Fortunately, since many tourists were campers, lots of them carried thick ropes in their cars. One group of amateur mountain climbers essentially had enough for everyone. From there, it was an easy process cutting them into three-foot strips, looping them through the hub caps or wheels, wrapping them around the rubber of the tires, then tying them off. Each wheel needed at least four cords to give adequate traction.
Finally, after making sure all the other cars stuck on the hill were properly outfitted, she jumped back in the Suburban. “Well, Misha owed me twice for saving his life. He’s paying one of them back with this. I hope we don’t need him again by the time we get down, or we’ll be even. That’s not a position I want to be in.”
Asher warmed his hands on the vent again; he’d helped tie off the ropes, too. “Let’s make sure this is the last emergency, then.”
“The way our day’s been going, I’m not hopeful.”
“Me, either,” he replied, “but you seem to have a way of surviving the worst. I wouldn’t bet against you.”
She started the engine, glad once again she wasn’t going through everything alone.
Land Between the Lakes, KY
Ezra and his party rode the trail off the hillside and met up with people waiting on the near end of the wrecked bridge. Cars and trucks were parked in long columns as if waiting for it to reopen, though he guessed it wouldn’t be for a few years.
There were hundreds of cars and trucks in the line. Ezra went directly to a truck driver sitting on the side-step of his bright red sleeper cab, reading a book. He shut off the motorcycle so they could converse. “What happened here?”
The trucker looked up. He was a middle-aged man with an unshaven face and neck. After pulling off his glasses, the guy smiled. “It all washed away.”
The man’s accent sounded Eastern European.
“How long ago?” he pressed.
“Big fall was this morning. Main span was hit with barges. All the junk flowed through the middle opening since then.” He motioned with his hands as if pushing garbage out of his way.
Ezra really looked at the bridge. It was similar to the one in the north, with long strips of land leading up to the middle section over the water, but there didn’t appear to be any metal suspension work like the other one. It was simply a concrete bridge with no top. The middle section of the span had collapsed, possibly a result of the incredible amount of debris piled up on the south side of the opening.
“I can see why it would have broken. There must be a million little boats stacked up, along with hundreds of barge pieces, house tops, and loose boat docks.”
“Sound about right. I drive all over America and have never seen such a tragedy.”
“What are you waiting for?” Ezra asked, not sure what answer the man could give. His truck wasn’t going forward, but it wasn’t possible to turn around, either. There were so many vehicles packed in tight, even a little car would have trouble turning back.
“My company said they’re going to send a courtesy van to take me home to Virginia.”
Ezra couldn’t take his eyes off the lake. Debris poured through the gap like a bloody wound. It flowed on the surface, a lot like a river set on top of the lake. The mass of junk floated away as far as he could see to the north. Thinking back to the drive in, he’d probably seen the start of the mess when they passed those free-floating barges.
While he was lost in thought, a pair of grimy-looking young men came around the front bumper of the big rig. “Hey, Grandad, you got anything to drink?”
Ezra wasn’t sure if they were talking to him or the truck driver, but their demeanor suggested they expected to be served.
Butch, where are you? He’d stopped randomly at the truck to talk, but the women had gone closer to the front of the line, perhaps to see the bridge better. At that moment, he didn’t have eyes on them or his wingman.
“He asked if you got drinks,” the second youngster pressed. “And anything else we might want.” To make his point, the kid slapped a crowbar on the fiberglass fender.
They were in their late teens; based on their dirty clothes and faces, they could have been doing repair work on a car when the bridge was closed down. Since he was a mechanic himself, it should have been a point that impressed him, but they didn’t seem friendly in the least.
The trucker dropped his book. “I’ve got some water in my fridge. I give!”
Ezra considered pulling the AR off his back, but he’d been brought up with the rule that you never get out your gun unless you intended to use it. As much as he wanted to restore some order to the situation, he decided to let things play out. He did, however, set the muddy helmet on the end of his handlebar, then casually hop off the bike to free both hands.
The trucker got in his cab and disappeared for half a minute. The two men looked at him as if he wasn’t worth their time, which was exactly what he wanted to convey. The first thug revealed his crowbar when he nervously tapped it against the front tire of the red truck. He had a little time to wonder how fast he could get the drop on them before a gunshot made him jump wildly, almost causing him to push the bike on its side.
“No steal!” The truck driver stood next to his open door with a pistol raised to the air. After firing his warning shot, he aimed it at the two young men.
They dropped their crowbars and tripped over their feet to retreat. Ezra put his hand up against one of his ringing ears but laughed heartily as the boys ran from the scene, probably needing a change of underwear to boot. His laughter was cut mid-stream when he looked back to the truck driver.
His pistol was pointed at Ezra.
Isla Socorro, Mexico
Dorothy turned to walk up the ramp to the jumbo transport plane, but Petteri grabbed her arm. “You don’t have to go. We have very good facilities on the island.” He could force her to do whatever he wanted, but he was torn fifty-fifty on whether he needed her to come with him. Having her programming skills around could be useful in a pinch, but having her safe at the remote compound would ensure she never left his employment.
“I’d like to stay with you, Mr. Tikkanen. The satellite images only show so much. I want to get down and dirty on the ground. Heck, maybe I can help calibrate your satellite tech to see through some of that mess. But, to be useful, you’ll have to take me there.”
“Fine. Climb in.” He figured fate had made the call. He turned to Howard. “You know what to do?”
“We’ll be in Denver by mid-afternoon and at the impact site an hour after that. Our team from the Silverthorne mine complex is headed there as we speak. They should have the site secure well before us.”
Petteri was beside himself at his good luck. Not only did a huge chunk make it to the surface intact, but it had the good taste to land within a hundred miles of three of his Colorado mining facilities. The Silverthorne titanium mine was the largest in the state, and thus the easiest to tap for manpower.
“Good work, Howard. Keep me apprised of their progress toward Tuonela; the second we get there I want to know what we’ve got on our hands. Until then, let’s keep off the radio about this, just on the off chance someone is listening.”
His executive associate nodded. “I’ll have the pilot push the limits on speed and keep us running silent as best he can.”
Satisfied he’d gotten the secretive communication out of the way, he waved to a small group of five people waiting to board nearby. They were his private pool of reporters; he wanted them present so they could take approved video and photographic proof showing TKM was indeed sending resources to the affected areas. They went up the big ramp, cameras flashing and video rolling.
Once the press was out of earshot, he replied. “Very good. On the way there, Dorothy and I will study the situation from satellite imagery and listen in on local law enforcement channels.”
Howard nodded and walked up the ramp.
Dorothy tried to go up the ramp again, but he held her back a second time. “There’s something I need y
ou to do with one of our satellites, if you think you’re up to it.”
“I have them collecting data as fast as possible to determine the descending order of importance of the rock pieces across multiple states. We should know more in a few hours.”
“That’s not it,” he said dryly.
“Oh. Sorry.”
“If things in the mountain states are as bad as you think, uh, Mad Max I believe you called it, we need to know more. I’d like you to use satellite images to scan the region around Yellowstone National Park. I want to know if any pieces came down there, and, if so, how much devastation they caused.”
“I bet it’s because you want to know if those two runaways might have survived.” She flashed her white teeth for a moment before turning serious. “Why are they such a worry to you? I mean, it’s like you have a billion dollars in the bank, but you’re searching for a two-dollar bill blowing around out there.”
She wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t absolutely essential to eliminate Asher Creighton, but he’d gotten where he was by being thorough. As much as he wanted to consider them dead and gone, he needed to be sure. He’d already sent two extra teams; what could it hurt to triple-check?
“I’m a very generous man.” He pointed to the cargo hold, where TKM pickup trucks sat next to big pallets of rice currently being ogled by the reporters. “Willing to help my fellow Americans survive. However, there are people out there who would make me out to be a villain, say slanderous things about me. Mr. Creighton has already shown he was willing to go on video trying to discredit me. I’m afraid he’ll try to do it again.”
“Well, I didn’t bring my swimsuit, so there isn’t anything keeping me on this island. Unless you want me to spy on someone else, am I finally cool to go up this ramp?”
He stood up straight and waved her on, aiming to cut an imposing figure for the young woman. “I like to have one hand checking the other, you know? It’s the only reason why I’m asking you to double-check Howard’s man Misha.”
Internally, he cackled like a supervillain at the obvious threat, but strangely, Dorothy laughed with as much drama. “I’m sure you have people checking me, too,” she said glibly, “but I don’t mind. I do top-notch work. You and I can both take that to the bank.”
As he watched her go up the ramp, he wasn’t sure if he liked or disliked the spunky woman. Perhaps he’d decide after he could definitively stop worrying about Mr. Creighton.
Chapter 15
Beartooth Pass, WY
“I know you said I have a way of surviving the worst, but maybe this is the time my luck runs out. Don’t you think it would be better for you to get out and walk to the road? It’d be a lot safer.” Grace had the ropes on the tires, but wanted to give Asher a chance to bail out before she tried to move the truck. A short slide and a thousand-foot doozy of a first step were the price of failure.
“I’m staying, but I’m not watching,” he declared. “I won’t even take any pictures. We’re in this together, so, please, get this over with before I come to my senses.” Her friend seemed fascinated by the heating vents, as if staring at them would make all the other problems go away.
“All right. No more talk.” Grace touched the gas and the truck gave a satisfying lurch. She went forward a foot or two, then backed up. With both movements, the rear quarter panel rubbed against the other car. “Sorry!” she yelled out the window.
Her intention had been to see if the two cars in the ruts would slide by if she moved, but they appeared firm on their rope tires, too. Finally, convinced the beat-up Chevy would stick to the ground, she angled the truck away from the ruts and started up the snowy hillside. On the way to the top, she passed about ten other vehicles facing in various directions; they were the lucky ones who’d managed to stop their slides before getting down to her truck.
A few yards before reaching the road, the truck jerked to the side as she dipped into the tire ruts again, but she turned into the slide and powered through. “Wow,” she exclaimed when she was back on safe terrain. “I never want to try that again.”
“No kidding,” Asher replied, looking outside into the light show. The thunder had nearly disappeared, but the lightning kept dancing high in the clouds. It created an eerie strobe effect above their location. “I never want to do any of this again.”
The other cars soon came up the gentle slope, although one front-wheel drive car had to be left where it was low on the slope. Even the ropes couldn’t help it get free of the hill, and she didn’t want to spend any additional time gathering people to help push or pull the car up. The snow continued to come down in heavy sheets; their tracks in the original six inches of precipitation were already filled in by the time she returned to the roadway.
“We go this way,” she advised, pointing to the right fork. Her stomach was unsettled about what she’d find at the bottom of the ravine, should she ever go down there. How many cars had already slid off the cliff? Those ruts were caused by someone. And worse, if she hadn’t stopped her own slide, how many of her people would be down there? The thoughts stuck with her as she drove on the paved road, hands at ten and two on the wheel, diligently studying every guide pole on the way.
The correct road started down the far side of the pass, getting a little steeper with each minute, but the ropes around her tires did their job and kept her on the state highway. Her intense focus broke only when two distinctive shapes appeared out of the darkness. A pair of people sat up against a guard rail on the right side of the road. She tapped the brakes and stopped. “Asher, there! See if they need help.”
Asher pushed open his cranky door and hobbled through the snow. She grew concerned when the pair didn’t hop up in excitement as he approached, and her worst fears were confirmed when he slowly walked back. “They’re dead,” he said dryly as he climbed in. “Frozen stiff.”
The temperature indicator on the dashboard said it was twenty-five degrees out. How long did those people sit there in the frigid temps? Or, maybe they froze after they died. Could they have been struck by all the lightning? They sat along a huge metal rail…
She had a further dark thought. “Did I make a mistake coming up here? What if all those people who sped ahead of us went over that cliff?” Grace studied the road ahead to see if there was any evidence of tire tracks, but the blustery winds and dense falling snow made it impossible to tell.
Asher slowly pulled and then buckled his seat belt. “Don’t panic. We’re up here now. Just get off this mountain, Grace. As fast as possible.”
His calming tone helped beat down her lurking panic. When the road hit a flat section, she tried going faster and slower to test how fast the truck could safely go. When she gave it too much gas, the ropes seemed to lose their grip, causing her to slide. “This is our top speed,” she commented, satisfied she’d found the limits, “as long as we’re going in a straight line.”
Unfortunately, the road didn’t go in a straight line down into a valley. It meandered along a ridgeline for several miles before they arrived at a warning sign explaining it was about to get much steeper. She read it with a mechanical voice, “Dangerous curves ahead. Closed in winter.”
Asher laughed. “You were saying about a straight line?” He spoke sarcastically. “If this is summertime, I’d hate to be here when it freezes and snows.”
“Yeah, we sure got lucky,” Grace snarked. She handled the truck around a switchback, then the view out Asher’s window seemed to drop off into an abyss. The left side was the mountain above them, but the right side was nothing. Minutes later, after inching along for a quarter of a mile, the narrow two-lane road turned left at what looked like a scenic turnoff. The view would probably be spectacular if they could see more than a hundred feet.
“I think some cars did make it this far down the mountain,” he said with sadness. “But this was their end. They went right through that railing.” He pointed to the small turnoff. If a car missed the left turn, they would go straight through the overlook. The railing at th
e tourist area was designed to keep people from getting too close to the edge. The planners probably didn’t imagine cars would slam into it.
She rolled along the tight leftward curve, letting her ropes grip the snowpack. The rest of the convoy followed at the same slow speed, keeping them from the dangerous ledge. She stopped checking back there when she saw the flashing lights of Tessa’s truck; it meant her whole convoy had safely navigated the turn.
A short time later, her lights picked up three people walking in the middle of the road ahead. Their feet created small postholes and drag lines barely visible in the stifling snowfall. All three jumped and waved when she pulled up.
It was a man, a woman, and a young boy or girl; it was hard to say since the kid was bundled up in an adult-sized winter coat. She positioned the truck as far as possible from the guard rail along the edge, so the trio had to stand outside Asher’s window. He waved at them as they came closer.
“We need help,” the man gushed. “Our car went over the side.”
“Did you all get out?” Asher asked in a clinical fashion.
“Uh, yes. My brakes wouldn’t slow us down at all. Thanks to all the lightning, I knew we were along the edge of the valley, so we’d been ready to jump. Fortunately, we all made it.”
The youngster faced Asher. “Suzie Q didn’t!”
The mother and father looked at each other before the man spoke in a reserved voice. “Sorry, our daughter’s little teddy bear was our only casualty.”
Grace saw herself in the little girl. Even the name Suzie reminded her of home; her dad’s nickname for her mom was Suze. She was impressed at how the family had survived.
“I’m so glad you’re safe. You’re the second group we’ve seen jump out like that.”
“Suzie Q isn’t safe! We have to find her!” the girl shouted through her cinched hood.
“We will, dear,” the mom replied.
Impact (Book 2): Bounce Page 12