New Year Island

PAUL DRAKER

Mayhem Press LLC

PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA

QUALIFYING ROUNDS

Camilla

October 20, 1989

Cypress Street Viaduct, Oakland, California

“G
ordon said he saw her this time—through the gap under the crossbeam, but she crawled away again.”

“Gordon’s wrong. It’s been three days since the last live rescue.” Dan Prescott looked down the black row of rubber body bags, lined up like dominos on the buckled asphalt. “Our window’s closed—they’re all dead.”

“But the crew from Engine Company Eight heard her, too—yesterday, under the H span. She was singing.”

Dan shook his head. His gaze followed the collapsed section of elevated freeway stretching a mile into the distance. The two-story spans were sandwiched together, the upper crushing the lower, resting against the crumbled concrete pylons.

“How could anyone still be alive in there?” he asked.

“I’m telling you, they
saw
her.” Manuel Garcia’s voice cracked. “They
heard
her.”

“I’ve been doing this for fifteen years, and I know,” Dan said. “At this point, it’s strictly recovery. I’m sorry, Manny.”

Black smoke billowed out of the small gaps between the roadway spans. Some of the crushed cars trapped inside were still smoldering four days after the earthquake. Two blocks away, a hook-and-ladder truck angled close to the rubble. A fireman clung to the ladder, spraying a stream of water into the narrow crack between the pancaked roadways.

Manuel stared at the constricted, smoking gap, his face drawn with anguish.

“They said she looked like a little angel, lost in the darkness,” he said. “She was singing to herself.”

Dan turned to the younger paramedic and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“I went home for a couple hours last night,” he said. “Looked in on my daughters, asleep in their beds… and I cried. Something like this, you can’t really get your head around it. You don’t know what to believe in anymore. So our minds invent phantoms, showing us what we want to see. Or hear.”

He looked at his junior partner and saw himself fifteen years ago. He spoke as gently as he could.

“Manny, there is no girl.”

• • •

A column of names ran down one side of the clipboard Dan held, question marks after them. On the other side were detailed descriptions: gender, approximate age, hair, eyes, clothing, but no names. He stared at the list, pen in hand, but a deep voice snapped him out of his bleary-eyed focus.

“We’re cutting into H section.”

Dan squeezed the bridge of his nose and blinked at Ballard, the fire lieutenant.

“Waste of effort,” he said.

Ballard’s expression hardened. “You should go home, Dan.”

Dan could see exhaustion etched into Ballard’s face, but his jaw was set. The rest of the crew from Engine Company 8 came around the side of the ambulance, carrying a Hurst tool—the Jaws of Life, used to pry open mangled vehicles. Two of them lugged a large rotary concrete saw, trailing its thick orange power cable. All wore bulky knee and elbow pads.

Manny Garcia stood next to Ballard. He wouldn’t meet Dan’s eyes.

Ballard pointed at Gordon, his station chief.

“Gordy says she’s in there, Dan. We’re going in to get her.”

• • •

Three hours later, Dan had check marks next to most of the fifty-eight names on his clipboard. He counted down the list of missing with his pen, pausing at the name that caught his eye again: Camilla Becker, seven years old.

Their imaginary girl?

He circled the name with his pen and continued down the list. A yell interrupted him. He looked up.

Shouts came from the hole in the concrete where Ballard’s crew had gone in. The yellow of a fireman’s protective greatcoat glimmered in the floodlights. They were coming out.

“Prescott, Garcia, over here.” Ballard’s deep voice echoed across the cracked concrete. “Now.”

Dan’s eyes widened. He turned to Manny, who was already hauling a stretcher from the back of the truck. He grabbed the other end, and they ran toward the gap.

• • •

“She’s alive.”

Dan had Dispatch on the radio. It sounded strange, hearing himself say the words, but there was no joy in them.

“Her legs—both of them,” he said. “She needs to go into surgery as soon as possible.”

He listened to the dispatcher while he watched the girl. She sat upright atop a stretcher near the fire truck fifty feet away. A blanket covered her from the waist down. He was sure her legs would heal, given time. The problem was the damage that didn’t show.

He held the radio handset loosely. The dispatcher asked a question.

“Seven years old, I think,” Dan said. “I’m not sure. She can’t speak.”

The girl’s face was expressionless under a layer of soot. She looked like a life-size doll. Manny stood next to her, speaking to her, stroking her hair gently. Her eyes were dark glass marbles. Unresponsive. Empty.

Whoever the girl had been was gone forever, lost in the darkness behind those eyes. She was catatonic.

“No media,” Dan said. “It’s not a feel-good story.”

The girl—Camilla?—sat like a mannequin, unaware of her surroundings. She was nearly the same age as his oldest daughter. He looked away, down at the cracks in the concrete, and tried to focus on what Dispatch was saying.

“Channel Four?” He swore under his breath. “Who called them?”

He could hear sirens in the distance now, getting louder.

“Look, Ballard’s crew went back in to try and locate the vehicle,” he said. “To establish her identity… to find the rest of her family.”

He looked up at the hole the fire crew had cut in the concrete. They were coming out now, climbing down from between the spans. He watched them as he listened to Dispatch coordinating with the hospital. There was something odd about the way the crew was moving. Slowly. Like they all had been hurt somehow, where it didn’t show.

Ballard walked toward him. Dan couldn’t read his expression, but his cheeks and forehead looked pale under the dust and soot.

“Media?” Ballard asked. His voice was hesitant, not the usual commanding baritone.

Dan nodded. “Television.”

“Shit.”

Ballard turned away, walking faster now, and waved his crew into a huddle. Dan couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they all turned to stare at the girl. Gordon and Ballard appeared to be arguing. Gordon shook his head and left the huddle to join Manny next to the girl. Dan watched Gordon lean toward Manny, speaking with quiet urgency. What was he telling him?

Ballard and the rest of the crew broke the huddle, moving with resolve. They picked up the concrete saw and the Hurst tool again.

Ballard raced over to the fire truck and opened a side compartment. He reached inside and pulled out a chainsaw.

Dan covered the radio handset with his hand. “What the hell…?”

“Not now.” Sorrow and shock warred on Ballard’s face. “Oh Christ, Dan, she…” He swallowed and wiped a hand across his cheeks. “Don’t say a word to the media when they get here.”

“But—”

“Not a goddamn word.” Ballard pointed toward the girl on the stretcher. “For her sake.”

He hustled away, carrying the chainsaw, and scooped up two empty body bags with his free hand. Then he hesitated, dropped them, and grabbed four smaller bags instead. Ballard followed his crew, disappearing into the hole in the concrete.

Confused, Dan looked at Gordon and Manny, standing over the girl’s stretcher. Manny was still smoothing the girl’s hair with one hand. As Gordon spoke to him, his hand slowed. Then it stopped moving, frozen in mid-air.

Manny slowly pulled his hand back, tucked it under his arm, and took a step away from the stretcher. Then he turned and stumbled after Gordon, who stalked away with angry strides.

Baffled by Manny’s withdrawal, Dan walked toward the girl. She looked so lost, so alone now. He put his hands in his pockets and stared at her blank, doll-like face.

Are you still trapped under there, Camilla Becker?

Inside her mind, was she still crawling through wreckage and flames, surrounded by the dead and the dying? He couldn’t imagine what she’d been through these last four days, or what kind of damage it had done to her. Had she given up, or was she still trying to find her way out of the darkness?

Her parents had been in the car with her, according to his clipboard. An only child. No next of kin listed. He didn’t know what Ballard and the others had seen when they found her family, but in fifteen years he had never seen those guys shaken like that.

Dan tilted his head, watching her.
Maybe it’s a mercy if you never come back.

Then he frowned. Singing to herself yesterday, Manny said…

The girl was alive for a reason. She was a fighter.

Dan’s throat tightened.
I gave up on you. I shouldn’t have. Manny’s right about me—I’ve been doing this so long, I’d lost hope. But you…

His vision blurred.

You’ve given me a reason to believe again, Camilla. I do think you’re going to find your way out of the darkness.

Something flickered in her expression.

Dan leaned closer, but it was only the red flashes from the arriving emergency vehicles reflected in her unseeing eyes. A long and difficult road lay ahead for her.

Despite himself, he reached out and touched her forearm in awe.

JT

September 11, 2007

FOB Salerno, Northeastern Afghanistan

“T
he Valley of Death.”

Sanchez dropped his cigarette and ground it into the tarmac. “I should have guessed. The goddamn Korengal Valley.”

JT ignored him and squinted against the dust. He liked the kid, but Sanchez hadn’t been with 1st Force Recon in Iraq. He hadn’t been there for Fallujah.

Without turning around, JT raised his voice to be heard over the rotors. “DiMarco, what are we looking for out there?”

“Hell if I know. One-three brass wouldn’t say. Routine patrol, they told me.”

Predawn glow outlined the row of black AH-64 Apache helicopters that stretched into the distance. The 173rd would ferry them in-country in one of the larger Chinooks, though. Its dark bulk loomed behind him, dotted with pinpoints of red—running lights.

JT would have preferred the Apache’s firepower. Bringing in 1st Force Recon Marines for this operation meant something. This wasn’t a routine patrol.

The cool, dry desert air chilled his skin, but in a few hours it would be scorching. Six years today, he thought. Six years since the planes hit the towers and the world changed forever. He had joined the Corps that same afternoon, walking away from a full engineering scholarship at U.C. Berkeley, and had never regretted his decision.

Their pilot walked across the tarmac toward them. Alone. He climbed into the cockpit.

“Saddle up, gents.”

“Where’s your buddy?” JT asked.

“He’s in no shape to fly, Corporal. Birthday last night. I don’t want him puking in my cockpit.”