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“THEY’VE GOT SOMEONE.”
A radio crackles near me, and I push closer to try to hear more. The air is electric with snapping, charged urgency. The search and rescue team, with their bright yellow jackets and orange helmets, their cables and carabiners and gurneys, is on the ground.
“How many?” someone asks. Everyone—the SAR team, the EMTs who have come in to assist at the rescue site—are like tightly coiled springs, ready for action.
The people who are trained for this are here. They’re going to do what they can, but it won’t be enough for some.
There’s no way everyone survived the Underground last night.
“Two women, one man,” the SAR leader calls out to the EMTs. “A possible spinal injury. That’s all I know.”
The parking lot at the end of the Underground has been turned into a triage site. A bright red SAR operations tent takes up part of the lot, where the SAR team leader, a woman with a radio, is coordinating the rescue efforts. I’ve made my way through the barriers, acting like I belong here, to find out what I can before they inevitably kick me out. Eden National Park ambulances and ranger trucks fill most of the lot. On the plateau near us, helicopters churn into the air to get visuals on the canyon.Rangers stand sentry at the parking lot, turning people away. I made it just in time.
Thunder cracks the heavens.
There’s another storm on the way. From this vantage point, I can see the livid, still-weighted sky north of us, the gray-blue slant of heavy rain coming down on the plateau that might shear its way toward us, causing another flood.
The window to get people out of the canyon is closing.
Unlike in the Underground, the scope of the sky up here is infinite, the world laid bare and to waste beneath the heavens. The air smells the way it did last night, like electricity, and in the distance jagged bolts of lightning zigzag down.
“They’re coming in!” one of the EMTs calls out, and everyone swarms into motion, readying their equipment, running toward the figures in bright yellow making their way up the slope, carrying gurneys between them. I catch my breath.
“We’ve got three, all alive,” one of the SAR team shouts, and then the group is upon us, heading for one of the ambulances, carrying three figures on their rescue gurneys. “Holy shit,” someone says, “they’re inbags,” and it’s true, all three people are in plastic bags and are strapped to their gurneys with heavy black straps. “That’s okay,” someone near me says. “That’s to stabilize them,” and then I see someone shoving through the crowd toward a gurney. The ambulance is already wailing its siren, preparing to move. I follow in the person’s wake. Ihaveto see who they’ve found.
The SAR team hands off a gurney to a group of EMTs. When the SAR team turns away, I see that their faces are haggard, their eyes bright, adrenaline racing through them in a way that they’re trained to manage. There’s not a lot of work harder than this—technical climbing into a canyon to retrieve someone, making sure you don’t accidentally kill yourself or one of your teammates on the rescue mission. Time is a factor, terrain a factor, weather a factor—
“Hey,” I say, surprised. “Joe?” We went to high school together.
“Page,” says the man nearest me. Lightning snakes the sky behind him. “You have someone missing?”
“Sonnet does,” I say. “Eight people.”
“Damn,” he says, but someone’s already calling to him. He has to go.
“Good luck,” I say, and he nods, already breaking into a jog. Lightning darts down again. If I stay the hell out of the way and keep my head down, maybe I can learn more. I glance back at the barrier where the rangers are trying to manage the crowd. It’s increased even in the last couple of minutes. There are families, frantic, who started driving the minute they heard about the flood, locals who have come to help but haven’t been given tasks yet. There are rubberneckers, and yes—there it is—a local news truck. They’re behind. The situation in the canyon is already all over social media.
Someone grabs my arm. I turn, and it’s one of the people they brought out from the canyon, his face battered and bruised, eyes bloodshot, holding on to me for all he’s worth from his stretcher. The EMTs carrying it pull up short, turning to look at me.
The man holding my sleeve is a twentysomething guy I don’t recognize, not one of our guests, and he is staring at me in absolute panic. “Gone,” he says. “They’re allgone.”
“Get back!” one of the EMTs says, pushing my arm from the man’s grip, but not before I see that his pupils are dilated and his face battered. From what? Did he fall? Did the flood in the canyon do this to him, or was it something and someone else?
“Wait,” the man says, pointing. “Can she come with me?”
I turn around. Look behind me.
He’s talking to me.
“Are you his wife?” an EMT asks me. “Sister?”
“No,” I say.
“Family member of any kind?”
I shake my head, my eyes still locked on the man’s. Why did he pick me? Do I remind him of someone he knows? Is it just because I’m here?
