Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 91438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
I laughed. “You know,” I said as he stripped my shorts from me, “this car is my brother’s pride and joy.”
“Well your brother’s pride and joy is about to become our fuck stand,” he muttered, and then he was on me.
Chapter 11
If a man says he will fix it…he will. There’s no need to remind him every six months.
- Coffee Cup
Sawyer
Despite the way Silas was able to keep my mind off the storm that raged on outside, our town, as well as the surrounding towns, was hit hard.
Really hard.
I drove to work in my now very dented car, and I pulled into Dr. Zack’s office lot to see a flurry of activity.
I parked in the back of the lot where the employees had been told to park, and walked into the office, straight into total pandemonium.
“What’s going on?” I asked Joanie.
Joanie, who was standing at the front door, her back holding it open, lifted her head to me and visibly wilted.
“We’re swamped. Zack asked me to send you straight to the back, but you’ll have to walk around the building. There are so many people and dogs here right now that you won’t be able to make it through.”
Giving the crowd one last look, I hefted my bag on my shoulder once more and started to walk through the damp grass around the building.
The building itself was just plain brick. There were only three windows in the entire place, which meant Zack’s office didn’t get hit as hard as he probably could have.
The road to work today had been perilous.
Two of the roads had still been under water.
One had been inaccessible due to a downed power line and there had been so much debris scattered about that I’m sure I looked like a crazy person with all the swerving I had to do to get around the stuff.
I wasn’t risking running it over, though.
That would’ve been just what I needed, to run something over, getting stuck on it or getting a flat and not making it to work on time.
“Sawyer!” Zack called. “Hurry!”
I picked up my pace, moving back through the lot toward Zack, who was in his truck.
“Hey!” I said, stopping at his open window, “what’s going on?”
He shook his head as he ran a hand over his weathered and tired face.
“The tornado that hit Dixie was bad. I’m headed there now to see what assistance I can offer.” He pointed toward the front. “I’ve already got people bringing in animals that they’ve found. I’ve called in my old partner, Bane. He’s going to handle the practice and help anyone who comes in today. You wanna go with me?”
He looked so hopeful that I really couldn’t tell him no.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, circling around the front of the truck.
I smiled when I saw Zack’s Labrador Retriever, Belly, in the front seat.
“Hey there, big girl,” I cooed as I scooted her over and sat next to her.
“You’re going to put her back into action?” I asked hopefully.
He nodded.
Belly was a retired police dog.
Her specialty was finding things, like one would use a Blood Hound.
Belly had been hurt two years ago during another storm similar to this one, and she’d been temporarily retired while she got back into fighting shape.
Even now she walked with a slight limp, one she sustained when the house she’d been searching caved in around her.
“If you’re game, I’d like you to take Belly. I already know I’m going to be busy with a lot of triaging,” Zack said as he pulled out of the parking lot, giving a wave in Joanie’s direction.
“What?” I asked in surprise.
He nodded. “Yeah, I’m going to be helping with the animals coming in to the shelter. You can take Belly and start wherever the police direct you two, once it’s been deemed safe though.”
Holy shit.
Belly was attached to Zack’s hip.
It absolutely floored me that he’d willingly give me the responsibility of handling Belly.
“Are…are you sure?” I asked with hesitantly.
Zack tossed me a grin. “Yeah, I’m sure. You’re pretty awesome, girlie. You’ll do just fine.”
I highly doubted that.
I’d never seen anything like this level of destruction, though, and I was really nervous.
Adding responsibility for Belly to the mix made me feel positively nauseous.
The ride to Dixie, Louisiana was relatively short – less than a fifteen-minute drive – which further drove home just how bad it could’ve been for our little town.
How lucky we had been that the tornado hadn’t formed just ten miles south.
“Okay,” Zack said, pulling in to park in the bank’s parking lot. “Let’s go. I’ll introduce you to the incident commander, and we’ll go from there, okay?”
I nodded, following Zack and Belly.
My eyes, which I imagine mirrored the haunted expression I wore, were scanning all around me as I took in the destruction.
“My God,” I breathed. “Oh, my God.”
Trees were uprooted, large ones that I couldn’t even fit my arms around.
Park benches that’d been bolted to the ground, gone. Laying as if they’d been carelessly tossed to the side, twisted into scraps of metal that no longer resembled a bench and never would again.
Signs hung haphazardly from their perches. Letters and numbers missing off of the remnants of what once were the buildings of downtown Dixie.
Only one of the buildings was still standing, relatively intact.
The only thing that was really there, were the roads.
And even those were ripped up in some places.
“Yeah, this isn’t my first rodeo, but this one is pretty bad. I’d bet it was an F-3,” Zack muttered, stepping over what appeared to be a car’s bumper.
My stomach was in knots.
How could a town of this size ever come back from something like this?
And if I wasn’t mistaken, an F-3 was at the middle of the scale, a scale that ran up to F-5. My God, I couldn’t even begin to imagine how it could have been any worse.
“There’s the command tent,” Zack said, interrupting my contemplation.
I looked up in time to see a rather large firefighter dressed in bunker gear shouting out orders to men and women alike.