Chapter 2 #2
I spotted our dueling postmaster couple, the Ferrells, one from each state, boarding up the front of the Tennessee office.
I figure they’d flipped a coin for which one they’d do first, much like they did every day to decide who would deliver the mail.
At this point there was pretty much no one else left in town.
“What is square?” Rose asked. Her hair was plastered on her head, she was exhausted, and she was beautiful.
“The power of water,” I said. “Water weighs a smidge over eight pounds a gallon. If you double the velocity at which it’s moving, then it’s four times as powerful.”
“No shit, Max,” Rose said. “I was in the Pathfinder with you.”
“These buildings will hold,” I said, looking for something positive to say. “It’s a question of how high—”
Then we heard Coral scream. We ran for the rooftop hatch, opened it, and rapidly climbed down the ladder. She was on the first floor. She was kneeling next to Pike, who was trying to get to his feet.
“Stop!” I yelled at him; because all of us could see the unnatural bend in his left thigh. A broken femur and if it moved the wrong way the bone could cut the femoral artery, and he’d be dead within a minute or two.
Of course, being the stubborn old coot that he was, Pike ignored me and continued struggling.
So I hit him on the side of his head. I didn’t knock him out, that would be hard given how thick-headed he was, but it did daze him enough to make him collapse prone.
Then I pinned him down. “Get Jackie,” I yelled at Rose.
She nodded and raced out the door.
“You hit him,” Coral said.
“Yep.”
“Thank you,” she said, because she was a realist. Her history as a Honey Pot in Berlin when the Wall was still up had made her hard and practical.
She was also a great baker. Her Franzbrotchen was to die for.
Which reminded me. I took a quick glance over, but the display case was empty. Damn. I couldn’t catch a break.
Jackie rushed in, her old leather doctor’s bag in one hand, Luke at her side.
“Broken femur,” I said, hitting the limits of my medical expertise. “He kept trying to get up. I had to hit him.”
“Crude, but effective,” Jackie said. She rummaged through her bag, retrieved a syringe, expertly filled it from a small vial, then jabbed it into Pike’s other thigh.
“This will dull the pain and his stubbornness.” She looked at me.
“Can we evacuate him? I don’t want to take a chance trying to set it under these circumstances.
He needs a surgeon. Hell, we all need to get the hell out of here. ”
Bearton, the closest larger town, had lost its medical clinic due to the cuts in the federal budget for such necessary things as tax breaks for the rich; I didn’t think we could get a billionaire in here to help with their extra money.
Asheville had the closest hospital but was a two-hour drive in good weather.
There were plenty of places along the way where the two-lane highway brushed up against the overflowing river.
Iffy at best. And the Pathfinder was gone.
While I was thinking, the lights flickered and then went out.
Great.
Jackie was checking her cell phone. “Service is down.”
I nodded. “The local towers don’t have power.”
Cell phones were out. Power was out. The town was effectively dead at this moment. Jackie was right. We needed to get the hell out.
I looked at Coral. “Do you have Pike’s satellite phone?”
Mine had gone into the river along with the rest of my essential gear.
“I think it’s in his sock drawer,” Coral said. “He hasn’t used it in years.”
I ran upstairs and began rifling through drawers.
The Satphone was indeed buried in his sock drawer.
I was a little surprised to see it was inside a Faraday bag.
A dark padded pouch with a silvery interior lining.
Sealed, it was a dead zone, invisible to satellites or any electronic tracking.
Pike had been careful, which made sense given his background.
I took it downstairs. Jackie pulled a battery pack out of her black bag without my having to ask and handed it to me.
I took the satphone out of the pouch. Pike had put black electrical tape over the on/off button.
Probably to prevent accidently turning it on.
A bit of overkill given the Faraday bag.
I peeled that off and plugged in the satphone.
It was frustrating waiting for it to recharge enough to turn on.
While I waited, Jackie stabilized Pike’s leg so he couldn’t move it.
I got a live screen, so I ran up to the roof, leaving it plugged in to the power bank. I turned it on. I ignored the rain since the human body is waterproof (wisdom imparted by a Ranger School instructor some years ago while we clawed up the side of a mountain) and held it up to acquire a signal.
Not for the first time since we’d gotten rid of Herc, our former boss who’d led Pike and Oz to Rocky Start to found the town as a haven for our type, I realized what had also disappeared when he died.
That all-powerful hand in DC that could get things moving.
Of course, the tradeoff was he’d manipulated the hell out of us and also tried to kill most of us.
I did what normal people do. I called emergency services.
And quickly found out it sucked being normal.
FEMA was a waste of time. They were so gutted, that the one human I managed to get through to, could only direct me to state resources.
North Carolina was a bust. I couldn’t even get through to their EMS. At Tennessee EMS I finally got hold of a human and relayed our need for a medevac.
The young fellow on the other end was nice enough but couldn’t promise much.
It seemed there were a lot of people needing helicopter medevac in the mountains.
While I was talking to him, Jackie joined me. I was impressed when she cupped her hands and fired up a cigarette using a match despite the wind and rain. Mad skills.
“Why didn’t you evacuate?” the guy on the other end asked. Of course.
“Because we’re idiots,” I said.
“It’ll be at least twenty-four hours,” he said. “Should have evacuated.”
“Listen you bozo, you—”
The line went dead.
“Your people skills need some work,” Jackie noted.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” I said. “Mind if I keep charging?”
“I’ve got another battery pack.”
“Thanks.” I put the Satphone, still connected to the battery pack in my coat pocket.
“Pike needed that chopper,” Jackie said. She tossed the cigarette aside. “Old habit. Just the act of lighting up when things get stressful helps.”
“Right.”
“You punched Pike?” she asked, making it sound like a bad thing.
“He was—”
“You could have just restrained him,” Jackie said. She shrugged that off. “Pike doesn’t have twenty-four hours. The town doesn’t have twenty-four hours. Ask Marley for his car. And Luke’s van can make it.”
“That old BMW? We need four-wheel drive and high clearance at the least. And there’s a good chance the road is washed out between here and Bearton.”
“Reggie helped him modify it,” Jackie said. “You haven’t noticed? Big tires? A lift? Hard to miss.”
“I’ve been busy with the cottage,” I said, wondering why I was having to defend myself.
But if he’d done that to the Beemer, it was possible we might be able to make it out.
The engine certainly had enough power, and Reggie was a genius with cars.
Luke’s van was electric, all-wheel drive, and had high clearance. “All right. Let’s get him loaded.”
As we headed for the trap door to go down, the satphone vibrated. Figuring it was emergency services, I pulled it out as Jackie disappeared down the ladder. There was no identifier for whoever was calling.
I answered anyway. “Hello?”
“Pike?” A woman’s voice asked. She had an accent; one I couldn’t place.
“Who is this?”
“You are not Pike?” the woman asked.
“Who the hell is this?” I demanded.
“Where are you?”
“Who is this?”
There was a long silence, just the crackle of the transmission. Then the connection was severed.
Great, I thought. But there were more immediate concerns right now.