the hinge joint as she could get.
Then she stood up and planted her right foot in the stream, which she noticed was deeper now, coming up to the tops of her boots. She put her left foot on the base plate and then leaned slowly against the branch.
Tommy groaned as the trap moved, but the arms did not budge. Not one inch. She relaxed and then tried again, positioning her hands for maximum leverage. She thought she saw the arms move fractionally, but
without her hat, the rain was in her eyes, and then the branch snapped cleanly in two just above the trap and she went tumbling into the grass below where Tommy was trapped. She swore aloud and then realized her cheek was touching metal.
She gasped, commanding every muscle in her body to freeze. Taking tiny breaths of air, she tried to see through the individual blades of wet grass.
“What’s the matter?” Tommy called through the rain.
“There’s another one. Wait a minute.”
She finally mustered the courage to push some of the high grass aside.
Her head was on the base plate, her cheek actually touching one of the snapping arms. But not the trigger, a flat spoon-shaped piece of metal between the arms, which she could just see. Moving very carefully, she pulled her head away from the trap and then sat up in the grass. She reached for the broken branch, stood up, and then jammed it furiously into the trap, which slammed shut hard enough to break the pine branch into two additional pieces and sting her hand. She swore and hurried back to Tommy, who was trying to pull himself higher up on the bank. The water was rising, really rising, as all the rain upstream began to invade the gully. Tommy’s free leg was completely out of sight, and the water was swirling around his hips. Rip was still passed out, but his lower body was quickly disappearing from sight. She looked at Tommy and found him staring at her face. The rain kept coming, plastering her short hair to her skull. He knew.
“Tommy, what do I do? I can’t open that damn thing.”
“See if you can move the chain.”
She examined the chain, whose links were at least a quarter-inch thick.
The chain was about a foot long. The links on both the base plate and the ground screw were solid, welded in place. She jammed the broken end of the pine branch into the screw eye and tried to turn it, but the chain immediately tightened against Tommy’s leg and he groaned. A lightning stroke threw the trees on the far side of the gully into stark relief. She saw the building again.
“There’s a building beyond those trees,” she said.
“I’m going to go see if I can get help.”
“Rip said this place has been shut down for twenty years,” Tommy said.
“There isn’t going to be anyone there.”
“There might be a metal bar or something,” she said, looking upstream.
There was an ominous noise coming from the far western end of the ravine, a sound of something substantial, moving.
“Tommy, we don’t have much time.”
“Okay, go. Go! Jesus Christ, this hurts.”
She checked Rip one more time, but he was still fading in and out. The water was swirling around his waist now. She started to step out of the streambed, then wondered if there were more traps on the opposite bank.
She grabbed a stick and beat the grass in front of her, but nothing happened.
She reached the far side of the gully and glanced back through the driving rain. The creek, which had originally been maybe two feet across, was now almost ten feet wide and becoming a menacing, foaming coil of muddy brown water. Tommy was clutching at a tuft of grass to stay upright. Rip was leaning like a drunk against the bank, his left arm undulating in the current. The rumbling sound that came from behind the trees upstream was more pronounced. She peered through the trees ahead but could no longer see the building. She couldn’t bring herself to leave the boys, so she started screaming for help, knowing it was probably hopeless. There wouldn’t be anyone there. The boys were going to drown. She yelled again and again, then gave up and climbed back down to Tommy, being careful to stay in her own tracks.
The water was up to his lower chest now, and he had managed to pull his free leg underneath him so he could kneel and get his face higher. She waded out to him, feeling the force of the current. The stream had spread out in the gully to fifteen feet, submerging the traps and all the grass.
“Something’s coming,” Tommy said, looking upstream. The rain began to let up, and Lynn felt a surge of hope. But the noise from upstream was definitely still there. Then she saw lights in the trees across the gully.
“Oh my God! Look!” she said to Tommy, and then she stood up.
“Over here! Help! Hurry, they’re trapped in the water!”
Two dark figures were coming through the trees from the direction of the building, their flashlights bobbing in the gloom. The rain was definitely letting up, but the water was still rising. She called again, waving her arms, wondering if she should get out her own flashlight. Then the larger of the two men apparently saw her. He was tall and had a black beard. He put his arm out in a signal for the other man to halt behind him, which he did.
“Over here,” she yelled again. Why were they stopping? The rumbling noise from upstream was gaining strength; she imagined she could feel the ground trembling under the water. There was a sound like the rattle of individual boulders and rocks audible above the water noise.
She yelled and waved her arms again. The tall, black-bearded man stepped down to the edge of the flooding gully. He was wearing a long rain slicker that came all the way to his boots. His bearded face was partially covered by a large black hat. He looked at her and then upstream. The rain began to intensify.
“Tommy’s trapped,” she called out.
“So’s Rip. Please, can you help me get them out?”
The tall man was about fifteen feet from her now, and the water rose up to the hem of his slicker. Tommy coughed and then groaned in pain as the current shifted him sideways. The water covered his shirt pockets, and he was shivering uncontrollably. Behind him, Rip, wild-eyed and wide-awake now, sputtered something as the water came up to his neck.
She still could not see the big man’s face under his large mountain man-style hat.
He came forward again, steadying himself against the current. When he reached her, he put out a hand and motioned for her to take it. She was trying to decide what to do when a roaring noise erupted upstream. As she turned to look, a five-foot-high wall of brown water and debris came sweeping around the bend.
She screamed at the sight of it, knowing what was about to happen.
Then he had her by the forearm and was pulling her back toward the tree line. She screamed again, something about Tommy, but the grip on her arm was like a vise and she was literally being dragged by her heels through the water and up the slope. He pulled her the last few feet out of the water as the flash flood roared by, filling the air with the smell of mud and the sound of cracking rocks. She put up a hand to see through the rain, to find “Tommy and Rip, but they had disappeared. The surge front was followed by a second, swelling tide, this one as much mud as debris choked water. It rapidly filled the gully all the way to the tree lines on both sides. There were bushes and small trees sailing by in the rumbling water, but the boys were now five feet down and lost forever. She felt sick.
The big man did not relax his grip.
“Take her to the nitro building,” he said in a cold, commanding voice.
“Full restraint. Then we’ll come back for the bodies.”
“There’ll be a vehicle somewhere,” the other man said. She could not tear her eyes away from the brown river sweeping by them, which only a few minutes ago had been a small brook.
“Yes, we’ll need to find that, too. And their backpacks. Take her, now.”
Take her? Lynn thought. Take me where? Who are these men? She
started to ask them what was going on, when the tall man pulled her arms behind her and held them.
“Hey!” she yelled, but then a second set of hands pulled a wet length of fabric across her eyes. Then some kind of gag was taped across her mouth. She tried to struggle, but the man behind her lifted her pinned elbows, causing a lancing pain in her upper back. She gave a muffled yell of pain and stopped fighting.
“Be still,” the tall man ordered. She could feel him bending close. His body gave off a scent of wet canvas and leather and something else, some kind of chemical smell.
“You should not have come here,” he said, his voice ominous above the rumble of the flooded stream.
