Aidan #3
Reno was right to be concerned; the river was…
terrifying. I didn’t know what it looked like before because I’d never gone out with him on one of his visits, but there was no way in hell there had been a river that size and strength near the outpost without me knowing about it.
It was far too loud, and I was reminded of the time I’d tried my hand at white water river rafting and had come away soaked to the bone, sore, and with a newfound respect for the sheer force of moving water.
The river had overtaken several feet of bank, ripping away chunks of earth and sending whole branches tumbling.
I watched a large one washed away before it was slammed into a rock and with a harsh crack, splintered and was dragged beneath the surface.
I knew the river could do just as much damage, if not more, to the human body, and we needed to tread carefully if we wanted to make it.
A tap on my shoulder brought my head up, and I saw Mika gesturing further upstream. There I could see two brightly colored figures, Jake and Reno, in their neon safety rain gear, and the smaller of the two was gesturing frantically at something I couldn’t see through the rain.
I didn’t have to be told to keep close, staying hot on Mika’s heels as we made our way upriver, keeping at least two feet between us and the river’s edge.
There was no real bank anymore, and considering it was still stripping the land of solid earth, it seemed wiser than to risk getting dumped into the raging rapids.
A phrase that had always felt a little dramatic, but now as I watched the sheer force of the water, I was questioning the logic of my dismissiveness.
“What?” Mika called over the sound of the river as Reno yelled, but we could only catch a few snippets, nothing that would help us understand. Mika finally gave up and held up his walkie, waving it to get his point across.
It was Jake who plucked his walkie from somewhere in his coat and pressed the button. “He says the dam is going to break, and if it does, it means trouble for all of us.”
“Dam?” I asked, and Mika pointed at what I had thought was just a random upswell of water. Except now I could see there were large branches sticking out of the roiling water and something solid underneath it. “Fuck, how bad?”
Reno tried to explain; he ripped the radio out of Jake’s hands. “It’ll fuck up half the outpost and if it doesn’t, all this fucking water will hit the confluence downstream!”
“I don’t know what that means,” I admitted to Mika.
“It’s a tributary,” he said, leaning in close, and I heard the worry in his voice. “It’s usually a third of this size and nowhere near this strong. It feeds into the river that runs through the town. It might not look like it, but the dam is keeping a lot of water from flowing too fast downstream.”
“And if it breaks, it fucks all that up and the town—”
“Could be fucked,” he said with a nod. Then picked up the radio. “What do we do?”
“Sandbags, fucking sandbags!” Reno bellowed, and I blinked as I realized there were in fact heavy bags of wrapped sand on both sides of the river.
“Did your brother fucking prepare for this?” I asked in amazement because, yeah, Jake was huge, strong, and had impossible stamina, and Reno wasn’t weak by any means, but there was no way they could have lugged all that out in that weather, there was no humanly possible way.
“I’m not surprised,” Mika said, and despite everything, there was a fond smile on his face for his brother. “Just get used to him frantically ordering us around on the radio.”
As we marched up to the pile on our side, I still wasn’t sure how Jake and Reno had got over their side of the river, but I found out quickly he wasn’t kidding.
Reno sounded half panicked, half demanding as he spat out directions over the radio, clearly annoyed that he had to stop doing what he was doing to instruct us.
He was apparently in control when there was danger but wasn’t patient, making for irritating motivation.
“Hey!” a booming voice rolled up through the storm as we carefully followed Reno’s directions as fast as possible. I turned to see Xander marching along the river, Colin in tow.
Mika gestured for them to hurry as he grabbed another bag and heaved it onto the pile to help brace the dam.
I had no idea where the beavers had ended up, but I hoped they were safe and weren’t holed up in a dam that was probably flooded with water.
Then again, what did I know about beaver dams in the middle of storms?
“What’re we doing?” Colin asked as he approached, his normally laid-back gaze turned sharp and honed as he looked around. When it met mine, the not so nice twist of his mouth and the raised brow told me he knew.
Looking at the piles we had been constructing, I winced as I watched Jake and Reno take turns carefully walking out onto the dam with the sandbags to brace it.
There really had been no other choice but for them to take the risk, and we’d started doing the same right before Colin and Xander had shown up.
I didn’t relish doing it again, but it was the only way to keep the whole thing stable until we found something to withstand the elements.
I opened my mouth to explain the plan when there was a cracking sound louder than the rest. We spun around to see water spilling over the dam, and after another crack, louder than the first, it trembled and broke apart; I knew what was happening.
The realization came almost a second too late as I lurched backward, grabbing hold of Mika as I felt hands yank me from behind.
Mika stumbled and fell behind me, but I kept my footing as the dam finally gave way.
All I could do was watch in horror as Jake and Reno, still standing on the bags and dam, reeled and buckled as the water poured out, dragging huge clumps of mud and wood with it.
Jake grabbed hold of Reno and threw him onto the edge before the section Jake stood on gave way and dumped him into the water.
“Jake,” Xander screamed in a voice I would never forget as the large man was sent tumbling head over heels through the water. Flashes of his clothes and boots were all I could see as he was pulled into the center of the river.
It wasn’t over; the dam giving way sent water spreading out in every direction, ripping at the earth that had made up the ‘new’ riverbank and widening the river.
It left us scrambling backward as the furious water washed over the ground and started pulling it into its path.
We slipped and slid, but we were quick enough to make it back, even as Xander stumbled down the river’s edge to keep Jake’s body in sight as it tumbled helplessly.
The three of us were safe for the moment, but Reno wasn’t as lucky. He must have landed wrong when he’d been thrown, landing near the original edge of the river. The expansion of it washed over him, and he could barely lift his head before he was pulled down into the river’s power.
“Reno, no!” I heard Mika screech in a voice I never wanted to hear as long as I lived.
And then, even though I had no idea what I was doing, I knew exactly what was going to happen.
It was how fast everything happened; it was the mindless pain and panic in Mika’s voice, and it was the way Reno was scrambling to find purchase on the riverbed that refused to grant him mercy.
I whirled around as Mika tried to fling himself forward, mindless and desperate to get to his brother, even if it meant putting himself in danger.
Colin was reaching for him, but he was too slow, and I did the first thing I could think of: I reached out and took hold of Mika.
There was no way in hell I was going to overpower him, not with our size difference, not with his adrenaline-fueled panic.
There was no other choice, and clamping down on his arm, I ignored the way he snarled at me and used his force to whirl him around, making him stumble and slip and lose momentum, using it to fling him behind me blindly.
I flung him right into a tree, and he dropped; I turned to Colin. “Stop him!”
Colin was calmer, bigger, and stronger than me, and had more training dealing with big, strong men who didn’t want to cooperate.
He didn’t miss a beat. He was on Mika before he could do more than get to his hands and knees.
It hurt to hear Mika’s raging, pleading, tearful cries to let him up, let him get to his brother, get off, get off, get off!
I turned and saw Reno had found something to get hold of.
It looked like a branch, but there was no way any branch would hold long enough for him to stay in one place.
I could also see he was dazed and weakening.
There was nothing I could do to help Jake, not right now anyway, and I hoped he was as tough as he looked, but what could I do for Reno?
He didn’t have the strength to hold on while I came up with a safe or clever way of saving him, and I didn’t think he had the capacity to help himself beyond clinging on for dear life as the water battered him.
I spotted something that would help me, even if it was a terrible idea, but how was that going to…my hand flapped against something hard on my hip and I gripped it. Right, I’d noticed it earlier when I’d put the work belt on; it was a rope and hook combination.
“Oh, bad, bad idea,” I muttered, but I was already moving up the river.
“Aidan!” I heard Colin bark through the storm. “What are you doing? Get away from there!”
I almost did, and not because it was borderline suicidal, but because there was a tone of command in Colin’s voice that made me hesitate. I turned and gave him a salute. “You’re actually going to be a great second.”
His eyes widened as Mika twisted in his hold, trying to break free, trying to get to Reno, who he could see hanging on for dear life in the river. “Don’t you fucking—”