No Ordinary Day (19 page)

Now, the floodwaters were pooling at the edge of the parking area around the park that had been in the center of town.

The barrels that had survived were half-submerged.

As the Ladies Auxiliary, led by Betty Finley and Emmie Klein, came around, passing out the promised coffee, he tried to focus on the knowledge that Sue and the twins were safe, having been evacuated early on, and that Sarah had been rescued from the flooded school. He tried to recall the feeling of holding his oldest daughter in his arms a few hours before, the relief he had felt knowing she had made it out alive.

But all of the good feelings had been buried forever by a day of other people’s tragedies.

Dave had never been so discouraged in his life.

Don Farmer sat down next to him, staring at his steaming coffee.

“I don’t think I can do any more of this, chief,” he said quietly. “Can’t look at one more dead kid. Just—can’t. I’m sorry.”

Dave let his breath out slowly. “Go if you need to, Don. I understand, believe me.”

In the flashing lights, he looked up to see a dozen other faces like Don’s staring at him.

“That goes for all of you,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee. “Anyone who has to leave, go.”

“We don’t do that,” protested Thad Cochrane. “C’mon, Dave—that’s against one of the rules of the constitution—”

“ ‘Maintain a healthy fear of this job?’ I think we all have that rule covered, Cochrane,” said Ronnie Halari snidely.

“Actually, I was thinking ‘no one leaves ’til the scene is secured,’ ” Cochrane fired back, “but I know that’s never been one you’ve tested out for, Halari.”

Dave rose quickly as the two men turned angrily toward each other and raised his hand.

“Listen,” he said sharply.

The crew fell silent, obeying.

At first, there was no sound outside of the noise of the other rescue and law enforcement agencies doing their disaster relief work.

Then, in the distance, a thin noise could be heard over the whine of the wind.

A weak cry, throaty and frail.

Possibly a last gasp.

But unmistakably that of an infant.

An explosion of Styrofoam coffee cups blasted skyward as the firefighters scrambled for their tools and flashlights, suddenly energized.

“SHhhh!” Dave Windsor cautioned.
“Quiet.”

The crew froze.

The noise had stopped.

Dave raised a finger to his lips, new light in his eyes, as the men and women of Obergrande Fire Company #2 inclined their ears into the wind, listening hard, praying silently.

They heard nothing but the gusting clamor of the wind and the roar of the river.

“Come on, little one,” Dave whispered. “Come on—tell us where you are.”

For an agonizingly long time, the firefighters waited, straining their ears.

Then, finally, somewhere in the darkness they heard what appeared to be the sound of hiccups.

Walt Bentley, the senior member of the team, pointed rapidly upriver.

“There!” he shouted. “It’s coming from up there!”

The team scrambled toward the new waterfront, holding their flashlights aloft, scanning the refuse along the shore.

Oh God, oh God please,
Dave thought, holding his flashlight high and shining it in the area Bentley had indicated, along with almost a dozen others.

The lights reflected on nothing but endless garbage, pushed up against the edge of the street and floating in the pooling floodwater.

“SHhhhh!” Dave Windsor commanded again.

The firefighters kept their lights trained on the wreckage, falling into anxious silence.

Nothing.

Footsteps running behind him barely registered in his ears until a panting voice spoke next to Dave.

“Chief?” It was a woman’s voice, husky and high in pitch.

Dave turned slightly away from the spot, trying to keep his eyes fixed on it.

Lindsay Saboran, one of two women on his team, stood beside him, puffing from the exertion of running so fast in her gear.

She held up a piece of equipment.

Trying to keep from losing the direction of his focus, Dave grabbed it from her and held it up in front of his face.

It was the unit’s thermal imaging camera, on loan from Clarkson University.

A new, high-tech camera that sensed, and projected, heat.

His concentration broken, Dave stared at the equipment in irritation.

Then, a moment later, understood her intent.

“Turn off your flashlights!” he shouted to the rest of the team, who were still focusing their beams on the garbage-strewn shore. The firefighters turned in confusion, only to see him switching off his helmet light and sighting the thermal imaging camera.

Looking for heat, even in the smallest amount.

As understanding passed through the crew, lights in their hands and on their helmets snapped off in short order, leaving the rain-swollen streets black, the pretty antique streetlights all dark in the powerless city, save for the distant beams of the television crews and the endless flashing of the police lights.

“Hold still,” Dave Windsor directed.

He turned on the camera and made his way closer to the docks, pausing beside his comrades who stood, silent and still in the devouring darkness, holding their breath.

“Where are you, little baby?” he murmured. “Where are you?”

For an agonizingly long time, he scanned the new, clogged waterfront, looking for a heat signature.

He could see nothing.

Then, at the edge of the camera’s range, a small flash of heat.

Very dim.

Dave Windsor rotated and pegged the camera on the small flash, then zoomed in quickly.

He saw what might be a tiny limb, in what appeared to be a broken canoe, the rest of the body blocked by heatless refuse.

The little arm twitched, then lay motionless.

He dashed to the mound of lifeless garbage, holding on to the camera tightly, his boots tripping over rubble in the way, righting himself.

And stopping directly above where he’d seen the glimmer of heat.

“Here!” he screamed.
“Here!”

The men and women of the crew were right behind him, their strength and energy renewed by a blast of hope. Like a machine, they formed a bucket brigade, only rather than applying water to a fire, they were dragging garbage out of water, passing it along and out of the way down the line.

A team of brothers and sisters, their spirits broken over the course of this day of loss and death, reinvigorated and strong.

Beneath him, he could see the heat of the firefighters’ faces as they dug frantically, through the lens of the experimental camera which was now crowded with colored readings. He tried to stay focused on where he had seen the tiny arm, giving oral directions to the diggers, until one of them seized something rectangular very close to what he thought was the limb.

And tried to lift it, but it was wedged in mud and sand.

“Help me!” Paul Moody shouted. “Scrape the crap off this thing, it’s stuck!”

A knot of bodies in fire gear surged forward, some hands dragging on the rectangle, some pawing at the weeds, mud, and garbage that stuck it to the bottom of the shattered watercraft. Their focus was honed, their training in full use, and within a matter of moments, Moody hauled the metal-and-fabric rectangle out of the canoe and spun it around to face Dave Windsor.

A life jacket surrounded the broken metal frame; the fire chief unsnapped the clasps and threw it on the ground as the crew quickly turned their headlamps and flashlights on, illuminating the scene.

At first he could see nothing beneath it but muddy cloth and webbed straps.

He tore the cloth away carefully, revealing a tiny, dirty face, hair smeared with grime.

Unmoving, seemingly lifeless.

“Nope,” Dave Windsor said through gritted teeth. “Nope. Sorry, kid, hope the dream you’re dreaming isn’t that great, because you’re gonna wake up now.”

He shouted for the medic, Callie Masino, who slid into place like a runner sliding into home plate, her bag in her hands, which she dropped to the ground.

“Give,” she said sternly to the fire chief, plucking the backpack out of his extended hands and laying it quickly on the ground with the help of three of the firefighters around her. She patted the baby’s face gently as she spoke to her team members.

“We need to get him or her out of this thing,” she said calmly, struggling with the knotted straps for a moment before giving up and snatching her scissors from the medic bag. Two snips and a few helping hands later, the broken backpack was dragged out from beneath the child, who was laid on a blanket another member of the crew had placed on the ground.

As the medic undertook infant CPR, two crew members kneeling beside her, handing her the instruments she asked for from the bag, the rest of the unit stood silently, exhaling the stress from the adrenaline rush they had just experienced, some whispering quiet prayers, others staring without speaking.

All tense.

Betty Finley came hesitantly to the edge of the circle, a tureen of coffee wrapped in dishtowels in her hands.

“Step back, Mrs. Finley,” Don Farmer said impatiently, trying not to snarl. “We don’t need coffee here now—”

“I thought you might need warm towels,” the town clerk whispered raggedly. “The coffee is keeping them hot.”

Farmer and Paul Moody exchanged a glance. Farmer took off his fire hat.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said quietly. “You’re right—it’s been—well, it’s been—”

Mrs. Finley nodded understandingly, her face white from shock and the lights on their helmets.

Callie was leaning over the infant now, compressing the chest, blowing gently into the nose and mouth.

“Come on,” Walt Bentley urged. “Come on, kid. Come on.”

Dave Windsor had stepped away, calling for an ambulance on his walkie talkie.

“Get the wet clothes off,” Callie instructed when she was back to chest compressions. “They weigh more than the baby does. There’s probably ten pounds of water in that diaper.”

The two assisting firefighters followed her instructions, gently cutting and removing pieces of the clothing when Callie’s hands were out of the way.

“A little girl,” Ronnie Halari, one of the two assistants, said quietly. He looked up, his eyes gleaming, and smiled at the other man assisting, Thad Cochrane, who returned the grin, both of them fathers of young daughters who had exchanged cross words a short time before.

Cross words long forgotten in the fellowship of their rescue efforts.

Their smiles faded as the child remained unresponsive.

Just as the medic was bending down for a second round of mouth-to-mouth, the infant flinched, then coughed, foamy water spilling from her mouth. Callie rolled her quickly to her side as she stretched, then spit up.

And let out a furious shriek that split the night and raised the hair on every head gathered around her.

A roar of laughter, followed by gasping cheers and shouts, hugs and high-fives, ascended into the dark night.

Breaking through the gloom, shattering the pall of death that had descended on the suffering town.

And the men and women who protected it.

At least for a moment.

The exhausted first responders rubbed their eyes, rolled their shoulders or bent at the waist, shaking the despair from their backs.

Celebrating the life they had found in the overwhelming grip of death all around them.

Mrs. Finley pushed her way tentatively forward again and unwrapped the towels from the coffee tureen, holding them out to the medic, who quickly wrapped them around the angry baby.

Who, in turn, stabbed their ears with an even more livid squeal.

“Maaaaamaaaaaa!” the little girl wailed plaintively as the lights of the approaching ambulance lit the area, splashing around, illuminating the drowned town square.

Stripping the smiles from the firefighters’ faces.

The word echoed against the walls of the surviving buildings.

Sweeping the joy that had blossomed for a moment into the last winds of the departing hurricane, which carried it into the sky.

Taking it far away from Obergrande.

‡

10:47
PM

Fire House #2, East Obergrande

L
ater that night,
after the ambulance had sped away toward the Mountain Medical Emergency Center in Emmettsville, carrying the rescued infant to the emergency room and the care she needed, Dave Windsor sat in the oil lamp-and-candle-lit kitchen of Fire Station #2, a broken backpack and life jacket on the table in front of him.

Lost in thought.

Betty Finley, the town clerk, despite being profoundly shaken, had offered to accompany the infant to the hospital and stay with her until morning, when, with any luck, she would be reunited with her parents. Her husband, Leland, Obergrande’s highway superintendent, had agreed to drive his wife to the hospital behind the ambulance so that none of the first responders needed to continue their vigilance into the night.

Dave had known both of them since elementary school; a half-generation older than he was, Leland had coached his high school football team, and Betty had volunteered in the school library, generous, he thought, for a childless couple who were not, he suspected, childless on purpose.