That one.” He pointed.

  Greg looked. It was utterly destroyed. Not even pipes sticking out of the ground on this one. “How’d you make it?”

  “Basement, but stuff fell on us, boards and whatnot. The stove came down, but thank God it missed us. Some glass got Millie.”

  Greg wondered how the man had gotten them both out after that. “Are you hurt at all?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing that can’t wait. You know, it doesn’t sound like a train at all.”

  “The tornado, you mean?”

  “It’s wind. It sounds like wind, but so much wind. It’s hard to describe.”

  The woman moaned, just as Massey came up with a first aid kit, already gloved and ready to treat her. “Let’s look at that a second,” he said.

  Greg backed off a step and watched, ready to lend a hand if asked. The man took the shirt away and fresh blood welled along a cut that stretched from the woman’s hairline back through her hair. Hard to see very well, except for the blood draining out.

  “God,” said the man. “Will she make it?”

  “Head wounds bleed a lot more than cuts other places,” said Greg, trying to reassure the man—and the injured woman, if she could hear him.

  “How much blood can a person lose?” The man held up the bloody shirt.

  Massey was cutting away her hair, trying to get a better look at the injury. “If we shave this, I think we can butterfly it. It’s not terribly deep,” he said. “Duncan, look for a razor in the kit.”

  Greg pawed through the kit, which was too damned small in the face of all the injuries they were likely to
find. No razor or even razor blade.

  Greg looked around himself. Probably twenty or thirty plastic razors scattered around the ground out here. Somewhere, under all the mess.

  Massey made do with the scissors, snipping her hair short. He had Greg take a two-by-two and pat away the blood as he butterflied the length of the cut. In five minutes, the woman’s wound was barely bleeding. Massey did good first-aid work.

  Greg looked up. The leading edge of the next storm was drifting overhead. No rain yet, but Greg thought there would be soon.

  Massey applied the last butterfly strip and tore open a gauze patch. “Hold this on,” he told the man. “And I’ll leave you a second bandage, in case that one is soaked. And tell me about your neighbors up and down the block. Would any of them been home?”

  The man could be seen trying to shift his attention from his wife. “Not the Macklebees. They both work.” He glanced across the street. “There’s a young mother over there, in that—well, what used to be that house there. With a baby and a toddler. I don’t know their names yet. I’m not sure if they were home or not. She drove a green sedan, but I don’t see it, so maybe she was out somewhere.”

  There were three cars visible. One was flipped on its roof and one was on its side, the undercarriage pointed their way. Greg would check it in a second. “The Honda is ours,” the man said, pointing to the only car sitting on its tires. Its roof was smashed.

  “Looks like it got rolled totally over,” said Massey, packing up the first aid kit again and snapping off his plastic gloves.

  “I guess,” said the man, shifting his hold on his wife.

  “I called the ambulance,” Massey said. “Is there anywhere you can go after she sees an EMT?”

  “My daughter lives over in Eaton,” he said. “Did it hit there, too?”

  “No,” said Greg. Eaton was north of them. “Give me her number, and I’ll try to get someone to call her, okay?”

  The man couldn’t remember the number. “It’s on speed dial, you know? I should know it, but I don’t.”

  “That’s okay,” Greg said, patting his shoulder. “She’ll hear the news and find you, I’m sure.” He hated to leave the couple, but they’d done what they could. Other people might need their help even more. Massey’s work has stopped the woman’s wound from gushing blood, and the EMTs would get here when they could.

  He and Massey went together to check the wreck of the house across the street where the young family lived. As Greg climbed a pile of lumber, it began to slide under him. The horrible thought that he might be climbing over dead children hit him, and he felt sickened by the thought of a baby’s delicate skin being torn by the board skidding under him. He leaned forward and had to slap his hands down to keep his balance.

  A nail jabbed his palm, and he yanked that hand back. The boards quit sliding and he stood up. Falling on a bunch of protruding nails could put him entirely out of commission. He’d have to be more careful.

  “You okay, partner?” called Massey.

  “Yeah,” he said, wiping his palm on his pants. It was bleeding—and he’d probably need a tetanus shot—but he was fine. Belatedly, he pulled on the pink gardening gloves. “See anything?”

  “No. Let me call again.” He yelled a “hello” into the debris pile. No answer.

  Greg turned and called across the street to the man with the injured wife. “Did this house have a basement?”

  The man hesitated. “I think, yeah. They were all built at the same time, back in the 50’s.”

  Greg said to Massey. “Maybe they got downstairs and are safe somewhere down there.”

  “Huh,” he said. “Maybe,” but he didn’t sound as if he meant it.

  “Let’s spend another minute more looking around here, and then—” he hated to say it but “—we have to keep going, I guess.” Again, Holly flashed into his mind. What if it were her down there? He pushed the thought aside. Getting emotional wouldn’t make him do his job any better.

  Massey bent over to pick up a blue plaid flannel shirt, held it up, balled it up and shoved it in his back pocket.

  “Uh, Massey, you need an extra shirt?”

  “It’s not for me. The guy across the street. It could get cold tonight, and who knows where he’ll end up. Whoever’s this was isn’t going to miss it that much.”

  He made his way carefully around the debris pile, looking for any sign of life—or death. He was in a pile of lumber and pipes, all straight lines, except for one thing. “Wait.” Maybe it was just a bunched up sweater or something. He leaned over and picked it up—it was a mud-streaked little dog. Dead. “It’s black,” he said, holding it up to show Massey. “Under the mud, I can see black curly hair.”

  “Oh, little Winkie. You think?”

  “Tinker,” corrected Greg. “Might well be him. Poor thing.” A ragged chunk of lumber had been driven into the dog’s head, right above the eyes, like a purposeful kill shot. His back was broken too, Greg thought. Hard to tell which injury had killed him.

  “Leave it.”

  “I’ll at least take it out to the sidewalk by the car, so she has a better chance of finding it.”

  “If you insist,” said Massey. “Dogs,” he said in disgust.

  “We need dogs,” said Greg.

  “Not the time for a philosophical discussion about pets, bud,” said Massey.

  “No, I didn’t mean it that way. I’m thinking, we could use some search and rescue dogs for these totaled homes.” And tomorrow, they’d need cadaver dogs. He kicked at a loose sheet of plywood, catching it with his toe and turning it over. Nothing beneath.

  “Yeah, I get you. Dogs would be helpful.” Massey stood up from where he’d been squatting and shining his flashlight under a pile of debris. I’m not hearing anything, and I can’t see anything, and maybe this family wasn’t even home. Let’s go on.”

  They stopped again at the couple, Massey handed over the shirt to the man and reassured them that help would be coming.

  “Thank you.”

  Greg bent down to look at the woman, who was pale. “She doing okay?”

  The eyes fluttered open. “I’ll be fine,” she said.

  “Of course you will,” he said.

  Back at the car, he dropped Tinker’s corpse onto the sidewalk. From the first aid kit, he grabbed a bandage and antibiotic cream out of the first aid kit and bandaged his palm. Then he radioed in again. The first raindrop hit the windshield, and then many more.

  “How’s the rescue of the chief and everyone else going?” he asked Dispatch.

  “They’ve just got the equipment set up and started working on it. No time estimate yet, even. Oh, and you didn’t hear, I expect. Magarelli and Simms reported in.”

  “They’re okay?” Greg was relieved.

  “Yeah. They were involved in a situation that kept them off-air, but they’re fine.”

  Greg was curious, but there was no time for gossip. “Good to hear. Any new orders?”

  “No. Chief Stephens said she’d assign their car to downtown, and for the rest of you to keep patrolling as planned.”

  And so they did. The next street gave them their first bodies. Neighbors from the houses just outside the tornado’s path had helped rescue a young family just inside it. A woman was alive, but a thin man was dead, along with a boy not far from Holly’s age.

  A neighbor was trying to comfort the woman, who was sobbing and keening over the child’s body. The neighbor looked up when Greg and Massey approached. “They homeschooled,” she said. “So everybody was home when it hit.”

  Greg wondered who worked in the family, if both parents were home all day. He bent to check the man’s pulse at his neck, but he felt nothing. This guy wouldn’t be working again, in any case. He could feel the moment of cold cynicism that swept over him whenever he confronted death. He knew it for what it was, a defense mechanism, but he worried that one day, it’d sweep over him, hard and prickly and dark, and never leave him, changing him into a person he didn�
��t want to become.

  The rain started coming down in earnest as they finished checking the street, soaking the living and dead and rescuers alike.

  They got in the car and drove to the next street. Massey got out of the car, trotted forward, called, “Hey!”

  Greg looked up and saw him staring south. He stood and put his hand on his gun, expecting trouble.

  But it was just the two officers patrolling the south side, visible a block away. Between them was a no-man’s land of destruction.

  Massey waded into it partway and called, “How’s downtown look?”

  Higgins yelled, “Totaled for about six blocks east of here. West of here, it missed Main.”

  The rain came down harder and he could no longer see them down there. Massey turned to the destroyed houses on the opposite side, and Greg took this side. They found three more bodies, mud-covered, unidentifiable, the biggest one’s face smashed beyond recognition.

  “For all I know, it could be my best friend,” said Greg.

  “Your best friend live around here?”

  “No, I meant—I can barely tell that it’s a white-skinned person. ID is going to be hard.”

  “White male.” Massey lifted the corpse’s left hand and wiped away some mud. “No wedding band.” He let the arm fall and it hit a piece of aluminum with a twang.

  “Christ. You have triage tags in that first aid kit?”

  “Yeah. Here.” He handed Greg a wad of black strips, and Greg bent to tag all three bodies. They would be visiting his dreams in the coming weeks.

  On the next street, they found a green sedan, lying on its side, badly dented. One side of it had most of the paint scoured off.

  “You think it’s from back there?” Greg said. “Where the injured woman was? Remember, the young family?”

  “Could be any green car.”

  “Still.” Greg thought of Holly. What if her body was buried in rubble back there? What if she could still be saved? He’d want someone to be working on finding her.

  “You smell gas?” Massey said.

  Greg raised his nose like a retriever and sniffed. He could smell the sulfurous additive for natural gas. “Damn. Yeah. You have a wrench in the car?”