Red Rain

13

“Let go of me! Please! Don’t hurt me!” Lea cried.

Mumbling crazily to himself, the man dragged her to a pile of boards and stones. His eyes were wild, bulging wide, his gaze darting from side to side. He didn’t seem to hear her cries.

He’s gone crazy from the storm.

What does he plan to do to me?

Then she saw the bare-chested boy, a stream of long hair hanging down over his face. His mud-drenched shorts clung to his hips as he bent over a pile of rubble. He appeared to be struggling with something in the pile.

As the man pulled her nearer, Lea heard the shrill screams. And saw the openmouthed, terrified face of a woman peering up from below a ragged crisscross of boards.

The boy had her by the hands and was tugging with all his strength, crying and tugging, trying to free her from beneath the caved-in house. The woman tossed her black hair wildly, her head tilted back in pain, and she shrieked in agony.

“Help,” the man grunted, letting go of Lea. He motioned toward the screaming woman. “Help me.”

He lifted the boy out of the way. He gave Lea a gentle push and motioned for her to take one of the woman’s flailing hands.

I must have been the first person he saw. He’s obviously in a total panic.

She gripped the woman’s hand tightly. It felt cold and damp, like a small drowned animal. She gave the hand a gentle squeeze-and the woman screamed.

Startled, Lea dropped the hand and jumped back. Her heart was pounding in her throat. She had to open her mouth to breathe.

Don’t panic. You can do this.

The man motioned Lea to grab one corner of a slab of drywall. Lea grabbed it. They tugged in unison and managed to slide it a few inches off the woman’s chest.

The woman shrieked and wailed, batting her head from side to side.

Lea pulled up on a broken two-by-four. The man grabbed it from her and heaved it aside.

Then he turned back to the woman and wrapped his big hand around hers. The woman screamed again. Lea knew she’d hear these screams in her nightmares. Screams that seemed to have no end.

The man gave Lea a signal with his eyes. Working in unison, they forced the woman nearly to a sitting position. Then the man reached behind her back. Lea took her hands and gave a hard pull. With a moan of pain, the woman rose up, rose up in Lea’s hands. Rose up. .

Lea heard a wrenching sound. Like fabric tearing.

She gasped as the woman came stumbling out, falling toward her. Her face showed no relief. In fact, it twisted into a knot of agony. She pulled her hands free from Lea and shrieked in an inhuman animal wail: “My leg! My leg! My leg! My leg!”

Lea gasped. The woman was balanced on one leg. Blood poured from an open tear in her other side.

“Oh my God!” Lowering her gaze, Lea saw the ragged flesh of the woman’s other leg trapped beneath the pile of debris. A white bone poked up from the torn skin.

No. Oh no.

The other leg. We left it behind.

It’s torn off. I pulled it off. I pulled her leg off!

Blood showered the ground from the open tear in the woman’s body.

“My leg! My leg! My leg! My leg! My leg!”

The man stood hulking in openmouthed shock. Fat tears rolled down the boy’s red, swollen cheeks.

Heart pounding so hard her chest ached, Lea searched frantically for help. No one. No one around.

What could even a doctor do?

She and the boy and the weeping man took the woman by her writhing shoulders and lowered her gently into her own pool of blood. They stretched her out on the dirt, and the man dropped down beside her, soothing her, holding her hand, cradling her head till she grew too weak to scream.

Lea staggered away. She knew she couldn’t help. She stumbled away, holding her stomach with both hands, gasping shallow breaths of the heavy, salted air. She wandered aimlessly into the wails and screams, the moans, the howls of disbelief, the symphony of pain she knew she would hear in her nightmares.

I’m not here. I’m asleep in our bed at home. I have to get Ira and Elena to school. Mark, give me a shove and wake me up. Mark?

“My babies! My babies!”

The woman’s shrill howls shook Lea from her thoughts. She turned and saw a grim-faced worker holding two tiny lifeless figures, cradling one in each arm, as if they were alive. But their heads slumped back, eyes stared glassily without seeing, arms and legs dangled limply, lifelessly.

The shrieking woman, tripping over the jutting wreckage of her fallen house, followed after them, waving her arms above her head. “My babies! My babies!”

Lea lowered her eyes as they passed by. I’m in Hell.

Suddenly, she pictured Starfish House. Was the little rooming house still standing? And what of Macaw and Pierre? Were they okay? Had they survived? Her laptop was there. Her clothes. All of her belongings.

How to get across the island? James’s truck was useless. The road would be impassable. She could walk, but it would be a walk of endless horrors.

A steady drone, growing louder, wormed its way into her consciousness. A hum quickly becoming a roar.

“Help is already on the way.”

Lea turned to see James behind her. He had changed into baggy gray sweats. His eyeglasses had a layer of white powder over the lenses. Behind them, his eyes were bloodshot and weary.

She followed his gaze to the sky and saw the helicopters, five or six of them, pale green army helicopters, hovering low, moving along the shoreline.

“They probably can’t believe what they’re seeing down here, either,” she murmured. She shivered.

James lowered his hands to her shoulders. “Are you okay, Lea?”

She nodded. “I guess.”

His eyes locked on her, studying her. “No, I mean, really. Are you okay?”

“I. . I’m upset. No. I’m horrified. But I’m okay, James. I was just thinking about Macaw and Pierre. . ”

“Martha and I will walk you to your rooming house. It won’t take long. Maybe half an hour.”

“But-”

“If there’s a problem there, you can come back and stay with us.” He kept staring at her, as if searching for something she wasn’t telling him.

Lea pictured the little white building with its bright yellow shutters and the sign over the entryway: Starfish House. She saw Macaw in her bright red-and-fuchsia plumage; Pierre, bored, hunched over the front desk, thumbing through a magazine, humming to himself.

“Yes. I hope there’s no problem,” she said.

But there was a problem. A sad and sickening problem.