Riven - Jerry B. Jenkins [115]
He couldn’t just sit there. If he could help, he had to try. But his door opened only a few inches before striking the side of the ditch. In that instant he was drenched. Brady pulled the door shut and wrenched himself across the seat, tumbling out the passenger-side door into frigid water over the tops of his work boots to his shins. Every step in the sucking mud was an effort.
His first couple of attempts to scale the incline found Brady sliding back down. Finally he climbed atop the hood of the car, then the roof, and leaped up onto the shoulder, nearly into the path of a car. He zigzagged through the traffic to the other side, clods of mud flying up behind him.
He gave a wide berth to the trailer park sign, hanging by a single chain and swaying madly in the wind. The asphalt seemed to boil as millions of huge raindrops caused tiny splashes to rise from the surface. Emergency vehicles rimmed the place, and from one high vantage point as Brady began his path toward home, he could plainly see where the twister had barreled through. He had seen carnage like this only on television.
Again, part of him wanted to flee, to race back to the car and fling himself across the backseat. There he would hide his head and try to stay warm and keep any horrible news from invading. He had been close, so close, to a new life. Sure, he was taking risks, getting back into the unhealthy lane, consorting with dope pushers, living on the edge. But so far so good. Brady had a little money with the promise of a lot more on the way. And his parole officer seemed pleased, if wary.
But what if he’d lost a place to live or at least to crash? What would he and his family do?
Brady knew all this worrying was just delaying the inevitable. Deep in the recesses of his soul he was terrified at what he might find at home. It wasn’t really his life and his income he was worried about. It was his brother.
“God, please,” he whispered as he hurried that way. “I know I don’t deserve a thing from You, but please. Not Petey. Please.”
If Peter had been home when this happened, it was because Brady had begged him to be. Couldn’t the kid have been irresponsible, selfish, rebellious, disobedient once in his life?
Please.
Many trailers lay on their sides, some on their tops, some pushed several feet from their moorings. People Brady knew milled about, eyes vacant, crying, holding each other. The convenience store had had its roof blown off, its front door and window obliterated. People streamed in and out, apparently still able to buy things.
Emergency workers hurried through the crowds, barking orders, searching for the injured and the dead.
The gas station, where the Laundromat had once been, seemed the lone unscathed place, a strange oasis that had somehow escaped the worst of the damage. Men and women in uniform on squawk boxes made it obvious some emergency crew or another had set up a command post there.
The ravages from the funnel seemed to worsen the deeper Brady got into the park. Two entire streets, once made up of tight rows of modular trailers with tiny picket fences and indoor/outdoor carpeting that had served as pretend lawns, were now just empty ribbons of blacktop. In the distance towered a macabre pile of twisted aluminum carcasses. It was as if the homes had been tossed atop each other one by one.
Such was the devastation that Brady found himself suddenly disoriented, unsure exactly where he was. But there lay a street sign, marking an intersection he knew well. His trailer should be just ahead and left two blocks.
Adamsville
Except for the disconcerting news about a potential addition to their family, Thomas found the meal and the evening going better than he had expected. That was due, he had to admit, to the people skills of Dirk Blanc. Oh, maybe the tall man with the shaved head was a little out of touch with how he came across to others, but he proved gregarious and solicitous. He so praised the dinner that Grace had to finally scold him into stopping.
And he asked Thomas all about his work at the prison,