Page 88 of Desperate Creed

“You sure you’re okay?” Frankie asked.

By now, some of the others were sending beams of light over the area. It was difficult to see around the collapsed debris. Maggie stepped carefully, trying to make her way to Frankie. The woman was still on the bench but one of her legs had slid off. She saw Frankie trying to lift the leg back up out of the water.

“Let me help you,” Maggie said. Gently, she readjusted her.

Frankie was biting her lower lip, making it bleed. The pain had to be severe, still, she pointed to Maggie’s forehead and said, “You’re bleeding.”

Maggie wiped at the sweat on her face. When she brought her fingers back, she saw blood. It didn’t hurt. It was probably the cut from the first storm. She’d worry about it later.

Now that she had her bearings, she shot her cell phone’s flashlight toward the stairs to see if the door had, at least, blown off. She waved the light back and forth then up and down before she realized the stairs were gone. In their place was something huge and stainless steel.

That’s when she noticed a jagged hole in the ceiling. She could feel fresh air coming down from it, but there was only black on the other side. She shut her light off and tried to focus on the hole. She stared until she was convinced the dotted black was sky.

Yes, black sky with stars!

And she heard something or someone up above. Voices and engines.

Please be engines and not another storm.

She started looking for anything sturdy to help her crawl up, but quickly wondered if she could do that with only one hand.

Now, she noticed streams of lights up above.

“Is that lightning?” Frankie asked. She was searching the same spot.

From the other side of the debris pile, a woman’s voice cried out, “Oh no! I think she’s dead.”

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The closer they walked the more Creed thought the site looked like a giant meteor had hit the area. Trucks with generators pulled in front of them. Paramedics and firefighters were using headlights to find their way around the wreckage.

Creed remembered earlier there had been a concrete foundation along with a couple sections of teetering walls. And in the middle, right on top, the 18-wheeler had sprawled across the area, crumpled and surrounded by blue barrels tossed everywhere. Now there wasn’t a sign of the truck or the trailer. And there was absolutely nothing that resembled a restaurant or even walls.

“There was a fire,” Creed said to Trooper Sykes. Night had sneaked in around them, and in the stark light from the vehicles he couldn’t tell whether the crater was scorched. “Did the fire do this?”

“Someone tried to set a fire. The HAZMAT team had sprayed foam on any of the spilled fuel.”

“But there were barrels. Were they flammable?” Creed asked.

“That’s what the arsonist must have thought.”

“Vinegar and tomato sauce,” someone said from behind them.

They turned to find Sheriff Krenshaw.

“In the barrels?” Sykes asked.

“Yep. Turns out those blue barrels are made of some poly-something-or-another that makes it safe to ship acidic foods. The asshole who tried to start them on fire didn’t know that. Actually, I didn’t know that until a few hours ago.”

Creed couldn’t take his eyes off the crater. Dust still filled the air. Pieces of debris floated in the streams of light.

“Have you heard anything from your friends?” Krenshaw asked.

“No. Nothing.”

Creed shifted his feet, anxious to run to the edge and start pulling stuff off the piles. His jaw hurt from clamping it tight for too long. The panic churned in his stomach. Was it possible for anyone to survive that?

As if the sheriff could read his mind, he said, “They’ve already pulled two bodies from the wreckage. I don’t know anything more than that, right now, but I thought you should know.”