They looked over the edge. The olive-drab johnboat swished back and forth in the wave action. Butch’s discarded backpack remained where he’d left it. If they were desperate for it, Ezra could have gone back down the ladder, pulled the rope to bring the boat closer, and grabbed it. However, he didn’t think anything in the bag was worth risking his life again.
And it was a risk. Ahead, the dam was close. Perhaps a mile away, at best. All the debris stuffed up against the concrete structure had been washed away with the first waves to sneak through the broken barrier. More junk arrived every second, including dozens of barge containers both empty and full, and a lake full of windblown debris was following. It all surged through the opening…
Beyond it, the relatively calm waters of the draining lake turned into a frothy churn. The remains of a couple of highway bridges were behind the dam. The bridge pylons split the rushing current into parts and sent waves in multiple directions. As he watched, another empty barge crashed into one of the poles, washed up against it, then quickly filled with water.
“You don’t have to ride in the little boat, but I’m not sure being on this barge will be much better,” Ezra lamented.
Chapter 20
Red Lodge, MT
Grace’s wobbly emotions leveled out once she was back behind the wheel. The convoy drove on without her, but their tracks in the snow made it a snap to follow. An hour later, as they entered the small town of Red Lodge, the snow finally switched to sleet, bordering on rain. It got lighter, too, making it easy to see the giant flag flying in front of the police station.
She cried out. “There! Finally.”
“Hold on, I need a pic.” Asher used his watch to snap a photograph of the two-story brick building as they pulled up. “I’ll call this one ‘salvation.’”
“We’ll see,” she said, dubious of ever finding that word while away from her parents. As they got out, she adjusted the Misha’s pistol in her front pocket. It bugged her a little to take the gun into a police station, but after dealing with a professional hitman, she’d learned to expect him to show up anywhere, even inside a well-lit, public building like the one in front of her.
“I’ll be glad to get warm,” Asher remarked.
“Amen,” she replied. “And I’m going to use their phone, too.” She’d been thinking about how to get in touch with her mom and dad ever since Misha took her phone away. Her plan was to use her authority as a ranger to ask the police in Montana to call the police in Kentucky.
She walked in the front door expecting a stereotypical big city police station, since Red Lodge appeared to be a large town of thousands. To her surprise, despite the exterior of the building being quite large, the almost-vacant police bullpen wasn’t much larger than the park police office back at Mammoth Hot Springs.
“Hello?” she called out.
A pair of officers sat near the back, manning phones. One held up a finger; the universal symbol for “hang on a second”.
She leaned close to Asher. “Do you think the convoy is somewhere around here? I figured they’d stop at the first sign of civilization, so why didn’t we see them?” While it was easy to follow her people on the remote road down the mountain, the number of tire tracks spiked when they reached the town limits. They’d lost their trail of breadcrumbs.
He shrugged, looking around. “Maybe they saw something here they didn’t like, or maybe they pushed on to Billings, as you were going to do?”
“Yeah, I hope so. I’d really like to know they made it to safety.”
They stood in a black puddle in front of the patrol desk. The snow on her boots melted and added to the flooded mess. She sloshed it around, wondering how much soot was in the air outside, but she glanced up when a man coughed to get her attention. “What can I do for you, Rangers?”
The officer wore a black tactical vest over his black uniform shirt. He was older, about the same age as her dad, and he had a salt-and-pepper beard and mustache. As with most men and women in law enforcement she’d known, the guy had inquisitive eyes, especially when he saw the thick black belts around their waists. Asher’s police-issue Glock was still strapped on him.
She took a breath. There were a million things he could do for them, but she needed to focus on the most important ones. “Did you see a group of cars drive through here? We were leading them out of the park, over Beartooth Pass.”
“Really?” he said with surprise. “We thought the pass was closed. Who would be crazy enough to go over the top with all this snow?”
She chuckled, knowing precisely how insane it was. “It wasn’t snowing when we started up the other side. It was a lot snowier coming down. Actually, I wish the pass could be closed. Lots of cars slipped off the road and fell hundreds of feet to the bottom. People died.”
He whistled through his teeth as if shocked. “We don’t have any authority to close it from the other direction, but we’ll try to get someone to shut the gates on this side.”
“I thought about that, but there are still cars on the mountain, trying to get down. You can’t block it until everyone gets clear.”
The officer shrugged his shoulders. “Then what can I do?”
“Did you see our friends? They had to come through here.”
“Yeah, I saw ’em. A bunch of cars went through here not long ago. Got a couple of calls from my residents telling me to keep them from stopping.”
Asher tapped the desktop. “And did you?”
The officer shook his head. “Saw no reason to. They kept on going, anyway.”
She wondered what would drive his community to complain about a few cars passing through, but she was content to know the convoy was still out there.
“Do you know what’s happening with the weather? Are other towns still up and running? We came through Cooke City and it was abandoned. It was a total ghost town.”
“Weather is what it is, I’m afraid. We listen to the National Weather Service same as everyone else. They aren’t giving any specifics for this part of the world right now. In fact, to your other point, I don’t know what’s happening anywhere but here. Billings was on the radio a few hours ago, claiming to be a FEMAST, but they’ve gone silent. Could be the storm.”
“A what?” she and Asher replied at the same time.
“FEMAST is some kind of FEMA designation. It means Billings is a Safe Town. The government should be shipping in water, blankets, medical supplies.”
“That’s awesome.” Billings was her original destination. It was the biggest city in southern Montana, and it would provide a good starting point for wherever they needed to go next. “How far is Billings from here?” she asked.
“Fifty-five miles,” he said dryly.
Her final question was the one she most wanted to ask. “I need to get a hold of my parents in Kentucky. Let them know I’m all right. The problem is someone stole my phone.”
She waited a few seconds to see if the officer would jump at the suggestion of theft, but he merely continued his attentive listening.
“As a professional courtesy, I figured you could call one of your sister police stations in Kentucky, and they could maybe run a car out to them.” She knew her dad had called her on a different number; he and her mom said they’d be on the road to Yellowstone, but she assumed they wouldn’t leave until things settled down. The only way to get a message to him before they left home was to send the police there. It was a bit selfish, she admitted, but she’d done her part for society the past couple of days. A little personal use of public services shouldn’t be out of the question.
“I’d love to help you, but we’re really short-staffed. You’re welcome to use our phone, but you’d have to look up the numbers of the stations in Kentucky yourself. I can tell you from experience, though, it’s unlikely any officer is going to hop in his cruiser to check on your parents. With all the weird weather and loss of life, I’d be surprised if police are even operating in some areas.”
Asher tapped the counter again, as
if to get the officer’s attention. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to make a call, too.”
“Knock yourself out, Ranger. Glad to help.” He pulled a cordless phone from a nearby desk and set it in front of them.
Asher picked it up. “Mind if I go first?” He winked at her. “My watch phone doesn’t have a signal for some reason. I’d like to try with this. Besides, I know my sister’s number.”
She resigned herself to going second. It gave her time to think of the towns closest to where her parents lived. Fairdealing was around the corner from her house, but it was so tiny it was hardly big enough to be called a town. One of the county firehouses was there, however, so it was a possibility. She’d visited it numerous times on class field trips. If no one answered at the station, the town of Benton was the next closest.
He nudged her on the shoulder as he listened. “It’s going to her voicemail. I guess she’s busy.” After a pause, he continued talking in the handset. “Hi, sis, it’s me. I’m alive. I made it, thanks to my new best friend, Grace. We’re in this little town, Red Lodge, Montana. Another hour and we’ll be in Billings, which is where we’re planning to stay tonight. Once I get there, I’ll try you again. Hope you’re okay. Will talk to you soon. Bye.”
He handed the phone to her.
“I’m ready for our luck to get better. Once I hear my dad’s voice, I know it will.”
Kentucky Lake, KY
“Well, we’re committed,” Ezra stated dryly.
There wasn’t much time to prepare for the passage between the remains of the dam. The giant rectangular barge was essentially a square, open-topped bathtub, filled with several feet of rainwater in the bottom. The water on board splashed in randomly as the ship pitched and yawed on all the different currents. He peered into the hold, then at the dam, considering their options. “You think you’d be safer down there?”
Butch crouched at the lip of the rectangular hold. “I guess so. What about you?”
“Nah. I’m going to stay up here. I want to see if we’re going to hit anything.” The dam was one navigational hazard, but there were three bridges on the river beyond the dam. Any of those could wreck them.
“Will it matter?” Butch asked with sarcasm. “It’s not like we have paddles to change directions.”
He was right. The floating container was at the mercy of forces around it. If they hit anything, the heavy-duty hull construction should keep things together. It was more because he had no way of knowing what was beyond the angry waves ahead of them, so he wanted to be prepared. Jumping was a poor option, but it was there. “I just like to know what’s coming.”
Butch glanced at the dam. It was a few hundred yards away and growing larger. “I’ll stay up top with you. If you needed me for one of my awesome skills, I’m not sure how fast I could get out of there.” He pointed into the fifteen-foot-deep cargo space. Unlike the outside of the hull, there were no ladders to the inside, though there was a metal cable hanging down in one corner, possibly the remains of a tow line. Whatever it was, it would be difficult to climb if time was a factor.
There was no good place to ride the cargo ship. It had no enclosed spaces, seats, or any other comforts. The flattest part was at the front of the hull; the area was thirty feet wide, but only about ten feet deep. Butch was already hunkered down there, so he sat next to him, using the small lip around the hold as his brace.
“This is a little like tying yourself to a rocket ship,” Butch said dryly, obviously attempting to distract himself from the imposing dam, which was now upon them.
“Hang on. You’ll be fine!” Ezra shouted the words but knew no one on earth could make that promise. Almost as a counterargument to what he’d said, the barge floated close to the northern edge of the dam. It threatened to ram it and chip away more of the concrete.
As Butch had joked, there was absolutely nothing he could do. He watched the mega-structure approach. When they drew next to it, Ezra saw into the hollow chambers of the broken dam. Most of the hydroelectric equipment had been scoured out of the concrete, like emptied-out crab legs, but one of the house-sized cylindrical generators was half-submerged in the churn at the dam’s edge.
“Hold on!” he shouted.
The barge struck the generator, then bounced back into the main channel, which was billions of gallons of water emptying out of Kentucky Lake. The roar all around was deafening, though it wasn’t quite like being inside a waterfall. It was more like pouring out the side of an above-ground swimming pool. As they descended, the contents of the hold sloshed forward and splashed over the lip, soaking them. A second later, they leveled out and passed through a rooster tail created by water rushing by one of the bridge pylons. The new sheets of water doused them a second time, though the barge stayed far enough away to avoid sliding over and sinking, like the one they’d seen a few minutes earlier.
“This is going to be close,” he warned, seeing what was ahead.
Behind the plumes of water thrown up by the remains of the first bridge, a lower railroad span came into view. Most of it was still intact, even though the metal trestle design seemed about a hundred years older than the ruined highway bridge. The water surged and dropped in huge rapids as it went under the rail tracks, though it sometimes went higher than the bridge, as evidenced by tons of debris plastered to the front side of the girders.
Ezra questioned his decision to sit on the top decking of the barge, but there wasn’t even enough time to get up and jump into the hold. Almost as soon as he saw the problem, the barge flowed with the current directly underneath the span.
“Holy good night!” he screamed, powerless against the fury of Mother Nature.
He and Butch caught the low point of a wave and shot under the bridge, but there wasn’t much room. He smelled the tar-oil stain of the railroad ties as he went under. The back part of the barge rose up, and it collided with the underside of the bridge. The grinding noise was eardrum-splitting, and it caused the entire barge to lurch, threatening to throw him and Butch forward. When he glanced back, he found the lip surrounding the rear half of the hold had been ripped off.
If they’d been sitting back there…
The unpredictable wave action continued as they went under the third bridge, the double-span interstate highway. However, it was newer, higher, and had fewer pylons to block their progress, so they easily shot through. After that, there were no visible threats lower on the waterway.
“That was fun,” Butch lied.
“Wanna do it again?” he chuckled, wiping his face.
“Not in a million years. Those were the scariest two minutes of my life, and I’ve been shot at.”
He watched as the water settled down. It had blasted them out through the dam at high speed, but the flood spread out across the farmlands along the Tennessee River as it headed for the nearby Ohio. He’d done some fishing along the river in his earlier days and knew where it was supposed to go. Although, as he looked north, there wasn’t a familiar landmark anywhere in sight. The rushing water had covered most everything for several miles on each side of the river, creating a giant, debris-laced lake.
They floated for a short time before a familiar sight came into view. It was closer than he expected, but lingering smoke had obscured their approach. As the barge spun him into position, they got a good view of the wrecked city of Paducah, ahead, on the left.
Butch pointed. “That’s where my mom died.”
“It’s where we’re going next,” he deadpanned.
In the air over Colorado
“I don’t know how this is possible,” Howard slurred. He whipped out his phone and scrolled the screen, getting defensive. “Here, Misha left his message at 4:44 this morning. That’s after he walked out of the area.”
“And before the park service truck pulled away.” Petteri’s voice turned dry. “He was lying, Howard. You need to fix this.”
The turbulence of the flight had affected Howard more than anyone else on the plane. He’d been in the
bathroom for a reason. Petteri couldn’t feel sorry for him, however, since he was angry at his normally reliable assistant.
The normally ramrod-straight-backed man leaned against the seat ahead of him. “Do you want me to redirect team two back to this area?”
“Hell no,” he snarked. “I don’t like to run people back and forth. That team must get to the fallen rock in northwestern Wyoming and chase these interlopers away. It would take too long to get another strike group up there. I want the first team on the ground and in Misha’s face as soon as possible. They can finish what he started if the targets are still alive. The convoy is going somewhere; it will never be easier to find the national park truck leading the parade than it is right now.”
Howard checked his phone again. “The team is in Billings. That’s right in the path of the convoy. I wanted them closer, but there is a snowstorm dumping feet of snow in the mountains near there. It might even happen the convoy doesn’t make it out of Yellowstone.”
Petteri held up his hand. “I don’t care about excuses anymore. I need to have Mr. Creighton’s head on a pike next to my door before I’ll believe anyone who tells me he’s dead again.”
The distinctive sound of breakfast being tossed came from a few seats ahead. Dorothy must have overheard their discussion. He started to chuckle at the turn of events, but Howard’s face went back to pea-soup green as he looked at him. The man scuttled toward the front of the plane.
The captain chose that moment to light up the intercom. “Ladies and gentlemen, sorry for the turbulence. I’ve never seen it this bad. However, the good news is we should be landing in the next fifteen minutes. We’ve made it to Denver.”
The sounds of his companions getting ill made his stomach want to join in the fun, but he forced himself to fight off the urge, even as the plane rattled and creaked in every joint.
Just a little farther.
Chapter 21
Impact Series Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 36