Chapter 22

Kelly dreamt that she was riding in a small fishing boat in the middle of a massive storm. The boat was purple. The waves were pink and they seemed to reach the sky. Her stomach tightened as seasickness threatened to overtake her. She was trying to find a life preserver that fit her, but her breasts were so huge that all of them were too small. Throughout her search, the boat seemed to rock in every direction.

She was shaken awake by Ed. He was shouting, “Get up, Kelly.”

She sat up thinking she must still be dreaming. The floor was moving and then it hit her. She screamed, “Earthquake!”

Beth and John were seated on the floor getting calmly dressed. They seemed to be in no hurry. Ed saw that Kelly was awake and handed her some clothes. She accepted them and started dressing. She was rushing and tripping over herself as she struggled to stand on the moving floor and pull on her jeans.

Ed looked around at the room and laughed. He said, “John, you’re right. This is the safest place to be. I bet this place has survived a hundred earthquakes.”

John shot a serious look at Ed and said, “Exactly.”

“What now?”

“There are people that need our help.”

It didn’t take long for them to get ready. The floor finally stopped moving. John went to the front door and opened it. The four of them walked out. They were greeted by the sounds of sirens and the screams of panicked people. John looked down the walkway and saw addicts streaming out of the rooms. Another couple that had rented a room for a morning tryst had run out naked and screaming.

John motioned to the man with whom he had talked to the previous day. The guy came running over with a freaked out look on his face. John turned to him and said, “I can use your services now. Collect all of the pain killers, amphetamines, and sedatives that you can find.”

He turned to Beth and Kelly. “We need the first aid supplies.”

He turned to Ed and pointed to the street. He asked, “Can you look up and down the street to identify where the problems are the worst?”

As everyone went to perform his or her individual tasks, John stood there and watched. He knew that this was going to be big, but as he looked around, he realized that he hadn’t known how big. Bridges had collapsed, buildings had fallen, and fires were burning some of the smaller structures. People wandered around in a state of shock. A large number of them had minor injuries. He quickly loaded their stuff into the back of his Jeep.

The first one to return was the Hispanic. John turned to him and said, “I’m John Carter.”

The guy looked at him in surprise and replied, “I’m Juan.”

John laughed and said, “John and Juan! What are the odds?”

Juan asked, “So what do you want all of this stuff for?”

John said, “You see those two women there?”

“Yes.”

“They are the most important people in the world to me. One is a doctor and the other is a nurse. They are coming with Ed and me, but they will stay in the street treating people that we pull out of the buildings. I want you to stay with them and protect them. When they need medicine, provide what you can.”

Juan looked around for a moment and then replied, “Yeah, man. Sounds good to me.”

John nodded and said, “Good. They’re back. Let’s go.”

Ed pointed down the street and said, “There are a bunch of apartments down that way. I suggest that we go that way.”

As they passed each building, John and Ed checked them out for possible victims. At the door of a lawnmower repair shop, they heard a moan from inside. The door was locked, but John broke it down. Inside, an overweight man was trapped under a shelf that had fallen. Ed and John knelt down and removed the engines from the shelf until it was light enough to lift off the man. They lifted the shelf off him and he slowly stood up. He couldn’t stand without support. Ed helped the guy out the door and set him down on the ground away from the shop. Beth came over and performed a quick inspection. She turned to Juan and said, “I need a pain killer.”

Juan handed over a pill to Kelly. Kelly looked at the pill and exclaimed, “Damn, we don’t have any water.”

The man on the ground said, “I have a large thermos in the shop and bottled water. Take it.”

John had just come out of the building. He went back inside. After searching for a few minutes, he found the thermos. It contained black coffee. He poured a cup and drank it down quickly. He then poured the rest out. He filled the thermos with water from the water cooler. He was about to leave when he noticed a stack of paper cups. He grabbed those as well. Exiting the building, he handed the stuff to Kelly. Juan took it out of her hands and said, “Kelly, I will carry this for you.”

Kelly smiled at him and said, “Thank you, Juan.”

In a short time, the man had been medicated. Beth wrote out a note that stated his vital signs, her diagnosis, the medication that had been given him, and the time at which she had been there. She signed the note with the phrase, ‘John Carter Rescue Squad.’ Then she gave the note to the man and told him to give it to the EMS personnel when they arrived.

While the women were busy with the guy from the lawn mower repair shop, Ed and John went to the next building. There was no one there. They went to the next building. There were several people inside. They had been outside, but had returned into the building to check out the damage. John and Ed went inside and told everyone to get out of the building because they could expect aftershocks. The women caught up with them and checked out the people. She sent them down to the other guy to keep him company until an ambulance showed.

Ed and John went to the next house just as another tremor hit. They could hear screams from inside the house. The movements were too violent to move, so they just lay down until they stopped. Once the tremors stopped, John looked up at the house and saw smoke. He shouted, “Ed, stay out here. When I find someone, I’ll come to a window, and call out for you. I’ll lower them to you and you set them on the ground out of harms way.”

Ed replied, “Anything you say boss.”

John ran in the building. It was already filling with smoke, but he was well away from the flames. They were localized to the kitchen so far. He came across a middle-aged woman unconscious in the living room. He pulled her to the front door. He yelled to Ed, “Come get her.”

Ed came in and pulled her out of the house. John went deeper into the building. There was a bedroom along the hall and two kids were inside. He broke out the window and yelled out, “Ed!”

Ed came charging around the corner. John lowered the first kid to Ed and turned around to get the other. He then lowered the next kid to Ed. He shouted, “There are still screams coming from the second floor.”

John disappeared into the bowels of the house. It took him a minute to find the stairs. The smoke was getting thick. It was beginning to obscure his vision. He turned on the light of his walking stick. Climbing upstairs, the smoke got even thicker. He heard cries in one of the rooms. He entered it and closed the door behind him. There were three kids in this room. He went to the window and looked out. The window opened onto the roof of the attached garage. He broke out the window and helped the kids onto the roof. He shouted, “Ed, over here!”

Ed came around the corner and looked up. He shouted, “Lower them as much as you can and then let go. I’ll catch them.”

The three kids were quickly lowered to the ground. John shouted, “Are there more people in here?”

Ed asked one of the kids how many kids were in the house. He was told there were seven. He shouted up to John, “I think there are two more.”

John ran to the window he had knocked out and climbed back into the house. He checked under the bed in the room and the closets. He went out the door and dashed across the hall to the next room. It was empty. There was one more room on this level. He dashed into it finding one little girl scared to death. He asked if there was anyone else in the room. She pointed under the bed. He looked under the bed and spotted the other child. He pulled him out from under the bed. He ran to the window and looked out. It was a full two-story drop. He picked up the kids and headed to the first bedroom. Flames were licking their way up the stairs. They went through the broken window. He shouted, “Ed.”

Ed was where he had been standing. He shouted, “I’m here. Have you got them?”

“Yeah,” replied John. He lowered the kids to Ed. Once Ed had put the last kid on the ground, John handed his walking stick to Ed. He swung off the roof and dropped to the ground. Taking his walking stick back, they led the kids around to the front of the building.

Beth looked up from her patient and said, “She’s concussed. There’s nothing I can really do here. I’ve wrapped the head wound and written a note explaining her condition. I also wrote a second note for her in case she wakes.”

“Ok.” John said even as he headed to the next building. He left Juan to explain to the kids that they needed to stay with their mother.

They had finally reached the apartments. It was a two-story building. Half of the rooms on the top floor had collapsed into the first floor. John looked at Ed and said, “This is going to get messy.”

“No doubt about that in my mind.”

While John and Ed broke into apartments and pulled injured people out of the building, Beth and Kelly were busy taking care of the injured. Juan dispensed the medicine as requested and made sure that no one threatened the two women. He had watched John race into the burning building and it had amazed him. He watched now as both men darted into and out of buildings. In some cases, the buildings collapsed as soon as they left them.

They ran out of water very quickly. He handed the pills to the Kelly and told her that he would return. Kelly looked at the bag of pills and couldn’t make out which was which. It was about ten minutes later that he returned with a large toy wagon loaded with several cases of 20 ounce bottled water. Kelly looked up at him and asked, “Where did you get that?”

Juan shook his head and said, “Can you believe the 7-11 is still open? I told him that it was an emergency, but the bastard took every dollar I had.”

Kelly answered, “Don’t worry. We’ll make it up.”

Juan said, “Hey, no need to do that. I’m not doing much to help. You gals are doing all the work.”

Beth listened while she patched up another victim. She said, “The drugs are helping tremendously. These people are in pain. I don’t know what we would do without you.”

Juan watched John and Ed dash into another room. He asked, “Can you believe how brave those two are?”

“If we didn’t need you here so much, you’d be right there with them.”

“No way. I’d be back at the hotel getting high right now.”

Kelly smiled and said, “But you aren’t, are you?”

“No, I’m not.”

The conversation was interrupted by a shout from John, “We’ve got a bleeder!”

Beth jumped up and ran over to them. They were staggering as they tried to carry the woman and keep pressure on the wound. Running, she shouted, “Bring the supplies.”

Juan had already grabbed the supplies and was right behind her. Kelly grabbed a couple of bottles of water. As soon as Beth reached John, they set the person down. An artery was squirting blood despite the pressure that John was applying to it. Beth took charge, “Juan, put your hand here and press as hard as you can.”

Juan did what he was asked. She ripped clothes off around the cut and frowned. She turned to Kelly and said, “I need a needle with suture. There’s some in the bag.”

Kelly quickly satisfied her request and handed the needle to Beth. Beth started patching up the arm the best that she could. The three of them bent over the patient working feverishly. Beth would give instructions to Juan and he would do his best to follow them.

John ran back to the building and joined Ed in extricating another person from under some debris. It took them some time, but they finally got the person out. Both were sweating. They were exhausted from the heavy lifting. Weakly, they carried him to the sidewalk and told him that a doctor and nurse would be there soon.

Summoning what little energy they had left, they broke into the next apartment. Part of the ceiling had crashed down in front of a bathroom door. The door was open and a very overweight woman was shouting to them to get her out of there. She was holding a towel in front of her, but it barely covered her. Ed went into the bedroom and found some clothes. He returned and threw the clothes to the woman. Dressing seemed to calm her down tremendously. The two men studied the ceiling as it covered the door. They couldn’t see a way of removing it without causing the whole ceiling to collapse.

John asked the woman to describe the bathroom to him. She described the layout. The wall that was accessible from the apartment was blocked by a sink and toilet. Even if they broke through the wall, the woman wouldn’t be able to get out. The other side of the room was shared with the apartment on the other side of the building. John told Ed to stay there and talk to the lady.

He went to the other side of the apartment complex and broke into the apartment behind the one with the trapped woman. As soon as the door flew open, he realized the hopelessness of his task. The ceiling had collapsed in this apartment. He looked, but the only person he could find in the apartment was dead. He ran around the building and rejoined Ed. John said, “We are going to have to get some lumber and push the ceiling up and out of the way.”

They went out and searched through the rubble to find some appropriate boards. It took them some time, but they finally managed to find four 2 by 4’s of roughly the same length. They went back to the apartment and braced the ceiling with two of the pieces of wood. Then they applied the other two to push up the ceiling about an inch. They removed the first two leaving the others as the support. Inch by inch they raised the ceiling to where it was finally thirty inches off the floor. Bracing it with all four boards, they stepped back. John told the lady to lie down under the ceiling. He and Ed grabbed an arm each and pulled her out.

She followed John and Ed out to the street. The men collapsed. Juan came up to them with a pair of Cokes. He was covered in dried blood and looked almost as bad as some of the victims that they had pulled out of the building. He said, “Here, drink these. The doctor said that you needed water and sugar. This has both. I offered to get you some stimulants, but she said that might interfere with you later on today.”

The men drank the Cokes and took the time to recover their energy. They had visited almost three-quarters of the apartments on one side of the building.

Juan stood next to them and said, “You guys are working hard.”

“Thanks, Juan. How are things going over there?”

Juan looked at the ladies and said, “An ambulance has come by several times and taken away some of the worst cases. That doctor is amazing. The nurse seems to be able to read her mind and hands her stuff before she even asks for it.”

Ed nodded as he looked over Juan. He said, “Looks like you’ve been busy.”

Juan looked down at himself. The blood was dried, but he expected to be covered again shortly. For the first time in a long time, he felt proud of something that he had done. He looked up and said, “The ladies are doing most of the work. I’m just helping out where I can.”