Second Chance Love, page 11
They were able to work their way around the tree, but it was slow going after that. They rarely exceeded 10 KPH, and often had to stop to roll a rock aside, or push and pull a fallen branch out of the way. Over the next eight hours, they were able to make eighteen miles.
Finally, after moving what felt like their ten thousandth tree limb, Steve looked up at the darkening sky and said, “Okay, I admit it. You can out-work me.”
“I didn’t know it was a contest,” she said with an air of innocence.
“It’s getting dark. We’re obviously not going to make it there tonight. Let’s pull over on this wide spot here, douse ourselves with mosquito spray, enjoy some Spam and bottled water, and see if we can get a few hours of sleep.”
“Who says men are not romantic? Eau de OFF! and heavily salted canned meat? Steve Larson, you are sweeping me off my feet.”
They got a blanket out of the trunk, unrolled it on the hood, and had their picnic. After eating, they lay with their backs against the windshield, looking up at the stars, holding hands. Steve rolled on his side and said, “I promised you I’d show you the world. Well, this is a deserted road in the middle of nowhere, Palawan, the Philippines, and is definitely part of the world.”
“I’m happy,” she said, simply. A look into her eyes confirmed it. Steve thought of the society girls he had dated occasionally over the years, tried to picture them in these circumstances, and laughed a bit.
“What? What’s so funny?” Elizabeth said. “Do I have dirt on my face or something?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. You do have dirt on your face, and pretty much every other exposed part of your body. You know what? You have never been more beautiful.”
“Flattery will normally get you everywhere, but not on the hood of a car or in the back seat of a too-small Honda, Romeo. What’s the plan for tomorrow?”
“More of the same, to a certain extent.” He thumbed his phone on. “Suzi, how many miles to the Eden’s Bay Resort now?”
“You are four point three miles from your current destination.”
“Since we are sleeping on the luxury mattress sometimes known as the front seat of a Honda City, I would bet that we’ll be up with first light. Even if something catastrophic is wrong with the road up ahead, we can still get there by midday. Then we’ll have to play it by ear, see if anyone there needs our help. If someone is there, Suzi can hook us up with the authorities via satellite and we can get them help.”
"Here's hoping that there's help to be had, and someone alive to get it."
Behind them was a day as long as either of them could remember. Ahead lay a day that could be even longer. They sat together on the hood, holding hands and talking softly for a long time.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It had finally cooled off overnight, and Steve lifted the blanket a little higher around her shoulders. He eased the driver’s door open, but the squeak of the hinges woke her. She stretched her arms out in front of her and asked, “What time is it?”
“6:15. Why don’t you go back to sleep for a few minutes?”
“And leave all the glorious road-clearing work to you? I don’t think so. What’s for breakfast?”
“How does another cold can of Spam strike you?”
“Like I’ve been meaning to start a fast, that’s how it strikes me.”
“Yeah, me too. Maybe it’ll sound better at lunch.”
Fifteen minutes later, after using a bottle of the drinking water to clean up as best they could, they had the City once again creeping down the road. When they had covered the better part of three miles, they saw a lone figure on the right side of the road ahead, slogging along.
They hit a relatively undamaged stretch of road and pulled up beside him. He was barely picking up one foot and placing it in front of the other. He was wearing blue jeans, a red bandanna, and a torn, filthy blue chambray work shirt. They pulled completely alongside him before he even noticed them. He turned a brown, creased face toward them with a distant gaze, as if fixed on a far horizon.
Elizabeth rolled her window down and said, “Hello, are you all right? Do you need some water?”
“Water?” he said, in heavily accented English.
“Yes. Water. You must be horribly thirsty. Here.” She reached in the backseat and pulled out a bottle of the drinking water, handing it to him through the window.
The man seemed uncertain, but after a moment he accepted the bottle, uncapped it and drank it in one long motion.
“Oh, thank you,” he said. “I ran out of water early yesterday. I did not know if I was going to make it.”
Steve leaned across so the man could see him better. “Make it where, if I might ask? Are you trying to get to Eden’s Bay Resort?”
The man’s eyes lit up. “How do you know Eden’s Bay?”
“I’m Steve Larson. My company was overseeing the construction—"
The man shook his head in wonder. “Steve Larson? I am Bayani Alidon.”
Steve’s face split in amazement and recognition. “Bayani?” He leaped out of the car and embraced the man he had never met. “We’ve traveled halfway around the world to see if you are all right.”
Bayani’s face betrayed his exhaustion. “I am not all right, Mr. Larson. I was in Puerto Princesa when the storm hit. I had left before the sun was up that day to pick up supplies we would need the next week. We did not get any notice of the storm, or I never would have left. When I heard the news on the radio, I turned around immediately, but my truck did not make it back.”
Steve thought back to the Isuzu pickup from yesterday. “But that must have been almost forty miles back.”
“Really?” Bayani looked dazed. “Does that mean that I am close to Eden’s Bay?”
“Yes, we’re probably less than a mile away. But why in the world would you be trying so hard to get back? Are there other men there?”
A shadow passed over Bayani’s face. He mastered it with a visible strain. “My wife and children are there.”
A glance passed between Steve and Elizabeth, but they chose not to say anything.
After some supply-shuffling, and with Bayani in the back seat, they set off for the last stretch to Eden’s Bay. And I can't ask him all the questions I want to ask, thought Steve. Look what's happened to him in the service of my profits. And if I sound to Lizzie like I'm more worried about the remains of the resort than this man's family, I will have proclaimed myself the worst human being in the car. But I can ask about people.
“You said your family was on site. Who else was there?”
“No one else. We had finished a big project, the recreation center, on Friday afternoon. We needed supplies before we could begin the next building. I had been pushing the men very hard to finish, so I gave them the weekend off and they went home to spend it with their families. We had worked thirty-four days in a row.” He said this almost apologetically, as if giving his crew a weekend off had been disloyal.
“After working solid for a month? I'd say they earned it. And I’m so glad you did. If you hadn’t, we might have lost all of them.” Steve paused, then realized what he was implying. Bayani’s family had been directly in line with the worst of the storm, and all alone. “How many children do you have?”
“Two. Tala, my daughter, is seven. Danilo, my son, is only two. My wife is named Chona. She is very capable, but she is small.” He blinked back tears.
“We’ll be there soon,” said Steve. And then I almost blurted 'I'm sure they're all right.' Just the kind of empty bullshit reassurances the man doesn't need. And this guy is strong. Raise him in my world, with my advantages of birth, and maybe he'd have done a better job with my company than I have. In fact, considering that I've tubed it, he'd have had a hard time doing any worse. “Why don’t you drink some more water now and eat something, so your strength will be up when we get there. Take whatever you want.”
I hope he's ready for whatever we find. I hope I am.
Steve activated his phone. “Suzi, how much farther now to Eden’s Bay?”
“Point three two miles.”
Steve glanced at Elizabeth, who had been silent since Bayani had gotten in the car. Her face was a knot of worry.
Just as Steve was thinking they must be almost there, they rounded a bend in the road to confront a massive tangle of trees, bushes, rocks and other debris.
“It’ll take heavy equipment and a lot of man-hours to clear this. Looks like we’re walking from here.”
"Thank you," said Bayani. He took off at a fast jog.
“Wait! Let’s take some things we might need with us,” Steve said, but Bayani had already disappeared around the edge of the pile of debris and was gone.
“I don’t blame him,” Elizabeth said. “If that was you somewhere out there, and I didn’t know if you were alive or dead, nothing would slow me down either.”
“True. So let's be the ones to haul in a few things we might need. The resort sits on over forty acres, so it could take us some time to do a thorough search. Let’s take as much water as we can carry. We can set up a meeting point and leave it there.” He opened the City's trunk, took out a hundred feet of soft cotton rope, and hung the coil about his neck. “To tell you the truth, I have no idea what we might need rope for, but it seems like the thing to bring on a rescue mission. Here, you carry this,” he said, handing Elizabeth a small hatchet. “Again, no idea, but I’d rather have it and not need it.”
They followed the same path Bayani had, skirting around the edge of the mass of tangled roots, building materials, mud and muck. To judge by some of Bayani's trail, he had tripped and fallen a couple of times.
Then Steve and Elizabeth stopped dead.
They were standing atop a rise, perhaps fifty feet above the ocean. The slope seemed to have absorbed the bulk of the tsunami. Stretched out before them was one of the most picturesque bays they had ever seen, firsthand or in photography. The water was nearly calm, a deep cobalt blue. Gentle whitecaps dotted the sea like cake frosting.
From the waterline back toward them, all was wreckage. A few buildings remained upright but askew. Most were completely gone, leaving only bare foundations littered with junk. The lovely curving roads through the resort had been lined with a low brick fence, but it was perhaps half demolished.
Phase One had consisted of two ten-story resort hotel wings, each with lobby and entertainment areas on the ground floor, then nine stories of luxury suites. Every room had at least a partial view of the South China Sea. To Steve's eye, Phase One was a total loss. There were hotel towers before. Now there are not hotel towers. It's that simple.
Phase Two had been a novel idea: three dozen stand-alone buildings scattered along almost a mile of beachfront. While designed to look like primitive huts, in reality they were sturdily built luxury units. A few sat like battered, empty shells; the rest no longer existed. Phase Two was a 90% loss. Optimistically.
Steve sucked in a huge lungful of air and held it for a long moment. Anticipating the devastation and seeing it firsthand were two very different things.
Elizabeth reached out and squeezed his arm. “Oh, honey…” She looked for words of comfort, but came up blank.
Steve shook his head briskly, wiped his eyes and gave Elizabeth a tiny smile. “Let’s see if we can help Bayani.”
They picked their way over, around and through the debris field, working their way steadily toward the 'resort.' They walked under an immense, nearly intact brick archway that would have served as the entrance. Polished steel lettering set into the bricks still read: EDEN'S BAY—HEAVEN ON EARTH. They found an area that was mostly clear of debris, and set the water and other supplies down.
Steve rolled his shoulders, then cracked his neck, first right, then left. “Many years of eating too much and not exercising is probably not the best preparation for a tropical rescue mission.”
“The important thing,” Elizabeth said, “is that we are here. I don’t see anyone else lining up to help.”
“You’re right. You are very right.”
In the distance, they heard Bayani calling, “Chona! Chona!” over and over. His voice sounded desperate and ragged.
Steve shielded his eyes against the sun. “The safest thing would be for us to stick together.”
“We could cover a lot more ground if we split up, though," Elizabeth said. "There’s still a chance that his family is alive. We owe them the best chance we can give them. And if he finds them all alone, he might do something really rash. Listen to him. He's on the edge.”
Steve sighed. “I heard that too. Okay, let’s use this spot right here as our meeting place. We’ll divide the resort into quadrants, using the roads. They are—were—shaped like a big cross,” he said, pointing at the littered remnants. “We’ll do a methodical search of each section. Let’s ask Suzi and Max to give us a reminder every hour, and we’ll meet back here. That way we won’t have to carry a lot of water, but we can stay hydrated. I should have bought canteens, but I didn’t think of it.”
"You thought of the main things," she said. "Water, food, basics."
He pulled Elizabeth close, nestling her face briefly against his shoulder before holding her out at arm's length. “Be careful. The storm has made everything unstable. Do your best to avoid walking on top of any of the collapsed buildings.”
Elizabeth nodded, and her calm gaze reassured him that she wouldn’t take unnecessary chances.
“I’ll see you back here in one hour. And, Lizzie…I love you.”
“I love you too, but we’re not saying goodbye forever. I’ll see you back here in exactly sixty minutes.”
As Elizabeth walked toward the nearest pile of rubble, she realized the immensity of the task before her. Searching for someone sounds relatively easy, until the searcher finds herself facing a sea of rubble with no idea how to investigate it. She didn’t know what the building had been before Mother Nature had lost her temper, but now it was just a tangle of collapsed brick, stone, plaster, broken glass, and electrical wires protruding at odd angles.
She skirted around the edge of the building, avoiding any areas that seemed unstable, shouting “Chona!” then standing dead still and listening for ten seconds, then moving on to a new section. An hour later, when Max alerted her, she realized that she had gone less than a hundred yards from her starting point.
The near-equatorial sun was high in the sky now, beating down with an intensity she had never experienced before. She picked her way back to the meeting spot and found herself alone. She reapplied sunscreen and mosquito repellent, drank a bottle of hot water, and squinted into the sun.
She retrieved her phone and stared at it for a long moment. She was doing her best to conserve the phone’s battery, but the silence was deafening.
“Max, call Steve.”
She put the phone to her ear and listened to a long series of hollow clicks and ghostly noises as the signal found its way to a satellite and back down. It rang four times, then clicked over to voicemail: “Hello, this is Steve Larson of Larson Industries…” She clicked it off and slid the phone back into her pocket.
I’m sure there’s a very good reason why he isn’t here. I’m sure there’s a very good reason why he isn’t answering his phone. “I just can’t think what it would be,” she said aloud, and started walking in the direction Steve had gone.
Under other circumstances, she would have taken in the wonder of the setting—the ocean serenading her with its gentle song, the palm trees swaying in the breeze, the blue skies dotted with horsetail clouds—but she saw none of it. Her heart was in her throat as she ran along the route she thought he had taken, setting caution aside. Every twenty yards, she would call his name, wait a few seconds, then rush on.
After fifteen panicked minutes, she ran out of beach. A rock wall extended far out into the ocean, marking the southern edge of the bay. He couldn’t have gone further than this. So he's probably back at the meeting place, waiting on me, worried sick. I can see why.
This time, she ran straight back in half the time.
She climbed to the top of the black rock and scanned in every direction.
No Steve. No Bayani. Her lip began to tremble and she felt her throat tighten.
No. I will not cry. Steve is somewhere nearby, and he needs me to stay calm and find him.
She took a deep, shuddering breath, climbed down from the rock, and made her way back down the same path she had just walked. This time she walked, shouted, and listened more methodically.
Her heart fell when she looked up and saw the rock wall near again.
Where can he be?
She was about to turn and go over the same route for the fourth time, confirming Einstein’s definition of insanity, when she saw movement at the far edge of her peripheral vision: a dog, a small beagle, just sitting there. She almost rubbed her eyes to see if it was a mirage. The dog whined at her, then turned and trotted down a small path that was virtually hidden by a fallen tree. It led her away from the water, around the edge of a large crumpled building.
She followed the dog as fast as she could, stepping over fallen trees and bushes. Soon she came to another devastated building that sat on a rise, built almost flush with the rock wall. This one seemed to have fallen in on itself, collapsing down into what appeared to be a basement.
The beagle stopped, looked at her and barked. It barked again, looked at her, then at the wrecked building. Elizabeth walked to the edge of the building, calling, “Steve? Steve, are you there?” but heard only silence in return. She walked to a small opening in the rubble and tried to look down into what remained of the building, but none of the bright sunshine reached the lower level. The opening was set back a few feet, and the footing around it felt like it might be unstable, so she climbed back down.
Sighing in frustration, she reached out to pet the dog, but he danced just out of her reach and barked again. Just then, Elizabeth heard a woman’s voice call out: “Tulong! Tulong! Tulungan nyo kami!”
