Chapter 11

If a man says he will fix it…he will. There’s no need to remind him every six months.

- Coffee Cup

Sawyer

Despite the way Silas was able to keep my mind off the storm that raged on outside, our town, as well as the surrounding towns, was hit hard.

Really hard.

I drove to work in my now very dented car, and I pulled into Dr. Zack’s office lot to see a flurry of activity.

I parked in the back of the lot where the employees had been told to park, and walked into the office, straight into total pandemonium.

“What’s going on?” I asked Joanie.

Joanie, who was standing at the front door, her back holding it open, lifted her head to me and visibly wilted.

“We’re swamped. Zack asked me to send you straight to the back, but you’ll have to walk around the building. There are so many people and dogs here right now that you won’t be able to make it through.”

Giving the crowd one last look, I hefted my bag on my shoulder once more and started to walk through the damp grass around the building.

The building itself was just plain brick. There were only three windows in the entire place, which meant Zack’s office didn’t get hit as hard as he probably could have.

The road to work today had been perilous.

Two of the roads had still been under water.

One had been inaccessible due to a downed power line and there had been so much debris scattered about that I’m sure I looked like a crazy person with all the swerving I had to do to get around the stuff.

I wasn’t risking running it over, though.

That would’ve been just what I needed, to run something over, getting stuck on it or getting a flat and not making it to work on time.

“Sawyer!” Zack called. “Hurry!”

I picked up my pace, moving back through the lot toward Zack, who was in his truck.

“Hey!” I said, stopping at his open window, “what’s going on?”

He shook his head as he ran a hand over his weathered and tired face.

“The tornado that hit Dixie was bad. I’m headed there now to see what assistance I can offer.” He pointed toward the front. “I’ve already got people bringing in animals that they’ve found. I’ve called in my old partner, Bane. He’s going to handle the practice and help anyone who comes in today. You wanna go with me?”

He looked so hopeful that I really couldn’t tell him no.

“Yeah, sure,” I said, circling around the front of the truck.

I smiled when I saw Zack’s Labrador Retriever, Belly, in the front seat.

“Hey there, big girl,” I cooed as I scooted her over and sat next to her.

“You’re going to put her back into action?” I asked hopefully.

He nodded.

Belly was a retired police dog.

Her specialty was finding things, like one would use a Blood Hound.

Belly had been hurt two years ago during another storm similar to this one, and she’d been temporarily retired while she got back into fighting shape.

Even now she walked with a slight limp, one she sustained when the house she’d been searching caved in around her.

“If you’re game, I’d like you to take Belly. I already know I’m going to be busy with a lot of triaging,” Zack said as he pulled out of the parking lot, giving a wave in Joanie’s direction.

“What?” I asked in surprise.

He nodded. “Yeah, I’m going to be helping with the animals coming in to the shelter. You can take Belly and start wherever the police direct you two, once it’s been deemed safe though.”

Holy shit.

Belly was attached to Zack’s hip.

It absolutely floored me that he’d willingly give me the responsibility of handling Belly.

“Are…are you sure?” I asked with hesitantly.

Zack tossed me a grin. “Yeah, I’m sure. You’re pretty awesome, girlie. You’ll do just fine.”

I highly doubted that.

I’d never seen anything like this level of destruction, though, and I was really nervous.

Adding responsibility for Belly to the mix made me feel positively nauseous.

The ride to Dixie, Louisiana was relatively short – less than a fifteen-minute drive – which further drove home just how bad it could’ve been for our little town.

How lucky we had been that the tornado hadn’t formed just ten miles south.

“Okay,” Zack said, pulling in to park in the bank’s parking lot. “Let’s go. I’ll introduce you to the incident commander, and we’ll go from there, okay?”

I nodded, following Zack and Belly.

My eyes, which I imagine mirrored the haunted expression I wore, were scanning all around me as I took in the destruction.

“My God,” I breathed. “Oh, my God.”

Trees were uprooted, large ones that I couldn’t even fit my arms around.

Park benches that’d been bolted to the ground, gone. Laying as if they’d been carelessly tossed to the side, twisted into scraps of metal that no longer resembled a bench and never would again.

Signs hung haphazardly from their perches. Letters and numbers missing off of the remnants of what once were the buildings of downtown Dixie.

Only one of the buildings was still standing, relatively intact.

The only thing that was really there, were the roads.

And even those were ripped up in some places.

“Yeah, this isn’t my first rodeo, but this one is pretty bad. I’d bet it was an F-3,” Zack muttered, stepping over what appeared to be a car’s bumper.

My stomach was in knots.

How could a town of this size ever come back from something like this?

And if I wasn’t mistaken, an F-3 was at the middle of the scale, a scale that ran up to F-5. My God, I couldn’t even begin to imagine how it could have been any worse.

“There’s the command tent,” Zack said, interrupting my contemplation.

I looked up in time to see a rather large firefighter dressed in bunker gear shouting out orders to men and women alike.

They got their orders and then immediately started on their assignments without any hesitation.

Then he turned fully around, and I was greeted with a younger version of Silas.

Sebastian, I think I’d heard Silas call him.

But I wasn’t one hundred percent sure.

What was he doing here?

Then I saw Silas not too far from him with a little girl in his arms that looked to be two or three at most.

When he’d left my house this morning after the storm had passed, I’d thought it’d been rather abrupt. I never expected to see him here doing this.

He’d gotten a call before he’d left.

And I was ashamed to admit that I thought that maybe it’d been another woman.

But now I was glad to see that I was wrong.

“Sebastian!” Zack called.

Sebastian turned at the sound of his name being called, and he smiled when he saw Zack.

“Hey, Guzzy. How’s it going?” Sebastian asked somewhat distractedly.

“I’m setting up in Old Miller’s place. I just wanted to lend Belly and Sawyer here to you. Use ‘em as you see fit,” Zack said, offering Sebastian his hand.

Sebastian took it.

“Thanks,” Sebastian said, returning the handshake. “I just got here myself. I’m on two different volunteer departments, but since Dixie was hit worse than the other town, I came here. And suddenly find myself in charge of everything.”

He seemed like he was doing a good job, though.

Even if he didn’t think he should be the one in charge.

“Alright, Sawyer. Take care of my Belly and take this,” he said, passing a handheld, two-way radio to me. “Call me if you need anything.”

I took the two-way radio, strapped it to my jeans and reached for Belly’s leash, scared as hell and trying my damnedest to hide it.

“O-okay,” I said.

Zack smiled reassuringly. “These boys will take good care of you. Promise.”

I didn’t need his reassurance.

Silas had taken care of me very well last night…not that I’d be telling him or anyone else about that.

I nodded firmly. “Thank you.”

He smiled, hefted his bag and started walking away.

Belly gave a soft bark, making Zack turn around and smile at his friend before he turned and continued on his way.

I turned from watching Zack walk away to find both Silas and Sebastian watching me with varying degrees of surprise etched on their face.

“What?” I asked, concerned.

Silas went back to his phone call that I hadn’t realized he was on, turning around without saying a word.

Sebastian, though, smiled.

“Never seen Zack give up Belly. He’s usually the one to do the searching and rescuing with her,” Sebastian said.

I nodded.

“I’m a little confused as to why he did it myself,” I answered.

He shrugged.

“He blames himself. While he was searching the building that’d caught on fire for survivors, it’d started to shift with him and Belly in it. He stayed, and Belly ended up paying the price for that decision. He thinks he’s not worthy of leading her anymore,” Sebastian said, ushering me over.

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“H-he thinks that I’m going to be better at that?” I asked a bit shrilly.

Sebastian’s eyes met mine. “He must see something in you that makes him believe in the trust he just gave you. Don’t let him down.”

It sounded like a threat, and I had to fight the urge to take a step back.

“I’ll need you right here. We haven’t had a chance to search these houses yet. What we’ll have you do is just circle the houses as best as you can. Belly should do the job from there,” he said, pointing to a road on a real life map.

“Can you, you know, tell me how to get there?” I asked.

Sebastian nodded.

“Dad!” Sebastian called over his shoulder.

My eyes moved from the map and the point he wanted me to search to the man whose attention he’d wanted.

My breath caught in my throat when Silas turned, said a few words into his cell phone ending the call.

“Yeah?” He asked shortly.

Sebastian waved his hand in the universal sign of ‘come here.’

Silas, annoyed, came.

My eyes fell to the girl he was holding.

The closer she came, the more my breath caught in my throat.

She looked just like him.

But when Sebastian reached forward and pulled the girl from Silas’ arms, I realized that the girl belonged to Sebastian, not Silas.

My heart felt a little lighter, but I couldn’t help the pang of longing that went through me at seeing the little girl in his arms.

“My papa,” the girl said, reaching her arms out for Silas again.

“No, Blaise. Papa has to show this woman where to go. You can have him when he gets back,” Sebastian gently chastised his little girl.

Blaise then turned her baby blues on me, and I was struck speechless by how beautiful this little girl was.

She was going to be a heartbreaker when she grew up, and the two men that were currently looking at her with such adoration were going to be busy keeping up with her.

Someone called Sebastian’s name, and I was left alone with the man who’d held me all night long.

“Hey,” I said nervously, twirling Belly’s leash in my hands, intertwining it with my fingers.

He smiled at me.

Those beautiful eyes of his drinking me in.

“Didn’t think I’d see you so early,” he said as he took hold of my arm and steered me out of the command tent.

I was slapped upside the head once again by the devastation all around me.

From here, you could see the exact path the tornado had blazed through this little town.

Buildings sat untouched on either side of the path of destruction, making the devastation within that path all the more remarkable. Within the path that the tornado took, you could barely make out a single distinguishing feature of the buildings that used to be there.

Up ahead I saw a sign for the high school.

My breath caught when I saw how the tornado had traveled right through the center of the high school.

“God,” I breathed. “God.”

Silas’ eyes turned down to me. “Yeah, it’s pretty fucking bad. I’ve been a part of a lot of search and rescue operations due to natural disasters, but this one being so close to home is really fucking with my head,” he said almost absently. “I mean, I volunteer on this fire department. A fire department that’s now gone.”

He pointed to something that was nothing more than a pile of rubble.

Brick, mortar and wood.

Sticking straight up the very middle of the pile was the fire pole. I was stunned that it was still standing.

“Shit,” I breathed. “Where were the fire trucks?”

My question was answered moments later when we turned the corner.

The fire truck in question was currently on its tail end, resting against a building.

“Right there,” he said.

I shook my head.

“How are y’all going to get that down without damaging it even more? Is it safe to be around that?” I asked worriedly, sinking my hand into Belly’s scruff at the base of her neck.

She ran her wet nose along my arm in silent reassurance.

“There’s a car beside it keeping it in place,” he said.

“They’ve already checked all this?” I asked, holding my hand out to indicate the street we’d just passed.

Silas nodded. “Yeah, the fire station was the first place we came to, and everything in about a three block radius has been checked.”

He waved his hand to someone, and I turned to find Trance with his own dog.

“Find anything?” Silas yelled.

Trance shook his head. “No.”

Silas nodded and continued walking, still keeping a hold of my arm.

It was surprisingly comfortable, despite the way he gripped it like I was a criminal.

I doubted he even realized he was doing it.

“We’ve found more alive than dead. Six casualties so far. Twenty-four rescues,” he said.

Six deaths.

Holy shit.

“This is where we’re searching right now. The white X indicates the property has been searched. Red circles mean the property is unstable and don’t go near it. Okay?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Call me if you need me,” he said. “If you find something, or Belly finds something, just holler and they’ll come running, okay?”

I nodded again, suddenly very nervous to be left alone.

“You’ll be okay,” he said. “Promise.”

Then, with a kiss to my forehead, he was strolling down the street, and I was left with a dog that looked very eager to get started.

“Alright, Belly, let’s do this,” I said, giving her a pat on the rump.

She licked my hand in response, and we got started.