Chapter Sixteen
Creed
Looking uphill toward the Iniquus van, the scene reminded Creed of the pictures he’d seen in history books of the great northwest, where the loggers would roll the felled trees into the river, floating them from the forests to the lumber mills.
Sometimes, things went awry, and the logs jammed up, piled up, and kept coming.
He’d always thought that it was where loggerhead came from, logs that came to a head and couldn’t move farther. He was disappointed that it was the name of a turtle.
Moving forward on his assigned task, Creed could see the bridge now. There was the pile-up of cars, and above that, he could just make out Auralia’s car over the edge.
Creed took a picture and spread it wide to see the details more clearly.
Auralia was inside. He could see the top of her head.
The car looked stable. “Mandy, I’m sending you a picture of a car balanced on the bridge.
Can you have the engineers assess the situation and get back to me ASAP?
Single female, twenty-five, Auralia Rochambeau.
Mandy,” he paused as his heart galloped; he didn’t want emotion to color his words, “it’s Gator’s sister. ”
“On it,” Mandy said.
In Creed’s experience, an “on it” from any of the teams that supported operators in the field was swift and comprehensive.
Iniquus employed the best of the best because their bread and butter was saving lives.
The lives they saved first were those that sheltered under the Iniquus employee blanket.
Labeling Auralia as Gator’s sister meant every resource available would be pressed into play.
Creed had to be patient as the cogs moved into place.
“Mandy, give an update to Gator’s support to loop him in.
Make sure he knows Auralia is not injured. ”
“Not injured. Wilco,” she said as Creed was distracted by, “Striker here.”
“Mandy, I’m putting you on hold, Striker’s in my ear.”
“Standing by.”
Creed tapped the button on his phone and dropped the plastic case to his chest as he pressed his sternal button to open his mic. “Creed.”
“Randy is moving up to take your place. Here’s the situation: a man, bleeding profusely from the head and walking, and I quote, ‘like a zombie,’ climbed through his moonroof.
He fell down the west-facing ditch, and the woman reporting thought he’d passed out there, but then he crawled out and kept on moving and disappeared into the woods.
She said, and again I quote, ‘he looked like a drunken banker.’”
A drunken banker? “Copy.”
“Suit, hard-soled shoes. She says there’s also an elderly woman who got out of the car and seemed to be trying to follow the man. She made it to the ditch, but she slipped. And has been gripping her back. She’s pretty hysterical. And, it’s raining on her.”
“How are you hearing about this?” Creed asked.
“A member of the walking wounded made a recording and brought it to me as they made their way up the road.”
“What’s the priority?”
“Throw a Mylar around the woman,” Striker said, “so she doesn’t go hypothermic.
See if you can calm her enough to find out why the guy took off into the woods.
The only thing I can think of is that he’s concussive and doesn’t know where he is or what he’s doing.
He might also have some substance in his system that’s affecting his behavior, but it could be anything.
Maybe he’s afraid that the cops will detect something when they get to his car.
That’s not interesting to us. We just need the guy found and escorted to the road.
If he’s walking, we can put him on the choir bus, though the bus filled up almost immediately after arrival.
It’s about to go deposit these crash victims at the church and come back to collect more. ”
“I’ll grab Rou. We’re on it.”
“Sending you the PLS,” Striker said, referring to the point the man was last seen.
A moment later, Creed’s phone pinged. “PLS received. Moving. Out.”
Creed jogged by his teammates. Blaze was ashen and determined as he tugged off a pair of Nitril gloves and shoved them in a hazard bag.
Immediately, he pulled on a new set as he moved up to the next car that Gator had smashed while he was doing his triage.
That broken window was Blaze’s visual cue that someone inside needed a tourniquet.
This whole dystopian landscape looked crazy and unsurvivable, but Creed kept reminding himself that it was by design, the result of decades of engineering work, testing, and reworking.
This was what brilliant minds had developed to absorb the impacts into the bodies of the cars and to keep protective cages around the passengers.
The destruction was the beauty, the safety, and the hope for those going through this hell.
Creed jogged past Striker, who was walking with a child on his hip, and a woman was tightly holding onto his side. They were making their way toward the minibus. It was a vital resource.
The smells of burning rubber, the sobbing cries, and the moans of pain filled Creed’s senses.
Creed was hyper-aware of how many people were trapped in their vehicles for myriad reasons, and beneath the surface of his assessment was a wave of terror: What if one of these cars caught fire?
The flames would leap from car to car, gas tanks would explode, the people would burn to death, and there was nothing that could be done for them.
He hoped that the regional airport was sending in its fire engines, which could shoot fire-suppressing foam over the scene.
Until then, the risk was high.
At the van, Creed stopped long enough to put a bowl of water out for Rou. When she was on a task, she was so focused on the endgame that it was all but impossible for Creed to get her to stop and drink. Here at the van, he might be able to fool Rou into thinking they were taking a break.
He pulled her collapsible bowl from his pack and poured some water from his water bottle. Knowing Rou, once she got her nose on the trail, she wouldn’t let up. This was Creed’s chance to drink as well, so that his shirt didn’t ping Mandy and tell her that he was dehydrated.
The technology of the wearables was fascinating.
Creed had been watching a video about the dental guards that women’s Rugby players wore on the field.
When a specific head motion occurred, the AI in the tiny chip inside the mouthguard could interpret it.
If certain parameters were exceeded, the guard would light up, and the athlete would be pulled for a brain check.
While many brain injuries in the military were caused by blast concussion, wearing a mouth guard like that might be an important tool for post-mission health checks.
A similar technology was also appearing in various products, such as shoes for seniors and smartphones, which used accelerometers and gyroscope sensors to detect sudden movements, like falls.
Right now, Creed would- guaran-damn-tee that loved ones designated as ICE—in case of emergency—in the accident victim’s contacts list were getting text messages letting them know there had been an accident.
Creed wondered if that was actually multiple text messages as the cars took hit after hit, piling one on top of the other, quite literally.
The Iniquus tactical shirt he was wearing took that idea a step further, monitoring everything from his temperature to his hydration levels and heart rate, among other metrics.
It fed that information back to Logistics so they could monitor the safety of each operator, as adrenaline or concentration on the unfolding event could cause the operators to be unaware that something had gone awry.
Another feature of the shirt, which Creed didn’t like to emphasize, was that if an operator died, the shirt would enter death mode.
To conserve battery, it would turn off. Then, every thirty minutes, it would come briefly back online to send out a signal.
In that way, his body would be recovered, and his family would have closure.
Closure was imperative, and that’s why, long after the rescue part of a search and rescue became a recovery, it was every bit as imperative as a live find. The searchers went after it with the same sense of urgency.
The pain of a distraught family was unbearable to Creed.
When he was fighting in the war, he’d seen horror and pain, and it wore on him.
It started gnawing at his guts at night.
Sleep deprivation became his norm, and the only reason he didn’t drink himself into a stupor or take drugs to ease the mental anguish was a promise he’d made to his mamma on the way to boot camp.
His mom was a wise woman who had witnessed the effects of life as a military family firsthand.
She’d told him, “Son, proud of you. But I will take a mother’s privilege and extract a promise from you to solace me.”
The look on her face, anguish that she tried to disguise as calm, and he would promise her anything to ease the suffering he knew he was going to cause her.
“No alcohol and no drugs. Not a drop. Not a dribble. Not a dram. Clean and sober.”
“Yes, ma’am.” And because of that oath, he’d told the men who made fun of him that they wanted someone who understood what it was to have a set of guiding principles, to have a creed and live by it.
And one of his guiding principles was that his word was his bond, especially when it came to his mama.
And in boot, they changed his name from Honoré to Creed, and it stuck for everyone because it just seemed to fit him like a well-worn glove.
Creed looked down where Rou sat like a soldier at his feet. Her head tipped back, and her body tensed. She knew from the shift in Creed’s posture that they were about to get to work. And there was nothing that Rou liked better than to head out on a search.
The point on his map would pull Creed farther from Auralia, but having seen the car looking stable and knowing that better-informed eyes than his were assessing, relieved some of the pressure that was expanding his ribs.
“Part of the problem, Rourou,” Creed said, “is that even if we find a cut through in this mess—which I don’t see happening—taking it would be too big a risk.
We can’t do it, not with the cars that are still slipping and sliding down the hill.
We’ll have to jog to the top.” Though Creed had noted that it had been a while since he’d last heard the shriek of brake and the bang and crash.
Creed had tried to figure out how long it would take for a siren and a badge with authority to stop the traffic and turn them around.
He knew that the police in this area divided the county and that the cars were distributed based on population, not by area. That meant there was one lone officer tooling around in his car, waiting for the call.
He also knew that when that call went out, it would be all hands on deck and they’d be racing from everywhere.
While it felt like much longer, it had been only about thirty minutes since their mission had switched from dell oversight to rescue. Creed was just now hearing the sirens scream out in the distance.
Creed put the phone to his ear. “Mandy, Rou and I are rerouting to the point uploaded to my map system. We will be starting a search there. I’ll be functioning as a single searcher. My focus will be on Rou, and cell connectivity is intermittent in this area.”
“I’m inputting that data. I’ve already downloaded the maps to your shirt. If you’re offline, you can still follow the directions. Are you at a good point to start the tracking?”
“I’m getting prepped.” Creed twisted the top back on his bottle. “The engineer?” he asked.
“Looking at Auralia’s car? They’re putting it through computer modeling to include the local weather conditions and wind dynamics over that type of bridge.”
The wind was steady with heavy gusts, and that was what he was afraid of. One big blow could come over the bridge and catch the undercarriage of the car, tipping it end over end.
Or, Auralia could have climbed free already.
That was the picture he wanted to hold in his mind for her.
He didn’t want to conjure danger or pain. He’d hold her in hope.
He pulled up to the table of life, and he found sustenance.
Not showy, not five-star restaurant fare, cause that didn’t feed the body and soul the way a plate could be filled with an honest day’s work.
And around that table, there were places laid for all the people that he cared deeply for and who cared equally for his best.
And now, he and Auralia would tell all those people about how deeply they loved one another.
Gator’s nonchalance about Creed’s being in love with Auralia was a burden relieved.
He’d felt that his secrecy was a lie of omission that he would never have taken on except that he’d been raised to allow the lady to decide what was publicly said about her and the relationship she was in.
His mamma would have taken him to task if he did anything that might sully any woman’s reputation.
His mamma, Creed shook his head, she was going to be thrilled.
Rich. He was the richest of men. He just wished to hell that Auralia would call in and tell him she was okay.
And as if he’d sent out an etheric signal, his phone buzzed with a call from Auralia’s phone.
“Mandy, stand by.” Creed switched calls. “Shit, woman!”
“Yeah,” Auralia exhaled. “I guess Doli got hold of you.”
“Are you okay?”
“Just hanging around for the moment. I wanted to let you hear my voice so you could focus on the people who need you most. Is Rou with you?”
“We’re getting ready for a search. Somebody seems to be concussive and wandered into the woods.”
“In this rain? Shit. Get out there, Creed. What the hell are you doing talking to me?”
He chuckled.
“I love you. Be safe.”
“Love you. Be safest.” When she hung up, Creed tapped Mandy. “Mandy, that was Auralia calling in. Let Gator’s support know I heard her voice, and she’s okay for now.”