Chapter 9
Nine
Outside of town, Floy stood at a window, witnessing the rain turning into ice. He heard what sounded like hail or sleet on the roof and against the windows. He quickly peeked out the front door. It was a knee-jerk reaction when he called Dory.
She answered breathlessly, as if she’d been running.
“This is Floy. Please tell me you didn’t go trick-or-treating.”
There was almost a sob in her voice. “No, we didn’t. The power is flickering. I just got the generator started. We’re okay.” Then she paused. “I can’t believe you called.”
“I can’t believe I did, either,” he said. “Stay away from windows, just in case,” he said, and disconnected.
The rain was freezing as it fell, but it was the shrieks and wails within the storm that didn’t fit. It took him a moment to realize the screams were human, and the sounds made his skin crawl. He ran back inside and called Moe. Whatever was happening in town, Moe would know.
The phone rang once, then twice, and when Moe answered, Floy started talking.
“What the hell is happening in town? I can hear screams from my front porch.”
“It’s the ice, Floy. The ice. There were so many kids and parents who were trick-or-treating on Main Street when the rain hit.
It was turning into sleet before it hit the sidewalks.
I started outside to help and fell flat.
I have a bloody lip, and I think I broke my nose.
I barely made it back inside. There are people lying all over the streets and sidewalks who can’t even get enough traction to crawl into a store, and people inside the stores are helpless to give aid.
I heard that some kid fell and broke his arm, and the ambulance couldn’t even get out of the bay to come get him.
The view from my window is like watching one of those disaster movies in real life.
I’m crying, dude. I think I’m watching people die. ”
Floy disconnected, then turned and ran, dressing quickly in layers and putting on the warmest clothes he had. He dug through a storage closet in the laundry room until he found the spiked roofing cleats he wore when they were shingling steep roofs and slipped them over his boots.
He had a vague idea that might or might not work, but he had to try. He bolted out the back door, running through the frozen grass to get to the barn. He drove the truck out, then backed it into the shed and hooked it to the flatbed trailer.
The panic he’d felt earlier was gone. He had a plan.
All he needed was a miracle to go with it.
He eased out of the driveway, then onto the highway leading into town.
The chains on his tires kept him from slipping.
The flatbed was towing smoother than he’d hoped, but by the time he drove into town and saw the victims and the devastation, he almost panicked.
Blood had frozen on the skin of children’s faces from the wounds they’d suffered when they fell.
Purple bruising was already visible anywhere bare skin was revealed.
Hair was frozen onto their clothing and on their faces.
Children were splayed out on their backs, still crying—still screaming, but too exhausted from trying to get up that they had just stopped trying, while others were on their bellies still attempting to gain traction, using elbows and knees as they crawled, because they’d learned painfully early that bare skin stuck to the ice.
The colorful mittens and gloves they’d been wearing had scattered everywhere and frozen to the ground, with the fingers splayed out like the petals of winter flowers, frozen within a sea of white at the very spot where the child first lost them trying to crawl.
A cold shudder washed through him. “God help me,” he muttered, inching the truck and trailer forward slowly until he reached the first group.
He put his truck in park and got out. The roofing spikes held him steady as he moved toward the nearest child.
He scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the trailer.
“Don’t move,” he shouted, and went back for the next one, and then the next. He also helped adults to their feet, then physically pushed them forward to the trailer as if they were on skis.
Once he’d cleared that group, he was back in the truck, easing farther down the street to the next lot of stranded parents and children, repeating the rescues time and again while the sleet kept falling.
The crack of a tree limb giving way to the heavy burden of ice sounded like a gunshot.
The power was off now, and only people with generators still had lights.
He didn’t think about anything but getting the wounded to the trailer, until he looked up at the street in front of him and realized it was clear.
He turned around to make sure he’d left none behind, then looked at the trailer behind his truck.
It was covered with people, young and old, who were swiftly falling into hypothermia.
The sleet still fell, freezing their hair into caps of ice that they couldn’t take off. The wind and cold blistered their skin to the point of frostbite, and the street was a solid sheet of ice as Floy finally moved to the back of the trailer, shouting above the wind to be heard.
“How many of you live on the East side?”
Hands went up.
“How many of you on the West side?”
A larger number of hands went up.
“How many of you live near the school?”
A few other hands went up.
“Okay!” he shouted. “Here’s what we’re going to do.
I’m going to circle through town, and when you see your house, you shout, ‘Stop!’ as loud as you can.
I will hear you, and we’ll stop long enough to get you and your parents to your door.
It’s going to take a little while, but I will get you home.
” Then he pulled a pile of old moving blankets from the back seat of his truck and began handing them to the adults.
“Get as many kids as you can beneath the blankets. Hold them tight and keep them away from the sides of the trailer. Okay?”
The adults nodded and began grabbing blankets, gathering children to them, and covering as many beneath the blankets as they could. He waited until they were situated, then vaulted back into his truck. He rolled down both front windows so he could hear their directions and headed east.
After that, it was a steady route of stopping and getting out to carry kids, with parents gripping Floy’s arms to the point of pain to keep their balance just to get under porches, or to their doors.
Then he was back to the truck and pulling the trailer to the next stop, repeating the process until the very last child was carried to the house and the last parent delivered to safety with them.
Even as he drove slowly through the residential streets back toward Main, his eyes scanned the yards and sidewalks, making sure nobody else had fallen victim to the ice and couldn’t get up.
He couldn’t see through the windshield anymore.
It was frozen into a solid sheet of white ice, and he’d been driving with his head hanging out of the window just to see the road for almost an hour.
He couldn’t feel his feet. His eyelids were close to being frozen shut from the constant need to squint against the sleet hitting him in the face, but he knew where he was going and how to get there.
He passed the City Limits sign on autopilot with nothing left in him but the will to live. Seeing home up ahead was what got him there. He backed the trailer under the shed and unhooked it, then he drove his truck into the barn and parked it.
For a few seconds, he stood in the open doorway of the barn, momentarily sheltered from the falling weather.
Then he took a deep breath, pocketed the keys and, one more time, stepped out into the storm, crossing the distance from the barn to his backyard, moving on sheer will alone.
His legs were numb. Movement felt like walking through mud.
Every step dragged.
Every breath hurt.
The porch light at his back door was his searchlight to the shore of safety. He could hear the Generac generator he’d wired into the house years ago, running smoothly as it powered heat and light to his home.
Finally, he stumbled up the steps, then into the house. The screen door slammed behind him as he turned the lock on the kitchen door.
“One more step. One more step.”
He didn’t know he was saying that aloud until he was in the laundry room with ice melting into puddles beneath his feet.
His clothes were stiff with ice, resisting the pressure he had to exert just to get them off.
At first, he thought they had frozen to his skin until everything began giving way.
Finally, all the clothing that had been on his body was now wet and melting on the floor, and he was holding onto the walls to stay upright.
He couldn’t feel his feet, but he could see them, and they were moving him toward the bathroom on their own.
He made it to the tub and crawled into it before he fell.
He managed to turn on the hot water tap and let it run, waiting until he could feel the heat before dropping the plug.
Afterward, he sat within the rising steam, adjusting the water temp constantly as it began to fill.
When there was finally enough water in the Jacuzzi to cover the jets, he turned them on and let the tub keep filling until it reached the limit, then he sank down into the depths.
One prayer emerged faintly.
“Thank you, God, for helping me get them home.”
Then he closed his eyes.
Every officer at the Blackjack P.D., including the chief, had gathered around the dispatcher’s desk, glued to the video feed of the traffic cam on Main Street.
They had crashed two police cars into each other in the P.D.
parking lot at the onset of the storm in a futile attempt to help rescue people and had only made it back inside the station because Tex had thrown a forty-foot length of rope out into the parking lot and pulled them inside one by one.