Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

A rescue worker holds her by the arms, looks curiously at her.

Then she smells something. A sweet, sickly smell. God, what is that?

A spark hits the gas and sets it off.

Nora hears a sharp crack, then a bass boom that rattles her heart and she falls over the hole. When she looks up again, there’s fire everywhere. It’s like the freaking air is on fire.

And moving toward her.

The men yell, “?Vamonos!?Ahorita!”

Let’s go! Right now!

One of the men grabs Nora’s arm again and pushes her, and they’re running. Flames are all around them, and burning debris falls on their heads, and she hears a crackling sound, smells an acrid, sour smell, and a man is slapping at her head and she realizes that her hair is on fire, but she doesn’t feel it. The man’s sleeve catches on fire but he keeps pushing her, pushing her, and then suddenly they’re in the open air and she wants to fall down but the man won’t let her, he keeps pushing her and pushing her because, behind them, what’s left of the Regis Hotel tumbles and burns.

The other two men don’t make it. They join the other 128 heroes who will die trying to rescue people trapped in the earthquake.

Nora doesn’t know this yet as she trots across Avenida Benito Juarez into the relative safety of the open space of La Alameda Park. She drops to her knees as a policewoman, a traffic warden, throws a coat over her head and pats out the fire.

Nora looks around her-the Regis Hotel is a pile of burning rubble. Next door, the Salinas y Rocha department store looks like it’s been cut in half. Red, green and white streamers, decorations from Independence Day, are floating in the air above the truncated shell of the building. All around her, as far as she can see through the clouds of dust, buildings lie toppled or cut in half. Huge chunks of stone, concrete and twisted steel lie in the streets.

And the people. All over the park, people are on their knees praying.

The sky is dark from smoke and dust.

Blocking out the sun.

And over and over again, she hears the same muttered phrase: “El fin del mundo.”

The end of the world.

The right side of Nora’s hair is scorched black; her left arm is bloody and studded with tiny shards of glass. The shock and adrenaline are wearing off and the pain is starting to come in for real.

Parada kneels over the corpses.

Giving them, posthumously, the last rites.

A line of corpses awaits his attention. Twenty-five bodies wrapped in makeshift shrouds-in blankets, towels, tablecloths, anything that could be found. Lying in a neat line in the dirt outside the fallen cathedral while frantic townspeople comb the ruins for more. Search for their loved ones, missing, trapped under the old stone. Desperately, hopefully listening for any signs of life.

So his mouth mumbles the Latin words, but his heart…

Something has broken inside him, has cracked as surely and lethally as the earth has cracked. There is now a fault line between me and God, he thinks.

The God that is, the God that isn’t.

He can’t tell them that-it would be cruel. They’re looking to him to send the souls of their dearly departed to heaven. He can’t disappoint them, not at this time, maybe never. The people need hope and I can’t take it away. I’m not as cruel as You, he thinks.

So he says the prayers. Anoints them with oil and goes on with the ritual.

Behind him a priest approaches.

“Padre Juan?”

“Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“You’re wanted in Mexico City.”

“I’m needed here.”

“They are orders, Padre Juan.”

“Whose orders?”

“The papal nuncio,” the priest says. “Everyone is being summoned, to organize the relief. You have done such work before, so-”

“I have dozens of dead here-”

“There are thousands dead in Mexico City,” the priest says.

“Thousands?”

“No one knows how many,” says the priest. “And tens of thousands homeless.”

So, Parada thinks, there it is-the living must be served.

“As soon as I’m done here,” Parada says.

He goes back to giving the last rites.

They can’t get her to leave.

A lot of people try-police, rescue workers, paramedics-but Nora won’t go to get medical help.

“Your arm, Senorita, your face-”

“Bullshit,” she says. “There are a lot of people hurt a lot worse. I’m okay.”

I’m in pain, she thinks, but I’m okay. It’s funny, a day ago I would have thought that those two things couldn’t go together, but now I know they can. So her arm hurts, her head hurts, her face, scorched from the fire like a very bad sunburn, hurts, but she feels okay.

In fact, she feels strong.

Pain?

Fuck pain-there are people dying.

She doesn’t want help now-she wants to help.

So she sits down and carefully picks the glass out of her arm, then washes it in a broken water main. Rips a sleeve off the linen pajamas she’s still wearing (glad that she’s always opted for linen over some flimsy silk thing) and ties it around the wound. Then she tears the other sleeve and uses it as a kerchief over her nose and mouth because the dust and smoke are choking, and the smell…

It’s the smell of death.

Unimaginable if you’ve never smelled it, unforgettable once you have.

She tightens the kerchief on her face and goes in search of something to put on her feet. Not hard to do, seeing as how the department store has basically exploded its contents onto the street. So she appropriates a pair of rubber flip-flops, doesn’t consider it looting (there is no looting-despite the overwhelming poverty of many of the city’s residents, there is no looting), and joins a volunteer rescue crew digging up the rubble of the hotel, searching for survivors. There are hundreds of these crews, thousands of volunteers digging through fallen buildings all over the city, working with shovels, picks, tire irons, broken rebar and bare hands to get to the people trapped underneath. Carrying the dead and wounded out in blankets, sheets, shower curtains, anything to help the hopelessly overextended emergency personnel. Other volunteer crews help remove the rubble from the streets to clear the way for ambulances and fire trucks. Fire department helicopters hover over burning buildings, lowering men on winches to pluck out people who can’t be reached from the ground.

All the while, thousands of radios drone a litany, pierced by screams of grief or joy from the listeners as the announcer reads the names of the dead and the names of the survivors.

There are other sounds-moans, whimpers, prayers, screams, cries for help-all muffled, all from deep within the ruins. Voices of people trapped under tons of rubble.

So the workers keep working. Quietly, doggedly, the volunteers and professionals search for survivors. Digging beside Nora is a troop of Girl Scouts. They can’t be more than nine years old, Nora thinks, looking at their serious, determined faces, already carrying, literally, the weight of the world. So there are Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, soccer clubs, bridge clubs, and just individuals like Nora, who form themselves into teams.

Doctors and nurses, the few who are left after the collapse of the hospitals, comb the rubble with stethoscopes, lowering the instruments to the rocks to listen for any faint signs of life. When they do, the workers holler for quiet, the sirens stop, the vehicles turn off their motors and everyone remains perfectly still. And then a doctor might smile or nod, and the crews move in, carefully, gently but efficiently moving the rock and steel and concrete, and sometimes there’s a happy ending with someone plucked from the rubble. Other times it is sadder-they just can’t move the rubble fast enough; they are too late and find a lifeless body.