He said to Heidi, “Did you telephone for help?”
“Yes. They’re on the way.”
“Good. Is the house open?”
“Yes,” said Heidi, thinking, We can’t stand here and chat. We have to do something. But what?
“I’ll start moving people up to the house,” he said.
He hauled a moaning woman to her feet. Putting her arm over his shoulder, he said to her, “Come on, walk, you have to, the rest of the plane is going to go, it doesn’t matter how much it hurts.”
The rest of the plane is going to go, she thought. That means the people in the fire are already gone. That means we have to get everybody here into Dove House. Now. I have to do it myself. Now.
She walked another ten feet and pulled a tree limb off the person touching her leg. “Can you walk?” she said.
“Yes,” said the woman. “Go help somebody else. I can make it to the house alone.”
The calm of these two passengers helped. It gave Heidi a train for her thought: Move people into the house.
Right.
Okay.
Start.
Heidi fell on a chrome pole. She staggered up. It was part of a liquor cart; tiny little bottles made a bumpy glass puddle.
She got over it, heading for the closest cry for help, but when she reached down to assist the person screaming, the person was dead. The screamer was beneath him. In the weird half-light of fire and moon and ice, the dead passenger was already a ghost. She tried to shift the body, but it was heavy and stuck to its seat. The seat itself was crushing the wounded person beneath.
“I’m coming,” said Heidi stupidly. “I’m here.”
She plucked and twitched, as weak as a butterfly, trying to get a handhold on the dead thing and its seat and finally came to her senses and just tipped it over. The person beneath was a little girl. A very little girl, with a leg bone sticking up into the air like a snapped broomstick.
Heidi had no idea what to do. None. She turned and screamed into the night “Hurry up!” Her scream blended with all the other screams, the screams for help, the screams in Spanish, the screams for Mama.
She looked at her watch. Three minutes had gone by since her phone call.
Only three minutes.
She was older by a decade. She was useless. She had no brain, no sense, no strength.
She did not know how to pick up a child whose bone stuck out through the flesh. “It’s okay,” she said idiotically to the child. “What’s your name?” she added, thinking, I’m insane, this is not a tea party.
“Teddie,” said the child.
Somebody crawled toward her. Heidi wanted to bolt, but instead she said, “Can you stand? I’ll get you up to the house.”
The person was drenched in blood. She had never seen so much blood; it was as if the person had just taken a shower. “It’s mostly not mine,” the person mumbled. “My leg, though. Crushed up into me.”
Heidi got her arms around the person; she couldn’t even tell what sex it was. “I’ll be back, Teddie,” she said. Like the last couple in a nightmarishly slow three-legged race, she and the bloody person hobbled up the hill until Heidi ran out of strength and just lay the person down again.
“More people are coming to help,” said Heidi.
But are they? It’s been hours.
She looked at her watch. Another minute had gone by.
One measly minute.
She tried to organize herself. Tried to think of a master plan here.
Twice she went back to the wreckage and twice moved a victim halfway up the hill.
I’m not doing the right thing, Heidi thought. But what is the right thing?
It was like a horrible test; an immense exam; she was failing; she had not worked her way through a single complete problem; people were dying and she was failing them.
I’m alone, Dear God, don’t let me be alone!
Where are they?
Make them come.
Saturday: 5:44 P.M.
Nobody was at the coffee shop. Patrick couldn’t believe it. What was the matter with this town?
“Go hang out with kids your own age,” said Noelle severely. Noelle knew everybody. She especially knew Patrick. She handed him a Pepsi as he left, winking. He winked back, although it embarrassed him; if Noelle had noticed that he could not manage coffee, had everybody else?
Okay, so now where did he go?
The girl he had been dating—if you could call it dating; the girl he usually met at things, and teamed up with, and had once kissed, but frankly he didn’t think kissing was so great; of course if he had been less nervous it might have been … Anyway, that girl was kissing somebody else these days, somebody either more interested or less nervous, and he disliked running into her. She always gave Patrick a smile he could not interpret. He emphatically did not want to run into her.
So he drove around instead of trying to find the action.
Patrick loved driving. Loved roads. Loved cars. Among the many things Patrick wanted to do with his life was surround himself with vehicles. Anything with wheels. Anything with engines.
He loved the act of driving: every detail, from putting the key into the ignition to steering around tight corners. He loved keeping perfect track of the traffic around him, the traffic approaching, the traffic coming up from behind.
He loved the interior of his truck.
The accessories: the scanner that was always on; the radio that was always on softer, so he wouldn’t miss any calls. He was dying for a car phone, but his parents simply looked amused when he brought it up. Patrick swore that when he had kids, he would never look amused.
It was his parents’ only flaw, though.
The scanner sang the four electronic notes of Nearing River Emergency, and Patrick turned his radio down even softer to listen. Icy rain tapped gently on the hood, the windshield wipers shunted back and forth, the engine throbbed. To Patrick they were a symphony: the sound of a boy wrapped in a car with a big engine.
“Nearing River personnel, reported plane crash in the north end of town. Unconfirmed. Location, woods behind private home called Dove House off Rockrimmon Road off Old Pond Meadow.”
It was Patrick’s mother. Her voice was completely calm. “Ambulance and fire personnel await confirmation.”
For Patrick, time did not include seconds and milliseconds. He did not debate choices. He just stepped on the gas and hauled hell for leather to Rockrimmon. He couldn’t be but a mile from there. “Whooo-eee!” said Patrick out loud, laughing. I’ll be first! he thought.
Rockrimmon was a very old road, cut through a rocky, high area. Few houses had ever been built there. Putting septic systems and wells into those ravines and ledges was either impossible or horrendously expensive. The road, however, was wrapped in manmade stone walls. Two or three hundred years ago, some poor slob had actually tried to farm up here.
Old Pond Meadow had been widened so school buses could manage the curves. Rockrimmon had not been widened. It seemed to Patrick that there was somebody taking the bus from there this year, though. The road’s name had come up at a meeting he’d attended with his parents, where they asked for Ambulance and Fire input on possibly widening Rockrimmon. It was one of those meetings meant to solve the world’s problems, but they got bogged down in something pointless and never decided anything.
Patrick used the call-back frequency, but not his name. He did not say, “Hey, Mom, so exactly where is this place?” In his radio voice—his smooth, un-Patrick, un-nervous voice—he said, “Please identify driveway location on Rockrimmon.”
Scanner listening was a big hobby in rural areas. That was one reason why you used codes on the air, so the entire world didn’t know what you were talking about. ’Course, the entire world knew the codes, too, but still nobody ever said, “We’re back at the barn and we put gas into the ambulance for the next run.” They said, “We’re 40.”
Everybody would be listening. Men and women all over the area would be zip
ping up snow jackets, grabbing gloves, racing for their cars, turning on the de-icers, turning on the strobe lights and the sirens, and heading toward their fire and ambulance stations. For a call like this, it didn’t matter whether you were signed up for duty or not; for a call like this, you were on duty.
His mother knew his voice, no matter how suave he tried to be, but she did not say, “Patrick! What are you doing over there, young man? You’re supposed to be …”
She said, “It’s exactly three eighths of a mile from the intersection with Old Pond Meadow. On your left. Two stone pillars and an open iron gate. Then a driveway also three eighths of a mile long.”
His adrenalin was pumping like nothing he had ever felt before. He hardly needed a vehicle; he could have run as fast; he hardly needed an engine; his heart could have moved the truck. He would never need sleep or food again. Arrival first on the scene would satisfy him forever.
The stone gate appeared, and now he recognized it. Peacock Place, they used to call it, because several times in past years when the peacocks had screamed their horrible dying wails, neighbors had called in that somebody in the woods was hurt.
Patrick turned into the private drive. The first reality hit him and his heart sank. The drive was too narrow for two-way traffic. An ambulance could get in, but there would have to be traffic monitors to get it back out.
He was not going to be a traffic monitor. No way on earth. Let some other poor Junior do that.
Patrick flew into the courtyard and jammed on the brakes, skidding to a halt with a satisfying rubbery screech.
He felt as if he were in a foreign country, with this immense bricked expanse to park on, this cold and frozen fountain, this crazy shingled house with tiny glittering windows, like postage stamps on a gray page.
There was nobody there.
For a moment he was outraged; furious; homicidal.
It was a joke, a game, he would kill whoever …
And then he smelled it: the fuel.
He heard it: the screams.
And he saw it: flames cresting the roof of the mansion.
Patrick jumped out of his truck and raced across the courtyard, losing his footing on the slippery brick. He hopped over a low stone wall and ran out onto the grass.
Below him lay the largest thing he had ever seen.
A huge plane.
Window after window after window: tiny rectangular black spots on an immense white body.
Like a Christmas card: gleaming white and winking colored lights.
For a moment Patrick could not identify why it did not really look like a plane. Then he realized that the section had no wing; the wing on his side had been torn away and was flaming hideously and noisily where it had fallen.
It was not the house that was on fire, nor was it likely to be. The distance was considerable and the ground between was rain-soaked.
Jet fuel, he thought. How many thousand gallons would they have on board? Depend if they were at the end or the beginning of the flight, I guess.
He remembered vaguely that you didn’t use water on fires from fuel. But he was not trained in the Fire Department; he didn’t really know anything about their techniques or equipment. Foam, he thought vaguely, and didn’t know if Nearing River was equipped for that or not.
Patrick had never been in a plane. He was stunned by the size of the thing: not so much the length as the breadth: the circumference of the smashed plane was unbelievable.
Remaining sections of the vast plane were upright: so high up that Patrick could not believe that, either; they would need two-story ladders to get people out.
Other parts of the plane littered the landscape like a Beirut bombing.
And eerily, an overlay of silhouettes; people were walking around down there.
People lived through that? he thought.
Patrick forced himself back to the truck. His legs were weak. He hated himself for those weak legs. He picked up his scanner and struggled to think of institutionally correct things to say. Nothing came to mind. “It happened, all right, Mom,” he said. “I think it’s a 747. It fills the whole field. And some of the woods. We’re gonna need everything we’ve got. It’s bad. Some of it’s already on fire.”
“Right,” said his mother, still calm. She made the calls without skipping a beat, including the Mutual Aid calls to every town in the area. If her son said they needed everything, she would call everything in.
Patrick left the truck, jumped over the stone wall again, and found himself with an elderly woman, obviously from the mansion, wearing a hooded, lined raincoat over a long pink bathrobe. She had forgotten about her feet and was still wearing fluffy little pink slippers. “Plane,” she whispered, pointing. “It’s a plane.” Putting one hand over her mouth, she made little, contained barks of horror.
Patrick knew how she felt. No amount of training had prepared Patrick for this. Accidents happen one or two people at a time; a single car; a single heart attack; a single fall downstairs.
We’re “the uh-oh squad,” thought Patrick. We have absolutely no idea what to do except stand there and go “uh-oh.”
Patrick had been trained as a First Responder. But he had never reached an accident or attended a patient without a crew of other, experienced people. He had never seen anybody who was burned.
Burned? thought Patrick. Incinerated.
He stared at the huge piece of plane and wing, which was the black center to screaming, frenzied flame.
He understood then what was screaming.
Not the fire.
I’m First, he thought, and for a moment he was entirely paralyzed.
Six
SATURDAY: 5:44 P.M.
Laura recognized the tone on Ty’s scanner instantly: the electronic singsong of their own frequency. Although she had been a volunteer only four months, she slid right into rescue mode: her body stiffened, her ears pulled ahead of the rest of her senses, she tuned out the rock tapes being played, the laughter and the talk. She absorbed the dispatcher’s voice.
“Plane crash,” it said. “All units.”
Patrick’s mother was on, a very calm woman, a woman Laura admired and wanted to be exactly like.
“Rockrimmon Road off Old Pond Meadow,” said Patrick’s mother.
Laura raised her eyes, bringing sight back into her world. She and Ty were the only rescue-squad people at this party. She didn’t even like Ty. Brains of a baked potato. “You have your truck?” she demanded. Of course he had his truck. A guy like Ty, he wasn’t a man without his wheels.
“Come on,” he said, “where’s your coat?”
They didn’t even remember the party; they were yanking on their coats as they dashed over the porch, down the steps. Ty’s truck was blocked in by several cars.
“Plane crash!” whispered Ty, shaking his head. He didn’t go back into the house to ask people to shift cars. He drove his truck right over the lawn instead, bumping over the curb and into the street. Ty loved doing stuff like that. Everybody suspected he was the one who did wheelies in the football field and ruined the turf each year, but nobody could prove it.
“Trucks,” he said proudly to Laura, meaning every complimentary thing there was about vehicles that ordinary obstacles couldn’t stop.
Ty’s truck sported enough lights to dock the QE II: a row of blinkers on the top of the cab, an interior light that spun in circles, flashers attached to both headlights and taillights.
“All units,” Laura told Ty, “does not mean you should signal outer space.”
Ty hated girls who put down his pride and joy. If they hadn’t been on the way to a crash, where duty called, he’d dump Laura by the roadside.
He didn’t let himself get bogged down in irritation at Laura. I’m not going to be immature just because she is, he thought, pleased that he was better than she was. He rehearsed in his head, going over procedures, eliminating panic, questions, and fear.
They whipped past traffic that pulled over to the right for them.
At two intersections, they met compatriots also rushing to the ambulance barn and the fire department. In a few minutes they were part of a veritable parade of volunteers.
“We’re Juniors,” said Ty briefly.
There was no need to amplify that.
Juniors ran the town by day. But it was night, and they would be elbowed out by every adult who showed up; and tonight, with this amount of excitement and desperate need, every adult was going to show. Adults that hadn’t contributed a single hour in years were going to show. People whose training certificates had run out during the Reagan Administration were going to show.
Anger stiffened Laura. Don’t you butt in ahead of me just because you’re older.
I won’t give them a chance, thought Laura. I’m going in no matter how old the people are ahead of me. So there.
Ty pulled into the correct entrance for the barn, so that departing ambulances wouldn’t end up fighting opposing traffic just to leave their own barn. Laura leapt out of the truck even as Ty was looking for a parking space. The first ambulance had left, the rescue truck had departed, the paramedic’s vehicle had left, but the second ambulance was still there. Laura raced over, praying to be the fourth, not caring in the slightest about Ty. She wanted a piece of the action, not a piece of hanging around hoping for a later ride.
“Fourth?” said the driver. He had the ambulance in gear, ready to roll; he was just waiting for a full crew. She could actually see the adrenalin behind his eyes, in the hand that gripped the wheel. A plane crash! They were all wildly excited.
“Fourth,” said Laura, leaping in back.