Page 16 of South of Nowhere (Colter Shaw #5)

16.

Time Elapsed from Initial Collapse: 3 Hours

Colter Shaw was returning to Hinowah with a new mission.

He sped toward the south end of Route 13, which was bustling with a sandbag-filling party.

A woman noncommissioned officer from the army engineers and two corporals were supervising a workforce of about eight townspeople. He’d never heard of putting sandbags on top of a fragile levee but that was hardly his area of expertise, and the fact was, it seemed to be having some effect.

Most of the eyes turned to him as he skidded off the asphalt and down the hill on the south side of the valley, using the road to the village proper. He could have negotiated the hill by himself, off-road, but the only way across the torrent-filled spillway was the bridge.

Once over he picked his way through the soupy mess that the south side of town—Misfortune Row—was becoming, thanks to the overflowing spillway. It had been hours since the levee’s collapse, and the erosion at the top had turned the spigot up higher. The waterfall was far stronger—and louder—than when he’d left town. He continued north until he came to the hill on which the command post was situated.

Here, he didn’t bother with the switchback and gunned the engine to plow straight up the grass and over the crest. He got more speed than planned and needed to brake fast, so he skidded to a sideways hockey stop, just shy of the main tent.

Debi Starr, the young officer, watched and nodded with approval. She looked as if she spent her days in knitting clubs and the kitchen, not in the garage tinkering with a Harley, but Colter had learned long ago not to make baseless assumptions.

In addition to Starr, Mayor/Chief Han Tolifson was present. He sat at a table, looking exhausted as he typed, two fingers at a time, on his laptop keyboard.

He said a perfunctory, “No leads to the family, I assume.”

“No.”

Starr’s face tightened at this.

Tolifson said, “Isn’t looking good.”

This was true and there was no reason to dispute, or elaborate on, the comment.

But he did have something to say.

It was about his new mission.

“My drone’s been up and down the river all the way to Fort Pleasant. Tomas Martinez and I have covered it too. Nothing.”

The rain persisted but was less insistent and the wind less fierce. The drumming on the canvas ceiling was softer.

Tolifson asked, “Where’s the drone now?”

“In the drink. Almost made it back, but the batteries went.”

“I’m sorry. Must’ve been expensive.”

It was, but hardly worth even thinking about. “One last thing I want to try—the caves on the east side of the Never Summer. I think that’s the only place left to search.”

“Some are big, sure,” Tolifson said. “But an SUV?”

“I still want to check.”

Never equate a long shot with a no-shot .

“How would you do it, sir?” Tolifson asked.

“Boat. Pontoon. Double outboards ideally.”

“I guess it might work. But ask our resident fishergirl. Debi, those caves?”

Starr said, “I’d go with Daddy and my little sister and we’d canoe into some of them, after trout and pike. But inside, about four feet, the clearance shrinks to nothing. Any vehicle, especially a Suburban, you’d see from here. Easy.”

So.

That took care of his mission.

Rescue vs. recovery…

An SUV approached. Dorion’s rented Nissan Pathfinder.

She climbed out and joined the others in the tent. “I saw you come back. Didn’t hear anything, so…bad news?”

“ No news. Couldn’t find it. But, yeah, that’s bad.”

A wave of anger swept through him.

Could he have done anything differently?

Nothing occurred.

Which didn’t take away the tragedy of a loss like this—and its related burn of failure on his part.

Unreasonable? Maybe. But it always happened when he wasn’t successful at a reward job.

Starr asked Dorion, “How’s the evac going?”

“So-so. Still dozens of remainers. We’re threatening jail time and fines. We get laughed at. Or threatened back with Dragoons.”

“Oh, you met Mrs. Petaluma.” Tolifson looked at Colter. “She’s a town institution. And I guarantee she didn’t say a word to you.”

“No, just showed me the grip of her weapon.”

Colter said absently, “Nice handgun. Accurate—for a black powder piece.”

Starr pointed out her property to Colter. “It’s the one there, with the big garden.”

Tolifson said, “Her ancestors were some of the original people here. Early eighteen hundreds.”

Starr said, “The nation—they prefer that to ‘tribe,’ I found out. They did fine when the miners were here—the Silver Rush hit this part of the state a little after the Gold Rush. But when the ore dried up, the miners moved on; the Native people had to sell off all their land and move away. That property of hers is all that’s left. Out of more than a thousand acres.”

Tolifson offered, “Wonder if her attitude is: If I lose the ancestral home and land to a flood, what’s the point of going on?”

Colter felt a tight grip in his heart at these words. He was a survivalist and the son of a survivalist. You might risk your life at various activities from professions to sport, but you never gave up the game voluntarily.

He said, “We could pick her up and drag her.”

Starr said, “Hm. That’d be illegal. And there is that pistol thing…”

Motion from the levee caught Colter’s eye.

The streaming water had done what he’d suspected it would, knocked several sandbags off the crest and sent them tumbling toward the spillway.

Then his eyes took in some of the garbage and rubble at the base, sitting in front of a wide retaining pond.

He felt a blow, as if Bear had landed a gut punch.

Colter turned to Tolifson. “The man in the pickup, Louis Bell? He said the family’s SUV went into the river, right?”

His voice was urgent and the mayor frowned. “That’s right.”

“Did he see it happen through the rear window, looking back, or in the mirror?”

“Mirror, he said.”

“So it seemed to him like the SUV went to the left, but it might’ve gone right .” He nodded to the base of the levee. “I think they’re trapped in the retaining pond, not the river.”