Page 2 of Her Steadfast Hero

Fuck!

Ow! Goddamit, that hurt.

Plaster and dust swirled in the dim light. When would the earth stop heaving? He heard the annoying sound of faint car alarms ringing.

Who was shrieking? That wasn’t him groaning, was it?

“Carmen!” Ortiz shouted hoarsely to the screaming secretary.

The earth wouldn’t stop heaving until finally it abruptly stopped.

Pieces of the ceiling continued to thud around him.

He tried to move the chair, but it was stuck.

“Fuck!”

Moving his leg was a bad idea, it hurt like a son of a bitch.

“Sloane?”

“Ortiz? Are you okay?”

“No.” Pushing with his shoulder the chair moved a little bit. “I’m bleeding. The window,” the man gasped.

The woman’s shrieks had gotten softer. David needed to concentrate on Ortiz first. He tried moving his leg again. It hurt, but it wasn’t broken. He pushed harder, and the chair finally moved.

Sitting up in the darkness, David felt around and realized that a wooden beam from the ceiling had fallen on his leg. He could move his foot. It hadn’t hit his knee, just the upper thigh.

Okay, you can probably walk, so suck it up. Taking a deep breath, he hefted the beam and pulled his leg out from underneath it.

“Damn.” He sighed in relief. The leg still hurt, but God, not nearly like it had. David felt around in the dark and realized there were some portions of the debris that was stable enough to stand on. He pushed himself up. Pain zinged, and held him in its grips for long moments. Breathe. One. Two. Three. One foot in front of the other.

“Ortiz, I’m coming for you.”

Damn, a flashlight would be welcome. It had been cloudy outside, so only weak light was shining into the room through the broken windows. He stepped carefully around the desk.

“Ortiz?” Please let the man be okay.

He wasn’t. He was dead. A large shard of glass had pierced his chest.

David crouched down as best he could, and gently closed the man’s eyes so that he was no longer staring at nothing.

“Be well. You were a good man,” David whispered. He didn’t even know if the man had a family.

David walked to the window and looked out onto the main street.

Jesus. At least half of the buildings were caved in. He thought about the rural areas he had seen when the plane had flown him from Panama. What kind of devastation would they have been through?

He turned from the window toward Carmen’s weak cries.

Ortiz had been right; this was a clusterfuck.

* * *

“Carmen said you have to take a break.” David looked at the child who was quivering in front of him.

“What?” he wiped the constant stream of sweat off his forehead with the sleeve of his undershirt.