Chapter 17 Caro
CARO
THE AIR IS FULL of the smells of earth and stone, of mud and broken trees, of things torn up and changed forever. It is light enough that Caro can now make out Ash’s eyes, the pallor of her skin. It’s cold, but the rain has stopped. The sky—at least, the part of it that Caro can see—is lightening.
We made it through the night.
The two of us, anyway.
Caro thinks with a deep, gut-wrenching ache of Hope. Of Spencer, his friends, of Ed and Jean. The college students. The high school kids and their leaders. Of whoever else might have been in the canyon.
But mostly of Hope.
Caro and Ash had huddled together on a small ledge of rock.
Water came down from the plateau there, too, but it didn’t take them.
All night long they heard it sluicing around them as it descended from the plateau; they heard the roar of the river below.
Caro doesn’t think either she or Ash slept.
For a time, they called for Hope, they tried to talk, to figure out how they’re going to get out when morning came, and then they quieted down and held on.
And all the time, Caro also thought of Dan.
She might make it back to him.
I’ve been greedy to want so much. I’ve been weak to let things get me down. I should only want Dan and the life I already have. That should be enough. That is enough. Let me get back to it. Please. Please.
Is she praying? Caro lets out a breath that it feels like she’s been holding in all night, but her chest is still tight.
The college kids down the canyon, the tent they saw go by, the cheerful teens and their leaders, the guys on the other side of the river, especially Spencer, Ed and Jean—Hope again—
Stop.
It doesn’t do any good to fall apart.
Caro meets Ash’s eyes and she knows they are both thinking the same thing. Hope is gone. What now?
As the sky lightens by degrees, Caro sees that they’re surrounded by the debris from the plateau and the tiny ravines that thread to the canyon, and she also sees a place where a pile of something has been deposited: rocks and earth and a splintered small tree, and who knows what else.
She notices a spot where the bench of earth they’re huddled on has come away farther down, and she bites her lip.
A few feet more, and they might have gone over, too.
“Hey,” Ash says. “Do you hear that?”
Caro does. Her heart skips a beat. “I think someone’s coming.”
“Who do you think it is?” Ash asks, and Caro chooses the best possible answer, the one she wants the most. “A SAR team,” she says. “Search and rescue.” It could also be other hikers, but the calls she hears don’t sound like people in distress.
“HELP!” Ash’s voice is loud and ragged. It echoes around the sandstone walls.
“Let’s both yell on three,” Caro says, because if they combine their voices, there’s more of a chance, isn’t there? “One, two… HELP!!”
But she’s the only one who screams this time. She looks over at Ash, who is staring at the tangle of debris.
“There’s something here.” Ash’s voice is shaky.
“What is it?” Caro asks, a tiny flare of exasperation rising up in her because what could be more important than getting rescued?
“I think,” Ash says, her voice very small, “it’s someone.”
At first the words don’t register, but then, horribly, they do. Caro’s gut sinks. She thinks of Hope, though how would Hope have gotten here from where she was, and then she realizes it might be someone else, someone trapped up high in the flood? Someone who fell?
Ash has made the discovery, but it’s Caro who moves closer, of course; Caro is a doctor, and she will know what Ash has found.
And now she sees it, too. A jangle of what she took to be branches that could be bones, splinter-white and pink-mudded, held together by what used to be…
clothes? Caro sees a strip of blue-plaid fabric.
And there, in a swirl of debris behind it, a patch of bright yellow plastic.
A dry bag, she thinks. Another hiker, but not a recent one.
“Okay,” Caro says. “It’s okay. This is older. It must have washed out from one of the side canyons or crevices above us.”
“It’s okay?” Ash is incredulous. “It’s not okay! Hope is lost, we’re stuck in a canyon, and so what if it’s been around for a while? This is… this is—”
Ash can’t seem to bring herself to say it. She wraps her bright-orange-sweatshirted arms around herself.
“A body,” Caro says gently. “It’s a body.”