by Bobby Akart
“Hold on! Let me find a way to get to you!”
“Mom!” Tate shouted back to her. “Try stage right!”
Jill scooted out of the handicapped seat and pushed herself into the row behind it. She held her arms wide as if to decide which way was stage left and which was stage right.
“Your left, Mom!” Emily lended an assist.
The tears flowed once again, and Jill began to laugh. “Okay! I’ll find a way. I’ll get you guys out.”
“Hurry, Mom!” Tate shouted. “The back wall is starting to crack.”
Jill had heard enough. Nothing was gonna take her kids from her. She rushed around the side of the rubble and began to toss pieces out of the pile. She could hear Tate shuffling large objects on the other side of the pile of curtains, such as the fallen ceiling and the stage audio-visual equipment.
Then she heard voices. Several. Working together. Not panicked.
They were the children. Girls, young and younger. Boys, longing to be men, at the age of nine or ten.
“We can carry this one!”
“I’ll hold on to you while you pull!”
“Keep the little ones away from the wall!” said one child to another.
Jill set her jaw and used the strength of several moms. She ripped away the parts of the ceiling blocking their path. The aluminum supports for the drop ceiling were next. She rolled a speaker out of the way, dropping it on her toe in the process, not that she cared.
A dead woman lay underneath a long black curtain panel that Jill removed. She was young. Maybe in her late twenties. The mother of one of the youngest children fighting their way to safety. Her body had to be moved and then hidden from view. There were likely several orphans on the other side of the remains of the Halloran’s ceiling. They’d have to process it another time, as Jill could hear the squeaking tires above her. She suspected another car was sliding along the wet concrete toward the edge.
“Hurry, kids! You can do this!”
She could, too. She continued to clear a path, and now she was able to step onto the stage. There was a sliding panel that disappeared into a wall to her left. She used all her strength and then her weight to lean against the edge to force it out of the way. This cleared another eighteen inches.
That was all it took.
Emily greeted her mother first. She forced her body through the space created and immediately crashed into her mom for an emotional reunion. Tate reached through the space and touched his sister’s head and then his mother’s face. All three Atwoods were crying as relief poured out of them.
Then reality set in for Tate. “Mom, we don’t have much time. We’re losing the wall.”
Jill pulled Emily through and pointed to the wall behind her. Emily’s eyes grew wide as she noticed the minivan on top of the front-row seats.
“Mom,” she began hesitantly.
“Not now, honey. We have to get everyone out. Help keep the kids calm. Can you do that for me?”
Emily nodded, stood a little taller, and wiped the tears off her face.
A loud creaking sound could be heard, followed by more tires fighting to grip the pavement before they fell off the top of the garage.
“Mom!” Tate raised his voice to get her attention.
Jill handed the phone to Emily. “Keep the light shining over here.” She spun around to assist the first child through the narrow space.
In less than a minute, Tate and Jill worked together to usher all the children off the stage and against the wall. Then Jill led them up the walkway, lying to several of them about the whereabouts of their parents. Truthfully, she didn’t know for certain what had happened to them. It didn’t matter at the moment anyway. They could ill afford a distraught child breaking away and running through the Halloran.
Jill waited for Tate, who was bringing up the rear. She pointed up to the opening.
“That’s the way out?” he asked.
“Everything that way has collapsed,” she said, pointing toward the entry doors of the theater. “Hopefully, this is still open. I had to dig my way in and then bust my way through the wall.”
Tate looked around the floor and said, “Okay. It’ll be better for me to push their weight up to you. You can pull and I’ll push as far as I can. Whadya think?”
“Fine, but …” She hesitated. “How will you get out?”
“I’ll figure that out in a minute. Let’s get started.”
Tate led his mom to just beneath the opening. “I’m gonna clasp my hands together. I want you to face the wall, and I’ll push you upward. Use the jagged edges of the foam walls to hold on or get a foothold. You should be able to reach the opening. When you’re ready, I’ll shove you through.”
“I have to go through sideways,” she said.
“Okay, just try to get a knee on the edge. You should be able to stand and turn.”
“Let’s give it a try,” said Jill. She instructed Emily to light up the opening as they worked together to get out.
As planned, Tate used his powerful forearms to hoist his mom high up the wall. She was easily able to grasp the edge of the opening. Then Tate, like the cheerleaders do on the sidelines of his football games, took the soles of her feet and pushed her even higher until she could easily reach the opening. Jill disappeared into the wall and then reappeared on her hands and knees, with an arm dangling out to accept her first child.
“Good work,” she said to her son.
“Dad always said to move the heaviest weight first.”
“Hey!” protested Jill.
“You know what I mean,” he defended himself with a chuckle.
Jill smiled. “Send me up the smallest one first so I can get a system down. Em, keep the light on us.”
“Okay,” Emily replied.
Tate selected a young girl who was nine, but smaller than the eight-year-old who stood next to her. He hoisted the child up, and she grabbed Jill’s hand. With Tate pushing the child up and his mom pulling on the other end, the little girl was soon in the conference room.
“We’ve got this!” shouted Jill. “Keep ’em comin’!”
Tate sent up another. And then another. He worked quickly as several of the kids began to ask more pointed questions about the whereabouts of their parents.
“Why isn’t my mom helping, too?”
“Are they all right?”
“Is my dad waiting outside?”
It broke Tate’s heart to hear their innocent, yet logical questions. He knew where they were, and he suspected they were either dead or would eventually die there.
Whomp!
Another car crashed onto the roof, or what was left of it.
Emily jumped and lost her grip on the phone. It fell down into the debris pile they were standing on.
“Holy crap! That scared me!” she exclaimed.
“Where’s the light?” asked Jill.
“No time, Mom,” replied Tate. He turned to Emily. The two of them were the last to climb out. “Get in position.”
“Not without you,” she responded to his instructions with her arms crossed, defiant.
“I have a plan, Emily,” he lied. “More cars are coming. We don’t have time.”
She reluctantly got into position. Tate hoisted her up, and Jill used the last of her strength to pull her daughter into the space in the wall.
Tate did not have a plan. All that he knew when he’d made the statement to his mother earlier was that every second wasted on figuring out an exit strategy might endanger the young kids.
He turned around and rummaged through the debris to find his mother’s phone. He scraped his forearm on a nail that protruded through the drywall, adding another wound to the ones that were all over his body.
“Tate? What are you gonna do?”
He flashed the light up to his mother. “I can’t climb this wall, and you’re not gonna be strong enough to pull me up. I have to find another way.”
“I’m not leaving you here.”
“Mom,
you gotta get the kids out. I’ll figure something out, I promise.”
“No,” she insisted.
The back wall of the Halloran began to crash into the stage area. The ceiling and the remainder of the rigging fell hard to the floor, causing dust and debris from the parking garage to fly inside the theater.
Tate shined the light around the theater space from front to back. He took a few steps up the aisleway toward the fallen balcony.
“Mom! I’ve got it. Get the kids out. I’ll see you outside.”
“But—” she began, but Tate cut her off.
“Go! Hurry!”
Tate hustled up toward the balcony. He moved carefully down the row toward the point where he’d crawled under the newly formed lean-to.
“Sometimes to go down, you gotta go up first,” he said aloud. His father and uncle would reach the same conclusion in St. Louis.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Friday, December 21
Halloran Centre
Memphis, Tennessee
Tate climbed up the steep slope of the collapsed balcony, using the rows of seats like a ladder. He reached the top and then assessed how he would get to the door opening. Fortunately, the solid wooden door was open. However, the slope was too steep for him to walk up without something to grab onto. He used the flashlight app to survey his options. He did see that the hallway outside the door appeared to be intact.
He was hesitant to try leaping off the back of the chairs to grab the doorjamb. If he was unsuccessful, he’d likely slide down the slope and crash onto the theater floor more than twenty feet below.
If he could only get a running start, he thought to himself. He stood on the back of the seat supports that were bolted to the floor. They were sturdy. He looked up toward the open door and noticed it had a latch-type handle. He’d have to watch his footing. One slip and he’d tumble down.
He heard the telltale squeal and creaking sound emanating from the stage area. Another car was about to pile onto the Halloran. It was now or never.
Tate kept his balance and walked backwards three seats. There was sufficient ambient light from car headlights outside the building for him to focus on the handle. He set his jaw, tensed his muscles, and quickly walked on the back of the seats until he reached the last one. Then he pushed off with his right leg, leaping upward until he could reach the door handle. He hung on, his muscles straining to stop the effect of gravity pulling him backwards.
First with his right hand, and then with his left, he firmly grasped the door, hoping the hinges wouldn’t come ripping out of the doorjamb. Then he walked himself up the carpeted balcony floor, thankful that it provided him some grip until he was able to swing his right leg onto the still-level hallway outside. With one more effort, he called upon his weary muscles to pull his body up and out of the balcony.
Whomp! Whomp!
Two at once. The proverbial straws that broke the camel’s back. The roof of the Halloran was struck with a car and a truck near simultaneously. This caused a chain reaction in which the roofing system, the interior walls, and the floor joists succumbed to the crushing weight of half a dozen vehicles.
Tate didn’t pause to watch the total collapse into the theater. He immediately turned to find a way out. What he discovered was that he was standing on the equivalent of a catwalk with no way down. Other than a stretch of corridor reaching to the west side of the building, everything else on the second floor except a narrow hallway had already collapsed.
He tried the street side first, hoping for a soft landing spot. He was sixteen to eighteen feet above the ground. The debris pile below him made the drop a shorter distance. However, it was anything but soft. Jagged concrete, metal supports, and broken furniture were everywhere.
He wasted no time in abandoning this side of the building. He rushed in the other direction, and his prospects improved. Although the west wall had collapsed into the building, the steel fire escape still stood. It was not attached at the top, but it was still bolted to the lower portion of the building.
“Better than nothing,” muttered Tate as he turned his body to climb down. Rung after rung, he descended the ladder. Once on the ground, he had to crawl over the rubble to get to the street, but at least that was manageable.
Now that he was outside, he was able to experience the chaos on the streets of Memphis. Sirens screamed. Car alarms relentlessly blared. He could hear the shouts of people and the sobs of the injured.
He crawled over the piles of debris, careful not to cut himself further. He slipped at the very end and landed on all fours. Bits of glass embedded into his hands and knees. But he didn’t care.
Tate’s smile almost broke his face when his sister and mom helped him to his feet. The ordeal was over. Or, he briefly asked himself, was it only the beginning?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Friday, December 21
Western Mississippi
“Cold, Mama. Cold. Cold.” Anthony was tugging on Beth’s arm as they waded through the water. It had continued to rise and was now up to her knees. It had soaked Anthony’s pants and was now just above his waist. There was so much water, Beth periodically wandered off the pavement because she couldn’t differentiate between the asphalt and the submerged cotton fields. She certainly knew when it happened, however. The jagged limestone that made up the shoulder worked like those rumble strips designed to keep wandering drivers on the straight and narrow. Each time she found the shoulder, streaks of pain jolted her body from the soles of her shoeless feet upward.
She’d tried to carry her son to give him a respite from his little body sloshing through the cold, rising water. She found she could only go thirty or forty feet at a time before she had to set him back down. Her back was screaming in agony, and her arms were exhausted. Mentally, she was barely hanging on.
Beth had no idea how long it had been since the car spun out and then the floodwaters carried her off into the muddy field. She’d always relied upon her cell phone to tell her what time it was, and she’d stupidly left it in the car. Well, actually, she’d angrily thrown it into the passenger seat, and it had bounced onto the floorboard. She’d forgotten to bring it with her.
Every once in a while, she experienced a tremor. The orangish-blue flames were no longer spitting out of the ground. She suspected that was because the ground was covered in water. But the tremors persisted, although not quite as frequent.
The rain began to dissipate, and soon only a mist was surrounding her. The water levels also began to recede, or she was reaching higher ground. She really wasn’t sure which. She just needed relief before she lost it again.
Beth’s hopes began to rise when she saw powerlines cut across what used to be a cotton field to her left, and they began to run parallel to the road. The water level had dropped from her knees to mid-calf.
To her left, she caught a glimpse of the top of a natural gas valve and the white PVC piping marking its boundary. She walked farther, and the water levels receded more. She caught a glimpse of the highway markers in the distance. She unconsciously picked up the pace, dragging little Anthony by the arm.
Closer now, Beth chuckled as the arrow pointing to the left for the Highway 61 sign was accompanied by a sign above it that read NORTH. Only, the sign had lost a bolt and turned upside down. That kinda summed up how her world felt right now.
Beth had never been so happy to see a four-lane divided highway. It was a simple thing. But most importantly, it wasn’t totally flooded. That meant there would be cars, and that meant someone would give her a ride to the next town so she could get help.
She and Anthony stood in front of the stop sign on the elevated island and looked up and down the highway for several minutes. There were no cars in either direction. Anthony was shivering, so she removed her jacket and wrapped it around him. Her body took on the burden of his shivers.
Beth couldn’t recall if there was a town to the south, but based upon the sheriff’s report about rising water, she took her cha
nces on the northbound side of the highway. They ran across the four lanes and slowed upon reaching a parking lot in front of an abandoned metal building. The light blue structure had once been a chapel, but now it was mostly destroyed courtesy of the remnants of Hurricane Delta, which had roared across Louisiana and Mississippi several years prior.
Beth waited and waited for a vehicle to come upon them to give them a lift northbound. She couldn’t remember exactly, but she thought Tunica was only a few miles from them.
She heard the roar of an eighteen-wheeler headed in their direction. She got a firm grip on Anthony’s hand and inched toward the highway but not too close. She began waving her hands long before the driver would’ve been able to see her.
Suddenly, Anthony, upset at the roar of the oncoming diesel rig, squirmed in her hands and pulled himself free. He raced back toward the partially demolished building, screaming.
“Noise! No noise!”
Beth looked toward the approaching truck and then back to Anthony, who was distraught. She chose her son. She ran to him and scooped him into her arms just as the driver of the semi roared past them. He probably never saw them huddled by the roofless building.
It took several minutes to calm Anthony down. When his emotional outburst subsided, she knelt by his side.
“Hey, you wanna go for a walk?”
“No rain.”
“That’s right. No rain. A beautiful night for a walk.” She shivered from the cold as she spoke. She’d endure anything to keep her son protected from the cold and safe from whatever came their way. Beth stood and shifted her feet. She wasn’t sure if her feet could take a long walk, but she was certain she could make it a couple of hours, the length of time it would take to get to Tunica.
Or so she thought. It was actually twenty-three miles to Tunica, Mississippi, and Beth was only able to make it a few miles before both she and Anthony gave out after an hour and a half.
After crossing what amounted to a raging river beneath a short span of highway bridge, she came upon a guardrail beneath a sign advertising the casinos at Tunica Resorts. That was when she began to cry again. It read twenty miles. They could never walk that far.