He couldn’t avoid all of it, and at times he caught the strong odor of rotting food and excrement. He bore it as best he could, resisting his burgeoning gag reflex, and bounded forward.
Thankfully he had both shoes. Incredibly he hadn’t lost either yet, even when stuck in the sewer grate.
He shivered again. The relentlessly cold shower was biblical. It complicated everything. The flooding was one thing; the absolute darkness was another. The rain was the coup de grace.
Coup de grace, he thought. The taller of the pavement princesses would like the phrasing.
Nonetheless, he persevered. The flickering lights, alternately red and white, were growing brighter. As he drew closer, and the water deeper, he discovered it was coming from a street two blocks up and to the right. He hurried that distance and rounded the corner, emerging into a stronger current.
It wasn’t as forceful as the one along the hotel’s wide street, but it was strong nonetheless. His calves and thighs thickened with exhaustion as he moved toward the lights. Although he couldn’t see their source yet, they were there. Red. White. Red. White. Swirling and flashing against the water and the buildings, bouncing off everything they touched and brighter now because of the absence of all other light.
Then he saw it. At the intersection of the next street, pulled off the main corridor and buffeted next to a corner building, was a large high-water truck. It was black, cloaked in the night and nearly invisible except for the sharp, distinctive angles of its design and its large twin headlights that cast an arcing beam onto the water surrounding it. The water was high enough that it lapped at the truck’s grille. Its fog lights were underwater, giving a sense of the depth in a way that Doc hadn’t yet seen. Its tires, which had to measure four feet in diameter, were underwater, though the top curves of the wheel wells were visible above the surface.
Around the vehicle, working and struggling, was what Doc had risked his life to find. There were active rescues, families in need, and there were first responders.
Renewed with purpose, he slogged through the water faster, bending into the current and pushing forward against its resistance. He ignored the heaviness in his legs, the ache in his back, and the weight of his waterlogged clothes on his shoulders.
He reached the front of the vehicle, moving past the bright beam of its headlights, and felt the truck’s rumbling idle vibrate the water around him. He approached a man who looked like he might be in charge. The man, wearing a bright orange jacket with reflective tape banded across his chest and along his arms. He looked at Doc warily at first. His glare softened when Doc told him why he was there, that he wasn’t another person in need of help.
“I’m a physician,” he said. “I’m here to do…whatever you need.”
The man nodded briskly. He pointed toward the building closest to the truck. On the fourth floor, there were a dozen people crowded onto a narrow balcony meant for three or four at most.
“They’re panicking. None of them can swim, I don’t think,” he said. “We’re trying to get them into the truck one at a time. They keep threatening to jump en masse. We can’t have that. One group already jumped. We lost a couple in the current. I’ve got one guy in the truck with evacuees. I’ve got two guys climbing the stairs inside to get to them and bring them down. We’ve got a raft that can ferry them the short distance from the steps to the truck, but it’s taking a while. They had to clear a lot of debris first. They’re working on it.”
“Okay,” said Doc. “What do you need?”
“I need someone to stand there and calm them. Talk to them. I don’t know how many of them speak English. They’re migrants. That’s an illegal flophouse up there. The roof’s leaking on them. But anything you can do to stop them from jumping until my men get up there…”
“No problem,” said Doc. “Any injuries yet?”
“Our guy in the truck is sewing up an abrasion on one of the five we’ve got in the truck now. Not much else, I don’t think.”
Doc glanced at the back of the truck, to the large open bed in the back of it. He saw the tops of a couple of heads, not much more.
“Do you have a light on the truck?” asked Doc. “That might help.”
“We did.” The commander frowned. “One of the jumpers hit it, broke it, and went under. That’s one of the ones we lost. We’re kinda blind here. I gotta get on the radio and call for help if we can get any. Anything you can do to keep those folks up there would be much obliged.”
Doc nodded and moved carefully along the side of the truck toward the balcony. He reached a good spot and held his ground there, the water rushing around him. He looked up and, in the flickering red and white light, saw one of the men had climbed onto the outside of the railing. He was preparing to jump.
“Stop!” he shouted. “Too dangerous. Peligroso.”
He had no idea if the man spoke Spanish, but he tried it. Then he tried Vietnamese, aware that many of the fishermen who worked the shallow gulf waters were from southeast Asia. Both languages, neither of which he spoke well, had come in handy when he’d volunteered his time at free clinics in various substandard Los Angeles neighborhoods. He’d picked up important words here and there.
“Nguy hiểm,” he said, waving his hands. “Dangerous. Stop.”
The man held his ground for a moment. Then another man climbed out onto the ledge with him. Now there were two perched and ready to leap.
“No,” said Doc, using the most universally understood word he could think to use. “No. Wait. Esperate por favor. Làm ơn chờ. Wait. Someone is coming.”
The men listened. Both of them, one at a time, climbed back onto the crowded balcony. As the second of the two lifted his second leg over the railing, the balcony shifted. Its mooring loosened at the building’s facade.
In an instant, as Doc was exhaling a sigh of relief from having coaxed the would-be jumpers from the ledge, the balcony and the dozen people upon it came crashing down through the red and white strobing darkness. The crack of the landing separating from the building and the constant din of the rain on the rushing water were muted by the shrill screams of the people crashing toward the murk forty feet below where they’d stood a moment earlier.
Doc was nearly frozen, but somehow his aching legs instinctively pushed him to one side and he dove into the icy, putrid water away from the downpour of migrants. Underwater and scrambling to distance himself farther from the instantaneous threat, he felt the percussion of their bodies hitting the water. One after the other it was like an underwater sonic wave.
It enveloped him, disorienting him. Water ran up his nose, sending an electric sting into his sinuses like a bolt of lightning.
Something, or someone, slammed into the back of one leg, the blunt force only minutely dampened by the thing’s slap against the surface barely above him. He bellowed out in pain, a cascade of bubbles dancing across his face.
He grabbed at his wounded leg and used the other one to find the asphalt below and propel him up and away, a missile launching skyward.
He resurfaced, grimacing at the solid, throbbing ache in the back of his leg. He shifted his weight, putting his mass on the injured leg. It resisted but held.
Bruised, he thought. It was a deep contusion.
Convinced he wasn’t suffering from a fracture or bleeding laceration, he spun back toward the roiling chaos behind him. There was a mind-piercing wail from one thrashing victim, a gurgling call for help from another.
In the waterlogged confusion, Doc couldn’t tell which of the dark figures were those who’d fallen and survived and which were rescuers coming to their aid. He waded back toward the rumble nonetheless. More people had fallen than there were those to help them. Chances were whoever he reached first would be wounded, if they were alive.
The first wasn’t. The gruesome wounds on the woman’s warped body and disfigured face told Doc she’d hit something more than the water. Death was frozen on what was left of her face. Her eyes were fixed open, her mouth aga
pe.
Doc couldn’t do anything for her. He pushed past her, wiped the rain from his face, and found the next body. Ahead of him, first responders were trying to calm the wounded and separate them from the mass of bodies clogging the space between the side of the high-water truck and the entrance to the building.
He found his charge floating on his back, crying out through clenched teeth. Bleeding from his mouth and at his neck, the man was holding onto a piece of wrought iron that protruded through the surface of the water perpendicular to his body.
But when Doc evaluated his many injuries, at least the ones he could see in the strobing red and white light, he realized the man wasn’t holding the piece of iron. It was stuck there, having impaled the man’s thigh.
Doc took the man’s hand and squeezed. “Can you understand me?” he said, hoping the man could hear him above the rain and the ambient cacophony of pain. “I’m a doctor. You’re going to be okay.”
His eyes closed, smiling broadly through his pain, the man nodded. At least Doc thought it was a nod. He held the man’s hand, buoying himself in the water and trying to maintain his position at the edge of the chaos without floating too much one way or the other.
He inched as close to the man’s ear as he could, keeping his tone measured as he explained the man’s predicament.
He imagined the poor soul was in deepening shock, and if Doc couldn’t free him from the iron anchor feet below them, he would die. He didn’t express that last sentiment to the man, but he didn’t lie to him either.
“I cannot move you right now,” he said. “Your leg is stuck. I need to free it. When I do, we’ll be able to get you to the truck, and they’ll be able to take you to a hospital. Do you understand? If so, squeeze my hand.”
The man squeezed. It was trembling, like a weightlifter’s body out of juice at the end of a heavy set. The man was giving Doc every ounce of life force he had left in him to acknowledge his understanding.
Doc couldn’t actually free the man’s leg from the iron. It was likely embedded in or adjacent to bone. There was a web of blood vessels, and thick, sinewy muscle. Trying to wrestle or slide the bar free of the leg would not only risk irreparable damage but could lead to blood loss just short of exsanguination. He couldn’t risk either. And frankly, he didn’t have time to try even if it had been possible.
Instead he’d need to free the bar from the anchoring piece of railing at the bottom of the floodwater. It was his only chance to save the man’s life.
“I’m going to swim underneath you and try to free you. Please remain as calm as you can.” He let go of the man’s cold hand. He heard the sharp rattle in his weak wisps of breath that leaked through his teeth and bleeding nose. Then he dove.
The cold water swirled around him as he dunked himself headfirst the five feet to the street. He opened his eyes as wide as he could, but it did nothing to lighten the darkness. Even the red and white strobe was barely visible beyond the surface. Bodies and debris bumped against him as he groped blindly for the piece of balcony railing somehow stuck at the bottom. The only things that kept him from panicking were his medical training and the silence being underwater provided.
He found a mangled piece of iron railing that bent and twisted like an abandoned smokestack up and up until it reached the underside of the man’s thigh, where it disappeared into his puckered, wounded flesh.
When Doc accidentally touched the man’s leg, he felt the reactive jerk and recoil. It only proved to further move the iron stake deeper into the leg.
Doc couldn’t see it. He felt it as he wrapped his hand around the bar and slid it downward, tracing the bends and crooks until he found one with his fingers that seemed ready to break. He held the bend with one hand while drawing the other to it. He grabbed it and tried pulling, pushing, bending, snapping—none of it worked. He couldn’t get the right leverage to finish the job that the four-story crash had started, and the strain of attempting it had robbed him of air.
Using his good leg, he pushed himself back to the surface long enough to suck down another gulp of air. He descended again, fighting against his own buoyancy to dig his way back underwater. He found the same bend in the iron and tried again. This time, though, he placed a hand on either side of the extreme angle then gripped. He held his breath, feeling the pressure build in his ears, exerting his focused energy on the iron. As he relaxed and pushed in a second time, he grunted and forced the air from his lungs. He pushed, maintaining that pressure until he felt the sharp snap of the metal. He blindly reached around the thin pieces of the bar and worked them outward until the final threads of iron holding the two pieces together separated.
Certain he’d done enough to free the man, he propelled himself upward and treaded to the surface. He was breathing hard and his nostrils burned, his eyes blurry from the water and the rain. He took the man’s hand again and told him it had worked.
Then he realized the man wasn’t returning his grip at all. His hand was lifeless. Doc let go and wiped his eyes clear with the backs of his hands and looked at the man’s face.
The smile of pain, that wide grimace that stretched from cheek to cheek, was gone. His clenched jaw was slack. His eyes were closed, but there was no tension there anymore.
Doc called to him again, then tried moving his body closer to him. But the man, who was either dead or unconscious, didn’t move. He was still anchored to something.
Doc quickly moved to the man’s head and put his fingers at his neck, feeling for a pulse he couldn’t find. He floated to the other side of the man’s body; then he saw it.
The iron railing hadn’t just punctured the man’s leg. There was another piece that had speared through his back. The top of it, barely visible at the surface of the water, protruded through his midsection near his navel.
The man was dead. There was no saving him.
Still falling in sheets, the rain made it difficult to distinguish anything in the dim light. But Doc found a woman clinging to the side of the truck. Many of the dozen people who’d fallen were either floating away, sinking, or in the care of the few first responders on scene.
This one woman, however, was alone. She was sitting on the footwell on the side of the truck, holding most of her body out of the water. She was whimpering and holding one arm in the other, her elbow perched in the palm of the opposite hand. Finally, Doc thought, there was someone he could actually help.
His leg was throbbing and his chest burned from his dives beneath the surface. He was cold, his muscles were tightening, and his head was beginning to throb. What had been the faintest of jabs at his temples had spread across the top of his head like a bandanna of pain.
Yet he forged ahead and met the woman at the side of the truck. He ran his hands through his hair and adjusted his soaked jacket at his gut. He tried to smile at the woman, who appeared to recoil defensively as he approached.
Doc held up his hands. “I’m a doctor,” he said. “Can you understand me?”
The woman nodded. In broken English she said, “I understand.”
“What hurts?” he asked. The noise of crying and wailing had dissipated greatly, but the splash of the rain and the moaning of survivors above them in the truck’s bed made communicating a challenge.
She nodded at the crook of her arm, cradling her elbow. Her long black hair was matted to her face, her sharply cut bangs creating an odd frame for her pained expression.
Doc reached out for her arm slowly, locking eyes with her to gain her consent, and gently touched her at her wrist and at her bicep. The woman let go of her elbow. It was swollen, bloodied, and there was a shard of bone sticking out the side of her arm. It appeared to him as if the lower part of her humerus or the medial epicondyle were splintered.
“You have a fracture,” he told her. Then he thought of the moniker one of the paid escorts had given him. Captain Obvious. “You’ll be okay. They can fix you at the hospital.”
Her eyebrows furrowed and her expression tightened. “Help
me?”
Doc understood her to mean she was asking why he couldn’t help her. Now. She was clearly in pain.
“Yes.” He reached into the hip pocket of his rain jacket and pulled out the first aid kit he’d brought with him from the hotel. He always traveled with one. It was basic—analgesics, sterilizers, bandages, hot and cold pressure packs—but it was enough to typically suit his needs for intermediate care.
He told the woman to hold her arm with her hand over her breast, demonstrating with his free hand the movement one makes to say the Pledge of Allegiance or sing the national anthem. She mimicked him, wincing with the movement.
Doc opened the kit, holding it against the truck for leverage. He fished through the smaller items, grabbing a package of acetaminophen, to get to a plastic pouch in the bottom. He held the pouch between his teeth while he closed the kit, shoved it back into his wet pocket, then ripped open the pouch.
From inside it he pulled a roll of cotton fabric about two inches wide and six feet long. He wrapped it around her neck, created a sling, and tore the extra length of it with his teeth, knotting it at the nape of her neck. Then he unwound the rest of it and reminded the woman to keep her hand at her chest. Doc wrapped the fabric around her waist, upper arm, and her elbow above the exposed bone. He tore the fabric again and knotted it at the small of her back. He checked her pulse, making sure none of the arteries were trapped. There was a pulse. He sighed with relief and motioned toward the truck. They’d only moved a couple of feet, the woman holding onto the truck to stay above water, when the commander met them.
“C’mon,” he said. “We need you in the truck now. We’ve got to get these people to the hospital. We’ve done the triage; we’re ready to go.”
The Alt Apocalypse {Book 3): Torrent Page 14