The dogs, however, did not get much chance to sleep.
They were walked in four teams of six-hour shifts, around the clock, twenty-four hours a day, trained to sniff out flesh, bark when they sensed a body.
They barked plenty.
Over the last few days, Jim’s team had found a total of thirty-seven souls at six separate sites. Of those thirty-seven, Jim figured around ten would live to see their next birthday. And half of those would be forever disfigured, a few horribly so. That’s what was under all this destruction, all the crushing weight of concrete versus flesh and bone, the remains of a lost battle in which the frail bodies of man stood no chance.
When the dogs began their morbid barking, Jim had been smoking and studying the pink and blue peaks of the Verdugo mountains, praying for a night of quiet as the red sun blazed in the west. But damn them, they had called for him again. Didn’t even get to Amen, he’d thought sourly.
Jim walked over as the engineer grappled the giant crane’s hook to the eye nut and cable they’d so gingerly drilled into the slab. The men all stood back and the dogs snarled and Jim yelled for them to be pulled back. The hoist creaked as the chain ratcheted slowly upward, servos straining against the immense weight. The slab lifted, and the first thing Jim noticed is that it wasn’t a flat slab, or a pillar, but a bearing pad with three feet of column still hinged to it. No, it wasn’t flat under there at all. It had a fat projecting middle, which greatly decreased the odds for whoever was down there rather significantly.
Jim stepped forward first, as was protocol.
That’s when he saw the hand, followed by the man it was attached to. Based on where that man’s body lay, the protrusion of the concrete pad must have been settled quite neatly into the square of his back.
Likely crushed him on impact, Jim thought, and spat.
“MEDICS IN NOW! Swing that slab, Tom,” he yelled, pointing at the large chunk of concrete hovering over their heads. “Swing it the fuck out of here.” When it was safely rotated away from the rescue crew, Jim took two steps closer to look at the man’s body, and knew he was long gone.
As the medics ran up behind him, Jim studied the surrounding debris and saw a flash of something else.
“We got two of ‘em,” he barked, yelling for the ambulance to drive up. One of the men asked if he’d need two ambulances, and Jim shook his head. He looked back toward the site, where the medics were rushing up the side of a wall of debris to inspect the man.
“There’s a dress,” he yelled at them. “A blue dress, right there. You see?”
One of the medics nodded and Jim turned, not wanting to see this part, his job done for now.
Two women in yellow jumpsuits ran by carrying a long wooden backboard painted bright yellow but stained and scuffed with blood and death.
More goddamn corpses, he thought, sad and tired. How many more days, he wondered, how many more hands would he see lifting themselves from the twisted skeleton of their newly broken world?
He turned to stare once more at the jagged, pastel-stained peaks and grimaced, hating their solidity.
MATTHEW’S FIRST SENSATION when being pulled back to consciousness was that the horrible weight on his back was gone. The second thing he noticed was the noise.
Was that... dogs? he wondered, somewhere in the soft fuzzy nowhere of his working mind. And machines?
Then: VOICES!
Matthew felt the sun’s warmth on his face, and his eyelids glowed so fiercely he was terrified to open them, fearing the severity of the open sky would blind him forever. Then, as if by some miracle he was too far gone to fully appreciate, there was someone there, squatting next to him, talking to him, asking him questions.
Matthew didn’t open his eyes, but he turned his head toward the voice. He opened his mouth and tried to say that Yes, he could hear them, and Yes, he was very much able to acknowledge that he was alive, if they could only help him up and perhaps get him some water.
Oh, and for the record, he thought numbly, I’m, uh, pretty badly hurt. He wasn’t sure how bad, but it was bad, and he preferred not to dwell on it. He also wanted to apologize for the vomit and shit and piss and blood that had been spat from his body in different ways, at different times.
What came from his mouth was more of a groan, and a breathy hiss.
“Jesus Christ, this guy’s alive!” a man yelled, a young man’s voice. He sounded thrilled, and Matthew felt so good that hear that he was truly alive. Hallelujah, boy-o!
“Listen, mister, we’re gonna get you help, okay?”
Matthew heard another voice, this one from a little further away, as if he were standing over his body, looking down at him.
“Gary, his foot! Christ.”
There was a scramble of activity. Cases were being unclasped and something pinched into the inside of his arm. Hands were on him now, and he could hear the snipping sounds of his suit being cut off his body.
“Hey sir, my name is Gary, and I’m here to help you,” the young man said, his voice breathless and excited. “We’ve given you an IV which will get you fluid, okay?”
The voice was so assured, so positive, Matthew felt instantly better, safer. He wished he could have nodded in agreement, but that didn’t seem possible at the moment.
“Now listen close, okay sir? We’re gonna roll you onto your back. Just to be safe, we’re gonna do it nice and slow. We don’t want to move you too much but we’ve got to get you onto the board so we can carry you, all right? Does that sound okay to you?”
Matthew said nothing but did open his eyes. The light was very bright, and it did hurt, but it wasn’t so bad. He could make out shapes, blurry legs and a blue sky.
“There you are. Stay with me, okay? Stay with me. You’re gonna be fine. We’re gonna roll you... Bob, you ready? Yeah? Okay, we’re gonna roll you now. Just let us do everything, you lie still and try to relax.”
Gary felt his body roll, and the relief was trumped only by the intense pain. He opened his mouth to scream, but could only gag.
“You’re shittin’ me,” the second man said, and Matthew wondered what he was so upset about.
