The Scourge (Book 1): Unprepared

by Abrahams, Tom

  “I could get out and walk from here,” she muttered. “I’d get there faster.”

  “You might,” said Amir, “or you might not. It doesn’t look like the police are letting anyone near the exit ramp. They’ve got it all blocked in both directions.”

  Miriam was only half listening to Amir. He was nice enough, but they’d run out of things about which to talk. She already knew about his wife, their two-year-old, his overbearing father-in-law, their debt, and his three jobs. Uber was the most lucrative.

  She tapped through her messaging apps on her phone, and there was no response from Ashley in any of them. She checked her voicemail messages again and scrolled through her call log. Although she hadn’t missed any calls, her nerves compelled her to look regardless.

  The SUV lurched forward and stopped suddenly. The momentum switch jerked Ashley in her seat and she reflexively looked up with a scowl on her face. The wipers squeaked on the windshield.

  Amir must have seen it because he apologized. “I’m so sorry, I was looking at the helicopter. My fault. So sorry.”

  A wave of guilt washed through her. As frustrated as she was with the situation, it wasn’t Amir’s fault. While she was paying him a small fortune to cart her from place to place, he did it without complaint. He was as amiable a driver as she’d had and was surprised his rating was a 4.95. If Amir wasn’t a perfect 5.0, who could be?

  Miriam relaxed her scowl. She smiled genuinely, easing her guilt. “Don’t worry about it. I’m just stressed. I’m worried about my friend.”

  The helicopter was in full view now. It hovered a couple of hundred feet above the ground. A uniformed deputy was waving to the pilot, obviously guiding him to the spot he’d chosen for the landing.

  It was at the top of the exit where the wide lane, which ascended from the freeway below, merged into the westbound lanes of traffic on Lake Mary Boulevard. Beyond the landing zone the blue and red lights of emergency vehicles strobed. There were at least three of them. She couldn’t tell through the rain, but was pretty sure at least one of them was an ambulance.

  The rain intensified, and the slap of the thick drops against the windshield and on the roof of the SUV drowned out the fast sweep of the wipers. The flashing blue and red emergency lights colored the large beads of water before the wipers pushed them aside. Through it all, the helicopter hovered awkwardly. It lifted then dropped.

  The skids underneath the body of the chopper appeared to rock, pitch up and down, and were the most obvious signs the helicopter was struggling in the worsening weather. The pilot lowered the helicopter before lifting up. The aircraft was thirty feet off the ground. The wild spray of rain from its rotor draft made it look like a monsoon around the would-be landing zone.

  “Do you see that?” she asked Amir. “I don’t think it can land. I think the weather is—”

  Before she could finish the observation, the helicopter swung to the right. Its nose rocketed violently away from Miriam’s direction as the tail swept toward it. The chopper kept spinning as it lowered to the ground, picking up speed like centrifugal force controlled its movement.

  Its skids appeared to touch the ground, scraping against it, before the chopper lifted a couple of feet, canted hard to the right, and slammed against the ground. Its impact rattled the SUV. The fiberglass blades atop the helicopter kept spinning and splintered as they rotated into the ground. They sheared off and exploded into countless pieces of shrapnel. Its tail broke into two pieces, and the rotor bounced off the ground and spun onto the freeway below.

  The screech of brakes preceded a metallic crunch. A second collision followed, and wisps of smoke lifted from I-4 as flames sparked in the medical helicopter directly in front of Miriam and Amir.

  Miriam’s heart thumped heavily against her chest. She found her hands were covering her open mouth. She was light-headed, and only now exhaled. She wasn’t aware she’d been holding her breath as the surreal unfolded in front of her. It happened in slow motion. Neither she nor Amir spoke. Only the sound of the rain, the wipers, and the distant cries for help filled the car.

  She replayed the accident in her mind. In fast-forward and slow motion the chopper repeated its crash over and again. Its tail swung toward her like a giant, invisible finger had flicked it clockwise. Its spin accelerated until it tipped, and then it appeared to bounce twice before it dropped a final time.

  Without realizing what she was doing, Miriam unbuckled her seatbelt and stepped from the SUV. She sat at the edge of the driver’s side rear seat directly behind Amir. The door was open and wind-blown rain was slapping the left side of her face. She put her hand on his shoulder. “You have a first aid kit?”

  Amir pointed to the trunk and nodded.

  “Open it,” she said.

  He pushed a button and the rear tailgate opened. Then he undid his seatbelt and joined her at the back of the SUV. There were two kits, one larger than the other. He took the smaller one.

  “I’m coming with you,” he said.

  The two of them ran toward the smoldering heap on the other end of the elevated road that crossed over the Interstate.

  The wind was strong and steady, and the rain was blowing into her almost horizontally. From below and to the right people were shouting from the freeway. Miriam glanced in that direction and saw the buildup of traffic, the bright white glow of headlights expanding across the northbound lanes.

  Ahead of her, the chaos sorted into a collection of individual scenes. Each of them was their own horrible drama, connected but separate from the others.

  There was the helicopter itself. It was on its side, dark tendrils of smoke lifting from hot spots of flames. The wind fueled the fire, but the rain kept it from building. The putrid mixture of burning oil and jet fuel assaulted her nostrils.

  There was no movement at the helicopter. She did see a lone arm, fingers curled into a loose fist, sticking out from underneath the wreckage, and there was a helmet sticking through the windshield.

  There was someone at the side of the chopper, holding a fire extinguisher, shooting quick bursts of pressurized nitrogen or carbon dioxide, aiming white plumes of chemicals at the spotty fires.

  To the right side of the chopper, where the broken tail lay, there were bodies. Miriam couldn’t see how many or whether they belonged to men or women, boys or girls. One of them, though, looked as though he wore a deputy’s uniform. It matched the clothing of a man trying to help someone on the ground near the tail. Beyond that was the ambulance. It was on its side, and its strobing emergency lights still worked, casting an alternating red and white glow onto the injured and those who would help them.

  Rain blurred her vision and she swiped away the moisture with her free hand. The wind swirled around her. The temperature had dropped, and a chill swept through her body.

  There were agonized cries of pain coming from all directions. She couldn’t place them amidst the din of the rain and wind. Miriam wanted to curl into a ball and cover her eyes, block out the world. She didn’t though. Miriam steadied herself and moved forward, taking cautious steps across the overpass and getting closer to the downed chopper.

  To the left of the wreckage, in the westbound lanes, she approached a large piece of what she thought was chopper debris. The closer she got to it, she realized it wasn’t from the chopper. It was a piece of someone who couldn’t have survived the crash. Twenty feet away she saw most of the rest of that someone. She swallowed hard against the thickening lump in her throat.

  She questioned her decision to leave the safety of the Land Rover. Beside her, Amir looked as soaked through as she felt. They exchanged a look in which they silently asked each other what they were doing. Selfless and Samaritan weren’t descriptive words she’d included in her dating profile. But here she was. Without thinking about her actions, she’d leaped into the fray. She found her feet leaden with apprehension and fear.

  Amir offered a smile through the rain that streamed from his wet mop of jet-black hair and down his da
rk, angular features. That was enough. She smiled back and pushed toward the woman and child.

  When she got there, another man was helping them. He was young and thin and appeared as frightened as she felt. Crouched next to the woman, his hands trembled. But he pressed them against the woman’s right bicep. Watery blood seeped from between his fingers and along his arm.

  The woman grimaced. Her mouth was open and her teeth pressed tight together, like a child showing a parent she’d brushed her teeth. But her skin was sallow, almost gray. She clung to the child despite her injuries.

  The girl had her face buried in the mother’s chest. Both were drenched in the relentless rain. The woman appeared on the verge of passing out from what Miriam imagined was a horrible wound to her arm.

  Then Miriam saw the blood leaching from underneath the woman’s body. It mixed with the running water that collected at the curb and formed a thin stream toward the drains along the overpass.

  The young man, his hands still gripping the woman’s injured arm, motioned to Miriam’s side. “You have a first aid kit,” he said. “Can you give me something to help her? Something to stop the bleeding. And some gauze? I don’t know what to do.”

  Miriam saw the panic in his eyes. He was as frightened as she was. He was as unprepared for this as she. She dropped onto one knee and set the kit on the road. She swiped her hand across the red molded plastic case and unsnapped the lid with her thumbs. Inside the lunchbox-sized kit was a variety of bandages and salves. She fumbled through it, looking for something that might help. She plucked a bottle of extra-strength painkiller first.

  She was looking for a tourniquet but didn’t see one. The rain made it difficult to read the small lettering on the packages inside the kit. She picked them up, one at a time, swiped the water from the plastic bags, and read what they contained. One of them promised to “Stop Bleeding Fast.” It was called Celox. She held up the package, extending her arm and lifting her head.

  “Here,” she said. “This should…”

  She drew back the offer when she noticed the man had taken off his shirt and tied it in a tight knot around the woman’s arm below the wound. He glanced over at her and reached for the bag. “It’s not for her arm,” he said. “Help me. Take the kid.”

  Miriam handed him the Celox and the package of gauze and moved over to reach for the child. She slid her hands under the girl’s arms and tried to gently pull her from her mother. But the mother’s grip wouldn’t allow it.

  The woman shook her head, her rain-soaked bangs flicking water. Through her toothy grimace she uttered her disapproval. “Don’t take her.” Her voice was breathy, like a whispered grunt. “Please don’t take her. She’s all I’ve got.”

  Miriam inched closer to the woman, the current of bloody water at the curb sloshing into her shoes, and put a hand on the woman’s bare arm. Her skin was cold. “I’m not taking her,” she said, looking into the woman’s eyes. “I’m holding her for you. That’s all. I’ll stay here with you and hold her.”

  The woman’s pained expression softened for an instant before it hardened again. But she loosened her grip on the child and Miriam took her. She smiled at the woman, holding her gaze before she slid onto the curb next to her. The girl, who couldn’t be more than five years old, buried her face against Miriam’s neck and wrapped her little arms around her. The child smelled like baby powder and citrus. Her heart beat fast against Miriam’s chest. Her breath was hot on her neck.

  “Hang in there,” said the young man. “It’ll be okay.”

  Miriam thought for a moment he was talking to her. She tried glancing past the child’s head, pivoted to get a better look at him, and realized he was speaking to the woman. His voice quavered as he spoke to her. The bag of clotting powder was in his hand.

  “My name is Michael Crenshaw,” he said to the woman. “You can call me Mike. What’s your name?”

  “Gretchen,” said the woman. Through her clenched teeth, it sounded like Gurt-shun.

  Mike took the bottle of painkillers and popped the top. He pulled out cotton wadding and tossed it aside, then shook some pills into his hand.

  “Take these,” he said to Gretchen. “I don’t have water. Suck on them. Chew them. Doesn’t matter. It’ll help with the pain.”

  She parted her teeth enough for him to drop the tablets into her mouth. She instantly snapped her jaws shut and started chewing. Her jaw flexed in and out, and her grimace widened across her face from what Miriam imagined was the bitter taste of the medication.

  Mike tore at the bag containing the gauze. He put his hand on the woman’s knee. Miriam saw her leg was soaked with blood.

  “Okay, Gretchen,” said Mike. “I need you to lie back. The instructions here tell me I need to stick this in the wound. It’s going to hurt.”

  Gretchen’s eyes fluttered. Mike put a hand on her back.

  “Lie back, Gretchen,” he said. “Just lie back. Focus on the sound of the rain and my voice.”

  Miriam had the child positioned so that her back was to her mother. She didn’t want the girl seeing whatever was about to happen. Her eyes caught Mike’s for a moment, and she saw the fear was gone. Instead there was resolve. There was focus and singularity of purpose.

  Miriam wasn’t sure what Mike was doing. He had the tourniquet on her arm. Where else was she hurt?

  It wasn’t until Gretchen was flat on her back, her eyes clamped shut and spitting the rain from her mouth, that Miriam saw it. At the woman’s hip, there was a huge gash. Her shorts were ripped, and bright red blood oozed from a wide four-inch gash where her leg met her groin.

  “I’m going to rip open your pants here, Gretchen,” Mike said. “I’m making it wide enough to stop the bleeding.”

  Gretchen grunted and reached for Miriam. Miriam took her hand and the woman squeezed. The pressure hurt Miriam’s hand, but she didn’t resist. The girl in her arms, she realized, was whimpering. Miriam put her lips at the child’s ear and whispered to her. “Shhh. Your momma’s going to be okay. Shhhh. It’s okay. It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

  Miriam didn’t know if what she was saying did any good. She wasn’t a mother. She wasn’t good with kids. She didn’t like kids. That didn’t matter at the moment. All that mattered was keeping the child calm and her mother alive. She had one of the jobs. Mike, the heroic man in front of her, had the other.

  Mike used his hands to spread open the pants at Gretchen’s hip. He spoke to her as he worked, telling her what he was doing. “I’m going to put some gauze down in here,” he said. “I’m trying to get some of the excess blood from—”

  Gretchen’s squeeze tightened around Miriam’s hand. Her body tensed. She groaned, spit spraying from between her lips. Miriam’s fingers ached, but she didn’t pull away.

  Mike pulled back from the wound, a bright red blob of gauze in his hand. He tossed it to the side. His face was sour and he frowned. He read the back of the Celox package, running a finger along the plastic, before he tore it open across the top.

  Quietly, he hunched over the wound and poured in the yellow granular powder. He emptied the package. Gretchen squeezed again. This time her guttural groan crescendoed into a loud cry that almost sounded like a lunatic’s maniacal laughter. The child in Miriam’s arm shuddered. Her whimpers became sobs. Her back expanded and shrank. Miriam felt the girl’s rib cage beneath her hand.

  “I’ve got to apply pressure,” Mike said. “The package says five minutes, Gretchen. Just five minutes. Three hundred seconds. That’s all. Then you’re out of the woods. You can hold your girl again.”

  This time Miriam squeezed Gretchen’s hand. She rubbed the child’s back and started singing into the girl’s ear. It was the only song she remembered from her childhood. Her mother had sung it to her on restless nights when her legs cramped from growing pains and she couldn’t sleep.

  “Hush, little baby, don’t say a word, Momma’s gonna buy you a mockingbird,” she sang. “And if that mockingbird don’t sing, Momma’s gonna bu
y you a diamond ring.”

  The girl’s cries softened. Her breathing slowed.

  “If that diamond ring is brass, Momma’s gonna buy you a looking glass…” Her lips were touching the girl’s ear. Cold drops of rain ran between the two.

  “Hey, ma’am,” Mike said. “Sorry to interrupt.”

  Miriam thought he was talking to Gretchen, so she didn’t respond.

  “Ma’am?” he repeated. Miriam realized he was speaking to her.

  She stopped singing and glanced over at him. Her eyebrows arched as if to ask him what he wanted.

  “I’m Mike Crenshaw,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  Mike was pressing his hands onto Gretchen’s hip. His elbows were locked and he was bent at his waist. He looked like he was in the middle of performing CPR, minus the up-and-down movement of his upper body. He was soaked in rainwater. His undershirt stuck to his skin, revealing its pink tone underneath. It was stained red in spots, as were his pants. His hands were drenched in Gretchen’s blood. It was a bizarre scene for an introduction, but she imagined Mike Crenshaw was trying to keep his mind off his gruesome task for a moment.

  “I’m Miriam Weber,” she said. She started to tell him that it was nice to meet him, but stopped herself. “You can call me Miriam.”

  Rain dripped from his chin, and she noticed the wind had slowed. There were intermittent gusts, but the steady chill had subsided. The rain had lessened to more of a mist, blowing in the subtle breeze like tiny specks of translucent snow.

  “Thank you,” said Mike.

  “For what?” asked Miriam.

  The girl wasn’t whimpering anymore. Her breathing had slowed. There was no hitch in it from the edge of hyperventilation. Miriam wondered if she might have fallen asleep. Then she considered she’d never looked at the child’s face. Such a strange experience, this was.

  “For helping me,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do. I just saw Gretchen get hurt. I saw her child crying. I ran to help her, but, like I said, once I got to her, I kinda froze.”