Page 53 of Trusted Instinct
“Randy is moving up to take your place. Here’s the situation: a man, bleeding profusely from the head and walking, and I quote, ‘like a zombie,’ climbed through his moonroof. He fell down the west-facing ditch, and the woman reporting thought he’d passed out there, but then he crawled out and kept on moving and disappeared into the woods. She said, and again I quote, ‘he looked like a drunken banker.’”
Adrunkenbanker? “Copy.”
“Suit, hard-soled shoes. She says there’s also an elderly woman who got out of the car and seemed to be trying to follow the man. She made it to the ditch, but she slipped. And has been gripping her back. She’s pretty hysterical. And, it’s raining on her.”
“How are you hearing about this?” Creed asked.
“A member of the walking wounded made a recording and brought it to me as they made their way up the road.”
“What’s the priority?”
“Throw a Mylar around the woman,” Striker said, “so she doesn’t go hypothermic. See if you can calm her enough to find out why the guy took off into the woods. The only thing I can think of is that he’s concussive and doesn’t know where he is or what he’s doing. He might also have some substance in hissystem that’s affecting his behavior, but it could be anything. Maybe he’s afraid that the cops will detect something when they get to his car. That’s not interesting to us. We just need the guy found and escorted to the road. If he’s walking, we can put him on the choir bus, though the bus filled up almost immediately after arrival. It’s about to go deposit these crash victims at the church and come back to collect more.”
“I’ll grab Rou. We’re on it.”
“Sending you the PLS,” Striker said, referring to the point the man was last seen.
A moment later, Creed’s phone pinged. “PLS received. Moving. Out.”
Creed jogged by his teammates. Blaze was ashen and determined as he tugged off a pair of Nitril gloves and shoved them in a hazard bag. Immediately, he pulled on a new set as he moved up to the next car that Gator had smashed while he was doing his triage. That broken window was Blaze’s visual cue that someone inside needed a tourniquet.
This whole dystopian landscape looked crazy and unsurvivable, but Creed kept reminding himself that it was by design, the result of decades of engineering work, testing, and reworking. This was what brilliant minds had developed to absorb the impacts into the bodies of the cars and to keep protective cages around the passengers.
The destruction was the beauty, the safety, and the hope for those going through this hell.
Creed jogged past Striker, who was walking with a child on his hip, and a woman was tightly holding onto his side. They were making their way toward the minibus. It was a vital resource.
The smells of burning rubber, the sobbing cries, and the moans of pain filled Creed’s senses.
Creed was hyper-aware of how many people were trapped in their vehicles for myriad reasons, and beneath the surface of his assessment was a wave of terror: What if one of these cars caught fire?
The flames would leap from car to car, gas tanks would explode, the people would burn to death, and there was nothing that could be done for them.
He hoped that the regional airport was sending in its fire engines, which could shoot fire-suppressing foam over the scene.
Until then, the risk was high.
At the van, Creed stopped long enough to put a bowl of water out for Rou. When she was on a task, she was so focused on the endgame that it was all but impossible for Creed to get her to stop and drink. Here at the van, he might be able to fool Rou into thinking they were taking a break.
He pulled her collapsible bowl from his pack and poured some water from his water bottle. Knowing Rou, once she got her nose on the trail, she wouldn’t let up. This was Creed’s chance to drink as well, so that his shirt didn’t ping Mandy and tell her that he was dehydrated.
The technology of the wearables was fascinating.
Creed had been watching a video about the dental guards that women’s Rugby players wore on the field. When a specific head motion occurred, the AI in the tiny chip inside the mouthguard could interpret it. If certain parameters were exceeded, the guard would light up, and the athlete would be pulled for a brain check.
While many brain injuries in the military were caused by blast concussion, wearing a mouth guard like that might be an important tool for post-mission health checks.
A similar technology was also appearing in various products, such as shoes for seniors and smartphones, whichused accelerometers and gyroscope sensors to detect sudden movements, like falls.
Right now, Creed would- guaran-damn-tee that loved ones designated as ICE—in case of emergency—in the accident victim’s contacts list were getting text messages letting them know there had been an accident.
Creed wondered if that was actually multiple text messages as the cars took hit after hit, piling one on top of the other, quite literally.
The Iniquus tactical shirt he was wearing took that idea a step further, monitoring everything from his temperature to his hydration levels and heart rate, among other metrics. It fed that information back to Logistics so they could monitor the safety of each operator, as adrenaline or concentration on the unfolding event could cause the operators to be unaware that something had gone awry.
Another feature of the shirt, which Creed didn’t like to emphasize, was that if an operator died, the shirt would enter death mode. To conserve battery, it would turn off. Then, every thirty minutes, it would come briefly back online to send out a signal. In that way, his body would be recovered, and his family would have closure.
Closure was imperative, and that’s why, long after the rescue part of a search and rescue became a recovery, it was every bit as imperative as a live find. The searchers went after it with the same sense of urgency.
