16. Chapter 16
Chapter sixteen
Charles
Anguish clutches at my gut. What I had seen out on the deck hits me like a blow. The golden mesh designed to keep pets and little girls from falling off had been ripped in several places as if the stainless steel fabric had been no stronger than nylon mesh fly netting.
Gidget’s kennel is flattened behind the remains of the raised beds. Bricks, chairs, tables, and dirt are strewn everywhere, destroying Cece’s garden and most of the careful landscaping. Thank God, Em had insisted on the safe room.
“Kate,” I direct, “pack for you and Cece while I get food and gear together. Keep in mind that we will have to carry everything since the elevators aren’t working.
Kate’s face is pale, but she is rock steady as she says to Cece, “Come on. Let’s go pack some clothes. Do you have anything special you want to take?”
“What about Gidget and Mr. Fluffy?” Cece asks.
“We’ll put Mr. Fluffy in his backpack carrier,” I intervene quickly before she can start worrying. “Gidget will need her leash and can go down on her own four paws. ”
“Okay,” Cece says cheerfully. “I want my tablet. It has my books and games on it.”
“Good choice,” I approve. Then I turn my attention to organizing the rest of the building, confident that Kate can manage packing for herself and Cece.
I’m not too surprised when she turns up at the stairwell door with a small duffle for herself, a large one for Cece, a suitcase devoted to MREs from the safe room, the cat in her backpack carrier and an excited Gidget on her leash. Gidget is fitted out with an impromptu set of saddle bags made from cloth grocery bags zip-tied to a dog harness. Kate also has her laptop bag and bag of books.
I have also packed a small personal bag and have devoted most of my large duffel to bottled water and dried food stuff out of the pantry. It might have been a while since I’d been in the field, but once you learn bug-out procedures, they stay with you.
“How are you going to get all of that down the stairs?” I ask.
She grins at me, a savage baring of the teeth more than a smile. “We could always stand at the top and throw it down,” she says. “I need my books and laptop.”
I sigh. “I’ll take the cat and your books,” I say.
“You will not,” Kate replies firmly. “You can take the cat and Cece’s bag. It isn’t heavy because it is packed with a few clothes, stuffed toys, and boxes of cereal. I’ll take my stuff and hang onto Gidget.”
“We might need to move in a hurry,” I point out.
“At that point, we could leave the books,” she retorts. “But you are not carrying them. They are heavy, and if your hip goes out, you are going to be even heavier. I can even do without clothes, but we need the food, and I’m not going anywhere without my laptop.”
I can see the sense of that. Clearly, Kate has her own survival instincts. I have my laptop packed in its hard-shelled traveling case. I will need it to stay in touch with business operations.
I open the door, and we start making our way slowly down the stairs. I don’t like being reminded that my well-honed body is not in peak physical condition, but there is nothing that can be done about that. I want to grab Cece and Kate and bolt, but haste is only likely to make things worse.
We make good progress down the first few upper floors. These were office levels. Only the custodians had been in them when the storm hit. One fellow, who is carrying only a stack of towels and a bag of food from the shelter, takes Kate’s book bag. That is one worry relieved. I can hear him and Kate talking softly behind me. It is meaningless social chatter, so I tune it out.
Mr. Fluffy shifts and fusses in his carrier. Gidget dances and wiggles at the end of her leash, wanting to greet every new person as we go down. I am glad to see that my people are going about their assigned emergency tasks with efficiency and dispatch.
At the fifth level down, we run into trouble. People are running to and fro, looking for family members, trying to haul precious family heirlooms to the stairwell, and generally clogging the corridor and stairs.
The custodians hold the door open for us. The stairs don’t go straight down — it is a fire break precaution, to keep the stairwells from acting like a chimney. I am on the third step up, looking out on the milling crowd.
We have to get through that. Moreover, these people have to get down the stairs, out to the street, and get packed into vehicles. How in the world had Mr. Jeffers ever made it up through all this? Then I spot him, out there among the milling crowd, attempting to sort things out.
I take in a deep breath and bellow: “Everybody, HALT! ”
Everything stops; even pets are brought to heel. They all gape at me for a minute. Then there is a soft susurrus of voices. “It’s Mr. Emory. That’s Charles Emory. They made it. The penthouse must still be standing.”
“That’s right,” I say, in tones that still carry through the corridor but are not as loud as my initial shout. “I’m Charles Emory. There is a plan for getting you down out of here safely. This building was put together with an eye toward safety, but a vehicle was blown through a tenth story window and it has clipped a main support. The elevators are out and are likely to stay that way. You won’t be able to rescue the grand piano or grandma’s dining table. If it won’t fit in a backpack or suitcase, you’ll have to leave it behind.”
There is a soft murmur of sound, then, “My wife’s bedridden,” an older gentleman calls. “Is there some way to get her bed down?”
“There’re emergency slings in the first aid closet,” one of the custodians volunteers.
A woman raises her hand. “I’ve got EMT training. I can help her.”
“Anyone else disabled or have someone who is?” I ask.
Several hands raise. It doesn’t take long to organize work groups, including people to carry personal gear for those who can not carry their own.
But it makes downward progress slower. I start having Kate and Cece rest on the landing above each floor while I check to see what is going on below. It helps that we discovered several people who are military reserves and local law enforcement. Firemen, custodians, and policemen go through each floor as we go down, and I lock up behind us.
It might not completely prevent looting, but I can try. My building wasn’t as stormproof as I had hoped, but if these people’s belongings can be returned to them intact, it will help .
Even an orderly retreat takes time. It is long past dark before we reach the ground floor. That is when I realized I’d not planned transportation for Cece and Kate, or myself.
As I stand in the lobby, berating myself for being an absolute idiot, the entrance revolving door spins and James comes walking in.
“There you are!” he says. “I kept looking. Are you planning to go down with the ship, or are you willing to travel with me?”
I can not help but be jealous of the look of relief that flashes across Kate’s face. I rein in that response before it can get away. Of course she is relieved.
“I don’t think we’ll all fit in your economy car,” I say. “Not with all this stuff.
“It’s cool,” James says. “I brought the Safari Special.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. Long ago, when James and I were roommates in college, we had purchased a neck-over camper and a beat-up F-150 truck. The camper was just a shell, and the truck a mechanic’s nightmare, but we’d worked on both on weekends, and even took the rig out a time or two before we graduated and had to turn to “Real Life”.
Kate rolls her eyes at both of us. “You don’t expect us to ride in the camper, do you?” she asks, remembering the spavined old Ford that had consumed so many of our weekends.
James walks over and gives his sister a hug. “What do you take me for? Of course not. That would be unsafe and illegal. I brought Dad’s F-150 special King Cab.”
James takes Kate’s laptop bag, and the custodian who had walked with us down three miles of stairs follows along behind with her book bag and my duffle.
When James opens the door to the truck, I can see why he had brought it instead of our college toy. There is a child’s safety seat in the back, as well as bench seats with seat belts for bigger people. Behind the seats is space for groceries, luggage, or whatever else a farm family might want to haul.
Kate quickly loads Cece into the safety seat and climbs up beside her. Gidget hops up between them. James walks around to the passenger door with me. He divests me of the cat carrier, hands it to Kate, then gives me a shoulder up. I manage not to groan with relief as I settle into the heated cloth upholstered seat.
“Long walk down?” James asks, amusement glinting in hazel eyes that are so like his sister’s.
“Yeah,” I agree. “Long walk.”
Kate leans forward and taps me on the shoulder. “What about Larry?” she asks.
“Who?” I question.
“Larry,” she says. “The custodian who helped carry our stuff. His house was demolished last night, and he doesn’t have any family. We talked during our rest stops.”
“He can ride with us,” James breaks in. “I could use another hand, especially someone that is willing to help. You want to come along?” He directs the last to Larry, the custodian.
Larry shrugs. “Neighbor called a little bit ago. Everything on our block is gone. He was in the church basement, and just checked back. One of the few times I’m grateful that I don’t have a wife, kids, or pets. So, if you’ve got a place for me and work to do, I might as well. Everything I own is on my back or in my pockets.”
Looking up in the rearview mirror, I see Kate scoot over toward Cece, making room on the bench for the custodian. While I don’t know every employee in the Agri-Oil building, I realize that I don’t know the man and I’m not sure I’d ever seen him before.
He is wearing an Agri-Oil custodial uniform, so he didn’t even own the clothes he was wearing since we rented the uniforms from a service that dropped off the clean ones and picked up the dirty ones each week. Somehow, he made me uneasy, but under the circumstances, I could hardly refuse him.
James hops up into the driver’s seat, then leans out the window to confer with a man wearing a red fez with a tassel on top. The fellow drops out of sight, then reappears astraddle a motorcycle, walking it up the row of cars ahead of us. When he reaches an opening, he picks up his feet and drives cautiously up the line.
I must have looked puzzled, because James explains, “Shriner. The local chapter is volunteering to help guide our caravan since the police and just about everyone else is busy. He’s gone ahead to tell the lead car that everyone is loaded, and we are ready to roll out.”
I nod my understanding and lean back in the seat. As the long column of cars, buses, vans and other assorted vehicles rolled out, I try to think what to do next. I’m taking these people out to a hunk of unimproved land, without even so much as a barn to house them. What the heck am I going to do with them?