Page 61 of Desperate Creed

As Jason put Scout’s all terrain boots on, Creed applied a breathable wax balm to Grace’s pads. This, she allowed. It protected her from the hot asphalt and toxins, keeping her pads strong. But it wouldn’t protect her against sharp objects like Scout’s boots would. Creed had tried to put Grace in every kind of footwear available, even the less obtrusive ones that Dr. Avelyn, his veterinarian, had recommended. Grace didn’t resist having them put on. She didn’t chew or tug them off. No, she simply sat. She wouldn’t move. She refused to move.

They put the dogs’ vests on and attached short leashes. Creed checked the GPS devices to make sure the batteries were full before zipping one into the pocket of each dog’s vest.

Jason and Scout headed down one street. Creed and Grace took another. They agreed to meet back at the Jeep in an hour. The dogs would need a break. The sun was blazing hot and the air thick. The extra moisture from the storm made it difficult to breathe.

It amazed Creed how people reacted to dogs in a disaster zone. Dogs brought normalcy back to their lives. Some even stopped and asked to pet Grace, despite the shock in their eyes or the blood on their clothes. Grace’s presence, her prancing and genuine joy to get to work, also gave Creed a sense of calm. Still, he could feel the tension as the two of them walked through these very personal and private ruins of strangers. He couldn’t help but feel like a trespasser.

After a natural disaster, the primary search for first responders had to be for surface victims. It would keep them busy doing triage and getting survivors to hospitals. But Creed and Grace had to concentrate on those victims trapped, buried, or pinned beneath the crushing weight of their demolished homes.

Time was never on their side. Buildings compromised by the storm could collapse completely. It wasn’t just the structures they had to worry about. There were downed power lines, gas leaks and flooding. Life threatening injuries could quickly turn a rescue into a recovery.

“She must be in here,” a woman was screaming.

Two men teetered on top of a rubble pile that just hours before had been a house. They were ripping up layers of shingles, beams and drywall. They tossed down bent window frames with pieces of glass flying as the frames hit the pavement. The younger man stopped and waved at Creed.

“Mr. Creed. Deputy Mitch Huston. I was out at the interstate site yesterday.”

Without his uniform, Creed didn’t recognize the man. Truthfully, there had been dozens of responders, and he’d only met a handful, but he pretended to remember.

“This your neighborhood, deputy?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m across the street. We were lucky. Unbelievably lucky.” He sheepishly pointed to one of the houses that escaped damaged, survivor’s guilt already taking hold. “These are my neighbors, Bud and Alice.”

“My mom is somewhere in this mess,” the woman said to Creed, gesturing to him with a cell phone in her hand.

“She was home. I was talking to her on the phone when it hit. She’s in there somewhere.”

She tapped her phone’s screen and a few seconds later everyone stopped at the muffled sound of a phone ringing. It came from deep inside the debris pile. Creed could tell they’d already done this—call the number and listened to the ringing. They knew where they needed to dig, but now, they all stared at him, watching and waiting.

He ventured closer. Toward the back, another section of the house had collapsed into a mess of splintered boards and drywall. Creed found a tangle of clothes and shoes. Carefully, he tugged free a canvas tennis shoe. He held it up, showing it to Alice.

She was speechless, suddenly overcome with emotion. She simply nodded before he asked if it belonged to her mother.

“Hey, Mister.” It was Bud calling down to him. “No disrespect, but we could sure use a hand up here. It sounds like her phone is straight down underneath us.”

“Sir, hold on a minute,” Creed told him.

He squatted down in front of Grace. He presented the shoe to her, allowing her to sweep her nose over it. She sniffed the surface then dipped her nose inside. He could have chosen any of the woman’s clothing. If she had worn the item recently there would be skin rafts with her individual scent. But Creed trained his handlers to choose shoes if they had a choice. Few people laundered their footwear, so the scent stayed longer.

He could feel all three of them watching. Most of the time, he’d insist family members move away while his dog did her job. A family’s emotions could distract a scent dog. Sometimes people physically got in the way or simply asked too many questions. But last fall Creed had found himself in the position of being one of those family members and defending his right to be included. At the time, they were searching the graves of a madman and believed they might find the remains of his sister. So he knew how it felt to be pushed out of the way. For all he knew, Grace would alert to the exact spot where they were already digging and confirm the woman’s location.

But that wasn’t at all what Grace did.

She poked her nose in the air. Circled once. Then she turned her back on the mountain of debris and headed in the opposite direction.

45

Frankie felt the crushing weight but couldn’t see what was on top of her. There was a lot of scrambling in the dark. Flashes of blue light as people found their cell phones. Someone was crying. It was better than the screams from a moment ago. And the fact that she could hear again, should have brought relief that the storm above them had stopped. Actually, it had stopped so suddenly Frankie didn’t trust that it was finished.

“Are you okay?” Someone asked. Before Frankie could respond, someone else answered and she realized they weren’t talking to her.

Could anyone even see her? It was so dark she could hardly see. Her back was against the cold concrete floor. When had she fallen down? She tried to move and pain shot up her leg.

“Oh my God, you’re bleeding!”

This time the voice was too far away, and Frankie knew it wasn’t directed to her.

The chaos around her didn’t seem to include her at all. More flashes of blue and white light as more cell phones came on.