I stopped when there were no more houses to be emptied—no more people to be pulled to safety. By degrees my hearing was returning, although I still had a ferocious ringing in my ears. The crying of the children was heartrending because there was nothing I could do to ease their anguish. I stood like a robot with its power cut off, another balled up wad of blankets in my arms, facing a small crowd of devastated people. I was waiting for someone to take the covers from me, but no one seemed interested. They were all looking past me.
I turned. There, smoking in the dim gray light of dawn, was what remained of the village. There was damned little of it. The adaman had burned with a will, and all that was left of most of the houses was the rough stone foundations. Smoke curled insolently from the ruins, as though to cruelly emphasize the totality of the loss. Not a single building stood.
I stood transfixed, like the rest of them, until the first flakes of snow began to fall. Then it hit me that they would need shelter and food. The weather on Messagie would not wait until it was convenient.
I simply dropped the blankets on the ground and turned, scanning the faces for Kellerman.
“Luther!” I called. “We’ve got to get these people in out of the snow. Can we use your tree?”
“But the fumes—” he began.
I shook my head. “We don’t have a choice, Luther. There are children out here. We’ve got to get them out of the wind.”
There was nothing he could say to that. He nodded, accepting that it was the lesser of two evils, and picked up some things at his feet. I picked the blankets back up and trudged off towards the tree. Halfway there, I became aware that someone was walking beside me. I glanced, seeing that it was the woman who had come for me after Sat’s house had exploded. I didn’t know her name.
“Thanks,” she said.
I took a deep breath, then let it out, as much a sigh as anything else. “It was just something that needed doing.”
“You didn’t have to. You don’t live here. You didn’t have anything to lose.”
“Actually, I did.”
She glanced up at me.
“My self-respect.”
Ruby threw open the doors to the tree, started the ventilation fans, then went back for another load. It took a little over an hour to get everything from the end of the street into the tree.
There was one more thing I needed to do before I could allow myself rest. Once again, I sought out Kellerman.
“Food,” I said. “We’re going to need—”
He held up his hand, nodding, having anticipated me. “Already working on it. We’re not in any immediate danger there. We have a building that sat away from town where we cured meat. I’ve sent someone to get some.”
“Away from town?”
“Can’t have predators sniffing about when they smell meat, can we?”
I nodded. “OK. If you need me, let me know I’m going to rest for a few minutes.”
He nodded, reaching out to grip my shoulder. “You earned it.”
I went, found my bag, and collapsed against it, using it for a pillow.
Careful fingers were probing the side of my face and it hurt like hell. I pried open my eyes—I hadn’t realized that I had fallen asleep—to find that Ruby was dabbing at the side of my head with a blood-stained rag.
My best attempt at a grin felt lopsided. “You’ve got a lot of people to check into your tree today, ma’am,” I told her.
She smiled sadly. “There’s a few who won’t be here.”
It took a moment for me to catch her meaning. “How many?”
She wrung the rag out into a small bowl of water—part of her china set, I realized. “Eight, we think. It’s hard to do a head count under the circumstances, but Luther is working on it.”
I winced as she resumed dabbing at the side of my face.
“You’ve got a nasty cut here,” she said, by way of explanation.
“I was afraid it was my ear. When Sat’s house went up it pretty much did in my hearing for a while, but it seems to be coming back.”
She nodded. “Kirdre was worried about you.”
“Who?”
“You were talking to her earlier, on the way to the tree.”
I nodded. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know her name.”
Ruby added, “Your hand is hurt, too. You might want to take it easy for a bit.”
I frowned, lifting my hands for inspection. My left hand was wrapped in a clean, white rag, probably torn from a sheet. I had known about my head, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember hurting my hand. I looked back up at her. “Now what?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we’ve got to start thinking about building shelter, something that won’t burn this time. Stone, probably. I know it sounds callous, but we’ve also got to get you people back into production. Rebuilding is going to cost money, and—”
“And we don’t have any,” she finished for me.
I nodded. “Nails, wire, blankets…”
“I see where you’re going.” She stopped dabbing at the side of my head. “All I can think about is getting through today. Tomorrow will have to take care of itself.”
“Ruby, we can’t wait too long.”
“We?”
“What?”
“You said we can’t wait too long. You aren’t under any obligation to help. Next time the shuttle comes in, you’re going home.”
For some reason, that brought to mind Stephanie’s impatience to get out the door. I sighed. “In my absence, I imagine that my house has burned, as well.”
She didn’t understand what I meant, of course, so I gave her a rough sketch of the situation back home. She didn’t say anything when I was done—just looked at me. What she was thinking, I couldn’t tell. She laid her hand on mine, my good one, for a moment, then moved on to her next patient.
Early the next morning I walked down to the village. It’s not as though I could accomplish anything, but I felt drawn to the ruins.
Another set of footprints preceded me through the fresh snow. Smallish footprints. For some reason, I expected to see Ruby when I got to the village, but it was Kirdre whose form materialized out of the drifting snow.
“Be careful,” she said, “it’s slick.”
Indeed, the snow that had melted in the street during the fire had refrozen into a solid sheet of muddy ice streaked with ebony soot. In most places the surface was rough enough to provide decent traction, but in some the water had pooled before freezing and the resulting surface was as smooth and treacherous as a patch of oil.
We walked slowly among the remains of the houses, side by side. She stopped. “This was mine,” she said simply.
“I’m sorry.” What else do you say to someone who has lost everything but the clothes on her back?
She stepped carefully over the low stone foundation wall. I followed. The intense heat had caused some of the rocks to spall off cupped pieces that reminded me of discarded, broken eggshells. “My room was here.” She walked a little farther. “The kitchen was here.” A few steps more and she whispered something too softly for me to hear. She turned, I opened my arms, and she fell against my chest, sobbing.
Guilt came to me, unbidden. I shouldn’t be holding this woman. Stephanie was waiting for me to return to Miami, and my arms were only for her.
But were Stephanie’s arms only for me?
I sighed and held Kirdre closer.
Eventually, we made our way to where Town Hall had stood. Along the side wall steel filing cabinets lay jumbled after falling through the floor when it collapsed. The paint was blackened and blistered, and in places the raw metal showed through, already revealing a light brown patina of rust. The exterior walls had fallen outwards and the roof had followed the opposite side wall on the way down so the heat had not been as intense or prolonged here. That and the lack of sufficient air inside the cabinets had largely spared the contents.