“First, we have to get out of this ditch.” Deveron looked up at the side. Even as tall as he was, the top of the ditch was still over his head.
“I don't know if I can climb.” Sarah used her good hand to point to her bad one.
“We’ll pull you up,” Deveron was already volunteering, and Sarah was nodding.
Even as Cage reached out to hold onto her good hand, they heard large wheels stopping on the road overhead. Doors slammed and two faces peered over the edge of the ditch.
“We’ve been stopping every so often and looking in the ditch!” The man said it as though they were searching for treasure. He grinned at the three stuck below and Cage realized he and his friends were the treasure: People, found alive.
“We saw the tracks where a few cars went off the road a while back.”
So they weren’t the only ones, he thought. Not surprising.
The round face with the short red beard grinned happily and called, “Need a hand?”
27
“Just use your feet,” the man called down.
Cage was trying to do that, but clearly failing. The harness wrapped around him did everything to help lift, but Cage also had to reach forward and grab onto the climbing ropes pulling him upward to help steady himself. The ground was soft and loamy, and the whole endeavor was awkward at best.
He’d just watched Deveron go up like a goat, and then he’d helped with Sarah—who was nothing approaching agile-footed. They’d all bit back their yelps a few times as her feet had slipped and they waited for her to land on her bad arm. She’d managed to prevent it each time, but Cage hadn’t managed to not wince.
He was now the last one to get out of the ditch. Boomer and Bob, who must be twins, had their huge, red, tricked-out truck well outfitted for this kind of rescue.
“Slow and steady,” Boomer called down to him.
Or at least, Cage thought it was Boomer. He didn't have them straight.
“Gotcha,” he called up with a smile, though he thought he’d been going steady. He tried to move even slower.
When he got close enough to the top, the other brother leaned over, reached down, and clasped Cage’s wrist like a bear trap. Cage grabbed on tight, appreciating the lift, but his mind flashed to the times that he and Joule had done the same.
This time didn’t matter. Joule wasn’t here.
Forcing his thoughts back to the task at hand, Cage reminded himself that he had to get out of here first if he was going to find her.
“Three…” Boomer counted out to him as Cage put his last steps into place. “Two…One!”
He cleared the top of the ditch and stood on his own, the harness finally relaxing against him, no longer grinding his skin and muscles against into bones and revealing more new bruises with each step.
Cage wondered if he, too, had broken bones. But since he couldn’t pinpoint anything specifically, he didn’t mention it. Probably, it was just paranoia.
While Sarah and Deveron had been hauled upward and he waited at the bottom of the ditch for his turn with the one harness, he’d pulled his phone from his pocket. It came out almost in pieces, making him wonder how it had stayed in his pocket at all. It was cracked and bent and completely useless.
He wanted to show the rescuers a picture of his sister and ask if anyone had seen her. But that couldn’t happen now. Cage had been wondering if Sarah or Deveron had pictures of Joule on their phone—and if their phones were in any better shape than his?—when Bob had seen him and called down, “Don't worry about it. There's no service yet.”
But there would be, Cage thought. And he'd need to find a place to get pictures of his sister downloaded. As he stood at the top now, with Bob unclipping the harness and taking their webbing and supplies back, he realized the back of their truck was already full of tornado refugees.
A woman sat with two young children. The smaller one had her arm in a makeshift sling and the other held a once-white towel to his forehead. It was now soaking up a nice patch of red blood from a cut he must have gotten. The mother sat with her arms around the little ones, her face streaked with dirt and tears. Beside her, three men sat across the back of the cab. One had his knees up, elbows bent, and head down in between. Cage couldn't see his face.
Some of the people looked vaguely familiar. Then again, he'd been working in this town for several months now. He'd been in the restaurants and the stores, and he'd surely seen their faces somewhere. This slice of Alabama wasn't that big, although somehow he hadn't met Boomer and Bob before.
“Don't think you're gonna get your car back any time soon,” Boomer was telling Sarah. “It's lost until someone comes by with a working winch to tow it out.” He paused, scratched his head, and delivered more bad news. “You’re probably not high on the priority list.”
Cage had already figured that out after the five-day lag in getting the driveway fixed so they could get up to the house. His and Joule’s car had been hostage at the house because it couldn’t navigate the road to leave. He could only hope this went faster.
Sarah had her own wishes, it seemed. She shrugged her one good arm and told Boomer, “Hopefully it'll run without too much work.”
Their conversation continued about who to call and what she should do next, but Cage didn’t pay much attention. Finally free of the harness constraints, he pushed all his thoughts aside for a moment and did a full rotation to look at the road.
It was littered with toppled trees, wood pieces, shingles, pieces of pipe, chunks of insulation, and anything you might find in a
