Page 24 of Desperate Creed

Southern Alabama

(50 miles south of Montgomery)

For the last several miles Ryder Creed had to swerve around pieces of debris in the road. He first noticed trees stripped of their leaves, and in some instances, stripped of their bark, too. In two spots he had to stop and remove fallen branches, once pulling out his chainsaw. Electrical poles leaned, wires dangled and swung in the breeze. Then he started seeing not just branches, but whole trees, shoved onto their sides exposing tentacles of roots. It looked like a giant had plucked them out of the ground and flung them aside.

From the road, Creed saw pine trees snapped in two. Rows and rows of them. An entire forest gone. He could see the horizon that was normally blocked. This area of southern Alabama was thick with pine, pecan and century-old oaks. Sometimes the kudzu grew so thick it netted the trees together. He’d seen the invasive vine take over and swallow abandoned sheds and rusted old tractors, covering them like a blanket of green. But all of that was gone now, sucked up and leaving broken stumps in puddles of muddy water.

He came around a curve and slammed on the brakes. The asphalt buckled in front of him. Huge swatches were gone, puzzle pieces chiseled out, leaving behind crumbs. The ditches ran full and in places overflowed across the highway filling the deep gouges.

Creed looked up in the rearview mirror. He’d insisted Grace stay in her crate instead of sitting in her regular spot on the folded bench behind him. The hard-shell was placed in the middle with the door facing forward, so she could still look over the Jeep’s center console and get air from the vents.

“What do you think, Grace?”

She was standing, staring out the windshield. She glanced at him and sniffed the air. She was ready to get to work. That the landscape looked like an explosion had ripped through the area wouldn’t bother her. Creed had worked after hurricanes and mudslides, but this...this reminded him of Afghanistan.

Creed kept the Jeep idling and the A/C blasting. The clouds had disappeared. The rain had washed the sky blue, but now the sun added even more heat and moisture. He kept the radio tuned to a local news station, listening for updates along with weather forecasts, not deceived by the sudden lack of clouds. When he used the chainsaw earlier, he could taste the salt and humidity in the air. The storms weren’t over. This was only the calm in between.

He checked his vehicle’s GPS. A portion of Interstate 65 was still closed, so he’d taken this alternative. Highway 31 ran parallel. He was surprised no one else had been through then he remembered that most of the first responders would be coming from the other direction, down from Montgomery.

He knew this area well enough to know that there were only a few straight routes. The unpaved back roads twisted, curved and looped adding extra miles. Most of them were dirt and gravel surface, sometimes more clay than dirt. If the tornado had chewed up and spit out asphalt, it had probably made a rutted mess of the others.

“Hang on, girl,” he told Grace as he backed up a short ways and scanned the highway beyond this buckle. There was more debris up ahead, but after this section at least the asphalt looked smooth again. Finally, he decided the Jeep could handle it.

The next five miles included two more stops to clear sheet metal and to cut more branches. As he got closer to the Interstate 65 junction he started seeing more debris, bigger pieces he could identify. He almost wished he couldn’t. A car door, a twisted bumper, sections of chain-link fence, chunks of roof, scattered bricks.

Further along, instead of pieces there were piles: shredded metal, a billboard stuck in a tree, a six-story cell tower bent in half. Then he started seeing the vehicles: toppled, smashed and ripped apart.

Creed had seen traffic accidents. Pile-ups on the interstate. Vehicles rolled and upside down in the ditch. But the scene around him now looked like nothing he’d seen before. Except maybe in Afghanistan.

In the field to his right, a stock trailer had been tossed and now laid on its side. Cows were being coaxed out of the wreckage. Except for a few stumbles, they looked fine. He checked his rearview mirror and saw Grace watching the cattle.

“They seem to be okay,” he told the dog. “How is that possible?”

The cab wasn’t there, and Creed’s eyes scanned the field, the toppled trees, and debris. Pink cotton candy clung to the leafless branches of a giant oak that managed to remain standing, the tree a beacon in the now stripped horizon. A large piece of metal wrapped around the trunk, and Creed felt his stomach twist when he recognized what was once a chrome grille and bumper.

He shook his head. Mother Nature’s cruel irony—the cattle walked away unscathed, but the driver of the rig? Creed couldn’t imagine anyone inside that cab had survived.

He glanced back at Grace. Her nose bobbed, sniffing and watching. There would be too much scent. Blood and death dragged, scattered and flung. He’d worked a couple hurricanes and a mudslide. It was difficult in natural disasters like this where rescues quickly turned into recoveries. As a multi-scent dog Grace had been trained to find the lost as well as the dead. She could also sniff out cocaine and meth, C. diff and the bird flu. Two years ago, Creed and Grace had made national headlines when a search for drugs on a commercial fishing boat turned up a drug cartel’s second cargo. Grace had made the discovery under a hull filled with mahi-mahi. Instead of cocaine, she’d alerted to five children stashed under the floorboards. The cartel had kidnapped them and were planning on trafficking them.

Even Creed had been amazed with his dog and the fact that she could smell the children under the big fish that were stacked three-feet-deep. Ironically, the word “fish” was the search term he and Grace used for drugs. Asking her to find fish in a crowded airport drew less attention and panic.

But now, as Creed pulled the Jeep to a stop, he was overwhelmed by the devastation in front of him. He realized how difficult this task would be. Grace would need his help. He’d need to give her direction without hampering her.

Survival time after a disaster like this would be a narrow window. Yet, he couldn’t ask Grace to ignore the dead for the sake of finding the living, because there wouldn’t be much distinction in the scent. This soon after the tornado, blood was still blood. And it could have been dragged or flung far away from where the body might have ended up. More than ever, Creed would need to follow the number one piece of advice he gave all of his handlers. He needed to trust his dog.

First, he checked to see if he had cell phone reception. He promised to text Hannah when he arrived. But more than that, he needed to ask her to send Jason and Scout. In the distance, he could see the glint off metal and glass. Vehicles were flung in every direction. It looked like a giant had tossed his entire collection of matchbox cars. There was no way Creed and Grace would be able to do this alone.

18

Birmingham, Alabama

Willis Dean glanced up to see Mia Long standing in front of his desk. He’d retreated to his messy office just a few minutes ago. They’d gone off the air after the last watch and warning expired, but Willis couldn’t stop looking at the photos coming in. He’d been concerned about s and grateful none of the area schools had been hit. But he hadn’t considered the interstate.

Crumpled vehicles had been tossed and scattered over the fields. Debris littered the area, pieces strung from the few trees that were still standing. At the interstate junction, piles of brick and boards, glittering glass and more smashed trucks and cars were all that remained from what was once a gas station, fast food restaurant and convenience store. From the aerial drone photos, he wondered how in the world anyone had survived.

“Four dead,” he said, shaking his head.

“It’s a wonder there weren’t more,” Mia told him.