Natural Disaster (Book 3): Storm

by Lou Cadle

  “We’re going to winch up a beam here, and I want you to scream really loud if anything hurts you, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “We’re going to move as fast as we can.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she called back.

  There was a different engine noise, and a motor on top of that, and some squealing. Long seconds ticked off. Then more squealing, and the light changed again. And rain came down on her.

  She laughed at it. Maybe a little hysterically, but those raindrops meant the roof was coming off her, and that was good.

  The noise quieted, and the voice came back. “Still good?”

  “Great,” she said.

  “Atta girl.” The squealing started again and she felt—blessedly felt—something lift off her. It lifted more.

  Then blood began to flow into her legs, and they started to hurt.

  She forgot her moment of toughness about being a brave patient, fighting off some crippling injury, soldiering on, no matter what. She forgot about school and her plans for university and Adam and everything. As the pressure lifted, the pain increased. And kept building, and kept on. And it went way beyond the cramps from the abortion, and way beyond the broken ulna she’d had at age nine, and way beyond anything she knew a human being could endure.

  She would have started screaming, but the pain was so great now that it stole her breath away.

  “Okay,” shouted the man. “I can see her.” The voice came as if from a mile off, or through a pillow covering her ears. “Malika, you okay?”

  She tried to answer, but the pain wouldn’t let her. It was a dragon, teeth clamping her legs, rending them, trying to rip them off and steal them. And it had stolen her ability to breathe, too.

  “Okay. I got it,” said the voice to someone else. “Take this one, too, and I think I can get to her.”

  She heard the words as a series of sounds, but they made little sense to her. The pain had worked its way all the way down to her toes now, and her legs felt about ten feet long, and pain every millimeter of the way. She gasped, and finally a breath came, and when it came out, it was a scream.

  “Meek!” It was Adam.

  “Get back, son,” the second voice said. “We’ll get her out.”

  A third male voice, panting for air, said, “There’s another tornado coming.”

  Good, thought Malika, as her air ran out and the scream—like someone else’s scream, she had so little control over it—dwindled away with her breath. Good, let another tornado come and kill me. I don’t want to live with this kind of pain. Not one more second. Jesus, please, take me now.

  *

  She must have blacked out for a few seconds—not fainted, but just…gone away, in her mind. When she came fully to herself again, the first thing she heard was Adam, yelling at someone.

  That was wrong. Adam never yelled.

  Her legs still hurt, like blazes. Yes, literally like blazes, hot fire licking up and down them. Like her legs had gone to Hell while the rest of her remained on Earth. And rats with burning little claws were skittering up and down them. But she wasn’t screaming now. That was good. It’d just upset everyone. She managed a whisper. “Save me, Jesus.”

  “Get this winched up,” said the second man. “Son, get back. I’m not telling you again.”

  “Meek, are you in there?” Adam.

  “I’m—” she gasped for breath. “Here.” Then the pain welled again and she bit her lips together to keep from screaming again. A moan escaped through her nose. She had no idea a person could hurt like this. It was a revelation, and one she’d never forget.

  Another squeal from the equipment outdoors, and then something else moved, and her shoulders were free, too. She reached a hand back, feeling the back of her neck. But no, she didn’t have to worry about paralysis any more. Heck, she’d welcome paralysis now. Anything to make her legs stop burning.

  Crunching sounds behind her. She tried to lever herself up onto one elbow.

  “No, hon,” a man said, the first voice. “Lie still. Let us do the work.”

  Adam’s voice: “She sucks at letting anyone else help her.”

  She felt the strange man’s hands touch her head, her ears, her neck, moving down over her shoulders.

  “My arms—fine,” she managed to say, raising one hand to prove it.

  “Okay, but I’ll check you out here. Just stay still and let me see.”

  “It’s my legs,” she hissed.

  “They hurt?”

  She nodded, then realized he might not be able to see it. “They hurt bad,” she said.

  “I’ll try and be gentle.” Fingers probed her thighs. It didn’t hurt any worse. The pain was all coming from inside her, and nothing he did made it flare up. He lightly squeezed an ankle over her shoe. “You feel that?”

  “Yeah,” she said. She realized tears were dripping off her nose. Stupid. Crying wouldn’t solve a thing. She sniffed and willed the tears to stop.

  “Your legs feeling any better?”

  She thought about it. “I’m not screaming now,” was as far as she was willing to go. And she could think more clearly. For a minute there, when her legs were first released, the pain had kept her mind from working right.

  “It’ll probably hurt more when we move you.”

  She remembered what she had just heard. “A tornado?” she said. “A different one?”

  “There’s another coming, yeah. But we’re pretty sure it’ll be a bit north of here this time.”

  “Tell Adam,” she said, and then the pain heated up, and she had to pant and catch her breath before finishing the thought. “Tell him to get away.” Just in case they were wrong.

  “The kid, he’s really worried about you. That’s your boyfriend?”

  “Yes.” It was easier than explaining their whole history. “Tell him to go. A basement.”

  “Okay,” the man said. “Hold tight one second. I just need to check something out here.”

  She could hear three of them talking. She wondered about a second tornado. Was that even possible, for two tornados to hit the same place within an hour? She’d never heard of it. Maybe it was a mistake, like the warning coming too late. She hoped that’s all it was.

  “They think we’re in a safe area,” said the man, coming back to her side. She heard someone else walking nearer. “We have a stretcher here. We’re going to get you on it, and it’ll probably hurt.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  She tried to relax, let go, and let them move her as they needed to. It did hurt. Her legs felt like burning iron rods attached to her hips, still. But it wasn’t as awful, not quite as bad as it had been when they unpinned her and she first felt them.

  They got her onto the stretcher, still face-down, and then they attached something to its sides with a metallic snap. The first man stayed while the second stepped back. The squealing noise again, and the stretcher was being lifted, the man with her balancing it as it started to sway. “Go up,” he called over his shoulder. She could see his arm move as he signaled behind him. Then the stretcher got raised more, and it was about at his waist level. He guided it as it swung out, and she could see as she moved over them, a toilet on its side, and a pile of crushed black stall walls, and then lumber and bricks and then she was hanging out over the tarmac of the parking lot, with scattered glass and bent chrome and stuff all over it. What a mess. Somebody needed to clean that up.

  The uniformed firefighters—she could see the truck now in her peripheral vision, a medium-sized fire truck with ladders and hoses and all that—got her stretcher up onto their truck and strapped her in, way up high. When they moved away, she could see out over the roofs. And she could see the tornado, too. It was in the distance—she couldn’t tell how far away, and going from left to right. She could see all kinds of things blowing around it—a whole roof, big sheets of something—metal or house walls, and thousands of smaller bits that could be anything.

  Maybe even people.

  “
Is it coming this way?” she asked the firefighter.

  “Thank God, no,” he said. “We’re driving you to the evacuation point, south of here. You’ll be in a hospital in Cincinnati within an hour, and well away from the storms.”

  Adam was in front of her face, squatting down. “You’re out. It’ll be okay now.”

  The fireman was telling him to get the hell off the truck.

  “Thank you,” she said to Adam, who hadn’t budged. “Thank them, and anyone who helped.”

  “I will. They’ll take care of you. And I’ll be there—at the hospital—as soon as I can, okay? I’ll tell your mom, too, bring her with me, and my mom, too.”

  “Adam.” She ran out of words, so simply extended her hand, and he gave her his. It was warm. She pulled it in and kissed his knuckles.

  Chapter 10

  It’s up to me. Sherryl went back into Jim’s room, and stared, amazed, at the damage. The walls, when they had fallen, had scattered bits of themselves all around. The dresser had pushed itself into the next room to the left, leaving a space on the floor with less debris. She ducked around fallen wires, hoping the electricity was off, but being careful anyway not to touch them.

  Glass crunched underfoot. She smelled lumber, the scent as strong as it’d be out back of a lumber yard, of freshly sawed wood. Stopping at a tumble of bent and cracked beams—or were they joists?—she called out for her husband. “Jim?”

  No sound.

  At least the bed wasn’t crushed. That gave her hope. Best case, it had protected him from flying glass.

  Worst case, it had rolled on top of him and was pressing down on him right now.

  The thought made her move. She leaned over—her back twanged again—and bent her knees, trying to lift a chunk of drywall out of the way so she could see better. Her knees popped as she tried to lift. Instead of coming straight up, it pivoted around one corner. She yanked her end back toward her, uncovering a broken table lamp base. And a bony ankle, sticking out of blue striped pajamas.

  “Jim,” she said. “Can you hear me?”

  No answer.

  Her heart hammering in her chest, she leaned over, grabbing the end of the bed for balance. Trying to not put any weight on it, she leaned over. There was his leg, from the knee down, pointed this way. No blood on it. As she bent down, a second leg came into view, under the bed, shadowed by it.

  She could smell urine. He wore diapers, of course. This one needed changing. It was a minor problem. Was he alive?

  “Jim!” she said. “Talk to me.”

  Still nothing.

  Okay, the bed didn’t seem to be on him. It was covered with broken glass, though. She picked up a broken chunk of wood and swept glass off the bare mattress. Then she tugged her sleeve down over her hand and plucked off the last shards. She lifted a leg as far as she could—not far enough, so maybe she should take up yoga or something—and put it back down. Okay, then, just sort of throw yourself onto the bed.

  She looked first, making sure she wasn’t pressing down on Jim, then she gave it her best long-jump effort, which at this age, was more like a short jump. But her top half was on the bed.

  Ouch. She hadn’t gotten every piece of glass. She wriggled her way forward until she could flip over, then checked her shoulder where she’d felt a stab of pain. Blood seeped out. She slid her hand over and, when the hurt sharpened, knew she had found it. With her nails—cut short for gardening, damn it—she picked and picked and finally got the bit of glass out. Not even an inch long. She flicked it over the far side of the bed, and watched as fresh blood welled into the fabric of her blouse.

  I’ll live, she thought, dismissing the blood. Brushing at the mattress again, she made her way forward until she could lean down and look under the bed. She couldn’t see Jim’s face. It was hidden by the fallen wall. But the bed had broken the force of the wall falling.

  Her back hurt, and she wasn’t strong enough to push the section of wall away. But maybe her legs would do it. They were stronger. Pivoting around, she got her feet under the edge of the bit of drywall over the bed and tried to push it away.

  Nothing.

  Okay. More leverage. She wriggled her hips down further so her knees were bent more. Then she grasped the material of the mattress ticking itself, held on, and pushed from her thighs. The drywall moved maybe an inch, and she repositioned her feet to get more surface pressure and pushhhhed.

  No more movement. After ten or fifteen seconds of futile effort, she quit, and panted, feeling her heart pound.

  Don’t have a heart attack doing this. Somehow, I doubt you’ll be found very soon if you do.

  The section of drywall must be held in place by something she couldn’t see.

  She tried to remember what had been right there, next to the bed. A bedside table. Small lamp. Tissues, water glass.

  She rolled over to the side of the bed and reached as far under the debris as she could, trying to find a pulse, or movement, or anything that could reassure her that Jim was alive. But there was something in the way.

  Was his chest crushed? His head? She could feel tears pushing behind her eyes, but she refused to let herself cry. Get him out first. Or at least figure out if he’s hurt. Then fall apart.

  “Jim,” she said again. “Answer me, dammit.”

  Again, no reply.

  Okay, so get back over to the other side of the bed, and look in from the closet end. She surveyed the fallen wall. It was cracked into three big pieces, and a few smaller ones. Maybe she could crawl over that one, and peek down under and see him. Maybe.

  Nothing else to do but try it.

  Or—wait. It was just drywall. Maybe she could punch a hole in it here, over the space next to the bed.

  With what?

  Not the closet door—too big. There had to be something. Sherryl scooted back off the foot of the bed and retraced her steps, this time, kicking through the debris, looking for something dense, sharp, like a weapon. There was a thin blonde piece of molding—too brittle. So something in the closet?

  She picked her way over there and found a 2 by 4, with nails protruding from it. Problem was, it was long, and buried under something. She tried to pull it out, to no avail. Could she break it? No. Too sturdy. The closet—was there anything in there? She checked.

  Hangers? Plastic ones only. A shoe? Not hard enough. Her slacks tore on the edge of the smashed up closet door. No matter. At the back of the closet, she pawed around and her hands found a possible weapon to attack the drywall with. An umbrella—not one of the new, shorter, fold-up models, but an older sort, with a metal tip.

  Maybe.

  She twisted and tugged at it until it popped free, and hurried back over to the bed. Kneeling on the side, she began jabbing at the fallen wall. The drywall gave easily. But there was something else in there with a plastic mesh, and it was tough stuff.

  “Dammit,” she cried. This was taking far too long. “Jim, are you hearing me?”

  She heard, very softly, just under where she had been aiming her umbrella, a weak cough.

  “Jimmy! Jimmy! It’s me!”

  Nothing more from him.

  She punched away more drywall, and finally there was a hole big enough to push her hands into. Putting the umbrella on the mattress, careful not to lose it, she reached in and began clawing at the plastic. It was really tough.

  There was plenty of broken glass. Maybe she could slice it.

  It took her two minutes of pawing around the floor on the other side of the bed to find a bit of window glass still attached to the frame. Her hands were cut in a half-dozen places by now, but she could hold this piece of glass by the wood bit.

  She began hacking at the plastic. Sawing at it. Attacking it. Finally, she got a piece to cut, and she began to change her technique, trying to repeat what she had done, getting more cut, adapting her technique more, and the plastic began to spring away from the hole. She pulled at that until she had a hole through the wall.

  Then she leaned over
to see beneath—but it was too dark. She needed a bigger hole.

  Back to the umbrella, furiously slamming it down into the drywall, working faster now, feeling like time was running out, she slowly widened the hole.

  She pressed her mouth to it. “Jim!” she said. “Can you hear me?”

  “Sher?” she heard.

  Relief flooded her. “It’s me, it’s me.”

  “What?” She could hear him breathing, shallow raspy breaths. “What happened?”

  “We had a tornado.”

  “I can’t breathe,” he said.

  “I’ll get you out,” she promised. But she didn’t see how. Maybe a crane, or chainsaws, or something like that could get him out.

  But there was only her, one frightened old woman. She turned around and screamed toward the hallway, “Someone help me!”

  But no one came. She didn’t expect anyone to.

  She began widening the hole again, umbrella, then glass, then umbrella tip, then cutting more, until the hole was as large as her head.

  She leaned forward as far as she dared. She didn’t want to overbalance and fall onto whatever had him pinned in there. “Are you hurt?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Are we home, or in the nursing home?”

  “The nursing home,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, honey.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry for. It’s just a tornado, a storm. Not your fault.”

  “I’m sorry I’m sick.”

  “Oh, Jim.” The tears threatened again. “That’s not your fault either.”

  “I said something to hurt you today, I think.”

  “No,” she said. “You didn’t.”

  “I know I do. I don’t want to. And I can’t ever remember what I’ve said, not for long. But I see your face.”

  Her eyes were adjusting to the dim light. What she saw shocked her. There was a heavy board, like a roof beam, and the bedside table canted over, and all of it on Jim’s chest. “I wish I could see your face right now.”

  “I can see yours—or part of it.”

  She reached down and cautiously tried to find some part of him to touch. There. She felt his pajamas, moved her hand, felt the board. Moved along the board, up as far as she could reach.