Molly started crying. “NO! You have to stay here!”
“Molly! Molly! I have to go help! You two are safe here. You help out here, so I can help out there.”
“Daddy!”
“You have to help!”
I pushed them into the arms of their security guard, a young woman in her late twenties named Amanda Baines. She and Jerry were listed in the entourage as campaign staffers, not security. She hugged the girls and herded them towards the building. “Come on, let’s get cleaned up and help out.”
As soon as they were out of my hair, I turned to Jerry and said, “Come on, let’s go.” I ran up to the fireman, and asked, “Where do you need us?”
I don’t think he recognized me, and he just pointed at the next street over, which didn’t look as badly hit. “Check those places and see if anybody is trapped inside.” He turned away from me when somebody yelled that nobody was under one pile of rubble and they moved on to the next. I shrugged at Jerry and we went in the opposite direction. We went over a block and looked around. Looking down the street, it seemed that these houses ranged from just some loose siding and shutters to imminent collapse.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and everybody was at the campaign rally,” I told Jerry. That had been the reason that the destroyed house had been abandoned a moment ago; people knew everybody in the small town of Springboro and the family was at the rally.
“Let’s hope so,” he replied.
People were coming out of their homes around us, and staring in amazement. At the house we were in front of, however, nobody was coming out. We wandered around to the back yard and yelled out, “ANYBODY HOME!” as loud as we could.
We were on the verge of leaving when Jerry said, “Did you hear that?”
“What?”
“From over there!” He led the way around the corner and there was some crying from what looked like a basement door, one of those things on a slant with some doors on top. Now I could hear the sounds, but no way were we going down to the basement. Part of the garage had collapsed onto it, and we weren’t going in that way without a chainsaw and a crane. “ANYBODY DOWN THERE?”
“SAVE MY CHILDREN!” came out weakly.
I looked at the house and then at Jerry. “Oh, shit!”
“Mister Buckman, this place is going to come down any moment!”
“Then we’d better move quick.” The place looked like a fairly traditional center hall colonial two story. I ran back around to the back and scrambled up onto the remains of the back porch. It didn’t collapse under my weight, so Jerry joined me and we managed to pry the back door open. Inside it was dark, and everything looked like it had been knocked off every shelf and out of every closet. I ducked my head and slowly went inside, stepping softly.
“Oh, this is a bad idea!” I heard behind me. Then there was a loud creak as Jerry put his weight on the floor.
I turned and said, “Hold it!” I heard some voices ahead of me and to one side. “Wait for me. Give me a moment.” I kept moving forward through the kitchen, as the building creaked around me, and got closer to the voices. They were from a door to the cellar, just off the hallway, which looked sprung. I got down on my belly and stuck my head through the opening. “Anybody down there!”
“HELP! WE’RE TRAPPED! YOU HAVE TO GET MY BABIES!”
“Oh, shit!” I muttered to myself. “WE’RE COMING!” I yelled down the stairs. I began tugging on the door, and opened it enough to be able to slide through. I turned back to Jerry. “I’m going down into the basement. You can probably make it over to here.”
“I’m coming with you!”
“No way! I’ll send the family up. You have to get them outside!” I wriggled my way through the cellar door, and wedged my back against it, pushing it even further open. The door shrieked at the abuse, but I got it to the point somebody could come back up. “I’m going down now!”
There were a couple of windows in the basement, so I had some light. It looked to be about eight foot deep. I was halfway down the stairs when there was a loud crash and I went tumbling into the basement. When I climbed to my feet, the stairs had detached from the wall and collapsed under me. Jerry’s head was at the top, at the door. “You all right!?”
“Just peachy! You stay there. I’ll send people up.”
“How many?” he asked.
Good question! “I don’t know yet!” I went towards where I heard some voices crying and found the problem. A rack of canned goods had fallen across a doorway into their little emergency shelter. I pushed the rack out of the way and was able to easily open the door. “I’m coming in!” I called out.
I was greeted with a scene from a bad movie. Two little children were there, along with their very pregnant mother. She was bleeding badly from a cut on her right calf. Over in the corner a dog was nursing some puppies. All I needed to make this a disaster-of-the-week film was the requisite escaped convict and a nun.
Mom was crying for me to get her kids out, but she was in bad shape. I tried applying pressure to her cut, but it wasn’t helping. Meanwhile Jerry kept yelling for me to tell him what was happening, and I couldn’t answer. I looked around wildly and found a roll of cotton clothesline. I had no choice. I fashioned a tourniquet just below her knee, using a piece of scrap lumber to twist it. Thankfully she had passed out by that point, so I managed to get her up into my arms and carry her towards the steps. The little kids were trailing along with a flashlight.
“Where the hell have you been!?” he demanded.
“Sightseeing! Listen, she’s hurt bad. You need to drag her outside and get her some help!”
“Oh, crap! Lift her up here!”
I managed to pull over a couple of crates I could step on, and then lifted the young mother up as high as I could. It wasn’t enough. I just didn’t have the strength to lift her over my head and to where Jerry could grab her. I set her back down and ran back for the clothesline. I tossed it up to him, and he let down enough for me to tie it under her arms. Then, with him pulling and me lifting, we got her out. “I’ll be back!” he yelled. Above us the floor creaked ominously, and I grabbed the kids and ran back the other way.
They were little kids. The boy looked about five or six, his sister about three or four. “Who are you?” he asked.
“My name is Carl. What’s yours?”
“I’m Billy. That’s Molly. She doesn’t talk to strangers,” he answered.
“That’s cool. I have a little girl named Molly, too. When we get out of here, I’ll introduce you to her.”
“Is Mommy going to be all right?” he asked. Molly just looked at me with the widest blue eyes I had ever seen. They were both blond and blue-eyed.
“Oh, sure! You bet! She’s going to be fine! We’ll see her as soon as we’re out of here.”
Just then the dogs moved around some, and one of the puppies came over and sniffed at me. “You have to save the puppies!” cried Molly. It was the first thing she had said. “We have to save the puppies!” she insisted.
“I promise! How many are there?”
“Four. There’s three boys and a girl,” said Billy. “Maggie’s the mom.”
I looked over at Maggie, who was nursing the pups. She was a big shaggy dog with strains of golden retriever in her. This was going from bad to worse. “We’ll save everybody!” I said. I just hoped somebody would save me!
“Do you like puppies? Dad says we can’t keep them all. Would you like a puppy?” he asked.
This kid was going to be a salesman someday! I bit off the idiot reply I wanted to make. I just had to say something to keep these kids calm and under control. “I love puppies! I’d like the girl puppy.”