Chapter 3 - WHAT JASON SAWFour nights earlier, Jason Miller had stood beside Emily’s bed with the back of his hand against her forehead.
“You’re hotter than my truck engine.”
Emily groaned.
“That’s not funny.”
“A little funny.”
“No.”
“Okay. Tough audience.”
He smiled, but he was worried.
Her fever had climbed to 102.1.
The pediatric nurse line told him to keep her hydrated, give her fever medication, and monitor her.
The problem was that the bottle in the cabinet had expired.
Jason pulled on his jacket.
“I’m running to Whitmore’s.”
Emily sat up.
“You’re leaving?”
“Thirty minutes.”
“Promise?”
Jason hesitated only long enough to grab his keys.
“Promise.”
It was the kind of promise parents make without considering the possibility that the universe might hear them.
Before leaving, he checked the doors twice.
He showed Emily where her phone was.
“Don’t open the door for anybody.”
“What if it’s Grandma?”
“She’s in Florida.”
“What if she drives really fast?”
Jason laughed.
Then kissed Emily’s forehead.
“I’ll be right back.”
Those were the last words she heard from him.
Whitmore Pharmacy was fifteen minutes away.
Jason bought medication, drinks, popsicles, and the crackers Emily liked.
Rain had intensified while he was inside.
He considered waiting.
But Emily was alone.
So he drove.
At 8:57, his headlights caught a broken tree limb.
At 8:58, they caught something worse.
A silver car lay sideways in a ditch.
Jason braked.
Water surged around the rear tires.
He saw movement inside.
He dialed 911.
No signal.
He tried again.
Nothing.
Then a child screamed.
Jason was out of the truck before he had time to be afraid.
“Hey!”
Rain struck his face.
“Can you hear me?”
A woman hung against her seat belt in the driver's seat.
Blood covered one side of her forehead.
In the back, a little boy cried.
“The water!” the woman gasped.
Jason grabbed the rear door.
Locked.
He pulled harder.
Nothing.
Water climbed past his knees.
“Sir!” the woman screamed. “My son!”
Jason smashed the rear window with an emergency hammer from his truck.
The boy screamed louder.
“That’s okay!” Jason shouted. “Scream all you want. I’m getting you out.”
He reached through broken glass and unlocked the door.
The current nearly ripped it away.
The boy was strapped into a booster seat.
Jason cut the belt.
“What’s your name?”
“Caleb!”
“I’m Jason. Put your arms around my neck.”
“My mom!”
“I’m coming back for her.”
He carried Caleb to the truck.
Then ran back.
By then the water had risen another six inches.
Jason opened the driver's door.
“Hannah,” the woman murmured.
“What?”
“My name…”
“Okay, Hannah. Ambulance is coming.”
It was a lie.
Jason had no idea whether anyone knew they were there.
He tried releasing her seat belt.
Jammed.
He reached for his pocketknife.
Then a wall of water struck the car.
The vehicle shifted.
Jason was thrown backward.
He surfaced choking.
“Hannah!”
The car slid twenty feet downstream and wedged against trees.
He fought his way toward it.
Then he heard Caleb screaming from the truck.
Jason faced an impossible choice.
The silver car was now lodged on slightly higher ground.
Hannah was unconscious but no longer moving downstream.
Caleb was bleeding badly from his arm.
Jason ran to the boy.
He intended to drive half a mile until his phone got signal, call emergency services, and return.
Then the road collapsed.
Jason saw it too late.
The asphalt buckled.
He swerved.
The truck hit the guardrail.
Caleb screamed.
Metal tore.
Jason felt his head strike something.
Then water.
Cold.
Violent.
Dark.
He woke hanging sideways against his seat belt.
Caleb was crying.
That sound saved him.
Jason released himself.
Pain exploded through his ribs.
“Caleb?”
“I want my mom!”
“I know.”
The passenger window had shattered.
Water entered rapidly.
Jason crawled across the console.
Caleb’s forehead was bleeding.
His red jacket had snagged on the broken mirror as Jason pulled him through.
The jacket tore away.
Caleb wore only a sweatshirt beneath it.
Jason wrapped his own coat around him.
“Can you walk?”
“My ankle hurts.”
Jason lifted him.
He saw lights nowhere.
His phone was gone.
The road above had become a river.
Then lightning illuminated a concrete building through the trees.
The old water station.
Maybe shelter.
Maybe a landline.
Maybe emergency equipment.
Jason started walking.
He made it sixty yards before his injured knee gave out.
Caleb fell beside him.
“I’m sorry,” Jason gasped.
The boy cried.
Jason looked toward the truck.
Then toward the building.
Emily flashed through his mind.
Alone.
Waiting.
He imagined the clock moving past thirty minutes.
Forty.
An hour.
He forced himself upright.
“My daughter is seven,” he told Caleb.
The boy sniffled.
“What’s her name?”
“Emily.”
“Is she scared?”
Jason nearly broke.
“Probably.”
“Then we gotta go.”
So the injured man and the injured boy walked into the storm together.
They reached the water-treatment station after nearly an hour.
The doors were chained.
Jason found a broken window.
He pushed Caleb through first.
Inside smelled of rust, mud, and old machinery.
There was no electricity.
No phone.
No emergency radio.
Nothing.
Jason found a maintenance cabinet containing two dusty emergency blankets and several bottles of water that were years past their printed date.
He gave Caleb one.
The boy drank.
“What about you?”
“I’m not thirsty.”
Another lie.
Jason sat against the wall.
When he looked down, blood had soaked through his jeans.
A piece of metal had cut deep into his thigh.
He pressed fabric against it.
Caleb stared.
“Are you gonna die?”
“No.”
“You promise?”
Jason looked at him.
He had already made one promise that night.
A promise to Emily.
He could not bear another.
“I’m going to do everything I can not to.”
For the next twelve hours, rain isolated the building.
By morning, floodwater surrounded it.
Jason tried climbing through the window.
His leg collapsed immediately.
He shouted until his voice disappeared.
No one answered.
The first day became the second.
Caleb developed a fever.
Jason rationed water.
They found an unopened box of ancient emergency crackers.
On the second night, Jason carved Emily’s name into the concrete wall using a screw.
Caleb watched.
“Why?”
“So if somebody finds us…”
He stopped.
“If somebody finds this room, they’ll know I was trying to get home.”
Caleb took the screw.
Under Emily’s name he scratched:
CALEB
Then beneath it:
MOM
On the third morning, Jason woke to silence.
“Caleb?”
No answer.
He crawled across the floor.
The boy was burning with fever.
Jason shook him.
“Caleb!”
The boy’s eyes barely opened.
Jason knew they could not wait anymore.
He wrapped Caleb in both emergency blankets.
Then he looked through the broken window toward the trees.
Floodwater had begun falling.
There might be houses beyond the ridge.
Perhaps a road.
Perhaps people.
Jason tore a strip from his shirt and tightened it around his injured leg.
He lifted Caleb onto his back.
Every instinct told him he was too weak.
Every memory of Emily told him weakness didn’t matter.
“Hold on.”
Caleb’s arms closed faintly around his shoulders.
Jason climbed out.
He never saw the rescue vehicles approaching the other side of the creek.
And twenty minutes later, Detective Rebecca Sloan entered the abandoned water station and found the names carved into the wall.
Emily.
Caleb.
Mom.
May you like
Beside them was a fresh bloody handprint.
But Jason and Caleb were gone.
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