The Trip to Raptor Bluff

by Annie O'Haegan

  As Andrea stared dismally into the rainy night, she nearly strangled on the thought that she may have blown her relationship with Joshua for good. Lucy would tell him that Tara was a drug addict. She would tell him that Andrea had gotten drunk and attacked Rick for the satellite phone. Worst of all, Lucy would tell Joshua about her plan to let Tara and Reba cheat on their community service requirement. By telling the girls that Lucy would sign off on service they didn’t perform, Andrea made Zeemercise complicit in the deception. As a result, Joshua’s beloved company was now responsible for two St. Mary’s students who were stranded in the wilderness because they didn’t have shoes and couldn’t hike to safety with the others. It was all her fault.

  Andrea flinched as she recalled Joshua’s icy words when he learned she was abusive to Marlon Carlton. “I put my whole life into this business. I risked everything to make it what it is. Zeemercise is not your company to toy with and jeopardize at your whim. I would fire my own child for behaving as you did. You are fired, Andrea. Now get out!”

  Andrea moved further away from Tara and Reba so they wouldn’t distract her from her misery. “Joshua, nooooo!” she moaned as she rocked back and forth. “Nooooo!”

  “Leave her alone,” Tara whispered to the spooked Reba.

  Andrea rose to her knees and fell forward, pounding the ground with her fists as she screamed, “No no no no no no no noooooooo!” She didn’t even notice the aftershock that rocked the ground.

  Brenda, Shelly, Libby, and Pepper

  Brenda arose at dawn and returned to the demolished house in search of food. She was able to lie on her stomach and reach two more potatoes, but didn’t dare step inside; the filtered light exposed structural instability so extreme that a strong gust of wind would bring it down. As she walked back to the campsite, she fought a sweeping rush of hopelessness by laying out definite plans for a productive day. She would find a shelter and food no matter what that entailed.

  The girls were already awake and sitting up when she returned. “The house is unstable from end to end so we are going to have to find food somewhere else. We should probably break up in to teams. Two of us can go back to the main road and climb up until it branches into another street, and the other two can walk further down the road we are on.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Pepper.

  Libby shrugged as Brenda knew she would.

  “Good then. Pepper, why don’t you and Libby go up the main road? The climb shouldn’t be too bad without your packs. Bring water and try to be back when the sun is directly overhead. That should give you plenty of time.”

  “What exactly are we looking for?”

  “People first. If you find someone alive up there, come back immediately. Our second priority is food. Hopefully, even partially standing houses will have some food that we can get to. Next is shelter. We are OK for water for the time being. It’s too bad we can’t carry those five-gallon water jugs in the garage, but if worse comes to worse, we will just make this our watering hole and visit here when we have to.”

  “What if we find dead people?” shuddered Libby. “I, um, really don’t think I can handle that.”

  “I’ll go with Pepper,” said Shelly.

  Brenda hated to let Shelly out of her sight but was more worried about Libby’s reaction to a corpse, and there was every chance they would come across at least one. She nodded at Shelly and said, “That works. Take a good look at any houses you find but do not go inside, no matter how safe it looks. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Now repeat the two rules I just gave you.”

  “Look for standing houses but don’t go inside, and be back here about noon,” said Pepper.

  “Good girl,” said Brenda, liking Pepper more and more. The chubby teenager with the plain face and brunette pixie was sharp, confident, and had not uttered a word of complaint since their terrible ordeal began.

  Brenda and Libby headed south in search of standing houses, walking around broken slabs of pavement and large boulders that had rolled down the mountain during the quake. No area was completely free of debris and the further they went, the more difficult the walking became. The nearest house was almost a quarter-mile away and was buried in landslide material. The remnant of the next house was also flattened and buried in the landslide.

  Brenda sighed in vexation and debated whether or not they had time to check out yet another house before they turned back. She was jumping from one tilted slab of pavement to another when she heard frantic shouts from behind her. The shouts were distant and it took her awhile to find the source. Then she recognized Pepper’s orange shirt. Pepper was stumbling towards them with both arms waving in the air. Shelly was not with her.

  Brenda scrambled down a steep embankment and into a ditch she had avoided earlier because of the dense ferns growing inside. Falling more than she stayed up, she crashed towards Pepper in full dread. “Shelly!” she screamed. “Where is Shelly?”

  Pepper bent forward and put her hands on her knees to catch her breath. Her face was sweat drenched and bright red when she raised it to scream, “Shelly is OK! She’s fine!”

  Brenda burst into tears and halted in her tracks, wanting to throttle the rapidly approaching girl. She was furious that Pepper had left Shelly behind.

  Pepper was gagging on words as she tried to relay her message while she ran. She and Shelly found a partially damaged house with a lady lying on the ground outside. The lady was alive but pinned under the trunk of a large tree.

  “Her leg is trapped,” gasped Pepper. “We couldn’t get her out. She freaked when she saw us and Shelly didn’t want to leave her alone. She’s in a lot of pain and screaming that we have to find her husband.”

  Brenda ran past Pepper and lobbed a water bottle to her. “How far?”

  “Not far at all!” said Pepper, wiping spilled water from her mouth as she jogged to catch up. “There’s a street up the hill that turns right. The house is the first one on the left. We gave the lady our water but she needs more.”

  “I’m going ahead,” said Libby, deftly running over and around pieces of broken pavement. “Don’t worry about me. I will pick up more water on the way.”

  “Climb straight up the mountain behind our campsite,” Pepper called after her. “I came down that way. It’s much easier than climbing over broken road and it cuts the distance in half.”

  Pepper loaded their backpacks with water and power bars while Brenda dug through her duffel bag for first aid supplies. A folded potato chip package tucked in a corner caught her eye. “Tara’s OxyContin,” she thought to herself. “Thank god Rick divided it up instead of taking my advice to throw it over the cliff!”

  Shelly and Libby were kneeling over the body of a middle-aged woman when Brenda and Pepper arrived. Shelly put her fingers to her lips to gesture for silence as she stood up and approached them. “She just closed her eyes. Diana - her name is Diana - and her husband ran out of the house when the quake started, but he went into the garage to get the car out. The tree fell on Diana’s leg and then the garage caved in. She’s been here ever since. She was freezing and really thirsty when we found her.”

  “What did she say about her husband? Could she hear him after the garage collapsed? Did he call to her?” asked Brenda.

  “He’s dead,” said Pepper, looking solemnly at the pile of rubble where the detached stone garage once stood.

  “We don’t know that for sure…” began Brenda but Pepper cut her off.

  “He’s dead. I can smell him.” When the only response she got was wide-eyed silence, Pepper continued, “We found Mama’s brother, my uncle Peter, dead in his apartment last year. He didn’t show up for Mass and Mama got scared since he never missed Mass and he hadn’t called to say he was sick. When he didn’t answer his phone, we went to his house. The police said he had been dead for about two days when we found him. He hadn’t started to smell really bad yet because he kept his house so chilly, but we could still smell him. We knew he was d
ead before Mama found him in his bed. That’s what I smell now.”

  “I’m going to be sick,” groaned Libby.

  “Shelly, you and Libby stay here while Pepper and I check out the garage. Please don’t disturb Diana for any reason.”

  There was nothing left of the garage but sections of a shingle roof lying near the back of a large rubble pile. A yellow SUV was clearly visible beneath the ruin. “The car was backed into the garage so the driver’s door would be here,” said Pepper as she began picking up stones. “He was probably standing right where I am when the garage collapsed.”

  “Good thinking, Pepper. Really good thinking,” Brenda said as she began clearing stones.

  “He’s right here,” said Pepper quietly. “I can see gray cloth. We need to get him out before Diana wakes up.” It was at that moment that Diana began to moan loudly. Brenda and Pepper abandoned their grim task and rushed to her side.

  Diana moaned once more before she opened her eyes. She looked in confusion at the four faces staring down at her. Her body trembled with chills in spite of the coats laid over her.

  “Shhh, Diana,” Shelly crooned softly. “Remember me? I’m Shelly, and my mom is here now. We are going to help you get out from underneath this tree.”

  Diana’s face crumpled into tears, “Edward! He’s in the garage! You have to get him out!”

  Brenda took an OxyContin from her pocket and showed it to Diana before she said gently, “Diana, I have a pain pill for you. I want you to take it now, please. We will do what we can for Edward.”

  Diana groaned, “Please see to Edward.”

  “We will, but you need to take this pill, first.”

  Diana opened her mouth and allowed Brenda to place the yellow tablet on her tongue. Pepper and Shelly gently lifted her shoulders while Libby placed a bottle of water to her lips. “Edward,” she moaned again.

  “We are clearing the garage right now,” said Brenda. “Please, just lie back and stay still. We will let you know as soon as we find him.” She peeled off her windbreaker and placed it under Diana’s head.

  Brenda, Pepper, and Shelly began removing stones from the area around the corpse while Libby sat with Diana, who had fallen into a deep slumber within ten minutes of taking the OxyContin. Edward’s lower half, clad in gray slacks, was completely uncovered. Pepper was right about the time of death. Edward’s body was ice cold and rigor mortis had already come and gone.

  “His upper half is lying in a pool of blood,” said Brenda. “Shelly, are you OK?”

  “I’m fine, Mom. The sooner we get him out of here, the sooner we can take Diana in the house.”

  “The house is still standing? I didn’t even notice.”

  “Most of it is. The roof over a big bedroom collapsed and took out some of the walls with it. The rest looks OK from the outside.”

  “His head is bashed in,” interrupted Pepper. She quickly covered her mouth but didn’t make it far before she vomited. “Sorry,” she whispered, wiping her mouth.

  “Shelly, go sit with Libby. You too, Pepper. I can handle this.”

  “Yeah, and it will take you three times as long,” argued Shelly. “We want help, OK?”

  An hour later, Edward’s gruesome remains lay far from view in a thick copse of trees behind the house. The area where his hair, brains, bone, and blood splattered the garage floor was hidden by a thick layer of crumbled cement and dirt. Diana slept through the entire ordeal.

  “We need to get her in the house and warm her up,” said Brenda. “We can’t wait.”

  “I don’t see any blood where her leg is trapped,” said Libby. “Maybe it’s just broken.”

  “We can only hope,” said Brenda. Diana’s leg from shin to foot was beneath the trunk of the large tree. “You girls tried moving the tree when you first got here?”

  “It wouldn’t budge,” nodded Shelly. “We tried for a long time.”

  “I found these beside the raised garden in the back yard,” said Pepper, holding up a heavy shovel and a garden pick. “Leverage. Maybe if Brenda and I stick these under the edge of the tree and push down on the handles, Libby and Shelly can pull her leg out.”

  Brenda nodded dubiously. “I don’t know what else to try.” She placed the edge of the shovel under the tree trunk and pushed down on the handle. “I think this will work with enough muscle.” She looked directly at Libby and Shelly when she said, “What we cannot do… What we absolutely cannot do, is lift the tree and then have it fall back on Diana’s leg. Shelly and Libby, the very second I say ‘go’, you two have to yank her leg out. You won’t get a second chance. No matter how hard it is, and no matter how much Diana screams, you have to keep pulling on her leg. If we don’t get it out on the first try, we will just do more damage.”

  “Let Shelly help me push down on the pick handle,” offered Pepper. “Libby can move Diana’s leg by herself.”

  “No,” whispered Libby. “What if I can’t do it by myself?”

  “I’ll do it,” said Shelly. “Libby, go help Pepper.”

  “Let’s get this over with,” said Pepper.

  When the tools were set securely beneath the tree trunk, Brenda counted to three and she, Pepper, and Libby threw every ounce of their strength into bearing down on the tool handles. The tree barely lifted from the ground. “Go! Go! Go!” shouted Brenda as Shelly pulled as hard as she could on Diana’s leg.

  Diana jolted awake from her drugged sleep with blood curdling screams.

  “Harder!” cried Pepper, “Pull harder! I can’t hold this much…”

  Diana’s foot released and Shelly tumbled backwards. Shouts of triumph filled the air and Diana’s screaming abruptly ceased. She had fainted.

  “It is a mercy that she’s out cold. Her foot and ankle are crushed; we can see the breaks through the skin,” said Brenda. Diana’s foot, from the top of her ankle downwards, looked like a purple sock full of rocks. Brenda wiped the sweat from her eyes and noticed that her whole body was trembling. A small voice in her head began to scream that this was too much - this new earthquake-struck world was just too much. The only thing that kept her from falling to the ground in hysterics was the sight of three pairs of eyes looking to her for the next practical command on how to survive. “We need to get her inside,” Brenda said after taking a deep breath. She looked at the sprawling ranch house behind her and thanked God that at least one problem was solved; they had shelter. The missing front wall from the master bedroom suite exposed an array of tipped furniture and chunks of ceiling plaster, but the rest of the house looked stable enough to at least provide cover from the elements.

  “Dad is a vet,” said Libby, eyeing Diana’s unconscious form. “If a big dog is too sick to walk, he tells the owners to put it on a sheet and bring it in to his office that way, instead of trying to carry it in their arms. Diana will be easier to move if we put her on a sheet.”

  Shelly sat with Diana while Libby, Pepper, and Brenda entered the house through the exposed bedroom. Libby stripped a sheet from the bed while Brenda and Pepper explored the rest of the house. The door leading from the bedroom into a long hallway hung from one hinge. There were two smaller bedrooms, a bathroom, and a home office across the hall. “I don’t like the feel of this side of the house,” Brenda said as her eyes roamed over the damaged interior. “The ceiling looks like it could fall at any minute and the walls are cracked and buckling. Let’s see what’s on the other side of the house.”

  “We are going to live in the family room on the opposite end of the house from the bedrooms,” announced Brenda once they were all outside again. “It’s a mess but at least it looks solid. Pepper and I pulled a mattress from one of the smaller bedrooms and put it on the family room floor for Diana. It’s already made up and waiting for her.”

  Libby had laid out a sheet beside Diana with one edge touching her body. “Here’s what we do,” she said. “We flop her over by lifting her arm and leg. She’ll be face down on the side of the sheet and then we have to flop her ove
r again. The second flop will put her face up in the middle, and then we can carry her inside. If we are really careful with her foot, maybe she won’t wake up.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Brenda said as they began turning Diana on to the sheet.

  “Yeah, we need to clean her up out here,” sighed Pepper. The smell of feces and urine was overpowering. “Do we have enough water with us to wash her?”

  Libby was already pulling Diana out of her polo shirt. It was soaked with urine halfway up her back.

  “Let’s get her pants off.” Brenda looked in dismay at Diana’s tailored khakis. “It’s not going to be easy to get her injured leg out of those pants without hurting her.”

  “I’ll look for scissors in the kitchen,” said Shelly. “Be back in a second.”

  “She’s a mess,” said Brenda after they had cut off Diana’s clothes and rolled her on to her stomach. “Someone start cutting the legs of her khakis into large pieces. We’ll have to use those like rags.”

  Brenda and Pepper worked as quickly as they could to clean the filth from Diana’s lower half. “I’m so glad she’s not awake for this,” said Pepper. “Poor thing! How humiliating to be butt-naked in front of four strangers. She’s as helpless as a baby.”

  Diana remained unconscious through the entire cold water wash and the move inside. She seemed to be resting comfortably with her head on two pillows and her naked body covered by a down comforter.

  “Let’s get the mattresses from the other bedrooms and put them next to Diana’s. Then we can go back to our original camp to get the things we left.”

  “Um, Brenda,” whispered Pepper. “We need to bury Edward before Diana wakes up. She will want to see his body and I don’t think that’s such a good idea. She doesn’t need her last memory of him to be of a smelly dead body with a crushed head. He’s going to get really stinky, really fast.”