Chapter Twelve
Abigail
The transition from late afternoon to early evening did not happen gradually. The daylight didn't fade; it was aggressively suffocated.
By six o'clock, the entire area was plunged into a muted, unnatural twilight. The iron-gray clouds Will had pointed out earlier had mutated, rolling over the jagged peaks of the Bitterroots like a thick, boiling tide of dark purple and charcoal.
Abby sat cross-legged just inside the unzipped flap of her dome tent, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees.
She had done everything Will had instructed.
Her firewood was covered tightly by a tarp, anchored by the heaviest river stones she could carry.
The cooler was sitting right next to her sleeping pad, acting as an anchor for the center of the tent.
Her fire pit was cold, the embers deeply banked beneath a thick layer of dirt and ash to prevent any stray sparks from catching the dry pine needles.
She was prepared. She was competent.
But as the temperature dropped a staggering twenty degrees in less than half an hour, the cold logic of her preparation began to fracture under the sheer, primal weight of the atmosphere.
The air pressure dropped so rapidly it made her ears pop. The usual chorus of the woods, the rustling squirrels, the chirping insects, the distant calls of jays, was gone. The silence was absolute and terrifying, a breathless vacuum waiting to be filled with something violent.
It's just a squall, Abby repeated silently, resting her chin on her knees. He said it was just a squall.
She tried to focus on the memory of Will's steady, rumbling voice.
She thought about the way the corner of his mouth had tucked upward into that grudging, handsome smile when she lied about the mountain lion.
She thought about the sheer width of his shoulders, and the competent, effortless way he carried himself.
He knew these woods. If he said she would be fine, she could trust him.
The first warning came not from the sky, but from the trees.
A sudden, sharp gust of wind tore through the canopy, thrashing the tops of the hundred-foot pines. It sounded like an ocean wave breaking directly overhead. Pinecones and dead twigs rained down onto the clearing, snapping sharply against the nylon of her tent.
Then, the smell hit her.
It was the sharp, metallic tang of ozone, mixed with the heavy scent of pulverized pine needles and damp earth. It smelled like raw kinetic energy.
A blinding flash of brilliant, strobing white light eradicated the shadows in the clearing, illuminating every single branch and rock in stark, terrifying clarity.
One-Mississippi. Two-Mississ—
CRACK.
The thunder didn't rumble. It exploded. It was a concussive, deafening boom that vibrated straight through the thin foam of her sleeping pad and rattled the bones in her chest. Abby let out a sharp, involuntary gasp, throwing her hands over her ears, her heart stalling and then kicking into a frantic, terrified gallop.
And then, the sky tore open.
The rain did not start as a drizzle. It dropped out of the roiling clouds in a solid, punishing sheet of freezing water.
Within seconds, the clearing was transformed into a chaotic blur of gray.
The heavy drops hammered against the thin nylon roof of the dome tent with the deafening roar of a thousand snare drums.
Abby scrambled backward, frantically pulling the zippers of the tent doors shut. The interior was instantly plunged into near-total darkness, illuminated only by the frantic, stuttering flashes of lightning that were now striking in rapid succession.
She grabbed her small LED flashlight and clicked it on. The beam shook turbulently in her trembling hand.
"Okay," she whispered, her voice completely swallowed by the roar of the rain. "Okay, you're fine. You're dry. It's just a storm."
But the wind began to howl, a low, shrieking pitch that tore through the narrow valley. The walls of her tent bowed ominously inward, the fiberglass poles groaning under the sheer physical pressure of the downdraft. The nylon slapped against her shoulder, cold and slick.
She crawled to the center of the tent, pressing her back against the heavy plastic cooler, trying to use her own body weight to stabilize the structure.
The temperature inside the tent was dropping rapidly. She was shivering, the cold dampness seeping through her clothes. She reached for her sleeping bag, pulling it over her shoulders like a cape, but it offered little comfort against the deafening chaos outside.
Every time the lightning flashed, the shadows of the swaying trees were thrown against the walls of her tent like skeletal hands grasping at the fabric.
Abby squeezed her eyes shut. She tried to compartmentalize the fear, tried to use the executive tools that had served her so well in Los Angeles. Identify the threat. Assess the variables. Formulate a response.
But the wilderness didn't care about logic. It didn't care about margins or risk assessments. It was a force of unfeeling power, and she was sitting directly in its path in a house made of plastic and sticks.
Beneath the shrieking wind and the machine-gun staccato of the rain, a new sound began to register in her ears.
It was a low, grinding, guttural roar. It sounded like boulders being ground together in a massive industrial blender.
Abby opened her eyes, her breath catching in her throat. She recognized that sound, though she had never heard it at this volume.
The creek.
She had camped fifty yards from the bank, a safe distance for a normal rainstorm.
But this wasn't a normal rainstorm. The water wasn't just falling on her clearing; it was falling on thousands of acres of steep, rocky ridges above her, and all of that runoff was funneling directly down into the narrow bowl of her campsite.
The grinding sound was the noise of massive river stones and uprooted trees being tumbled downstream by a wall of rushing water.
The creek was rising. And it was rising fast.
Abby’s hands moved to her shoes, her numb fingers fumbling frantically with the laces, tying them into tight, double knots.
If the water breached the clearing, she couldn't stay in the tent.
The dome would become a trap, filling with water and dragging her down.
She would have to abandon her shelter and try to climb the muddy, unstable ridge. With her bad knee.
"Will," she whispered into the dark, a terrified, desperate prayer. "You said it was a squall. You said I'd be fine."
Another concussive blast of thunder shook the earth, followed by a terrifying, sharp SNAP from just outside the tent.
One of her guy lines had broken.
The front-right corner of the tent immediately collapsed inward, the heavy, water-logged nylon draping directly over Abby's shoes.
Panic, absolute and blinding, finally breached her defenses.