Chapter 49 Frannie
Frannie stood at the edge of the rising water.
She was freezing cold and soaking wet. They’d found five more survivors, but not Claire or Jenny or Jerrylynn or Paul. She wasn’t giving up, she just didn’t know where else to look.
Frannie had organized the search with Mel and Roberts.
Four uninjured men from the ridge joined in, one of them about a hundred years old but they needed all the help they could get.
Frannie grabbed a teenage boy named Lance and told him to look for supplies in the remaining cars and trailers.
“We need clean water, clothes, and blankets,” Frannie told him.
“And anything else you can find before the water covers it all.” A woman with an injured eye said she’d watch over Mildred Wilson, and Frannie put Jean and Jan to work building a couple campfires.
Down in the wreckage, Frannie and Mel found a boy named Phillip trapped in an upside-down trailer.
Phillip’s foot was crushed and bloody, but his only concern was for his mother, who was barely conscious in a tangle of rocks and debris twenty feet away.
Next, Frannie found Vicky sobbing under a pile of branches, naked as a jaybird.
She asked her about Jerrylynn as she helped her up the bank.
“I was in the tent, and then the water—and—” Vicky hiccupped and started to cry again.
“Get her a blanket and put her by a campfire,” she told Lance, then went back down. Jerrylynn had to be somewhere. She just had to be.
Roberts found the kindly Mr. Wilson pinned under a boulder not far from the slide.
He and Mel carried Mr. Wilson up the hill to join his family, and the girls surrounded him, kissing his cheeks.
Frannie was happy for them, until she saw Mr. Wilson’s leg.
It looked like it had been shredded by a grizzly and was bleeding so bad Frannie’s stomach turned over.
“Do you think we should put a tourniquet on it?” she asked Mel, who was looking sick in the flickering campfire light.
“Do you know how?” he asked.
“Not unless seeing it on television counts.”
She helped Connie wrap her father’s leg in a bedsheet and headed back down the ridge, where she met Roberts coming up carrying a frail white-haired man in his arms, while another man dragged a wheelchair behind them. “Polio victim,” Roberts said. “Found him stuck in the mud.”
Now, Frannie picked her way back down the wreckage to the edge of the rockfall, looking for Jeff and Dottie’s trailer or some sign of Jerrylynn.
Her flashlight was growing dim and her spirits were plummeting.
She hadn’t heard the cry for help from across the water since Roberts showed up.
Had whoever was out there given up—or worse?
A faint shout came from a tumble of debris out in the dark.
Frannie waded toward the voice. Mel followed, his flashlight sweeping the wreckage around them. She picked her way around the pile of downed trees. The beam of the flashlight skipped over the water and then—there—a blue plaid shirt, a pale face.
“Paul!” Relief rushing through her. Frannie splashed to him. He was sitting in the water with the thick end of a tree trunk over his lap, and another fallen tree against his back.
Mel caught up and bent over him. “Let’s get you out from under there.”
“I’m stuck pretty good,” Paul said.
Frannie wedged her flashlight under her arm, then she and Mel got a grip on the underside of the trunk that pinned him. They strained together. It didn’t budge. Frannie pushed at the huge tree trunk behind Paul’s back. It was twice as thick as the one on his legs and not going anywhere.
“We need help,” Frannie said after they tried again.
Mel said he’d be back and waded away. Frannie crouched down beside Paul. He was pale and he’d lost his glasses. She was so glad to see him she thought she might cry. “How did you manage to keep your clothes on?” Her voice cracked with emotion. “I woke up in my skivvies.”
“Just lucky, I guess.” Paul’s lips turned up in a weak smile. “Are you okay? I mean, did you get hurt when it . . .” He moved his head to indicate the horrible mess they were in.
“I’m fine,” she said. She’d almost died, but what else could she say?
Paul cleared his throat. “Have you—did you find anybody else? Jerrylynn or Vicky?”
“Vicky,” she said, “but not Jerrylynn.” Tears pricked at the backs of her eyes. “Not yet.”
“Your sister and—”
“Not yet,” she said again. Her chest was tight and she couldn’t breathe when she thought about Claire and the baby. “I will,” she said. “I’ll find them just like I found you.” She would. She had to.
Suddenly, another tremor hit. Frannie grabbed for Paul as the water around them turned into choppy waves.
Cries came from the ridge as the crash of rocks reverberated through the canyon.
Paul groaned and Frannie fell to her knees beside him.
The crushed cars and trailers shifted and metal shrieked against metal.
It stopped as quickly as it had started.
Frannie shone the weak beam of her flashlight on Paul. “Are you okay?”
His face was pale, and his jaw clenched. “I think so.”
Mel came splashing back with Roberts. “That was a big one.”
“We have to get him out of here,” Frannie answered sharply.
Another quake like that, and Paul could be crushed.
She and Mel and Roberts counted to three and strained to lift the tree.
Frannie pulled with everything in her. Mel grunted with the effort and a vein on Roberts’s forehead bulged. The tree didn’t move an inch.
“Hold on,” Frannie said. She ran the flashlight down the trunk, following it to where the root end was stuck under an upside-down Buick. She came back to Paul and followed the tree to its other end. “The top is jammed under this trailer.”
Roberts and Mel joined her at the trailer. The water covered the wheels and lapped at the underside. “We’re not going to get that to budge,” Roberts said.
“Let’s try,” Frannie said. She gripped the axle and looked at the men. “One,” she said with a glare. They each took a hold. “Two, three.” She pulled with all her strength.
Nothing happened except her hands—already covered in scrapes—hurt worse.
Roberts grabbed her arm as she started to wade back to Paul. “Listen,” he said, his voice low. “I don’t want to worry the boy, but somebody up on the ridge was talking about the dam failing.”
“What dam?” Frannie asked, peeved that Roberts had called Paul a boy.
“The one at the top of this canyon,” Roberts said grimly. “They say it could go any minute.”
“Didn’t it already?” Mel appeared out of the dark. “Isn’t that where all this water came from?”
“This isn’t from the dam, it’s from the river.” Roberts looked grim. “If the dam goes, we’ll have a real flood."
Frannie thought she’d heard him wrong. This could get worse? What would happen to Paul if they couldn’t get him out from under that tree?
Roberts patted her shoulder. “You should get to higher ground, miss. Let us do what we can for him.”
Frannie clamped her teeth together. Desert Paul? Fat chance of that. She turned the flashlight on Mr. Mountain Man, ready to give him a telling-off, and was stopped by the concern in his eyes. She let out a breath. Getting mad wasn’t going to help Paul.
I’m not a child, she’d said to Bridget. Then stop acting like one. She hated it when Bridget was right. “He’s my friend,” she said to Roberts. “I won’t leave him.”
Roberts gave her a long look, then nodded. “I’ll try to find a crowbar.”
Frannie waded back, determination growing with every step.
When her flashlight found Paul, she could see the relief in his face.
Her spirits lifted for a split second, then she saw the water.
It had been at Paul’s waist when they found him, but now was halfway up his chest. She knelt beside him.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “We’re going to get you out of here. ”
Roberts showed up with a crowbar he found in a car trunk, but ten minutes later threw it down in frustration. “There’s nothing to get any leverage against, it’s all mud.”
“Paul.” Frannie had an idea. It wasn’t a great idea, but they were running out of time. “Do your legs—I mean, are your legs broken, you think?” Paul was a smart guy, and she figured he knew what she was asking.
He met her eyes. “I can’t feel them.”
“Roberts,” she called. “Mel. Come over here.”
When the two men waded over, Frannie looked Paul in the eyes as serious as she had ever been. “We have to pull you out.” The truth was, if they didn’t get him out, he’d drown in front of their eyes.
Paul nodded grimly.
“Are you sure, son?” Roberts said. “If something’s broken under there—”
“I’m sure,” Paul said.
Frannie took his hand in hers. Paul’s mouth firmed as Mel and Roberts each hooked their hands under Paul’s arms.
Paul nodded. “Do it.”
“Together, now,” Roberts said. He and Mel heaved.
Paul’s face contorted like he was trying not to scream.
“Keep pulling,” Frannie ordered. Paul’s grip on her hand was so hard she thought he might break a bone.
Roberts and Mel strained again. This time, Paul did scream.
“Stop!” Frannie finally cried out. Paul’s face was bone white and his lips quivered, but he hadn’t moved a bit. “I’m sorry,” she said to Paul. Sorry her idea didn’t work. Sorry she’d hurt him. Sorry he was going to drown here. Tears flooded her eyes, blurring her vision as panic crept over her.
Paul was stuck, and the water was rising fast.