“Live with it, kiddo. You’ll be lucky I give you that much if you’re stupid enough to get hurt because you can’t be smart.”
“Says the guy who almost fell.”
“Almost is the key word.”
I swung myself over the rope, wrapping the high-friction gloves around it and making my way down. An actual clamp for climbing would have been better, but this wasn’t my first time having to bareback climbing equipment. Wasn’t sure how I would fare scaling in wet weather since the rough weather I’d had to fight had been considerably hotter and drier than this, but if I took my time, I could make it.
The embankment only got steeper, forcing me to take smaller steps so my feet sank securely into the soaked ground as I inched down. One bad step could send me flying, and Carter was right; falling down this bad boy would risk a concussion at best, a shattered skull or a funeral at worst. The last thing I needed was to be the one who got hurt when these three were depending on me.
Thankfully, I made it to the bottom, only to have Jake grab me and pull me closer with a scowl. “Where the hell is your hook?”
“What?” I asked.
“Your fucking climbing hook,” he growled, turning to Reno beside him and Carter, who landed shortly after me. “Who didn’t give him a hook?”
“He had it,” Carter said.
“You listen to me, jackass,” Jake snarled, and I took a step back as I pulled Carter close. “That guy is the one who keeps us alive, you got it? Whatever we gotta do to make sure he’s not the one if one of us gets hurt, we fucking do that, got it? So if you have to give up your hook, then you give it up. If you need to take a hit so he doesn’t, then you take it? Understand?”
“Jesus, okay, fine,” Carter said, and although I could see he was pissed, he seemed too taken aback by Jake’s uncharacteristic anger to really find a place to put that anger.
“Good,” Jake said, pushing Carter away lightly, turning to Reno. “Got it?”
“Protect your local medic, got it,” Reno said, making me wince when he enthusiastically bobbed his head, flashing the light into my eyes and nearly blinding me.
“Start by not fucking blinding me,” I said with a laugh, reaching out to push Reno’s head to the side. “Get us to that creek; we might be too late.”
Carter stared after Jake in a mixture of bewilderment and anger, but he was professional enough to dial it back and keep his head in the game. That probably meant this was going to be a problem when we got back to the outpost, but like Carter, I was able to put my thoughts to the side as I made my way after the other two.
“You hear that?” Carter called as we reached what was supposed to be a creek. Reno was right, though; the weather had made it more like a river. I wouldn’t have dared stand in it past my ankles out of fear that the current would yank my feet out from under me.
“What?” Jake called back, and when Carter cocked his head, Jake did the same. “An engine?”
Only for a harsh beep to cut through the howling wind, and while we all jumped in surprise, we knew where the sound was coming from and hurried in that direction. We walked for only a couple of minutes before we saw another light ahead and the sound of the engine was far clearer. Especially when it revved again, the horn giving another piercing beep that would have been irritating in any other circumstance but was welcome.
Signs of life were enough to spur us forward, and as we pushed through some brush, I could see what had happened. We already knew there had been two riders, and that they had flipped trying to get out of the storm. After that, the call had been hard to follow, breaking up and leaving us with only a fewbits of information. They had flipped near the edge of where the creek originally was, from the looks of it, but the creek had flooded quickly. The riders were pinned under their ATV, both girls sprawled so their heads were opposite one another.
A weak voice called from the ATV, and I moved to the side where the girl was still moving. I turned and twisted the headlamp off, popped out the stand on its back and set it up so I could see what I was doing, but also let her see more than a blinding light in the darkness.
“Keep the light out of her goddamn face,” I snapped at whoever was standing behind me, looking down. The light over my shoulder shifted out of sight, and I sighed, bending to speak loud enough for her to hear me. “Hey, we got you, alright? I’ve got you.”
“Ellie,” she managed. “Ellie…she’s on the…other side.”
Her voice was urgent, trying to get me to check on her friend, and I smiled. “They’re going to check on her, and I’m going to check on you, okay?”
I didn’t need to hear the murmuring behind me to know what I’d seen as I’d stomped through the water to get to this girl. The other one…had been facing toward the creek that was now a river. The water had risen and covered her head, probably long before we’d shown up. Her chances were next to zero; beyond saving, so it was this girl I needed to help.
“We’ve gotta get this thing off her,” I heard Carter say, his voice tight with desperation and worry. “Get her out of the?—”
“Shut up,” I snapped. “Sorry, I need you to hold still for me, okay?”
“I tried to hold it up,” she said, her voice weak and heavy with desperation. “Ellie, me and her…we tried to hold it. But she…she stopped and I-I tried to hold it, I tried so goddamn hard but I-I couldn’t, not alone.”
“You did good,” I told her, leaning over to block the rain from her face, pooling around her eyes and nose. “You did real good, now we need to get this thing off you. But I need you to keep telling me how you’re feeling the whole way, got it?”
“We need to get this thing off the other one!” Carter barked, and I twisted around.
“Then fucking do it, but don’t be stupid about it,” I told him with a scowl. I understood his need to save both girls, but?—