“Vance,” Creed said.
The man’s eyes returned to Creed’s.
“But you like to be called Ollie.”
“Son of a bitch!” Then over his shoulder he yelled, “I think he’s okay.” To Creed he said, “We’re still gonna take you down to our triage center. They’re letting us use the high school gymnasium. Medic thinks you have some busted ribs. They’ll fix you up and find you a nice soft cot where you can get some rest.”
“What about Bolo?”
“He’ll go with you.”
“Is he okay?”
“As far as I can tell. I gotta tell you, though, that dog was possessed. We were looking for you up higher, where the edge gave out and the slide began. He kept insisting you were all the way down here. You traveled a good long ways, my friend.”
“What about the other dog?”
Vance scrunched up his face in question.
“The vehicle underground.”
And now the man hung his head and his eyes went down as well. When they returned, Creed knew the results.
“Driver and two passengers were dead. They were pretty bloodied up. I don’t think they survived the impact. So at least they weren’t down there suffering.”
Vance stood up and waved for the medics to come back over.
“What about the dog?”
“I think she’ll be okay.”
“She’s a scrappy thing,” the medic said, keeping his distance from Creed as if to make sure it was safe to approach him.
“She was cushioned between the seat back and one of the passengers. Probably protected her from serious injury,” Vance said.
“She didn’t try to bite anyone,” the medic told him. “She’s back in the ambulance. We’ve got her subdued on pain meds. You and Bolo mind riding along with her?”
“Not at all.”
Creed let the medic help him to his feet. It took more effort than he expected and Vance came on the other side to assist. His legs felt like spaghetti. He couldn’t get his knees to hold. His head started swirling and suddenly he was struggling to catch his breath again. This time when the medic offered the oxygen mask, Creed didn’t fight him.
“Let’s sit you back down,” the medic told him, easing him back to the ground. Then into his shoulder radio he said, “Bring up that stretcher.”
“Hey, Ollie, we’ve got something here,” one of Vance’s men yelled to him, even though he was close by, less than twenty feet away. “Smells bad.”
Creed watched them pull and tug at something buried under the mud, digging around the edges. They were being careful. It didn’t take long to realize it was a body. He saw the urgency slip away from their shoulders and hands when they realized the victim was dead.
“Looks like there’s more than one.”
But even this revelation didn’t bring with it a sense of urgency.
Vance helped lift a body out from the hole. They turned it to lie faceup.
“Holy crap!”
Creed craned his neck to see but the men were standing too close around the body, staring down at it.
“What’s wrong?” he finally asked the medic who returned to Creed’s side. “They’re dead, right?”
“Oh yeah, they’re dead all right. But not from the landslide. One has a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead.”
16.
Daniel Tate shoved hard and another piece of concrete gave way. Finally he felt rain pouring down on him. He tilted back his head and opened his mouth, so thirsty he wanted to yell in relief. But he stopped himself. He had no idea how close the enemy might be.
All night long he’d heard rumbles and muffled explosions. The debris beneath him shook and the walls vibrated as though the whole place could give way again.
His fingers were raw and bleeding from digging. He had scraped out a cozy but teetering cave. Now that he could see sky—though cloudy and dark—he could see his surroundings.
The examination room had crumbled. Branches pierced through the walls. Frayed electrical wires dangled along trails of insulation from what used to be the ceiling. The door that Dr. Shaw had slammed shut and locked had been ripped away. Tate could see the dark hallway beyond the splintered doorway. Pieces of glass and broken equipment littered the floor.
What interested Tate most was the hole he had finally opened up above. It looked large enough for him to escape through. And yet he hesitated. He crouched in a dark corner atop a tattered pile of what used to be the examination table he had clung to and hidden under. It had probably saved his life.