"Hannah!"
"Here," she moaned.
He looked ahead and saw Hannah curled on her side several feet ahead of him in the gully.
Struggling forward as the water and debris spilled onto him, Grand reached Hannah's side. Water from the pipe flowed under and around her. Though her eyes were shut, she was breathing and coughing. Grand felt her neck. It didn't appear to be broken. It was probably all right to move her.
He slid his arms carefully under her legs and shoulders.
"Where are we?" she asked, her eyes still shut. It was as though she was waking from a dream.
"Outside the pipe," Grand told her. "Now hush. I'm going to get you out of here."
"Okay."
There was something sweet and trusting about the "okay."
Grand picked her up gently and, shielding her from the water with his body, carried her to the back of the gully.
Half-walking, halt-stumbling, but making sure that Hannah didn't hit the ground, Grand climbed from the channel.
He set her down on the soft grasses at the far end. Still barely conscious, Hannah moved her leg, her head, her arms. Except for a few cuts and bruises, she didn't appear to be seriously hurt.
"Where are the tigers?"
"I think they're staying inside. We're not a threat anymore," he said.
"Good… good."
Grand turned to look back at the pipe. The water continued to pour out but he saw no sign of the cats. He wasn't surprised. Once those claws and forelimbs dug into something, he didn't imagine there was very much that could dislodge them.
Grand sat on the grass to Hannah's left. He took her hand in his and held it as he caught his breath and thought about what he'd seen in the blockhouse. About the Chumash painting. About how it all made sense now.
Suddenly, the terrain began to brighten. Grand looked behind him as a light appeared in the sky. A moment later he heard the sounds of a rotor.
Less than a minute after that a chopper was settling down on the hilltop above the conduit.
Chapter Fifty-One
When Frank Lyon's chopper arrived, he had spotted Grand and Hannah and immediately called Gearhart for medical assistance. While they waited, Grand had told the Special Ops supervisor everything he'd seen. Lyon listened without comment, then left them to find the blockhouse.
A half hour later. Sheriff Gearhart came in the second chopper along with a three-person emergency medical team. Protocol, established by Gearhart, required that an emergency medical unit be on active call when any search-and-rescue operation was underway in the county. The sheriff hadn't changed the EM status since his people started looking for engineers Greene and Roche. The four teams rotated every eight hours, during which time they had to be within the county and near transportation.
Gearhart talked to Lyon on the radio while two of the technicians treated Hannah Hughes by the gully. They had both been draped in warm, red wool blankets; a portable heater and work lights had been set up nearby. Hannah was lying on her back on a field air mattress. There was no need to stabilize her with plastic splints or straps, since a quick check revealed that nothing had been broken. The only reason Hannah wasn't on the phone to her office was because the cell phone had been washed away in the flood and Grand hadn't bothered to look for it She needed to take a break. They both did. It had been a long, strenuous couple of days and things were only going to get worse.
Grand was standing next to Hannah's air mattress. He was thinking about the encounter, about what he'd seen in the pipe. He was searching for habits, patterns, explanations, anything that would help him make sense of this. He'd already been checked by one of the emergency medical technicians. Except for bruises and lacerations on his hands, shoulders, and forehead, the scientist was in pretty good shape. The medic, an elderly white-haired woman named Mrs. May, was dressing the last of Grand's wounds and telling him that he should check himself into the hospital for the night, just for observation.
Grand appreciated her concern. These medics, all of them volunteers, did what they did because they cared about people.
The medics finished a few minutes later. Gearhart met them at the foot of the hill and spoke with them briefly. At his request they left the lights and heater and headed back toward the hillside to wait. Then Gearhart had a talk with the chopper pilot by radio.
This was the first time that Hannah and Grand were alone since he'd pulled her from the gully. Hannah propped herself painfully on an elbow. She winced but refused to lower herself back down.
"You shouldn't be doing that," Grand said. "Lie back down-"
"I'll be all right," she said, wincing. "Never retreat or you'll stay there. That's my motto."
Grand shook his head. He sat beside her and moved close with his legs stretched out. He pulled her toward him gently so she could lean against him.
"Is that better?" he asked.
"Much," she said. "Thanks."
He held her a little tighter.
"Now-will you tell me something?" she asked.
"Sure," he said.
"What did you see before the flood?" Hannah asked. "What was in that conduit?"
"There's a blockhouse," Grand told her.
"One of those concrete storage bunkers with big mushroom-cap tops and heavy metal doors?"
"Yes," he said. "The one we came across was an access point for workers to service the conduit system. There was mostly repair equipment in there-welders, bags of concrete and troughs for mixing it."
"That's all?" Hannah said.
Grand held her. He didn't answer her.
"Jim?"
"What I saw were scraps of bone, hair, and clothes," he told her. "I don't even know how many victims there were. A half-dozen, maybe more."
Hannah squeezed his hand.
"I'm not sure who everyone was, but there was part of a backpack like the one we found in the creek."
Just then Gearhart walked over. He looked down at the young woman.
"How are you?"
"Fine," Hannah said.
Gearhart looked at Grand. "You?"
"Apart from feeling like a cat toy, I'm okay," Grand said.
Gearhart seemed to be studying Grand, like his eyes were little x-ray machines.
"Where are we, by the way?" Grand asked.
"Nearly halfway between Gibraltar Reservoir and Jameson Lake," Gearhart said.
"That far east?" Grand said.
"That far east," the sheriff replied. "You did some serious traveling."
"Have you been able to check out the blockhouse?" Grand asked.
Gearhart nodded. "Lyon got the keypad access code from Dean Rede. He went in."
"Is it definitely the missing men?" Hannah asked.
"I can't say anything more until we've run tests and notified next of kin," Gearhart said.
"But it's definitely human remains," Hannah said.
Gearhart didn't answer. He continued to study Grand. "I'm more interested about what you saw in the conduits."
"We saw two saber-tooths," Grand said.
"You're sure."
"I'm positive."
"They weren't just big cats."
"No. And these animals are smart. One of them stayed behind and let us through. Then be came after us."
"And obviously went back into hiding," Gearhart said. "Lyon's chopper is circling the mountaintop. So far he hasn't seen a thing. Not even a bobcat."
"The bobcats are probably scared," Grand said. "They must have run. That's common when a powerful new carnivore moves into an ecosystem. The smaller predators start to sense what's out there."
"You have any idea where they're going?" Gearhart asked.
"Not exactly," Grand said. "But so far they've struck at the sinkhole on Painted Cave Road, the two beaches, the campsite, and the blockhouse. Except for the attack on the catamaran, which veered to the southwest, the cats have been moving southeast."