So Cold the River(133)

For a moment Eric was airborne. Then his feet caught the hillside and his momentum sent him into a pinwheel down the slope, branches whipping at him. He was thinking that he’d fall all the way down into the water when he tumbled into the side of a tree. The impact exploded his vision into a burst of white light, but it also stopped him. He gasped and blinked and then he could see where he was—two-thirds of the way down the slope, a good sixty feet from the top of the ridge.

He looked for Kellen and found him fifteen feet farther down, covered in mud and leaves. He was crawling toward the stone cliffs, away from the trees. Trying to get lower. Eric followed, not even bothering to attempt getting to his feet, just sliding on his ass and using his hands and heels to push himself along.

They got most of the way down the slope, about five feet from the waterline, and pushed up against the loose stone wall, where there was an indentation that allowed them to pull back and find greater protection. There was no point in attempting to talk now; the roar had reached a thundering crescendo. It sounded exactly like the train that had blown past Eric on his first day in this place.

They didn’t have to wait long. Thirty seconds, maybe a minute. It felt longer, though, felt like a damn eternity, the way time passed when you were sitting in a hospital watching an ER surgeon approach from down the hall to provide the status of a loved one. Then the storm finally caught them, and the world exploded.

A full-size birch, fifty feet tall at least and with a wide spread of branches, tore out of the earth on top of the ridge and shot into space. It didn’t fall straight down, bound by the laws of gravity, but blew forward before catching on another tree and splashing into the swirling, roiling pool. The water sprayed up and showered them and then another tree was sliding down the cliff face, scattering loose stones in its wake. The woods were crackling with the sound of thick, powerful limbs and trunks snapping in two, and the wind was such that Eric could no longer hold his eyes open against it. He covered his face with his arms and pressed his body back into the indentation Kellen had found in the limestone wall and above them the world screamed in fury.

Then it was gone.

That something so terrible could pass so swiftly seemed impossible. There were still rumblings in the woods as uprooted trees and fallen branches slid down the hillsides and found resting places, but the raging wind was gone and the roar faded at its heels. Eric lowered his arms and stared out at the gulf. The water tossed and spun and in its midst were a half dozen trees now. When he looked up, he could see a line carved through the treetops on the east side of the ridge, as if trimmers had come through and topped them and then had gone on, leaving the limbs behind in careless piles. On level ground, the damage had been devastating. Would have been deadly. But they’d gotten down here into what was essentially a pit, ninety or a hundred feet below the surface, and the tornado had not been able to find them there.

“That would have killed us,” he said. “If we’d been on level ground, that would have killed us.”

Kellen nodded. “Yeah. We might still be airborne. In pieces.”

His voice was as tight as if someone had a hold of his throat, and Eric finally turned and looked at him. Kellen’s face and neck and arms were a mass of tiny cuts, and there was one good-size gash above his left eye that oozed a thick band of blood that ran along his jaw and curled out toward his chin like a sideburn, and Eric knew he couldn’t look any better. Kellen’s face was locked into a grimace, though, and he was rocking back and forth, hands squeezed into fists.

“You okay?” Eric said, and then he followed Kellen’s eyes down his leg to his foot and whispered, “Oh, shit.”

Kellen’s right foot hung unnaturally beneath the leg, twisted almost backward, and there was a distended bulge just above his shoe, pushing at his skin. The ankle was clearly broken. Not just broken, he realized after a closer study—destroyed. The bone had snapped, but clearly some ligaments had torn loose as well to let his foot hang like that.

Kellen’s face had drained to a gray pallor and he kept up that gentle rocking, but he didn’t moan or gasp or shout with pain.

“You’re hurt bad,” Eric said. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”

“Shoe off,” Kellen said through gritted teeth.

“What?”

“Get the shoe off. It’s swelling so fast… I don’t think it should be in the shoe.”

Eric slid down the slick rock and reached for the laces of Kellen’s shoe. When he gave one a gentle tug, it shifted Kellen’s foot. This time he shouted with pain. Eric dropped the shoelace and pulled back, but Kellen shook his head and said, “Get it off.”