“What’s that child doing now?” Lem asked.
“I don’t know,” Ben replied, feeling a mild tightness in his chest. He popped a nitroglycerin tablet, as Lem held on to his daughter.
“Reckon I know. Look!”
The two old men stared in disbelief then dropped to the forest floor and tried to shield the girl. Miri’s cry could not be heard above the whirling black dervish of destruction climbing the mountain only two-hundred yards away.
Edison and Galen stood inside the storage shed, as the rising wind gusts shook the structure. Galen tried to yell above the rumble.
“Tonio, hang on, we’re coming to get you … oh, sweet Jesus!”
Tonio, struggling to his feet, felt a white-hot bolt of fear, as he heard the blare from Edison’s weather-alert radio through the phone Nancy was holding in her shaking hand. He heard her gasp and Mike exclaim, “Holy shit!”
“This is an emergency bulletin from the National Weather Service. A tornado has been spotted in the vicinity of Agape Mountain. All residents take shelter immediately. Repeat. All residents take shelter immediately!”
He heard the all-too-familiar chugging howl, followed by the sounds of cracking wood and the shattering of glass. Then he heard Nancy screaming and calling out, “Bob! Galen!”
Then … silence.
They emerged from the shelter of their den. The strange violence had passed by, and now their instincts drew them out. Their muzzles rose to catch the scents in the air, their lime-green eyes cautiously scanned the sky. Their cone-shaped ears twitched and turned, detecting distant, unfamiliar sounds.
The three elders gathered their progeny and herded them into the forest and up toward the summit.
The wind gone, only steady rain caressed the forest floor.
Must get home!
Tonio stumbled as he attempted to cross a fallen tree trunk spanning the still-swollen stream. He felt a twinge in his right ankle as he landed after jumping the last few feet to safety.
Ow! Have to go on. No time to waste. It’s not far, I can do it.
Mike rose from the floor where his body had surrounded the older woman’s. He helped her to her feet.
“Tia Nancy, are you all right?”
Dazed, she went to the picture window in the living room, now just an opened maw festooned with sharp glass shards, and looked down across the driveway.
“Mike, they’re in there!”
“I know…”
“Galen, can you hear me? Galen?
“I can’t move, Galen…”
Tonio limped toward the entrance to Vista Drive.
I’m almost there.
Their ears still ringing and popping, Lem stood up first and helped Ben and Miri to their feet. He looked at the swath of destruction that ran up the side of the mountain.
Their little cottage was gone.
“Come on,” Ben said. “We’ve got to get to the big house.”
Lem nodded and took hold of Miri’s hand.
The pack headed first toward the two-legged ones’ small den, their paw strokes on the rain-wet forest floor muted by the saturated ground. Their sharp hearing registered the call of their sister, and they knew she was near.
“What the hell is that?” Ben said, amazed at the canine procession approaching.
“By golly, we got us an escort!” Lem replied.
“Freddie, look!”
He stopped the car. Four sighted, one blind—all turned in the direction of the black funnel cloud howling in the distance.
“My God, that’s near the house! Carm, call Safehaven!”
“I’m trying, Freddie. No one’s answering.”
The car leaped forward. No one complained about Freddie’s driving speed now.
Tonio turned as he heard the car horn behind him. The big, Crown Victoria police cruiser pulled up, and Lachlan stuck his head out the window.
“Get in, kid.”
“Lach, I think Safehaven’s been hit.”
He was shaking uncontrollably.
The state trooper put his hand on Tonio’s shoulder.
“That’s where I’m headed.”
“Looka that!”
Lem couldn’t believe it. Neither could Ben.
“The big house is safe! Damned tornado only took out a bunch o’ trees and those two storage sheds.”
“Who’s that standing out there?”
They saw Mike pulling away barehanded at the scattered, twisted pieces of sheet metal, lumber, and other debris. Nancy knelt close by. Neither seemed to notice the footsteps and padding paws approaching.
“What’s wrong, Missus?”
Mike didn’t miss a beat.
“Edison and Galen were in one of the sheds!”
The younger pack members stood by at a distance, as Zeus and Mercury pushed forward and began circling and sniffing at the rubble. Just then the police cruiser, followed by Freddie’s car, rolled up the driveway. Both slid to a halt, and their occupants spilled out and ran toward the site of the destruction.
“Michael!” Carmelita squealed with relief and delight, as she ran to him. “What are you doing?”
She and the others saw the look on his face and Nancy’s. They said no more and immediately pitched in alongside Mike and Lem, as Ben held Miri.
Faisal whistled for his guide dog.
“Akela, find!”
The wolf let out a sharp bark and ran toward his fellow canines. Miri’s guardian instinctively joined them as well. Four muzzles sniffed and huffed, and then Zeus stopped and let out a wavering howl.
Faisal yelled out, “They’re over there!”
“I hear something, Galen,” Edison uttered weakly.
“Galen…?”
It didn’t take long for the men to peel away most of the wreckage. The storm had imploded the shed and flung one of the walls—and Edison and Galen with it—nearly 100 feet into the woods. Fortunately, it had landed between two large boulders, which gave enough support to keep the men from being crushed under its weight.
“Tio?”
Edison looked up into the eyes of a wolf then turned his head weakly toward the voice above him.
“I can’t move, boy. I’m pinned. Where’s Galen?”
They heard the faint voice.
“Underneath you, little brother … Tonio … black bag … brown bottle … pills.”
Ben heard the old doctor’s gasping words.
“Here, give him one o’ mine.”
Tonio snatched the tiny pill from the other man’s hand and, lying down flat across the fallen beams, reached through the opening to Galen’s face.
“Open your mouth, Tio.”
He was barely audible now.
“Under my tongue, Tonio.”
Jacob looked at Carmelita.
”What’d he just give him?”
Her eyes moistened, as she replied “nitroglycerin.”
“Are you all right now, Tio?”
Tonio was close to tears himself.
Galen, though still weak, tried his usual gruff humor.
“Still here, despite Edison’s attempt to squash me.”
Tonio turned to the rest, all looking down. Their expressions betrayed the worry.
Twenty minutes later they had extricated Edison and Galen from the wreckage, and the Medevac helicopter had arrived to transport them to the hospital. Nancy’s Red Cross training had come in handy. She had checked her husband and was satisfied that all he had sustained were some pretty big bruises, though the EMTs advised taking him along for observation.
As the copter lifted off, Edison first looked at Nancy, sitting beside him and holding his hand, and then over at his old friend, who was barely conscious, an IV needle stuck in his arm and oxygen flowing to a clear-plastic mask.
“You okay, big brother?”
Galen’s eyes shifted in his direction, but he made no response.
The living room was nearly silent, as young and old alike tried to suppress their worry and recover their strength after the post-adrenalin letdown. Lachlan leaned against the fireplace then flipped on his communications receiver, as a voice came through the Bluetooth in his ear.
“Douglass, the town’s been hit!”
He hit the send button.
“What’s the status?”
“Bad. Better get over there. Reports of a nursing home and a daycare center…”
The tornado did what tornadoes sometimes do. After shearing off the top of the mountain it had made a sudden turn to the south and plowed through town.
Jesse Orth had heard the sirens.
“That’s a tornado warning,” he called out to the staff. “Get the patients moved to the sub-basement!”
The well-trained nursing-home workers had guided the ambulatory patients down hallways to stairways and wheeled the bed-ridden to the large freight elevator. In less than five minutes they had moved the entire complement of patients to the underground shelter.
Thirty seconds later most of the surface structure was gone.
The rain spattered the debris where once stood St. Ignatius Home.
Kim Thu Nguyen had just graduated from Penn State University with a degree in elementary education. She was slated to begin fulltime in the Wyoming County school system that fall. But like many young people between their school years and the start of their careers, she needed a summer job. So she had jumped at the offer of the Happy Valley Day Care Center.
“Come on Bobby, leave Samantha alone. Timmy, Tommy, quit shoving. Jane, you’re not supposed to put gum in Sally’s ears!”
Oh yes, she loved kids and loved this job.
The rain had driven them inside, and they were playing musical chairs, six preschoolers marching around miniature chairs and tables.
“Listen, children, listen to the rain. It’s going pitter-patter, pitter-patter.”
Then Kim noticed the suddenly darkened sky outside and heard the low but growing rumble. It reminded her of the waterspout skies of her coastal Vietnam village.
Realizing, she quickly herded the children together.
“Now we’re going to play a special game. Everyone hold hands.”
She led them out into the hall and down the stairs to the basement. There she found blankets and spread them out on the concrete floor, one for each child, one for herself. There were no windows, but the kids’ sharp hearing picked up the chugging shriek above. She could see the alarm in their eyes.
“Quickly now, let’s pretend we’re all going camping. I’ve made tents for each of you.”
Her voice was shaking as she laid a second blanket over each child then grabbed the last one for herself. She pulled it over her head and body just as the sky opened up over the building. Thirty seconds later, what had been the Happy Valley Day Care Center was no more.
The rain pitter-pattered on the rubble.
Lachlan’s face had turned pale, as he addressed the group now looking up at him from their exhaustion.
“Bad news, folks. The tornado took St. Ignatius and a daycare center nearby. I don’t know if anyone’s still alive.”
Tonio immediately jumped up.
“St Ignatius? No, no! They’re in there, they’re in there!”
Lachlan held up both hands in a calming gesture.
“They’re going to need all the help they can get. My sergeant says the center of town looks like matchsticks. He says the governor has called in the National Guard, but they won’t get here near quick enough.”
He took a breath.
“There were kids in the center.”
Momentary silence, then it was as though everyone in the room suddenly had the same thought.
“C’mon, we can all go in two cars.”
Freddie grabbed his keys and headed toward the door.
“What the hell…?”
His jaw dropped. The two elders, Zeus and Mercury, sat at the bottom of the stairs, while the rest of the pack watched from the edge of the woods. Lem reached the doorway and muttered.
“I’ll be damned.”
“What do we do now?”
Faisal had joined them.
“I know … Akela!”
The animal bounded out of the house and stood before the canines. Miri’s guardian she-wolf soon followed.
Faisal turned to Lachlan.
“We’ve got to get ahead of them and lead them.”
The strange caravan—two vehicles in front, the animals trailing—worked its way slowly down the mountain and took a circuitous route around roads that had been washed out by local creeks. As they entered the little town, it became hard for the group hold back the tears.
“Good God!” Lachlan muttered.
“My God,” Lem echoed.
Familiar homes and stores lay in ruin, mute testimony to Nature’s destructive power.
The two vehicles snaked around debris scattered across the roads, coming to a stop halfway down the block, where a nursing home and a daycare center once stood. The occupants got out in stunned silence.
Three ambulances and a Red Cross command-and-communications van were parked in front of the wreckage.
Lea Ann called the young adults over and quickly got them outfitted with hard hats, work boots, and gloves. Then the disaster-team leader took them aside for a quick briefing, but when she saw the four animals standing nearby, she stood back with a start.
“What are they doing here?”
Lachlan said quietly, “We need them.”
As if on cue, Akela returned to Faisal’s side, and the nameless she-wolf rejoined Miri, while Zeus and Mercury split apart, each heading to one of the fallen buildings. They roamed quickly over the wreckage, muzzles low, nasal alars flaring in large, inhaling gulps. Soon Zeus had zeroed in on a part of the daycare center and howled.
“Come on, Freddie,” Mike called. “Let’s get moving. That’s where we need to be.”
He gave Carmelita a quick kiss and joined her brother. The two young men began using pry bars and brute force to lift the debris away. More volunteers had arrived and joined them. Soon they had uncovered the stairway to the basement storage room, now lit by streams of sunlight. Down they went but found their way blocked by a heavy, wooden door.
“It’s jammed,” Freddie said. “We need fire axes!” he yelled up to the surface.
Soon Lem came running with the tools.
The young men were sweating profusely as each, in turn, swung the pointed ax tips at the door. The wood finally splintered, and the two were able to pass through the opening. Inside, beams lay half-broken and dust swirled, as air currents penetrated the enclosed area.