Ryan made himself look as small as he could, stooping low to approach the dog as it moved backward, woofing softly and whining again.
“Wassup, boy, are we heading for a new aftershock, huh? Is that what you’re tryin’ to tell us?” Ryan couldn’t believe he was talking to a dog. Oscar whined and turned, jumping off the outcrop and disappearing.
Ryan almost ignored him and crossed back to Nathan. He liked dogs as much as the next man, but if Oscar was warning of an aftershock then Nathan would need help just to stand, let alone to handle the earth moving.
Oscar appeared again at the top and barked twice. Something, some instinct to trust this barking dog, made Ryan turn back and scramble up the six-foot ribbon of twisted road, looking down at where Oscar now disappeared and to a scene of carnage he was sure he would remember until the day he died.
Five cars thrown from the road. Two were burned out with shadows of people inside. Two other cars had been crushed by road and rubble, and one car, like his taxi, had been half cut and pressed to nothing with huge rocks and chunks of road leaning precariously over it. Was anyone alive? Why was Oscar leading him down there? He wasn’t sure he could handle this.
“Daddy, doggy,” a small voice said. The sound was so small Ryan almost missed it. It came from the car cut in half. Calling back to Nathan that he would be back in a minute, he clambered down the other side of the newly exposed earth and climbed over God knows what to get to the car at the front.
“Hello?” he said. He couldn’t see through the spider web of broken glass
“Daddy?”
Shit, a child was in there. He tried to move around to see in, finally finding a small part of the car that offered a glance inside. A little girl sat in a car seat, untouched, but with the belts twisted and stuck. The only way to get her out was to remove the broken glass. He didn’t think about the fact that they should be moving, he needed to get her out.
“Hey, darlin’, I’m Ryan. I’m here to help. Can you cover your eyes, sweetie? I need to break the glass.” As soon as she moved her hands, he pushed the glass in, trying to ignore her shrieks of fear. Reaching in, he pulled at the belt, untwisting it and grabbing at the girl, pulling her out in one move. She was so tiny, no older than his three-year-old niece.
He heard Oscar whining, his gut instinct telling him that the dog wanted him to move. He was convinced that another aftershock was building under his feet, and desperately he moved away from the cars, the little girl sobbing into his neck, hanging on for dear life. He made it to the top of the rubble pile, sliding and slipping towards Nathan as another aftershock pulled at the earth, the hill that was left collapsing and crushing the girl’s car. He felt sick. He hadn’t been able to tell if her parents had been in the car, although he knew whoever had been in the front of the car was dead. There’d been nothing left of the front half of the car when he got there, and there was certainly nothing of it left at all now.
“Ryan, Jesus” was all Nathan could say. “What the—”
Ryan just shook his head. Don’t ask questions, just leave it. “We need to keep walking.” He switched the little girl to his left side and winced as her small hands twisted into the back of his torn shirt, pulling at open wounds. He gritted his teeth, then wrapped his right hand around Nathan. “Let’s walk.”
The smell of fire was overwhelming here, but Ryan couldn’t tell if that was because of the burning cars or if it was the specter of death sweeping down the hill as they descended, trying to grab at the few survivors on the side of this mountain. He tried to quicken the pace. He couldn’t even ask the little girl her name, because it made it too personal. What if he had a name to put to his failure to keep them alive? He couldn’t handle that. What if he failed?