Ron Benrey - Grits And Glory

“This must be our patient,” the man said.

Ann nodded. “Sean, meet Dave. He’s an emergency medical technician.”

Sean tried to look at Dave, but all he could see was a bright light shining in his right eye.

“He might have a concussion,” Dave said. “I’ll transport him to the hospital, too. Trouble is I can’t use a gurney right now because the rest of the team is working on Carlo Vaughn.” The light blinked off. “Sean, do you think you can walk to the ambulance?”

“Absolutely!” Sean began to stand—and staggered into Ann.

“Not so fast,” Dave said. “I’ll support your right side. Ann, you grab his left arm.” He continued, “Sean, take a step at a time. Tell us if you feel faint.”

“How’s Carlo?” Ann asked.

“Yeah,” Sean muttered. “How is Carlo?”

“He’s conscious, but barely.”

“Oh, my!” Ann said.

“Oh, my,” Sean echoed, and then he said, “I feel dizzy.”

“That’s what happens when you get whacked in the head.” Dave spoke to Ann. “I’ll handle the door, you prop up Sean.”

“Yummy!” Sean said when he felt the rain against his face. He lifted his head. The light poles were dark but three powerful floodlights on the ambulance provided enough illumination to see most of the parking lot. The ambulance was positioned on the left side of the van—the side away from the fallen steeple. The wind was still roaring, but less loudly than before.

“Sheesh!” Sean said to Ann. “Your steeple looks like a stack of firewood.” He tried to move toward the pile of rubble.

“Slow down,” Dave said. “Take one step at a time.”

“I must be seeing things in the dark,” Ann said. “Don’t those look like red boots sticking out from beneath the white boards?”

“Yep,” Sean said. “They look exactly like fake boots.”

“Except…” Ann began, then went silent.

Dave took over. “Except those are real boots, attached to real legs. Someone else was hit by the falling steeple.”

Sean felt uneasy when Ann left his side, ran toward the mound of shattered wood and began to yank the boards away.

“Be careful!” Dave shouted. “Those boards are studded with nails.”

“Shouldn’t you help her?” Sean said to Dave.

“I will—after I get you to the ambulance.”

They’d reached the back of the broadcast van when Ann screamed, loudly enough for Sean to hear her over the wind.

“Dave! It’s Richard Squires!”

Sean remembered. The man who fixes generators…

And then everything went black.

Ann stood behind Dave as he kneeled down and felt for the artery in Richard Squires’s neck. She knew Dave wouldn’t find a pulse. The way Richard’s body lay under the shattered boards and the empty expression on his face declared he wasn’t alive.

She sucked in two deep breaths to stop the churning in her stomach and glanced up at the clouds that were barely visible against the inky sky. She saw distant flashes of lightning and heard the rumble of faraway thunder.

Both the wind and the rain had subsided considerably since her last sojourn outside, but Gilda was still roaring loudly enough to make conversation difficult without yelling.

“Shift your flashlight a little to the right,” Dave shouted. Ann recalled with a shiver that this was the second occasion in less than three hours that she’d held a light for Richard Squires.

Only this time he was dead. All because he had done a good deed for the church and repaired the generator.

She moved her flashlight beam to the right of Richard’s head, revealing a glistening pink pool of blood mixed with rainwater. She felt like throwing up but managed to resist the urge. Instead she murmured a quiet prayer asking God to comfort the many people in Glory who knew and liked Richard.

Dave aimed his penlight into Richard’s eyes. “No pulse, no pupil response. He’s gone.” Dave climbed to his feet and added, “Richard must have been walking toward his car over there.” Dave pointed toward a compact sedan near the back of the parking lot. Ann could hear the anguish in his voice. “A board smashed the back of his head when the steeple fell.”

Ann switched her flashlight off. “Should we—” The question caught in her throat. She tried again. “Should we move him to the ambulance?”

“We don’t have a second gurney. I’ll come back for Richard’s body after I transport Carlo and Sean to the hospital.”

The ambulance’s rear door was open, the interior brightly lit. Ann could see Carlo, still unconscious, lying on a gurney. A thick white bandage covered his left eye. Sean, his face pale, sat near the door, leaning against another paramedic. The cut on his head had stopped bleeding, but a big bruise on his forehead was beginning to color.

She watched Dave climb into the ambulance. “Do you want to ride with us to the hospital?” he shouted. “You look more than a little shaky yourself.”

Ann ached to say yes. She didn’t want to be alone inside a sealed-up church—not with Richard Squires lying dead outside, half-buried under a pile of rubble. There was plenty of room for her next to Carlo and Sean. Everyone would understand if she bugged out.

Everyone except Ann Trask. The administrator of Glory Community Church had to stay at her post as long as Gilda threatened the town.

Ann shook her head. “I can’t leave.”

She expected Dave to argue with her, but he didn’t. “It’s a short run to the hospital. Expect us back in less than ten minutes.” He killed the three floodlights atop the ambulance and yanked the rear door shut. The vehicle’s white, red and amber warning signals spun to life, illuminating the jagged remains of the steeple piled next to the Storm Channel’s broadcast van and casting bizarre shadows in the parking lot.

Then the ambulance drove away, leaving almost total darkness in its wake. Ann wished that she’d remembered to switch on the exterior light above the church’s side door.

She tugged her rain hood forward and tightened the drawstrings. Not that the hood would make much difference. She was soaked to the skin inside her clothing—what were a few more drops of wind-driven rain dripping down her neck?

It hardly made sense to seek a few minutes of shelter inside the church, but she decided to check if anyone had telephoned in her absence. A quick glance at the answering machine in her office told her that no one had called. She made it back to the parking lot in less than five minutes, a moment before one of the police department’s four-wheel-drive SUVs, a boxy truck decked out with red and blue strobe lights, entered from King Street. Dave must have notified the emergency command center that Richard had been killed. She cringed. Why hadn’t she thought to call Rafe Neilson first?

Probably because you’re more shocked by Richard’s death than you’re willing to admit.

The SUV stopped next to the crippled broadcast van, inches away from Ann. Its headlights lit up the wreckage of the crushed steeple, making Richard’s red boots look especially garish compared to the mostly white chunks of smashed wood.

Rafe slipped out of the driver-side door and Phil Meade exited the passenger side. Their faces, alternately lit by blue and red flashes, seemed surreal, but Ann could see anger glowing in Phil’s eyes as he strode toward Richard’s body.

“Are you okay?” Rafe asked, approaching Ann. Ann took comfort in his strong, caring voice.

“I don’t think what’s happened has sunk in yet,” she said. “It doesn’t compute that Richard is dead. He was killed in such a weird way.”

“Weird happens,” Rafe said, “both for the bad and the good. The broadcast van was in the wrong place at the wrong time. So was Richard Squires. But as far as we know, no one else in town, or the county for that matter, has been seriously injured. One dead and two wounded is a lot better than we hoped for a few hours ago.”