***
It was forty-five minutes into my search that I found my first victim.
Or, I should say, Belly did.
She started barking like crazy at a pile of rubble, debris and dirt.
“I need help!” I yelled, walking forward until I was standing directly in front of the pile.
I didn’t know what to do, though.
So I gingerly started to pull off pieces of wood that I could reach without actually standing on the pile.
If there was a person under all that, they probably wouldn’t appreciate me standing on it to help them get out.
As suddenly as Belly had gone crazy, I was surrounded by huge, hulking men.
Some of them wore official-looking clothing, but most of them were in what I assumed they had most likely been wearing the night before.
“Back up, sweetheart,” one burly old man said softly.
I blinked and looked up at him.
He wasn’t ‘old,’ but he wasn’t young, either.
He was huge, though, so I took his direction and backed up to let the men work.
It was ten horrible minutes later that a shoe was uncovered, followed by the foot that shoe was attached to.
But that foot wasn’t moving.
Fuck.
Please be alive, please be alive, I chanted in my head.
My wish wasn’t granted, though.
By the time they had fully uncovered the man’s body, I known that he was dead.
No doubt due to the sheer volume of debris that was lying on top of him. Crushing him.
Then my eyes narrowed in on the bottle that the man still held, even in death.
“Oh, my God,” I breathed. “There’s a baby in there. There’s a baby!”
I hadn’t meant for it to come out sounding so scared, but it did.
One of the men turned to me, the big one with brown hair styled into a mohawk. The same one who served me at Halligans and Handcuffs.
He was wearing a Benton Fire Department shirt and was looking at me like I’d grown a second head.
“He has a baby’s bottle in his hand,” I said desperately.
He looked down, and the explicative that was propelled out of him spurred the rest of the men around him into a frenzy.
I walked around them with Belly, heading through a small path between debris piles.
I wasn’t sure how it was made, but I was going to use it.
Belly sniffed and sniffed, walking this way and that, until she came to a stop beside smaller pile of what resembled wood shavings and splinters.
She started barking.
“Over here!” I yelled, bending down to grab a piece of wood.
I was pushed back once again by the older burly guy and the Mohawk guy.
It still wasn’t the baby. I could tell that the moment they pulled off what looked to be half of a wall.
It was the mother.
She had what looked to be a teddy bear clutched tightly to her chest.
And she was dead, too.
I could tell that when Mohawk Guy pressed two very large fingers against the woman’s throat, just under her chin, and then shook his head.
“Shit,” I hissed. “Let’s go, Belly.”
Two dead people in one day.
How positively horrible.
Tears clogged my throat, and it took everything I had to stop them from leaking out and running down my cheeks.
Once again we started searching the house, but found nothing.
Belly and I, reluctantly, moved on to the next house.
Or some semblance of what was once a house.
We found two more who had perished before we found our first live one.
I’d just given the signal, and this time Trance and Mohawk Guy, as well as the big burly guy, showed within seconds of my call. Immediately, they started searching, getting down to the bottom of the rubble and unearthing a police car.
The guy inside was alive.
I could see his chest moving.
“Yes,” I exclaimed, practically jumping up and down.
My excitement garnered the attention of Trance, and his eyes were much more amused this time than the last time I’d seen him over by the dead mother.
“Keep going, girl,” he ordered, pointing in the direction of more destruction.
I smiled brilliantly at him, giving him a pat on the forearm before escaping through yet another small parting in the debris.
Minutes quickly turned into another hour before I decided to take a little break.
Although Belly didn’t look tired, I knew she was hot and most likely needed a drink.
“Come on, old girl. Let’s get you something to drink,” I said, petting her head lovingly.
She gave me a doggy grin, pushing her head into my hand and closing her eyes in bliss as her tongue lolled out the side.
I passed Mohawk Guy and said, “We’re going to get a drink of water.”
Mohawk Guy looked up and smiled. “10-4.”
As I walked back to the command tent, where I assumed there would be water, I realized just how far we’d walked today.
“I guess I should’ve gotten you water earlier, eh?” I asked my companion.
“Dogs are resilient creatures,” the burly guy said as he caught up to me.
I smiled at him.
“Oh yeah, I know. I used to work with them during my…old job,” I said. “I know they’re tough.”
I didn’t really want to ruin the mood by telling him I used to be in prison.
That was an instant mood breaker, and I probably had to work with him the rest of the day.
But the moment the command tent and Silas came into sight, the man was gone.
One second I was having a conversation with the man, and the next he was nowhere to be found.
“Weird,” I said aloud.
Silas spotted me the moment I came into sight.
“Who was that with you?” He asked when I was within ten feet or so of him.
I shrugged. “A man that I’ve been working with all morning.”
He smiled.
“It’s about two in the afternoon now, Sawyer,” he said chidingly, lifting his finger to run it down the bridge of my nose. “You’re burned.”
I shrugged. “Not the first time and won’t be the last.”
He shook his head slightly, wearing a little grin, as I grabbed a water bottle from the table in front of him. I picked up a bowl full of Band-Aids that had been sitting under the table, dumped them out, and filled it up with water for Belly.
Belly gulped it down quickly, and I felt even worse for neglecting her.
“Stand up,” Silas ordered.
I blinked and looked up at him to find him holding a bottle of sunscreen with a good amount already squeezed out on his extended palm.
I stood, trying not to smile as he rubbed the lotion into my face.
It burned as his fingers met the already sun kissed skin, but nonetheless I stayed still until he was finished.
Then his hands started on my neck and arms.
I shivered slightly as he took his time rubbing the lotion into my skin, dipping past my shirt to run along the swells of my breasts.
I was panting when I finally looked up into Silas’ eyes.
Leaning forward, my hips met the distinct bulge of his cock, and his eyes flared as we came into contact.
My mouth opened, and I started to speak when I was interrupted.
It was like a dousing from a cold bucket of water in the middle of a desert.
“Silas!” A distinctly familiar voice called. “Help me!”
I closed my eyes and looked around Silas’ large body to see my mother barreling down on us with a box of food filled to the brim.
“Sawyer! What are you doing here?” My mother asked.
Silas stayed where he was while I skirted around him, stepping over Belly who’d laid full out on the grass in shade the command tent’s shadow.
“Hi, Mom,” I said. “I’m here helping Dr. Zack.”
She smiled.
“Awesome. It’s good to see you out here,” she smiled, blissfully unaware of what she’d just interrupted.
“Reba,” Silas said as he turned around.
He had a clipboard he’d picked up off the table held in front of his erection, and I turned my face down so my mother wouldn’t see my satisfied smile.
I felt a pinch on my ass and whirled around to see Silas glaring down at me.
My head whipped around to stare at my mother, but she was so busy pulling food out from the box that she never even noticed our little interaction.
I widened my eyes at Silas, who only smiled and walked to the table.
“Whatcha got?” Silas asked, pulling out a couple of Styrofoam boxes.
“Barbeque,” she smiled. “I got your favorite!”
His favorite?
And why, if they were only neighbors, did she know his favorite?
I didn’t know his favorite anything, and I’d had sex with him multiple times!
I knew how he liked his cock sucked, though.
Which I guess was better than knowing he preferred chopped brisket to sliced brisket.
“I also got you pickles like you like,” she continued. “I brought you a Coca Cola but also brought a couple more bottles of cold water just in case.”
Silas took the package she handed him and tossed me a weird look.
One that oddly appeared almost calculating.
I wasn’t sure if he was watching me to gauge my reaction to my mother, or if he was watching me to make sure I didn’t say anything in front of her.
“I’m sorry, baby. But I didn’t know you would be here,” my mother continued. “I only brought Sebastian, Silas, and Blaise something to eat.”
So she knew them all on a first name basis.
Well now, that was interesting.
“That’s okay, I’m not hungry,” I lied.
I’m starving.
I hadn’t realized that it was two. I’d missed lunch and I skipped breakfast because I wanted to do other things this morning.
Things that involved Silas’ massive cock and my vagina.
Which was better than breakfast any day.
“You’ll have some of mine,” Silas ordered.
I gave him a look which clearly said, ‘You can shove that food up your ass.’
He gave me one right back that said, ‘If you don’t eat some of my food, I’ll spank you in front of your mother.’
Clearly that wasn’t an option, so I reluctantly sat down.
He handed me one of his sandwiches, and I reluctantly took it.
It was massive, and I really couldn’t see how he’d get one in his stomach, let alone two, but who was I to judge?
I could eat an entire bag of potato chips in one single sitting.
Something I’d only just discovered that I could do the day after I’d gotten out of prison.
Then my mind sobered, and unsurprisingly, I wasn’t very hungry any more.
I’d done a good job these past few days forgetting about the reality that was my life.
Silas was a good distraction.
Actually, he was a great distraction.
I hadn’t had to drink myself to sleep for a good four days straight, thanks to Silas’ and his skills.
“So how have you been, honey? You haven’t stopped by lately. I’ve been worried about you,” my mother said, picking up a small container of coleslaw and digging into it with a plastic fork.
“I’ve been fine, thanks,” I said. “How’s work?”
My mother worked as a float nurse at the hospital in Shreveport.
She’d been a nurse there for nearly thirty years.
She and my dad met there in fact.
My dad had been hit by a drunk driver, and he’d been in the hospital with a broken femur.
My mother had been his nurse during his hospital stay, and the rest, as they say, is history.
“It’s good,” my mother said distractedly.
“How’s dad?” I asked, trying to get her eyes off Silas.
My brows furrowed.
My mother was staring at Silas with worry.
For some unknown reason, I wanted to step in front of Silas to block my mother’s eyes from him.
It was jealousy.
I was jealous!
Of my mother!
My mother obviously had some sort of relationship with Silas, the man I was sleeping with, and it was beginning to really rankle and unnerve me to know that she clearly knew him better than I did.
“He’s fine,” she said, finally looking at me. “He’s busy at work.” She turned away from me once again. “How’s your daughter, Silas? Is she doing well?”
Ok, so she also knew his whole family.
Wonderful.
“She’s good. Her husband got into a little trouble a week ago during a SWAT op. But he’s fine. She’s worrying over him like any good woman would,” Silas said around bites of his sandwich.
I really didn’t have much of an appetite any more, and I couldn’t handle watching this familiar, comfortable interaction between Silas and my mother any longer.
I put the sandwich down, minus the four bites I’d taken, placing it on to Silas’ plate.
“I gotta use the restroom,” I lied. “Be back.”
Belly got up when I did, and I was so grateful I could have kissed her.
Maybe she could feel my anger and confusion over the situation, this clearly unmistakable friendship that my mother and Silas somehow shared.
I didn’t understand whatever it was that was going on between them, and I wasn’t happy about it at all.
This meant I didn’t plan on coming back after I finished supposedly using the bathroom.
Silas and my mother didn’t stop talking as Belly and I left, and something about that enraged me.
They acted like they had a relationship!
And it wasn’t normal.
My dad was a territorial man. A very territorial man.
When I was sixteen, my mother had innocently smiled at another man, and my father had flipped way the freak out.
So given that fact, a fact that my mother was very well aware of about my father, what in the ever lovin’ hell was going on between her and Silas?
I walked down the street to the high school, remembering seeing volunteers disappear and reappear out of the gym doors, a gym that was completely separate from the falling down building surrounding it.
That’s where I assumed the restrooms everyone was using were located.
I was right.
According to the man sitting on the brick wall outside, I’d made the right call.
“Bathroom?” I asked him.
He nodded. “Walk in and take a left. It’ll take you right where you need to go. Just follow the line.”
Great. Just what I needed right then, a line.
But alas, that was the way it was, so just like a good girl, I went to stand in line waiting for my turn.
“All yours,” the woman that had been in front of me said.
We’d been chatting while we waited about how crazy the weather had been since the first of the year.
Something I hadn’t witnessed for myself until about a month ago.
The weathermen predicted this unusual weather pattern would continue for at least another ten days.
I didn’t think I’d seen the sun shining in well over a week, yet I’d still managed to get sun burned, even through the clouds.
Once I was done in the bathroom, I picked up Belly’s leash from where I’d hooked it onto the stall’s door and headed over to the sink.
There wasn’t any soap left, and I grimaced as I used water only.
“Gross,” I muttered as I walked out, wiping my hands on my shorts seeing as there were no paper towels either.
I smiled in mutual commiseration at the women waiting in the line and continued on my way, Belly at my side.
Wiping all other thoughts of my mother and Silas from my mind, I got right back into the thick of things, thoughts focused solely on finding more people.
Hopefully – preferably – alive.
And Silas could suck it.