Chapter 12 - The Creek Road Washout
They took the old farm tractor—a rusted, open-cab diesel machine that had sat inside the tool shed for two years. Thomas worked the ignition with bloody fingers while Sarah held both children inside the rusted metal fender, shielding the baby with her own soaked coat. The engine sputtered, spat a cloud of gray exhaust, and roared to life with a mechanical shudder that shook their bones.
Thomas slammed the gear into low, and the heavy ribbed tires tore through the mud, bypassing the long driveway where Vance’s patrol truck sat empty in front of the burning house. They cut straight down the fallow pasture, the headlights of the tractor cutting yellow cones through the sheet of falling water. Behind them, the farmhouse was fully engulfed, a blazing beacon against the pitch-black sky.
The logging road was barely a road at all; it was a trench of yellow mud and washed-out shale. As they neared the bottom of the hollow, the sound of the engine was drowned out by the thunderous roar of the creek. Blackwood Creek had broken its banks, turning the small valley into a churning brown lake of floating logs and debris.
Thomas cut the engine twenty yards from the tree line. The hunter's cabin sat on a small knoll of limestone, but the water was already lapping at its front porch, swirling violently around the stilts supporting the wooden structure.
"Stay here!" Thomas yelled over the sound of the flood. He jumped down from the tractor, his boots sinking to his knees in the marshy ground as he ran toward the cabin door.
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Sarah watched from the fender, holding Ruth close. But as Thomas reached the porch, headlights flickered on the ridge above them. Vance had taken the old county bypass. His truck came sliding down the logging trail, tires locking in the mud, skidding to a halt thirty yards behind their stalled tractor.
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