Natural Disaster (Book 3): Storm

by Lou Cadle

  There was a voice message from Kimberly. “Greg, I’m sorry. You know I care about Holly. But I have a chance now to have a baby—my own baby—and you know how important that is to me. Otherwise, I would come. You know I would. Keep me informed, would you? I hope everything is okay.”

  If Greg had any emotional energy left, he’d hate her. Adopting Holly had been more his idea than hers, yes. But he couldn’t believe she wouldn’t have bonded with her. Holly was 14 months old when she came to them, the child of a teenager who’d tried to raise her on her own and—bravely, Greg always thought—finally realized she could not. For Greg, it was love at first sight. For Kimberly, Holly had always felt like someone else’s child. She hadn’t said so, but it had been clear in every look, every touch. Kim could never stop Holly’s fussing. Greg could. The baby had instinctively known who loved her most.

  At the end of the marriage, Kimberly did talk honestly about the issue. She wanted her own children. Greg couldn’t do that for her. He couldn’t afford to pay for complicated fertility treatments. And to him, it didn’t matter. Holly was his own. He couldn’t see the difference between her and a child he had fathered biologically. Here was a child who needed him, a delightful toddler, bright and inquisitive and responsive to attention, and she was his. His. But not to Kimberly. Holly had been 75% of the reason for the divorce, though Kim’s attitude had brought into focus for him several parts of her personality that he didn’t like. Mostly, he saw that she had a cold and selfish streak.

  And here it was again.

  Holly might not have a mother, but she had a family, he reminded himself. She had him, she had Aunt Sherryl, and she had her paternal grandmother. Even Malika, for the past year of babysitting, had provided a stable, loving presence in her life.

  He phoned his aunt again, while he still could, and woke her up. She whispered that they had a reclining chair in the room where she could nap if she needed to, and she was looking right at Holly as they spoke. No change. He thanked her and hung up.

  He drove his car back through the checkpoint and into town.

  Greg hadn’t thought of Malika all day until now. He hoped she was okay. If he got a chance, he’d run past her mother’s house and make sure.

  He flipped on his radio to tell Dispatch he was coming in to be reassigned.

  For most of the rest of the night, he worked on Main Street, along the path of the first tornado. His chief and the fire chief had decided time might be running out on injured people from the first tornado. They had a tent set up on the lawn of the former city hall, and they were conducting emergency operations out of it.

  A volunteer firefighter he worked alongside said maybe the first tornado’s victims could be less badly hurt, too. Greg wasn’t sure. The gossip was, the first tornado had been an EF3, with winds of over 170, and the second an EF5, with winds well over 250 miles per hour. He was pretty sure it didn’t matter if your house was knocked down by 150 or 300 mph winds. Either way, if a ton of house fell on you, you were done for.

  “Yeah,” said the guy, when he said this, “But the stronger winds will drive a rebar right through your gut. They had one of those up on Second Street, I heard.”

  “Thanks for the image,” a woman working alongside said. She was in fatigues.

  “Are you National Guard?” Greg asked her.

  “Yeah. One tour in Afghanistan.”

  “I guess you’ve seen as bad as this.”

  “Not like seeing my own home destroyed.”

  “You live in town?” he asked.

  “No, up in Eaton. But this could as easily have been Eaton, couldn’t it? It’s like my own neighborhood was leveled,” she said. “Can you help me move this section of fencing here?”

  “Sure,” Greg said. Everyone had been issued heavy-duty work gloves by now.

  They got the fence hauled over to the side of the road, came back, and shone flashlights onto the ground. No bodies. But there was an old wedding picture in a frame, from the 1970’s, the glass over it broken, and the Guardsman picked it up and carried it over to a box.

  She came back. “I shouldn’t be taking the time to do that, I guess. But they say it might rain again. And you know someone wants that.”

  “If they’re alive.”

  “If they aren’t, might be someone else wants it even more.”

  “True enough,” Greg said.

  He stuck with the woman for the next few hours. She was a good work partner, physically strong, and efficient. Together, they were able to move heavier pieces than either could alone. There were entire framed walls, roof beams, and other debris that was going to need heavy equipment. When he checked in with Rosemary, about three a.m., he asked her when it was coming.

  “We’ll get more at dawn,” she said. “Walk back over here, would you? I have a case of water and a case of soda for your crew. You can carry it back.”

  Greg realized then how thirsty he was. And hungry. How long had it been since he had eaten? As he walked back up Main Street toward the EOC, he tried to remember when he had eaten, and what, but his mind spun in circles and wouldn’t slip into gear.

  He found a woman in charge of the drinks. She introduced herself as Magarelli’s mother.

  “Do you know if there are any sandwiches or candy bars or whatever?”

  “Someone is organizing breakfast for the first responders. Seven a.m., if all goes well. Probably just bologna sandwiches and coffee.”

  “That’d be great. I’m starting to lag.”

  “Long night,” she agreed, and pointed him to the cases of drinks.

  He hoisted two and made his way from this pool of light to the next, down a long dark stretch and to the third pool of light, which was his work area.

  Everyone took a couple minutes to down a water. Then they got back to it.

  By dawn, they had found three bodies and one seriously injured person who had been whisked off on a stretcher. They cleared one block and, after moving generator and lights, had cleared most of a second.

  To say it was slow going was an understatement.

  He hoped they’d do better in the daylight. He’d been computing. If the second tornado was five blocks wide, and it had stayed down all across town, which he thought it had, and if only one person had been home out of every five, on average? Every block, that still meant thirty people had been there. How many were dying right now, waiting for someone to find them? It could be hundreds. The job seemed overwhelming.

  Of course, he knew, neighbors were helping to look. People on the south side of town, largely untouched, were searching for relatives and friends in the damaged areas.

  Still, Greg wished he could be everywhere at once, helping. And he wished he could be with Holly, too. For long minutes at a time, he was able to cut off that thought, but it kept drifting back to him. He hadn’t checked on her in hours.

  Rosemary called everyone in at dawn for a meeting. Greg saw Massey, who came over. “How’s your kid?”

  “Alive.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “Yeah. I need to call in and check on her. How’s your wife?”

  “Fine. Helping with breakfast, in fact.”

  “So the tornado missed Springfield?”

  “It actually caught the southern part of it, but by then everyone knew it was coming. She drove north out of the town to be sure, then circled back here.”

  The chief called for attention and used a bullhorn to make announcements. She encouraged everybody to go to the country club on the southwest edge of town to get fed. “I know most of you have double-shifted it already, but I’m asking you to work as many hours as you can stand, at least until sunset tonight, catching a catnap if you must, but hanging in for the town and for each other. We still have a chance at rescuing the injured.” What she didn’t say was that, after 24 hours, chances of finding anyone alive were remote.

  But they all knew it.

  Rosemary passed out a pair of assignment sheets, printed by hand. Greg glanced at
it and passed it along. He was getting reassigned to the northeast section of town, not a half mile from his house. So, instead of eating, he’d try to call Sherryl again to get the news on Holly and, if he had time, check his own house.

  Before she finished, the chief discussed phones. “We’re hoping to get cell service back by sunset tonight, so we can go back to our regular communications.”

  There was a collective sigh of relief at that.

  “Then tonight, from dusk to dawn, I’ll split a shift so everyone can grab five hours sleep. On your assignment sheet, you’re either marked A or B group—A group works 8 to 1 a.m., B group from 1 to 6 a.m. I hope after that, we’ll have enough support from other agencies that we can get back to regular shifts.”

  He was assigned to his area of town today along with Higgins. When Rosemary was done, he went over and asked him how it was going.

  “Seen some awful things,” Higgins said.

  “I know. My kid was hurt. I’m hoping to check in on her, so could you grab a sandwich or whatever is easy at the breakfast while I make that call?”

  He was more sympathetic than Rosemary had been and agreed to meet him out at the site with the sandwich in a half hour to forty-five, depending on how well organized things were at the country club. They agreed on a cross street to meet, and Greg made for his car again.

  As dawn cast a rosy light, Greg drove toward the rising sun, his phone on, hunting for the first cell signal. When he had two bars on the phone, he pulled over and called his aunt. She asked him to hold, and he heard her say Holly’s name. A seed of hope sprouted in his chest. Was she awake?

  Sherryl came back on and said, “She seems the same. I called her name and patted her arm, told her you were calling, but she didn’t respond at all.

  Greg felt again the pull to go to his daughter. He couldn’t. “Would you do me a favor and text an update to Kimberly every twelve hours? I’ll text you her phone number.”

  “She’s not coming?” his aunt said.

  “No,” he said, shortly. “I’m sorry, Aunt Sherryl, but I have to get to work now.”

  After sending the text, he stayed parked where he was and scrolled through text messages, finding one from his mother. He read it and texted back that it’d be best to phone Sherryl at the hospital. Next he spent a couple minutes looking at news of the tornado online at the Enquirer website. An overhead view showed the path of damage in Fidelity, with a center zone of utter destruction. The edges of that area had that weird tornado signature of a few houses nearly untouched in a block of razed homes. Maybe his was one. Flipping the phone off, he drove back in.

  He got as close to his assignment as he could manage, but the roads were still strewn with dangerous debris and he had to park three blocks away on Oak, on a patch of street that had been swept up by responsible residents. He grabbed his car rental receipt, found a pen in the glove box, and wrote the word “POLICE” on the back of it, then stuck it in the front window.

  The problem with agreeing to meet Higgins at the corner of Oak and Ninth was that there was no Oak and Ninth any more. Every street sign had been torn off, except for a rare post bent over, still stuck in concrete, that might have held anything from a cross street sign to a stop sign to a “slow children” sign. Every post looked like every other one, and he had to guess when three blocks had passed.

  Looking around, he realized they were lucky to live in a town that had basements, at least in all the older homes. No doubt it had cut the fatalities in half.

  At the heart of the damaged area, even the roads themselves were destroyed. He stopped and asked a couple rummaging through wreckage if that was their house. The man, seeing Greg’s vest and badge, got out his wallet and handed over his driver’s license. “I’m glad you’re looking out for looters.”

  Greg nodded and checked the address. He was a half-block north of where he should meet his partner. “Are you finding anything?”

  “Not much,” said the man. “I guess the things we really want, like the car title and birth certificates are blown away from here. We’ve found some other people’s photos, which we’re picking up.”

  “I imagine there’ll be some sort of social media thing,” said the woman, “linking people with found objects.”

  “That’s true,” said Greg. “Good luck, both of you. I have to go look for survivors.” He almost said, “Have a good day,” but that’d be about the stupidest thing he’d said since this happened. How could you have a good day at a time like this, with your home razed and all your belongings scattered over a square mile? He hoped they hadn’t lost anyone they loved.

  He hoped he hadn’t.

  Then he remembered Jim had died. They hadn’t been as close as he and Sherryl were, but he’d been a good guy. That death seemed so distant. Greg knew he was emotionally shut down, as you had to be at a bad car accident or shotgun suicide or any of the other horrors police work made you see.

  All his worry and grief was focused into a narrow beam, aimed at his own daughter. And even that, he had to try and forget in order to do his job.

  Higgins was twenty minutes late, but he had a large duffel bag with him. Out of it, he pulled two sandwiches wrapped in paper napkins that he handed to Greg. He searched his pockets for two paper containers of marmalade. Greg tore them open and piled them on one sandwich—hard-fried egg and bacon on biscuit—and ate the first sandwich in three bites. By the time he was unwrapping the second, Higgins had gotten out a bottle of flavored iced tea.

  “It’s not coffee,” he said, by way of apology.

  “It’s great. Thanks.” Greg unwrapped the other sandwich, but before he took a bite said, “Was it crazy down at the country club?”

  “They had it organized pretty well, several tables set up with food and coffee and orange juice, and then another couple long tables with these kinds of sandwiches already slapped together. It was crowded, and they may have run out of food before the last of the fire or Guard guys got there.”

  Greg chewed and swallowed. “I worked with a Guardswoman last night. She was on top of things.”

  “Yeah, I guess most of them are pretty good at this.”

  “I think she’d seen worse.”

  Higgins looked around. “I can’t imagine there could be worse.”

  Greg finished his second sandwich and washed it down with most of the bottle of tea. “Let’s get to it.”

  “I have some equipment in my bag. Rope, pry bar, bolt cutters.”

  “That’s great. I have my gloves around here somewhere.” Greg patted himself and found his work gloves in a back pocket.

  “How’s your kid?”

  “Alive,” said Greg. “Let’s try and find someone else who is.”

  “Roger that,” Higgins said.

  They decided to start with the first people they could see, asking them if they were looking for people—they were not—and then quizzing them about neighbors. They’d seen three of their neighbors yesterday evening, working on clearing their property, and they pointed out the house sites where they knew nothing about how the residents had fared.

  Greg and Higgins started with those. Each of them had learned different procedures working in different groups yesterday, and they combined the best ideas to get through the first block quickly. They ran across a living cat sitting on top of a battered electric stove, but that was the only sign of life. They moved south from there, finding three families looking through the debris field in the next block. Again, they questioned them and checked ID.

  Over the course of the morning, they worked in a spiral around Oak and Tenth, covering five full blocks in all. They found three bodies, one crushed beyond recognition, and a severed leg.

  “Hope no one is still looking for that,” said Higgins. Gallows humor.

  Greg got the image of a person with one leg, searching the neighborhood for it by hopping around. “I’m getting tired,” he said, to keep himself from laughing at the sick humor his mind was using to cope.

  �
�I could use a break. I’m hungry again. I wonder what we’re supposed to do for lunch.”

  “You know,” Greg said. “We could check my house. If there’s anything left of it, if by some miracle it’s standing, you can eat all you want out of the fridge before it goes bad.”

  “Man, you don’t know yet if your house is still here?”

  “No,” said Greg, arching his back and rubbing at the aching muscles.

  “It’s near here?”

  Greg had to think about where they were. “About three blocks to the west, one north.” He stretched his arms overhead. “What about you? Family, house okay?”

  “We live southside. If you need a place to stay—”

  Greg shook his head. “My aunt’s house made it through, but thanks.”

  They made their way through the increasingly crowded streets, stopping people to ask for ID. A few had none—or claimed they had none. In one case, a neighbor vouched for the person. In the other, Higgins gave a short lecture on looting and souvenir hunting, but the way the person just numbly nodded made Greg think they were legit.

  One man asked, “Have you seen my fence?”

  Greg and Higgins exchanged glances at that. “I’m not sure I could tell your fence from any other,” Greg said, as gently as he could. “You might even have a hard time.”

  “It was brand new,” the man said, and then he wandered back to his search without another word.

  “Shell-shocked,” said Higgins, watching him go.

  Greg couldn’t disagree.

  On Greg’s street, there was a crew of three women and a man who admitted to not being local. One woman said, “We’re trying to find photo albums, baby pictures, that sort of thing. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow again, so if any of that can be saved, it’ll be today.”

  Another woman said, “We just want to help. Any way we can.”

  Higgins and Greg exchanged a glance. Greg shrugged. “We’ll take your names, if you don’t mind.”

  They didn’t protest and offered up driver’s licenses.

  When they were out of earshot, Higgins said to Greg, “I hope we didn’t just make a mistake.”

  “How much more damage can they do?”