Martin replied. “Six of one, half dozen of the other. We can stop, but it might get worse, we also could be headed into the worst of it.”
Lane reached for the radio and took it. “I saw a sign a few miles back. There’s an exit ahead. Can’t be any more than five miles. I say we keep going and get off at the exit.”
Quickly I scanned the map. “That will take us on the interstate.”
“We can’t stay here,” Lane told me.
“Take the exit,” Skip said. “Let’s see if we can get out of this thing. Keep it slow and steady, we don’t need to kick up mud into the engines.”
“Roger that.” Lane returned the radio to me.
“You okay?” I asked,
“Driving in this?” Lane slightly turned his head my way. “Yeah. This is nothing compared to snow in Vermont.”
“That’s true.”
He kept a steady pace. I could feel the RV pull once in a while as the back end fishtailed slightly. The tires sloshed through it causing a strange grinding hum as we moved down the road.
Then even I knew something was wrong. No longer was it just the tires trudging through the thick matter, there was a vibration under the wheels.
I wasn’t a mechanic, but I worried the mud was caught up in our suspension, clogging it.
“What’s going on?” I asked Lane. “What is that?”
He held out his hand for the radio and I handed it to him.
“Hey, Skip,” he radioed. “I think our wheels are getting caked. I’m feeling a vibration.”
“It’s not your RV,” Skip said. “I feel it, too.”
“Me, too,” Martin added.
“What should we do?” Lane asked.
“Keep it steady,” Skip told him. “This can’t go on for—”
Nothing. Transmission just stopped.
“Come again, Skip,” Lane said.
Hiss.
Static.
“Oh my God,” Martin radioed. “Stop. Stop. We lost the bus.”
“What?” Lane asked, then hit the brakes.
The RV slid a good distance, turning sideways some before it came to a halt.
“What’s Pap mean?” Carlie asked. “We lost the bus?”
“How can we lose the bus?” asked Reese.
I held up my hand to the kids. “It probably skidded off the road.”
That was what I thought. After all, what else could it be?
Lane put the RV in gear. “I’m going to see what’s going on.”
Before I could respond, Martin, panicked, called out on the radio. “Lane. Jana. Hurry. We need all the help we can get.”
Lane couldn’t have had time to even process Martin’s request, he opened the door and flew out.
I turned to the kids. “I’ll be right back. Stay put.”
They both nodded at me, agreeing, I opened the door and stepped out.
I expected rain, I even expected the mud. I didn’t expect for my feet to sink and mud to come up past my ankles.
I turned, looking behind me I saw Anita, who had been riding with Martin, by the side of the truck holding on to it as she walked toward the back end.
I didn’t see the bus.
Hands on the RV as my guide, I made my way toward Martin’s truck, thinking once I got to it I would see the bus on the other side of the road.
It took until I reached Martin’s truck before I finally saw the school bus.
The road had given away, it collapsed, and the bus dropped down into what looked like a newly formed river of mud. It flowed violently like lava.
The front third of the bus protruded at a forty-five degree angle, swaying with the current.
“We have to get those people out!” Martin yelled, reaching for something in his truck.
It was hard to even move, let alone walk.
The thick substance was heavy, and I found myself lifting my feet with every step instead of dragging them.
I stood next to Anita, waiting to see what I could do to help.
The door to the bus was open and Skip leaned against the frame. His legs extended to brace himself as he held on to Dooley.
“Hurry!” Skip hollered.
Lane didn’t waste any time, he rushed toward the front end of the bus, stopping at the bumper. He examined it, then turned around. “Wheels are on the road. I need something to break the windshield!”
“Hold on!” Martin yelled.
I watched as he secured a rope to his truck, then tossed the other end to Skip. “Secure that around you and the baby!”
“We need to get the others out, too!” Skip shouted, grabbing the rope.
“We will!” Martin replied. “Just get yourself secure.” He went back to the truck, reaching inside. He returned with a large wrench which he handed to Lane.
It was insane.
The rain pouring down, the mud thickening, the bus swaying and jolting, and there was my husband, large wrench in hand, climbing up the front end of the school bus.
The moment he made it to the hood of the bus, it shifted and jolted. Screams carried out from the inside of the bus.
Martin wasn’t taking any chances. He got another rope, tied that to the truck and tossed it to Lane.
On the hood of the school bus, Lane lay belly down. He caught the rope, but I didn’t see if he actually secured it around his waist, I was too busy trying to take everything in.
“Jana! Anita!” Martin called. “Get near the front of the bus. Get the ones that can get out.”
I nodded and rushed as fast as I could near the bus.
It was frightening how fragile the situation was.
Too much was going on all at once.
Martin was telling Skip he had him and for Skip and Dooley to follow the rope, all while Lane busted the right side of the bus windshield.
The bus jolted again and all I heard were the screams.
“Grab my hand,” Lane hollered, his arm extending through the busted glass. “I got you. Grab it.”
“I have you!” Martin yelled to Skip. “Grab my hand. I have you.”
I couldn’t see everything that was going on. I could only hear.
“That’s it,” Lane said. “I have you. I have you.”
Below him Martin’s words were almost exactly the same.
Both men were pulling a simultaneous rescue.
All I could do was stand there, waiting to do my part.
“Skip’s out,” Anita told me. “Him and Dooley are out.”
I nodded, exhaled in relief then looked up. Rosie’s nine year old grandson was on the tip of the front end of the bus.
He turned his body to climb down feet first. I reached up grabbing on to his legs, then Anita and I helped him to the ground.
Before he was even settled, I saw Rosie’s granddaughter.
If someone were to ask me the exact details of that moment, I would draw a blank. It was a blur.
Martin had successfully guided Skip and Dooley out.
Rosie’s two grandchildren were safe, then just as Rosie made her way over the hood of the bus, it again jolted violently, only this time it dropped.
The bus sunk another three feet into the mud.
It was the bus equivalent of the Titanic. Perched out of its abyss of death, sinking fast. My husband still on the hood of the bus, trying to get people out.
Liza followed after Rosie, and then nothing for a few seconds until we helped Rick off the hood of the bus.
Another tremor of the ground caused the bus to sink even more, and a flow of screams carried to us.
“Lane!” Martin shouted. “Get out of there.”
What? Why was Martin shouting for my husband to get out of there?
I stepped back, rain falling fast against my face. I swiped away the water and my eyes followed the rope from the truck to the bus.
Lane wasn’t on the hood anymore, he was inside.
“Lane!” I screamed.
Another rumble of the ground, and with one final shake, the bus
dropped completely. That was when I heard the scream that I would hear the rest of my life.
A woman’s scream. That haunting, frightened scream.
“Oh, God, help!”
Her last cry out.
That was all I heard.
Gone.
Muffled beneath the thick bath of death.
Martin dove for the rope still attached to his truck. His feet slipped in the mud as he tried to hold on.
I was too hysterical. Screaming for my husband who had disappeared with the bus.
Martin pulled as best as he could, then everyone joined him in grabbing on to that rope. Even Rosie’s grandchildren. They held on and pulled. The rope veered to the right and everyone gave their all, fighting against the current.
Then I saw an arm.
It extended from the mud, slamming down to the road.
A single arm.
One I recognized.
Lane’s.
I dove forward for it. I couldn’t get a grip on his flesh, but I could grab his sleeve.
I couldn’t even purchase a foothold; the fabric of his shirt was slipping from my grip and my fingers struggled to hold on to something. Then Martin lunged down next to me and reached into the mud.
The two of us weren’t enough. Lane felt so heavy.
All I could feel was the fabric of his shirt, clutched in my fingers. I don’t recall who else joined in the effort, reaching in, grabbing, adding their strength. Lane’s head emerged from the mud. He gasped and coughed, and when he did, Martin latched on, lifting him.
I was useless. I didn’t have the strength, I realized when Rick moved me out of the way and reached into the mud.
My fingers slipped from my husband’s shirt.
But they had him.
It took both men to lift him, but they did, and it wasn’t just Lane.
In his arms was a woman, Colleen.
My husband was conscious, but she wasn’t. As they pulled both of them out of the mud river, Lane released his grip on her and scooted back. Her limp body sunk into the mud that covered the road.
Was she breathing?
She didn’t look like it.
Anita sprang into action, kneeling at the side of the woman. She opened her mouth, and using her fingers, scooped stuff out of the woman’s mouth.
The moment was frantic, I felt it in my bones, heart beating out of control.
I was still processing everything. I went from happy and grateful that my husband was alive to fearful and worried about the woman Anita worked to resuscitate.
In the span of two hours, we went from hopeful with sunny skies to death.
It was so hard to process, and I wasn’t sure I ever would. Would we, like Alice, have been safer going back? In my determination to go east, was I leading us into the worst of it?
The moment at hand was a whirlwind.
Anita desperately trying to revive a life while reconciling that we had just lost six more people.
Six people gone, never to be found, buried in that school bus at the bottom of that muddy river of hell.
SIXTEEN – HOSING DOWN
Colleen didn’t drown as much as she choked. Despite Anita’s best efforts, she wasn’t able to revive her.
Another person gone.
How did we get to this point?
At least, in my mind, I believed Alice and the others were safe. I had to believe that. Our pilgrimage had become deadly.
There was no way to know what was going on or which direction was best. The exit ahead of us Lane had suggested didn’t take us directly to the interstate, it took us to answers as to what had happened.
I didn’t realize how close to the Mississippi we actually were until we crossed it and saw how high and raging it was. Whatever storm burst through it caused massive flooding and mudslides of astronomical proportions.
I feared that we would run into more flooding or mud, thankfully we didn’t.
Our thirty person, five vehicle caravan had been reduced to thirteen people, two vehicles and six horses.
I don’t know how we managed to keep them healthy and fine.
My anxiety level was up looking at the map. It was a logistical nightmare for possible flooding.
We were right smack dab in the middle of an upside down horseshoe of water.
The Mississippi to the west, Ohio and Tennessee rivers to our north and the Kentucky lakes to the east.
Pushing through meant going another forty miles. Everyone was cold, wet and dirty. We needed to stop, but I just wanted to get beyond the lake.
Everything just seemed flattened as we drove through. Overturned cars, billboards lay on the road. It was hard to believe with all we had been through, it was still early in the day.
The sky didn’t give any indication of the time.
It remained gray and, in that pre-storm looking state.
My estimate by looking at the map was, if we stopped for ninety minutes, we could get another two hundred miles in before it would get too dark to travel.
We needed that two hundred miles, because at the point where we took a break, we still had six hundred miles to go.
Six hundred miles and eighteen hours until Ares.
Suddenly, I felt the time crunch. We could do it; I was no longer confident it would be without incidents that would slow us down and hold us back.
I expressed my worries to Lane, our voices now had dropped to a whisper, and we had added another six people to the RV.
“We could cut that you know,” Lane said. “Cut the trip by a good hundred miles.”
“How?”
“Take the interstate.”
“There’s nowhere to go, Lane, if something hits. We would have no cover.”
“I know. But we could make better speed.”
My plan to stay on the secondary roads and avoid the highways didn’t seem so plausible when faced with the time constraints.
I knew there was some hope for possible answers when the red blinking stop light greeted us when we pulled into the town of Princeton, Kentucky.
It was a small town, historic looking. The windows of the shops on the main drag were boarded up. Homes we had passed had done the same. We even saw a few people walking, they looked at us as we passed.
“What do you want to do?” Lane asked.
I pointed to a lot and we pulled over. It was a parking lot to a church, oddly one of three churches in that block. All different denominations.
A church would be a good start. There was power, so hopefully there was water.
It was my hope to find a spigot outside of one of the buildings.
We had bottles and there was water in the RV, but it wasn’t enough to get the mud off of everyone.
It was kind of heartbreaking, seeing the beauty of the small town. The historic buildings marked with plaques, knowing they were bracing for something that was stronger than the boards they put up.
We all unloaded from the RV and the truck, it was warm, even with the overcast sky. Anita and Skip stayed with the kids while Lane, Martin, Rick and I looked for a source of water. I carried a pot and headed toward the nearest church. We had pulled in the back lot and were behind the building. There had to an outdoor faucet somewhere.
My skin was tight, and it pinched from the dried mud. I was in a half bent over position looking at the bottom of the building when the man called out to me.
“Are you alright?”
I stood upright and turned around.
“Oh, my, what happened to you?” he asked.
“We ran into a massive mudslide,” I said. “There’s a whole group of us. Just …” I lifted my pot. “Trying to get some water to clean up.”
“And you think that pot is going to be enough?”
“I doubt it.”
“Gather your people, come on in, we’ll get you cleaned up,” he said.
“There are thirteen of us.”
“That’s okay. Gather your people.” He pointed to the back entrance of the church. �
��I’ll meet you inside.”
At a quick pace, I walked back over to the others and told them about the man who invited us to the church. No one even questioned it. We were all grateful and just needed to get the mud from us.
I didn’t even think about cleaning up the RV, that could happen while we traveled.
For the time being, we needed to take a break, get clean and clear our minds. Our motley and dirty crew made our way to the church.
✽✽✽
Reverend Barrows was the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, and he brought us to a back room where there were stacks and stacks of clothes for their upcoming bazaar.
“Didn’t know if you needed clothes, please help yourself.”
We all found something to wear and then he handed out bars of soap and towels, attached a garden hose to the stationary tub in the basement, and we all took turns getting hosed down. For most of us, splashing our faces wasn’t going to do it.
The only two who didn’t need to hose down were Carlie and Reese, they only had a few specks of mud here and there.
They joined the reverend above while we scrubbed down in the floor below.
The cleanup process took forty minutes of our time. I kept justifying it in my mind that we’d make up for it by taking the interstate for a little while.
Once we were all finished, we met them upstairs in the church banquet hall.
I felt so much better, my skin wasn’t tight, and the smell of fresh coffee was welcoming.
As he poured the coffee Reverend Barrows told us he was there at the church waiting for his crew to begin the near impossible task of boarding up the windows. He hadn’t been there all day and we had good timing. He and a few others had been working nonstop preparing the houses.
“It’s coming,” he said. “James Peirce does the weather for WSMV out of Nashville. He’s a local boy who had been communicating with his father up until about four hours ago when we lost all phones and cells.”
Hearing him say that gave me the first twinge of relief. Finally, we were going to hear something other than chatter on the radio. The internet information was bits and pieces.
In my ignorance I told him I thought the storms came from the west.
“Apparently, you don’t know about the hurricanes, do you?” he asked. “The East Coast, southeast, has just been battered. Hurricanes that dwarf any other in history. Hitting inland when it shouldn’t. The one we’re bracing for buried the entire state of Louisiana. It’ll be here,” he said. “Probably in the next six hours.”
Winds of Ares: An Apocalypse Thriller Page 11