“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.
They got their orders and then immediately started on their assignments without any hesitation.
Then he turned fully around, and I was greeted with a younger version of Silas.
Sebastian, I think I’d heard Silas call him.
But I wasn’t one hundred percent sure.
What was he doing here?
Then I saw Silas not too far from him with a little girl in his arms that looked to be two or three at most.
When he’d left my house this morning after the storm had passed, I’d thought it’d been rather abrupt. I never expected to see him here doing this.
He’d gotten a call before he’d left.
And I was ashamed to admit that I thought that maybe it’d been another woman.
But now I was glad to see that I was wrong.
“Sebastian!” Zack called.
Sebastian turned at the sound of his name being called, and he smiled when he saw Zack.
“Hey, Guzzy. How’s it going?” Sebastian asked somewhat distractedly.
“I’m setting up in Old Miller’s place. I just wanted to lend Belly and Sawyer here to you. Use ‘em as you see fit,” Zack said, offering Sebastian his hand.
Sebastian took it.
“Thanks,” Sebastian said, returning the handshake. “I just got here myself. I’m on two different volunteer departments, but since Dixie was hit worse than the other town, I came here. And suddenly find myself in charge of everything.”
He seemed like he was doing a good job, though.
Even if he didn’t think he should be the one in charge.
“Alright, Sawyer. Take care of my Belly and take this,” he said, passing a handheld, two-way radio to me. “Call me if you need anything.”
I took the two-way radio, strapped it to my jeans and reached for Belly’s leash, scared as hell and trying my damnedest to hide it.
“O-okay,” I said.
Zack smiled reassuringly. “These boys will take good care of you. Promise.”
I didn’t need his reassurance.
Silas had taken care of me very well last night…not that I’d be telling him or anyone else about that.
I nodded firmly. “Thank you.”
He smiled, hefted his bag and started walking away.
Belly gave a soft bark, making Zack turn around and smile at his friend before he turned and continued on his way.
I turned from watching Zack walk away to find both Silas and Sebastian watching me with varying degrees of surprise etched on their face.