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Part 3: The Drone’s Eye View

Navigating a drone through a condemned factory is like threading a needle in the dark.

I stared intently at the high-definition monitor strapped to my chest. The video feed transmitted the terrifying, skeletal interior of the building. Sunlight sliced through the cracked ceiling in thick, dusty beams. The walls were covered in decades of graffiti, peeling lead paint, and black mold.

“I’m sweeping the ground floor,” I spoke into the radio, my thumbs expertly manipulating the joysticks. “Nothing but rats and rusted machinery.”

I steered the drone toward the freight elevator shaft. The doors had been ripped out years ago. I slowly descended the drone into the pitch-black abyss of the basement level.

I clicked a button, and the drone’s powerful LED headlights flared to life, illuminating the darkness.

The basement was a sprawling, concrete cavern. It was littered with fallen support beams, massive piles of concrete debris, and old, rusted manufacturing equipment. It looked like the aftermath of a bombing.

“Taking it down Sector A,” I muttered.

I flew the drone slowly, hovering over piles of rubble, sweeping the light back and forth. Ten minutes passed. The battery on the drone was ticking down. The corporate suits from the development company were surely screaming at Hutch in the command tent.

“Nothing in Sector B,” I reported, preparing to turn the drone around.

Suddenly, my heart skipped a beat.

In the furthest, darkest corner of Sector C, nestled behind a massive, collapsed ventilation duct, a pair of eyes reflected the harsh LED light of the drone.

I stopped the drone’s forward momentum, letting it hover in place. I pushed the joystick forward, creeping the camera closer.

It was the Pitbull.

She was standing amidst a pile of shattered concrete. She didn’t look terrified of the buzzing, hovering drone. She didn’t bolt. She just stared at the camera with an expression of profound, agonizing exhaustion.

Her fur was completely soaked. She was dripping wet, having completed her morning ritual before the sirens began.

“Hutch,” I whispered into the radio, my throat suddenly dry. “I found her. She’s in the deep basement, Sector C.”

“Dammit,” Hutch swore over the comms. “Is she trapped? Can we blow the upper floors and spare the basement?”

“Negative, the entire structure will pancake,” I replied, my eyes glued to the screen.

I prepared to navigate the drone closer, hoping the mechanical noise would scare her out toward the stairwell.

But then, the dog did something that made the blood in my veins completely freeze.

She wasn’t hiding. She wasn’t sleeping.

She was standing directly over an old, heavy iron industrial storm grate built into the concrete floor.

As I watched the high-definition feed, the Pitbull lowered her head, positioned her body perfectly over the center of the rusted grate, and violently, aggressively shook her body.

A shower of muddy, dirty water flew from her soaked fur, raining downward, dripping through the heavy iron slats into the darkness below.

She paused, panted heavily, and shook herself again, wringing every last drop of moisture from her body into the hole.

“What the hell is she doing?” Hutch asked, watching my secondary feed from the command tent.

“I don’t know,” I breathed.

I pushed the joystick forward, bringing the drone mere inches away from the dog’s face. I tilted the camera gimbal downward, aiming the high-beam LED lights directly through the rusted iron grate.

The camera adjusted to the depth. The light cut through the darkness of the dry, concrete sub-drain beneath the floor.

I gasped. The remote controller nearly slipped from my sweaty hands.

At the bottom of the ten-foot-deep, vertical concrete drain pipe, curled into a tight, miserable ball, was another dog.

It was a Golden Retriever.

He was incredibly old. His muzzle was entirely white with age. He was skin and bones, a frail, tragic skeleton covered in matted golden fur. His eyes were milky white—he was completely blind.

He was trapped at the bottom of the pipe with absolutely no way out. The sheer, smooth concrete walls offered zero purchase for an escape.

But as the muddy water dripped down from the Pitbull shaking herself above, the old Golden Retriever painfully lifted his head. He opened his mouth, desperately, eagerly licking the drops of dirty water from the air and from the concrete walls.

The tears hit my eyes so fast and so violently they blurred my vision.

The puzzle pieces slammed together with the force of a freight train.

The scarred, feral Pitbull hadn’t been soaking herself to stay cool. She hadn’t been hiding in the shade.

She was a living, breathing sponge.

Every single day, in the middle of a lethal, 105-degree heatwave, this abused, terrified street dog had been submerging herself in the only water source she could find. She had been carrying gallons of water in her fur, running through a dangerous, collapsing factory, just so she could stand over a grate and shake the water off to keep her trapped, blind friend from dying of dehydration.

She refused the food we threw her because she couldn’t carry it down the shaft. She only cared about the water. She was sacrificing her own body, burning herself alive in the Texas heat, to keep him alive.

“Hutch,” I choked out into the radio, my voice cracking, tears streaming down my dusty face. “Hutch, abort the blast. Abort the damn blast right now!”

“Caleb, what is it?” Hutch demanded, hearing the absolute panic in my voice.

“There’s another dog!” I yelled, ripping the drone harness off my neck and throwing it onto the hood of the truck. “He’s trapped in a sub-drain! She’s been keeping him alive! Disarm the primary detonators!”

“Caleb, the corporate guys are on the line, they’re threatening to pull our contract if we delay—”

“Tell corporate to go to hell!” I roared into the radio, grabbing my heavy yellow hardhat and a flashlight from the truck bed. “I am going in!”

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