Max checked for a pulse, though he already knew what he’d find. Her neck had been positioned at an unnatural angle, and her eyes stared up at the sky—unseeing, unknowing.
An explosion large enough to level three houses would have killed her instantaneously. “I’m sorry, Carter. I’m—”
“Don’t say that! Do not say you’re sorry. Do not say…” He dissolved in a river of tears, hovering over the girl, holding her hand, touching her face.
“Stay with him,” Max said to Shelby. “I need to check for survivors before the fire spreads.” He stood and canvassed the area, trying to figure out who and where he could help. The house that had exploded was completely engulfed in flames. The houses on either side had fallen flat and were heaps of rubble. Even across the street, houses had been damaged—including Shelby’s and his own.
Max turned toward the house behind him, which looked as if a giant hand had flattened it. There could be survivors under the rubble. They would need to get them out before the fire engulfed it as well. He wasn’t worried about additional explosions because whatever had caused the rupture in the gas line had released all of the built-up pressure.
He ran toward the house, called out, stopped to listen, and then he moved a few feet and called out again. When no one responded, he went to the house on the south side of it. The northern wall had been pushed over, but the southern portion of the structure was still standing. Some part of his mind realized that people were streaming in from all directions. The crackle of the fire, smell of smoke, and shouts of dismay all seemed to come from a great distance, but this time it wasn’t because of his hearing. His arms began to tremble, and it occurred to Max that he was probably in shock, his body and mind trying to catch up with the horrific event.
He needed to push forward, to look under the debris, to call out for survivors. Stumbling, he made his way around to the back of the house.
“Hello? Is anyone in there? Holler if you can hear me.”
A trampoline sat in the corner of the lot, and the tire swing hanging from the live oak tree proclaimed that all was well. But it wasn’t all well. The gas lines had ruptured, but why? Was it a result of the solar flare? Would they see the aurora again when the sky grew dark? He glanced up, saw only a deep blue sky.
He called again and again, stopping every few feet, looking for any sign of survivors. Was theirs the only neighborhood with damage? How many were injured? How many killed? Glancing toward the next house, he heard screams from the backyard. A woman was frantically clawing through the debris.
She looked up, saw Max, and screamed, “I can hear her. I hear my daughter!”
Max darted back out to the street. “We need help over here!”
He didn’t stay to see if anyone heard him, or if they would come. There wasn’t time.
When he reached the back of the house, the woman was still hysterically pulling at the wreckage. Smoke pushed toward them as the initial fire spread. People with blankets and buckets stood between this house and the one closer to the explosion, trying to create a firebreak.
Max realized he knew the woman. Of course he knew her—she was his neighbor. The family had been living there when he moved home seven years ago. Agnes Wright and her daughter Courtney. Mr. Wright had moved away five years ago.
Her home had fallen like a house of cards. Bricks, wood, and other debris littered the yard. A lawn chair sat inexplicably on top of her roof, high atop the pile of rubble.
He reached for a board that Agnes was attempting to yank out and saw that her hands were bleeding. He wanted to tell her to stop, to let them handle it. Now there were a half-dozen men behind him accepting the boards, helping with the heavier pieces.
The air was filled with cries from the injured, the scream of an EMS vehicle, someone calling for a doctor. Max closed his eyes, shut out everything else, and listened.
He thought he heard—
“Everyone quiet.” He moved closer and stepped on a dresser that shifted, nearly causing him to lose his balance. If they moved the wrong board, if they put weight on something with an air pocket under it, they might bury Courtney more deeply under the pile of debris. They might kill her.
The scene took on an otherworldly quality. A mockingbird sang. A dog barked. A slight breeze stirred the leaves of a tree—and then he heard it. A faint cry to the right.
Agnes leaned over as if in pain, crying over and over again, “Please, Jesus. Help us to save her. Please, help us.”
“How old is your daughter, Agnes?”
When she looked up, her face had blanched whiter than snow in winter. Max worried that she might be about to collapse, that the shock or the fear might be too much.
“She’s fourteen. Courtney is fourteen.”
“We’re going to get her. Okay?” Max looked behind him and surveyed the group that had assembled. He turned back in the direction of the small cry he’d heard. “Courtney, we’re going to get you out.”
The group gathered around Max grew silent, and his throat was suddenly dry. He coughed once and tried again.
“Courtney, we need you to stay very still so nothing moves. When I call your name, just answer here so we’ll know we’re getting close.”
There was no answer. Praying that God would save this one, that he would shower mercy on this young girl, Max said, “Courtney?”
“Here.” The voice was small, weak even, and no doubt terribly frightened.
The men behind him began slapping one another on the back.
“Let’s get her out.”
“We can do this.”
“Hang in there, Courtney.”
Max knew there were others who needed their help, that they were working under a ticking clock. He was nearly overwhelmed when he allowed his mind to picture the block of homes now destroyed. How many people were buried alive? How many could they save?
One person at a time. That’s how the world is changed, son.
His father’s voice in his ear, clear and calm and steady.
“Ma’am, if you could move back and let… let Coach Parish stand up here with me.” He hadn’t realized who the man was until that moment. Parish nodded and took the mother’s place.
“I just heard her, approximately two feet ahead. There must be a pocket. We’re going to have to do this carefully.”
“Like pickup sticks,” Parish said. “Or Jenga.”
“Exactly like Jenga.” Very carefully, Max reached for the first board.
SEVENTY-ONE
Shelby tried to calm her son. Even as her heart broke over Kaitlyn and for her mother, for those with no home, for those still buried beneath the debris… as the sheer hopelessness of it all threatened to overwhelm her, she sought to comfort her son.
She tried to move him away to a safe distance, but he wouldn’t leave Kaitlyn. He simply shook his head, held the girl whose life had been struck short, and wept.
Minutes passed as people from surrounding streets flocked in to help. Finally emergency workers arrived to begin triage, but few had yet been recovered from the affected homes. One of the paramedics walked up, crouched beside them, and said, “We should take her now, while we can.”
Carter ignored them, or perhaps he couldn’t hear them through his pain.
“You have to let her go now, son. Just… let her go.”
Shelby didn’t know how she could persuade him, how to reach him in the depth of his sorrow.
Patrick and Bianca appeared by her side.
“We’ll follow them, Carter.” Patrick gently pulled the boy to his feet and nodded for the emergency workers to load Kaitlyn onto the stretcher. “If you want to go with her, I’ll take you.”
Carter wiped a blood-covered hand across his face and nodded, though he was still watching Kaitlyn. When they covered her with a sheet, he literally fell into Shelby’s arms, shaking and weeping.
Bianca rubbed his back, as Shelby had when he was an infant. Patrick placed his arms around them all, providing a protective barrier to
this most intimate of families. They had shared birth and life and catastrophic changes together. They would accompany one another through this valley too. Shelby realized in that moment that it was only death. Yes, only. She understood, maybe for the first time, that it was a thin veil indeed that separated them from those who had gone ahead.
As sirens blared, people cried, and the assistant fire chief barked orders, Shelby felt, inexplicably, as if she was standing on holy ground.
The ambulance blipped its siren once. Shelby glanced up and noticed that one other corpse had been loaded into the bay. The EMS worker slammed the doors shut and climbed into the front next to the driver. Another ambulance remained to treat the injured.
Carter stared at the ambulance as it moved away with lights pulsing. There was no need to rush, no need to blare the siren while carrying the dead.
“I need to go with them. I need to… to be there when her mom comes.”
“I’ll go with you,” Bianca said.
“We both will.” Shelby had an almost irresistible urge to check the vials of insulin in her backpack. Had they burst? Had Max crushed them? What would they do if—
“Shelby, you need to stay here.” Patrick nodded toward her damaged house, and Shelby saw that they hadn’t escaped unscathed. Her legs began to shake, and she wondered if she had the strength to face what lay ahead.
As if he could read her mind, Patrick said, “We’ll help you.”
She looked at her son. Gratitude overwhelmed her that he was alive, that he hadn’t been taken in this tragic accident, and immediately she felt ashamed for thinking such a thing. It was selfish. It was the cry of her heart, but what of Kaitlyn’s mom? She would be devastated. It was all so unfair. She thought again of her earlier revelation—holy ground, divided by a thin veil.
“He needs…” She wiped at the tears streaming down her face. “He needs his eye looked at.”
Carter reached up, wiped at the cut, and then he stared at the blood on his fingers.
“I’m okay.”
“You’ll need stitches, at least,” said Shelby.
“I’ll take him by the clinic,” Bianca said. “Everyone here is going to have their hands full.”
“Here, take my car.” Patrick fished the Mustang’s keys out of his pocket.
Carter looked at Shelby once before turning toward Bianca. The grief and confusion etched so vividly on his face tore at her heart as he walked away, Bianca’s arm around his shoulders.
As soon as they were out of sight, she dropped the backpack on the ground and unzipped it. Pulling out the old blanket, she unwrapped the top box of insulin, opened it, and confirmed that they were unbroken.
“We’re good?” Patrick asked.
She nodded and repacked the supplies. “Where do we start? With the rescue?”
“It looks to me like they have plenty of people doing that. We need to get to your house and see what can be salvaged.”
“Why?”
But she knew why. Already people were trolling through the debris, pulling out what was useful, scurrying away.
“This is going to be a difficult site to contain, at least for the first few hours. If there’s anything left in your house that you want, I suggest we get it now.”
“All right, but I’ll do it alone.” When Patrick began to argue, she pushed on. “That’s my one condition—that you go and check with the firemen before helping me. See if they need you to help look for people or fight the fire.”
The blaze had diminished considerably, but did that mean they were safe? She’d felt safe walking home from work with Max an hour ago, and now her life was in shambles.
Patrick didn’t look happy with her condition, but he nodded once, curtly, and strode in the opposite direction.
Shelby hurried over to the wreckage of her home.
Glass crunched beneath her feet as she made her way up the porch stairs. The windows had been blown out. There was no need to put her key in the lock. The front door had been thrown across the living room. And the inside of her house? It looked as if a tornado had passed through. The couch had been hurled against the opposite wall. Most of the pictures were gone, scattered, broken.
She remembered the bins that she had taken to Bianca’s only the day before. They were safe. Was that a miracle? She didn’t know. She felt numb as she walked into her office, and a cold acceptance crept over her. Resolve stiffened her spine, and she promised herself that she would not shed tears for this. Not while people were dying just past her doorstep.
The books that once lined her bookshelf were scattered around the room. The computer she hadn’t been able to use since the solar flare lay on the floor. How much of her life had she spent in this room, spinning stories, living through her characters? She’d suspected that her old life was over—done and gone. She’d even mentally accepted it when she first saw the aurora, and again when the fire swept through the north side of the square. The first day she’d gone to work at Green Acres, she’d resolutely told herself that no one needed an author now. What they needed was a clean bedpan, fresh linens, a healthy meal. Her priorities has shifted and adjusted and readjusted to fit this thing they were living through.
And now, looking at her office, at the destruction of their home, her heart recognized that her previous life was over.
She was fortunate to be alive, to still have her son, to know a few people she could truly call friends. No family? That might be true, but God had provided others. He had provided.
As she moved through their rooms, making piles of clothes, pictures, even food, she heard a soft rain begin to tap against the roof.
“Thank you, God.” The words slipped from her lips.
The rain would put out the fire. It would save what homes remained on their block. Never mind that it would also soak any items thrown out of the house. They were only possessions—only things.
As for her and Carter? They were now homeless. They’d joined the ranks of the people passing through Abney, the ones who hadn’t been able to find a way back to their towns. They were no different from the men and women who had lost their apartments in the downtown fire. Their lives had taken on the same uncertainty as the Mendozas’ and Dr. Bhatti’s had.
Patrick returned and helped her pack items into pillowcases and laundry baskets. They covered everything with trash sacks and lugged it all to the curb where they waited for Bianca and Carter to return. Max had stopped by to tell them he was going to help in another neighborhood—another area where there had been a gas explosion.
The rain had stopped, but the street still glistened in the last of the day’s light. Not even dark yet. How had so much happened in so little time?
As they waited, several of her neighbors walked by—stopped and asked if there was anything they could do, anything that she needed.
Each time, Shelby thanked them and said she was fine.
She wasn’t fine, but maybe she would be—eventually.
Until that day she would lean on the kindness of others.
Would they forget these days? In five years or twenty when life had taken on some sense of normalcy, would they push these memories from their minds? Or would they tell their children and grandchildren of the days of tragedy and how the town came together to help the injured and homeless and grieving?
“I need to go back inside,” she said.
“I’ll wait here with your things.”
She walked back into her house, through the living room, and into her study. The plastic tubs that held her supplies had been thrown from the shelves, and some were burst open. Still it wasn’t difficult to find the one she wanted. Opening it she pulled out first one tablet, and then another.
She might want to write—something. Not the romance stories of before, but maybe a chronicle of what was happening and how they were enduring. Possibly she could write an account not only of their sufferings but of their hope.
When would there be more paper? And what of pens? Were the pen factories still
open? She doubted it.
Shelby dumped everything out of her promotional tub—bookmarks and postcards and key chains and business cards. She found a dust rag pinned underneath her printer, pulled it out, and used it to make sure the tub was completely dry. She put the tablets, all of them, inside. Then she searched for the boxes of pens and placed them with the tablets.
She walked out of the room. Slung across her shoulders she carried the backpack with Carter’s insulin. Clutched to her heart was the bin of writing supplies.
Shelby didn’t look back. She felt no need to study the house that she’d grown up in, the home where she’d raised her son. That was her past. The future, though it seemed heavy and dark, was in front of her.
She would face that direction instead.
SEVENTY-TWO
Carter hated the way his mother stared at him, watched him, and checked on him constantly. He was fine. He had lived through the events of the last three days with only four stitches above his right eye to prove he’d even been on Kaufman Street the moment of the explosion.
Three days ago.
His world had tipped, turned, and changed completely.
“We struggle to understand.” Pastor Tony stood in front of the place where Kaitlyn would be buried. He wore a white shirt, tie, and dress pants even though the heat threatened to consume them. Sweat streamed down his face, but he didn’t notice. He seemed transported from their presence—his hands on the Bible, his gaze fixed on something Carter couldn’t see, something in another place and time.
It was June in Texas, and after the brief rain the night of the explosion, the temperatures had soared to the high nineties. People were literally stroking out from the heat. He’d heard his mom tell Max that two more folks had died at Green Acres. They were succumbing to the harshness of this new life one by one.
That, and the line of open graves that extended to the left of the pastor presented a scene more horrific than anything that Carter had ever seen in a video game or on television. Life was turning out to be harsher than he had ever imagined.
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