Page 18 of South of Nowhere (Colter Shaw #5)

18.

The Hinowah Fire Department vehicle did not feature a power ladder but rather two extendable manual ones. Buddy and Tolifson grabbed one and pulled it to its full length—about thirty feet. They placed it where Colter indicated: from the levee side of the mudslide to the shore of the retention pond, making a bridge about a foot above the flowing surface.

He called, “Need a chain saw!”

“I’ll get it.” Buddy ran to the truck. To Dorion and Tolifson, Colter shouted, “Sandbags.”

He hefted one himself and walked over the bouncing ladder to the vehicle and stepped into the water onto the Suburban’s roof, careful not to slip. A fall would mean a difficult extraction from the mud.

Or, if one went in headfirst, a very unpleasant four- or five-minute death.

He set the bag in the center of the roof and gestured for the others. Dorion, Tolifson and Starr formed a bucket brigade and passed the heavy sandbags to Colter, who placed them two deep on the roof, making a rectangle with an interior about three feet square. This was to keep the water from flooding into the Chevy when the hole was cut. Without the bags to stanch the flow, water would pour in and fill the van in seconds.

Colter called, “Saw!”

Dorion, Starr and Tolifson backed off the ladder—and Buddy made his way to the improvised sandbag well Colter had created.

Colter said, “Do the honors. Keep it shallow.”

Buddy fired up the tool, which clattered to life instantly. It was old, but Colter could see it had been perfectly maintained and the chain was new. He gave the fire department credit, and guessed that while the police rarely saw much felonious action, the fire service was kept pretty busy, even in a quiet town like Hinowah.

The man dropped the blade into the water, sending up a fierce spray—and filling the area with the huge sound of grinding. The teeth were sharp and dug readily into the sheet metal of the Chevy’s roof. Buddy was careful to cut no deeper than three or four inches in depth.

The instant of the first slice, the water drained inside, but the bags were doing an adequate job of keeping the rest of the pond at bay.

Soon he’d cut a U and was working on the final edge. Colter gestured to the saw and Buddy let it idle then gave it to him, while the fireman himself gripped the impromptu hatch in his gloved hands. “Ready!”

Colter revved the saw and completed the final cut as the firefighter lifted away the metal rectangle and pitched it into the pond.

Shutting off the saw, Colter rested it on one of the sandbags and pulled his tactical flashlight out of a rear pocket and clicked it on.

He wondered: What’re we going to find?

Dropping to his knees, he was hit by the scent of body odor and gasoline. A fuel tank leak! Had the fumes combined with the lack of oxygen killed them? There was no sign of life.

Directly beneath him were the empty front seats. He aimed at the second row.

There reclined a woman in her late thirties and two children, a teen girl and a boy a few years younger.

None of them were moving.

Their eyes were closed.

Colter dropped into the space and set his flashlight on the dashboard, pointed toward the rear of the vehicle. He turned to the three occupants.

He gripped the woman’s collar and pulled her forward.

With a gasp she startled awake, and gazed at him groggily.

Her movement jostled the daughter and she too stirred.

Colter noted something on the floor. An empty bottle of over-the-counter decongestant, and he understood that the family had cleverly tried to minimize their oxygen use by “overdosing” themselves to sleep.

Smart.

Though it would be a hell of a job to get the three largely unresponsive passengers out of the flooding vehicle fast.

And where was the fourth person Louis Bell had reported seeing?

No time to consider that further. Just get them all out.

“Who…?” The woman’s eyes were unfocused, and her voice slurred.

“Let’s go,” Colter said and muscled the woman into a sitting position. “You’re going to be okay.”

“No…children…first…”

Colter didn’t object. He helped the daughter sit and then pulled her to the front seat and, careful to avoid cutting her on the jagged edges, lifted her up to Buddy.

The girl was more or less conscious but the boy, smaller framed, was still out. Colter wondered how many pills they’d each taken.

“My…” The woman frowned and lost her train of thought.

As the boy was passed through the freezing stream of water, he began to revive and gasped at the freezing bath. “Mom…”

“I’ll…be…there…” Her words stumbled out before stopping. She blinked fiercely against the flashlight beam. They would have spent the last few hours in the dark. He helped her into the front seat and then handed her up to Buddy, far stronger than his slim build suggested. He simply plucked her from the front seat.

“My husband…George. My…”

She muttered some more words, but by then she was outside.

Colter shone his light into the back, playing the beam over the interior, noting that they had sealed the door and window seams with fingernail polish.

This too was smart.

Improvised survival techniques.

The water inside was now up to the bottoms of the seats, slowly rising. Toys and luggage and clothes and boxes and food and cups floated everywhere. In the rear was a man lying on his back, feet pointed upward.

Colter crawled closer. Was he unconscious?

Or dead?

“George!”

He couldn’t get close enough to the man’s head or chest to see if he was breathing or otherwise responsive.

The water was rising fast. Soon, Colter would be in danger himself. If the man was in fact deceased, Colter would have to escape.

But he needed to know for certain.

Colter tugged the man’s right shoe off. He used the handle of his unopened knife and ran it firmly along the underside of the foot. The maneuver, known as the Babinski reflex, will elicit a response in even comatose patients—though not with the dead.

His big toe curled and the others spread wide.

He was alive.

“George!”

He grunted and shifted.

“I…Sonja!”

“Your family’s okay, George. You’re okay. But we have to get out of here. It’s going to flood any minute.”

“I…” He began to cough. And, Colter believed, sob.

He was not groggy in the same way the others were, and Colter guessed he had not taken any of the pills, leaving those for his family. He had probably just passed out from the depleted oxygen and carbon dioxide poisoning.

“You’re going to have to move on your own.”

The man began to work his way over the second row of seats. Once there, Colter could help him. As they made their way into the front row, Colter noted that he was hampered by holding something in his right hand.

“That?” Colter asked. “Just drop it.”

The man stared at what he gripped and Colter realized it was a wadded-up bouquet of plastic film—the sort that dry cleaning is wrapped in.

Ah, he understood.

He recalled Tolifson’s words about Mrs. Petaluma’s possibly choosing not to go on in life without her house and garden.

That was an end Colter simply could not reconcile.

But here? George’s debate was to sacrifice himself and give his family a few more minutes of air, in hopes that rescuers would get to them in time.

A universe of difference between the two mortal decisions.

George had probably passed out before he could enwrap his face.

He released the wad and it floated away.

With a boost from Colter, the man climbed out of the hole and onto the ladder as Buddy took him by the arm and steadied him. He stopped, looking around, a gaze of astonishment on his face as he saw the reality of where they were.

Colter followed, and a few seconds later the inrush of water slowed and the interior was completely filled.

Starr joined them and helped the man make his way off the pond, her walking backward on the ladder, holding his hands.

Once off the ladder, he staggered to his family, who were with two medics in the back of an ambulance.

Buddy collected the chain saw and he and Colter followed. The fireman and Tolifson pulled the ladder to shore, and collapsed and reaffixed it to the fire truck.

Then the husband and wife lifted their eyes and, in identical poses, stared at the sandbags that sat atop their vehicle.

Like tombstones above their putative grave.

Colter laughed to himself: wondering where on earth the bizarre, if poetic, phrase had come from.

Debi Starr called, “Everybody, back to high ground.”

Wise. He reflected. Better not to lose sight of the fact that a thousand tons of lethal mud and water, at any unannounced moment, could come raining down upon them.