Dahlia’s first call dropped.
The second was picked up by an operator asking, “911, what is your emergency?”
She tried to keep herself calm, since she couldn’t keep anyone else that way. “There’s been an accident—we need an ambulance.”
“What kind of accident?”
“An … it was a work accident. We’re a salvage crew, working on a house. My cousin has at least one broken leg, maybe two. He needs help, right now. Sooner than that, if you can swing it.”
The patter of typing continued in the background. “Where are you located?”
“I’m … we’re … we’re near the bottom of Lookout Mountain, just above Saint Elmo.” She gave the street address, though she hadn’t seen any indicator of it anyplace on the house and she had no idea if it’d actually appear on anybody’s GPS. “What about you? Where are you located?” she asked the operator.
“I’m at the regional call center. Please give me your phone number, in case we’re disconnected.”
Dahlia complied, keeping one eye on Gabe, who was going pale and starting to sweat. “You have to hurry. He’s going into shock.”
“I’m in the process of contacting local emergency support services; please stay on the line.”
“Listen, lady? Is there any chance you could let me talk to the local support guys myself? The house we’re at … it’s tricky to find, but a local might know which one I’m talking about.”
The call promptly beeped, and dropped—right as another hard, billowing gust made the house shudder and lean, unless that part was all in her imagination. Dahlia was about to swear, but the operator called back immediately. “Ma’am?”
“I’m here! I’m still here! You have to send somebody … it might be tricky. We’ll have to … um … we have to get my cousin out to the main road. You’ll never get an ambulance up here, not with the rain. There’s no paved road up to the house.”
“Ma’am, due to the storms, your local first responders are experiencing a high volume of calls.” The operator dropped a tiny bit of the forced, professional tone. “Power’s out to half the county, and there are reports of tornados on the ground.”
“You’re shitting me. They get tornados here?”
“Once in a blue moon, so don’t look up. We’re doing the best we can, I assure you. Please be patient and we’ll have someone out there as soon—”
The call dropped again, and this time, so did everything else.
The world went dark with a pop so loud it made Dahlia’s ears ring—a fizzing, electrical bang, and then there was nothing. The lights were gone. The refrigerator stopped running. The weird background static of weather and electricity buzzed through the air, and evaporated. The Withrow house was quiet and dark, except for the shocked breathing and low groaning of its occupants, blinking against the dim and fading light—for it wasn’t yet sundown, but there wasn’t any daylight to speak of, and the storm leeched the last of the glow from the sky.
Except for what Dahlia’s phone said about the time, it might as well have been full-on night.
She broke the uneasy, uneven quiet. “Everyone stay cool. 911 is sending somebody, okay?”
Her phone rang again, displaying the emergency services designation. She answered, only to be greeted with silence, and a dropped call notice.
“Are you sure?” Bobby asked. “Did they tell you for sure that someone’s on the way?”
“Yes, I’m sure, but it might take them a while. Hang on, I’ve got another idea.” She rose to her feet and walked away from them, her footsteps ringing god-awful loud on the wood. She pulled up a Web browser on her phone, looked up the Chattanooga Police Department, and called them directly instead.
It took forever for anyone to answer. Dahlia could feel her neck flushing and her pulse rising, but someone had to keep control. Bobby was about to lose it, Brad had lost it already, and Gabe had too much on his plate as it was.
“Chattanooga Police Department.”
Her voice shaking, she explained the situation as fast as she could, but the cop who answered the phone cut her off after the bit about Saint Elmo. “To be clear, ma’am—there aren’t any life-threatening injuries, is that correct?”
She lost her battle with inner peace. “How the fuck should I know? I’m not a doctor! At the very least, his legs are broken, and the power is out!”
“I could give a shit about the power,” the cop responded in testy, frayed-nerve kind. “You’re in about the same boat as everybody else, all right? Broken legs aren’t a death sentence, now are they?”
“But he fell a long way … he could have other injuries,” she said, not because she necessarily believed it, but because it might bring help around sooner.
The cop sighed. “If 911 says you’re in the queue, then you’re in the queue—but I can’t make you any promises, you hear me? Tell me again where you are. Saint Elmo?”
“Kind of…” She took a crack at giving directions, then stopped. “Hey, is there any chance you were born and raised here?”
“Close enough. What for?”
“Then maybe you know the old Withrow house near the foot of Lookout Mountain. And before you tell me you can’t reach it,” she added quickly, “I’ve got two strong men here with me, and we can get the kid to the paved road at the edge of the property.”
“That old compound? I’ll be damned, they finally found someone to clear it out.” He was mumbling, like he was doing something else at the same time he was talking. Dahlia thought she heard the scratch of a pen on paper. “I’ll make a note of it. Give me your number so I can call you back if I need to, or so someone else can, if it comes to that.”
She obliged. She looked over her shoulder to where Bobby and Brad were doing their best to be comforting, and Gabe was doing his best to keep breathing, and not pass out cold. She could barely see them, except in outline. She wondered where the lanterns and flashlights were. That would be her next problem. “How long do you think it’ll be?”
“Best-case scenario? Half an hour. Worst-case? I honestly can’t tell you. We’ve got every man on deck tonight, and we’re doing the best we can. Somebody will call you when help is on the way, so you can start carrying the kid to the road. If there’s any chance you can get him to an ER yourself, you may want to give it a shot—but if you do, call back and let me know, so I can take you off the list.”
She thanked him and hung up, holding the phone with shaking fingers. She turned on the flashlight app to give them all a little more illumination. “It’s a mess out there,” she repeated what the cop had said. “911 won’t make any promises, and the cops can’t have anyone here sooner than half an hour, and it may take a whole lot longer. He didn’t say so, but I heard it between the lines. We’re going to have to take Gabe to the road—we can put him in one of the trucks to stay dry until they get here.”
No one was less thrilled about this plan than Gabe, who wheezed and moaned at the same time. “I don’t know if I can make it to the trucks, Dahl.”
“You can, and you will. Your daddy and Brad and me, we’ll get you out there between us. But first we need to wrap up those legs, to keep them stable.”
“I can do it,” Brad declared shakily.
Dahlia flashed him a dubious frown. Ten seconds ago he’d been on the verge of hyperventilating, and now he wanted to do something useful? “Do you have any first-aid experience?”
“The Boy Scout kind. And I used to be a life guard—so I was certified and everything. I can do it, so just … let me do it, if neither of y’all knows how.”
So he wanted a job to calm him down. It’d worked before, and Dahlia could relate. “Fine, what do you need?”
“A lantern. Then get me some more of that plastic tarp. Not the possessed piece of shit that jumped him,” Brad specified. “Rustle up something else, and the duct tape. Bring me one of those spindles from the decorative rail in the kitchen—they’re little enough, and they’ll work fine as a splint.” He looked down
at Gabe’s other leg, which was starting to swell, but didn’t look half so bad as the one that was well and truly wrecked. “Bring me two, to be on the safe side.”
A shock of lightning brightened the sky for half a second, then a great crack of thunder shook the house and everyone in it. Dahlia spotted one of the LED lanterns at the foot of the stairs, so she grabbed it and passed it over to Brad and Bobby.
“It’s too cold for a thunderstorm,” Bobby protested, his teeth chattering—from fear or chill, Dahlia didn’t know, and probably, neither did he. “It’s got to be too cold.”
“Ever hear of snow thunder?” Brad asked, accepting spindles and duct tape from Dahlia. His hands were quivering as hard as his voice, but he got to work, ignoring Gabe’s groans and squeaks. “Hold him still, Bobby,” he directed. “But yeah … snow thunder. It’s a thing.”
Dahlia couldn’t watch Gabe squirm, or Bobby do his best to keep from rocking his son back and forth, holding him steady by brute force or nervous tension. She stepped away to the edge of the stairs and looked up, half expecting to see Hazel standing there, or Buddy, or even the miserable phantom of Abigail taking some dismal pride in her work. She halfway wanted to see Abigail, if only to throw something at her, flip her the bird, or scream about what a bitch she was—for all the good it’d do them.
“You were aiming for me, weren’t you?” she asked the vacant space where no ghosts bothered to materialize. Her words were as tight as a guitar string. “Why? Why won’t you leave me alone?”
Through gritted teeth, Gabe joked, “Stop talking to yourself, Dahl.”
“She wanted me, and you got in the way.”
“You think she wants…” Gabe gasped when Brad wrapped his broken leg with the first strip of tape. “She wants … to kill you?”
“I don’t know. She wants something. You three … we have to get you out of here, before she gets any bigger ideas.”
“But you have to get out of here, too,” Bobby protested. “Especially if you’re right.”
“I can take it. I can take her. I want a word with that bitch.”
“Like you want another hole in the head,” Brad muttered, his elbows rising and falling as he maneuvered the duct tape around Gabe’s heavy shin and ankle. “She’s beat you up worse than anyone, until now.”
She snorted. “I’m still standing here, aren’t I?” She caught herself. “Gabe, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Don’t worry ’bout it, Dahl. Not your fault.” He gasped more shallowly, not so much breathing as crying.
“Doesn’t matter whose fault … mine, or Daddy’s, or Augusta Withrow’s, or anybody’s. All that matters is, we’re getting you out of here and to a hospital.”
Brad rose to his knees, then stood over Gabe. “There—that’s about as good as it’s going to get. How does it feel?”
“Feels like hell, sir,” the boy replied.
“Too bad, because we have to get you upright, anyhow,” Bobby declared. He scooted out from his position, half beneath Gabe, and worked his hands under his son’s armpits. “Come on. Brad, you take the right, I’ve got the left.”
Gabe shrieked, but did his best to prop himself between the two men on the one foot that wasn’t utterly shattered. “Keys,” he wheezed.
“Keys!” Dahlia repeated. “Here’s the keys to my truck. Bobby? Where are yours?”
“Pocket,” he grunted.
Brad strained beneath Gabe’s shoulder. “It’s pouring out there.”
“We won’t wash away,” Dahlia said grimly. “We can’t run, but we ought to hurry as best we can. The sun’s almost completely down. I’ll get the light, you boys get moving, and I’ll catch up in a second.”
The guys shuffled slowly, struggling to find a rhythm that would work for all three. Gabe did his best not to wail with every half-step; Brad and Bobby leaned, lunged, and worked against the sheer size of the boy. They swayed from side to side, teetering and seeking balance.
They got him to the front door, and they got the door open.
“Lock it behind us, Dahl,” Gabe called.
“Why?” she asked, running up behind them with one of the big lanterns. “Anyone dumb enough to go inside gets what he deserves. Come on, let’s go.”
She followed them onto the porch, worrying every inch of the way. Gabe was maybe six foot four, and 280 pounds if he was an ounce. His father was a couple inches shorter and a couple stones lighter. Brad was not a great deal larger than Dahlia herself.
By the time they’d reached the top of the porch steps—standing at the edge, where sheets of rain cascaded down around them—everyone had reached the same conclusion, but no one wanted to say it out loud. Brad surrendered, and said it first: “This isn’t going to work. We’ll never get him all the way to the truck.”
“Shut your mouth!” Bobby hollered over the downpour.
But Gabe shook his head. “No. He’s right. I can’t do this. Y’all can’t do this. Sit me down, for chrissake. My feet won’t hold me. My ankles. My … whatever.”
Brad was all too happy to comply, and even Bobby lowered Gabe reluctantly, but without complaint. Brad’s arms were quivering. They hadn’t gone thirty feet, and there was at least a quarter mile left to go.
“What about a wheelbarrow? A dolly?” Dahlia suggested desperately. “We could strap you in, and roll you down to the trucks like Hannibal Lecter.”
“Through this weather?” Bobby asked, waving at the curtain of water, then down at the flooded lawn. He was right, and she knew it. The yard wasn’t just covered in puddles; it was submerged in ponds.
“We have to get him to the truck! We have to try. It’s only water.”
“It’s a swamp out there,” Brad argued, “and it’s getting worse.” He rubbed at his upper arms to loosen them up, or warm them.
Dahlia refused to accept it. “Gabe, what if I get your legs—and the guys get your head and chest?”
Gabe’s pupils were huge with the dim, wet light, and with abject agony. He answered her with a question. “What do you weigh, Dahl? A buck thirty?”
“I’m stronger than I look, and the trucks are only on the far side of the stone pillars.”
“Only?” Brad squeaked.
“You got any better ideas?” she snapped.
He snapped back, “No, I don’t!”
“Then we can’t stay here,” she insisted. “The ambulance will meet us at the road.”
Bobby held up his hands, signaling an idea—for good or ill. “Wait, what if I go first and flag it down? Maybe they have a wheelchair, and they can come get him…”
“You think they could get a wheelchair through this mess?” Brad asked, half incredulous, and half hopeful.
Dahlia squinted out through the rain. Another flash of lightning showed the ruts that they’d been using for a driveway. There was gravel under that water, and she could see the grass and stones peeking through. “No, but they’ll have a stretcher, or a backboard, or something—and extra hands to help. If they ever get here.”
Brad ran his hands through his hair, smearing it back from his forehead. “They can’t just not come. It’s 911. That’s not how it works.”
She handed him the lantern. “The whole county is in an uproar, and we’re in the queue. That’s all they would promise. Bobby? Go ahead and make a run for it. You can wave them down and it’ll save us time, if they’re having trouble finding the place. The cop knew where we are, but God only knows about the EMTs. You got your phone?”
“Yeah.”
“Go get a Ziploc bag for it. If your cell gets waterlogged, it won’t do you any good.” Dahlia went back and pushed the front door open with her foot, then bobbed her head toward the kitchen. “You’ll find some baggies in the blue cooler.”
While Bobby ran inside, Dahlia and Brad did their best to make Gabe comfortable, not that it was really possible anymore. At best, they could prop him up against the side of the house, make sure he wasn’t sitting on any rocks or acorns, and
put a couple of bags under his feet. He said it felt a little better. Dahlia couldn’t imagine how it made a difference, and wondered if he was only saying so because everyone was trying so hard to help. It would be just like him, to say whatever he thought would make people happy.
Bobby emerged with his cell phone sealed in a clear plastic bag. He crammed it into his back pocket. “All right, I’m out of here.”
“Don’t you want an umbrella?” Brad asked.
He said no with a jerk of his chin. “It won’t do much to keep me dry, and it’ll slow me down, to boot.”
“Call us when you get to the truck,” Dahlia begged. “Even if there’s no ambulance, call and let us know you got there okay.”
He nodded, zipped his jacket up, and popped his collar. He jammed his favorite trucker hat on his head, hunkered down, and dashed down the stairs, and out into the rain.
Bobby didn’t exactly vanish into the storm. His retreating silhouette shuffled back and forth as he sprinted around the deeper puddles, over the mounds of monkey grass, and past the rivulets that were turning into gullies before their eyes. He was still visible, if Dahlia squinted, until he rounded the bend that would lead to the gravel ruts and the stone pillars and then the road—where the trucks were parked off to the side. As she watched the yard fill with water and runoff from the mountain behind them, she silently thanked God that they’d moved the trucks before it got this bad. The guys had been right. The vehicles would’ve been stuck up to their axles by now.
Brad wrapped his arms around himself and shivered. “Now what?”
“Now we wait, and see what Bobby says when he gets there.”
“Dahlia?” Gabe asked from his reclined position beside the steps.
“Yes, baby? How you doing? Hanging in there?”
“Yeah, but … do you have any … I don’t know. Tylenol or something? We have a regular old first-aid kit, right?”
She nodded vigorously. “Yes, we do. But the kit’s all packed up, so I’m not sure where it is right now. Let me pull my purse out from under your foot, and I’ll give you some of my own.” She always kept a little pouch full of tampons, Band-Aids, antibiotic cream, and generic painkillers on hand.