Laying Down the Paw (18 page)

“On my way.”

I looked around for something to tie Brigit to, but none of the structures looked stable. I ended up tying the end of her leash to the door handle of an upside-down Mercedes in the parking lot. “Stay here, girl.”

Brigit's eyes shined bright with anxiety but she obeyed, sitting down on her haunches with only a small whine in protest. I gave her a quick kiss on the snout. As scary as today had been, it would've been worse if she hadn't been with me.

My partner now situated, I began making my way through and over the rubble to the counter, talking the entire way, partly to reassure the person buried under the wreckage, partly to make sure I wasn't stepping on someone else buried under the debris. “Here I come!” I called. “Almost to you!”

Scuttling and crawling over shifting debris wasn't easy. Bricks slid and smashed my fingers twice, and a piece of drywall I'd mistaken for concrete gave way under my foot, jamming my ankle against an unforgiving strip of metal roof flashing. It felt as if I were in some type of carnival fun house—minus the fun.

When my eyes spotted one of the rescue teams heading our way, I raised my arms and waved them. “Over here!”

The man rushed over to the edge of the debris field, unclipped the leash from the collar of his golden retriever, and issued an order. The dog scurried onto the pile, quickly sniffing and snuffling his way past me, having a much easier time balancing on the shifting debris with his four legs than I'd had on my two. He stopped behind the counter, his nose shoved into the rubble, his back end sticking up in the air. A second later he raised his head, looked back to his partner, and barked.
Ruff! Ruff-ruff-ruff!
His tail wagged vigorously. To humans, search-and-rescue work was a matter of life and death. To the dog, his work was playtime, an elaborate game of hide-and-seek. Still, despite the differences in approach, human/canine partners made amazingly effective teams.

The man, whose embroidered name badge read
J. REED
, ordered his dog to continue his search for other survivors while he joined me in trying to get to the buried woman. Reed had an easier time than I'd had, having been trained for this type of work and also being equipped with knee pads, shin guards, heavy gloves, and other protective gear.

He began to pull bricks off the pile and stack them on the counter. “Careful,” he advised. “The last thing we want to do is make things worse.”

One wrong move and the stack of debris could tumble down like a house of cards or blocks in a game of Jenga, but with devastating consequences.

After three minutes of careful digging, Reed pulled away a section of uprooted floor tile to reveal a tiny white woman cowering against the back of the counter. Her gray hair was matted with blood, her face crisscrossed with deep scratches, her pink sweater soggy and stained.

“Thank God!” she cried. She reached up to grab me, nearly pulling me into the hole with her.

Reed and I helped her to her feet, and she looked around in horror. “Where's my son?” she said, softly at first, her words escalating to a shriek as the enormity of the damage sunk in. “Where's my son? Where's my son!?!”

The retriever had moved twenty feet back, indicating he'd found another person. But whether that person was still alive was unknown. The area where the dog stood contained an even deeper, denser pile of remains, including heavy machinery that had been tossed and toppled like children's toys.

Reed helped the woman to the top of the counter. “Stay here until we complete our search.”

He radioed for paramedics to come tend to the woman.

As we turned to head to the back of the space, his eyes met mine. From the expression therein, it was clear he thought the chances of anyone surviving in the wreckage would be nothing short of a miracle.

It took us a full five minutes to reach the dog, another ten to figure out how to unearth the buried person with the risk of dropping machinery on him. Two large washing machines were counterbalanced at odd angles on top of the ruins. One wrong move and we could cause an avalanche that might not only crush the man trapped below but us as well.

Minutes later, when we finally uncovered a leg, Reed called into the rubble. “Search-and-rescue here. How you doing in there?”

There was no response. The man was either dead or unconscious. I prayed for the latter.

“Is he okay?” cried the woman from where she now knelt on the countertop, trying to get a better look. “Is he okay?”

As much as I wanted to give the woman good news, I had to tell her the truth. “We don't know yet!” I called.

We continued to pull debris away from the man, keeping one eye on the machines towering over us.
Creeeaaak.

Uh-oh. One of the machines had begun to shift.

“Get back!” cried Reed, scurrying to his left. “It's gonna fall!”

I scurried in the opposite direction.

The machine wobbled atop the pile for a moment, letting out another
creak
, before toppling over backward and sliding away from us. While the machine had exposed the man buried below, it had also removed the main means of support for the other washer, which had started to inch its way down a slope of debris.

The rescue worker reached down and wrapped his hands around the prone man's left ankle. “Grab a leg and pull!”

I reached down, wrapped my hands around the man's right ankle, and yanked with all my might. We managed to pull him toward us and out of the way a mere instant before the washing machine slammed down into the space with a resounding
BANG!
A second later and the man would've been crushed to death.

Back on the countertop, the woman put her hands to her mouth and screamed.

“We got him out!” I called to her, hoping my words didn't give her false hope. We'd gotten the man out of the rubble, but whether he was alive was yet to be determined.

The man looked to be in his late forties or early fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair and a few lines beginning to form around his closed eyes. The rest of his face was slack, as if he were taking a restful nap. I only hoped it wouldn't be a permanent nap. A large, oozing gash on his left temple indicated he'd suffered major head trauma.

Reed put two fingers to the man's neck and exhaled a quick, sharp breath. “We've got a pulse. It's weak, but it's there.”

I looked over at the woman. “He's still alive!”

“Thank God!” she cried, putting her left hand on her heart and raising the other to the sky. “Thank God!”

A paramedic team ran up with a stretcher. While the three of them finagled the man's limp body onto the device, I picked my way back to the woman, helped her down from the counter, and gave her a shoulder to lean on as she limped her way through the rubble to join her son in the ambulance.

Brigit and I worked the rest of the day and late into the evening before being relieved from duty. During that time, I helped to pull three more seriously injured people from structures in the area. EMTs had set up a makeshift morgue in the bank building, one of the few structures that had suffered only minor, cosmetic damage. Several times I spotted teams going by, the limp forms on their stretchers covered with sheets. I nearly lost it when a woman's hand flopped out from under the sheet, the sparkly diamond ring and festive pink nail polish at odds with the dark situation.

Captain Leone stopped by in person just before nine, giving me a once-over. “You look exhausted,” he told me. “We've got officers en route to relieve you. Go on home.”

He'd get no argument from me. My muscles were so sore and tired they quivered. I was no use to anyone in this condition.

Brigit and I rode back to the station with Derek. I didn't bother to thank him for the ride. It was his job to help out a fellow officer, after all. Besides, he'd complained the entire time that my furry partner and I were making his patrol car smell of “wet bitch.”

I loaded Brigit into my Smart Car and drove back to my apartment. I'd never been so happy to get out of my uniform and into a warm shower. Afterward, I took a brush to Brigit, running it over her fur until her hair was tamed.

I set the brush aside and cupped her face in my hands. “That looter was right. You are a pretty girl.”

She gave me a sloppy kiss, then trotted across the kitchen to munch on her kibble.
Crunch-crunch-crunch.

I, on the other hand, had no appetite. I did what I'd been longing to do all day. Curled up on the futon and cried.

 

TWENTY-SIX

PARTNER PITY

Brigit

Her partner lay on the couch, curled up in a fetal positon, bawling and shaking. Tired as Brigit was, she knew she had to try to cheer Megan up. Heck, she could use some cheering up herself.

She abandoned her overdue dinner of dry kibble and walked over to the couch. Ignoring Megan's cries of protest, Brigit cleaned the tears from her partner's face with her warm, wet tongue.
Shlup-shlup-shlup.

Eventually, Megan unfurled, stretching her legs out on the sofa and patting the space in front of her, inviting Brigit to lie down with her. Brigit hopped up and flopped down, turning her back to Megan so her partner could scratch her chest while they cuddled and comforted each other.

Megan dug her fingers into the fur just below Brigit's neck and gave the dog a nice scratch.

Ahhh. That's the ticket.

 

TWENTY-SEVEN

BLOWING SMOKES

Dub

Dub parked the van in the back lot of the apartment complex. He didn't want to tell his mother about the van. At least not yet. She'd wonder how he'd gotten the money to pay for it and then she'd want to know whether he had any money left over. Dub didn't mind helping her out. But he wanted it to be on his terms. Besides, if he gave her any cash, he was afraid what she might buy …

He walked fast up to the apartment. It was nearly five o'clock now, and his mother would be home in half an hour.

Inside, he slid the second set of car keys into his backpack and looked around the apartment for places to hide his remaining $466. The toilet tank was too obvious. Same went for his mother's mattress. He thought about taping it under one of the kitchen drawers, but with his mom's history of delinquent rent payments he didn't want to risk them being evicted and someone else ending up with his cash.

Where should he hide it?

He realized then that the safest place to stash the cash was in the van itself. He rushed back out of the apartment, down the stairs, and was almost past the laundry room when Marquise stepped out of the doorway and blocked his way.

Shit.

Marquise's upper lip quirked. “Where you going in such a hurry, WC?”

None of your fuckin' business.
“Where d'you think?” Dub snapped, bumping shoulders with Marquise as he pushed past him. “To see a girl.”

“Ah.” Marquise laughed. “Gonna get you some, huh?”

“You know it.”

Dub continued on into the parking lot, looking back to see if Marquise was still watching him. Luckily, the guy was no longer in sight.

Dub climbed into the van. Though the vehicle might be a safer place to hide the cash than the apartment, Dub knew thieves sometimes broke into cars looking for electronics or drugs, especially in neighborhoods like this one. Dub also knew the glove compartment would be the first place someone would look if the van were broken into. He needed a better hiding spot.

He looked around. There were no floor mats to hide the cash under, and the back of the van had only straight metal walls. Spots of clear, dried glue told him there had once been carpet in the back of the van, but it was gone now. As he leaned back to check out the cargo bay, he noticed the vinyl backing on the passenger seat had separated at the seam, leaving a gap just wide enough to shove the money through if he folded it into a wad. He pulled the cash from his wallet, folded it in two, and shoved it into the seatback.

Good.

He turned back to the door and almost screamed when Marquise, Long Dong, and Gato stood at the driver's door, staring in at him.

Had they seen him hide the cash?

Would they take it from him?

Before he could decide what to do or say, Marquise yanked the door open. “What's this, WC? You been holdin' out on us?”

“Yeah, man,” Gato said. “You got yourself some wheels and didn't tell us?”

So they'd seen the van but not the cash.
Good.

“Just got it.” Dub slid down from the driver's seat and pushed down on the manual door lock. “Traded my twelve cartons of Camels for it.” He was blowing smoke, but he didn't want these guys to know about the lottery tickets. He knew how these relationships worked. As the newest member of their gang, it wouldn't take much for the other three to turn on him.

“You move fast,” Marquise said, watching Dub closely. “No grass growin' under your feet.”

“You got that right.” He closed the door behind him. “I'm going to use this van to start a lawn business.”

Long Dong scowled and waved a hand. “A business? Shit, man. You should be having a party in there!”

 

TWENTY-EIGHT

THE SUN WILL COME OUT TOMORROW

Megan

Sunday dawned warm and bright, not a cloud in the sky, almost as if Mother Nature were mocking us.
Scared ya, didn't I?

After a late breakfast I had no real appetite for, I checked my work e-mail and the news reports for updates. Seven people were confirmed dead, three more were still missing, and over a hundred had been injured. Weather experts verified the tornado as an EF5, the strongest possible category of tornado. The only saving grace was that the twister, though strong, had been narrow and stayed on the ground only a short time, giving the city a quick bitch slap before vaporizing.