“In Macon County, North Carolina, the county that borders Rabun County in Georgia, a 2004 debris flow detached material from Fish Hawk Mountain and it flowed over two miles.”
The moderator was momentarily speechless, so the geologist summed up. “It’s reasonable to expect the debris flows from this storm to be much, much worse than those.”
***
For most of the night Ozzie slogged through wet leaves and standing water with Isabella as he tried to lead her to Hal’s cabin, but the ferocity of the wind and rain drove them to seek refuge under the overhang of the granite outcropping in the pine cathedral. Even though it was almost noon, there was barely enough light to see deep inside the forest. Still, Ozzie was able to make out the body of the man who had shot at him.
Evidently the coyotes had gotten to him. He was dragged several yards away from the boulder, and what was left of him lay chest down on the forest floor. His head was completely removed, evidently chewed off by the coyotes. Ozzie scanned through the downpour but saw no sign of the head. Shane’s arms and back were exposed, but virtually all the flesh was gone. A metal stick...a shotgun lay in the muck beside him.
Ozzie and Isabella jumped to their feet as the mountain roared beneath them. They looked quickly to the right to see an entire hillside begin to move slowly, impossibly. A tree lost its footing and fell backwards. Then another. The speed picked up and the entire slope behind them gave way. They ran out to their left, retracing the same path that Ozzie had fled that day that seemed so long ago.
Without knowing why, Ozzie stopped at the precise spot where he had been shot and looked back. The hillside flowed down like lava from a volcano. The huge granite outcropping split the flow and sent it to each side of the boulder. It rejoined on the other side and laid waste to everything standing in its path. Ozzie squinted to see the mountain swallow Shane’s distant remains. Isabella and Ozzie turned and plodded in the direction of Hal’s cabin and away from their life as the oppressed.
Far, far behind them, the mountainside awoke with a fury. The steep slope behind Ozzie’s former home, his prison paddock, was among the first to seek its revenge for the painful oppression perpetrated on its soil. The slope erupted in a thunderous burst and washed down the mountainside. It devoured the curing sheds and the fences, burying their sins deep into its soil. The surge continued and spread as it slugged through hundred year old trees, swallowing them whole and mixing them with mud, leaves, and rocks in mountainous piles over makeshift roads and abandoned logging roads. A black sea of muck rolled over an old F100 pickup, burying it and Blake’s sins forever from human eyes.
Ozzie’s monster was finally laid to rest.
***
Hal shivered inside his cabin. His campfire had gone out early in the morning and his thoroughly soaked blankets were no match for the wind-driven rain. The only thing warm on his body was the back of his neck. If Only Rex was big enough to cover my whole body, Hal thought, I’d be fine and dandy.
The sounds around the cabin were deafening. Branches snapped loudly and crashed to the ground with increasing regularity. Hard, driving rain pounded the ground unmercifully, and the little stream that normally flowed peacefully fifty yards from his front porch now raged over his front steps.
Hal stood at the door and knew this was his moment. He had come out here to die alone, to be a burden to no one. Now death swirled around him, encircled him and tightened its icy grip until Hal had only the doorway to stand in. And now that it was here, it terrified him. He walked back inside and peered out the small window he had cut to see behind the cabin.
To the left of the garden lay a large Sycamore tree that had fallen the year before. Through the torrential rain, Hal peered at a red blob near its root ball. He stared pensively until he was sure he could make it out. Tammy lay on the ground and slept contentedly, riding out the storm and at ease with her survival instincts. Hal thought about how he had lived five years in the woods alone but, unlike Tammy and Ozzie, he was utterly at the mercy of nature. He needed shelter. And, he realized, perhaps too late, he needed companionship.
A bolt of lightning lit up the forest and blinded Hal just as if sunshine had reflected off a mirror into his eyes. He shielded his eyes and jumped back in the cabin as an earth shattering sound of thunder shook the cabin. A moment later he felt a bone rattling thud and saw a giant oak crash across his porch, ripping a third of his roof off in the process. His bed flew off the floor and crashed back down as Rex dug his claws into Hal’s neck.
Hal shook uncontrollably, drenched and overcome with terror. He thought about Tammy, how she was a creature of nature and knew how to survive. He thought of Ozzie and figured he was just as safe...hoped he was just as safe. Mostly, he though of Connie, picturing her face as he shuffled his feet to what was left of his front porch and allowed the rain to wash away his tears and his pain. He had come to forest to die, to put an end to his suffering. He found that now, just as when he had come five years earlier, he couldn’t embrace death. When push came to shove he realized what he wanted was to survive.
He stepped out of the cabin into rushing knee-deep water knowing that he had discovered that too late.
Chapter 33
Lonnie sat at his desk in the sheriff’s office surrounded by his deputies eight days after Hurricane Isabel hit Savannah and a week after it dumped thirty-two inches of rain on parts of Rabun County.
“Well, all righty then, anything else before I head out with my church to Savannah?” Lonnie asked. No one spoke. Lonnie surveyed the expressions and paused as he became, for the moment, Pastor Lonnie. “Let us say a prayer before I leave,” he said. Everyone bowed their heads and interlocked their fingers, none even questioning if an elected official could ask them to pray. Even the atheists and agnostics among them felt the loss and suffering that surrounded them and knew this was the time to remain quiet.
“Father–thank you,” Lonnie began. “Thank you for reminding us of what we have. For showing us what we all can be by being here for one another in each of our greatest times of need. For allowing us to remember that we are here, Lord, not to enrich our own lives, but to serve you and our fellow man. Please be with us, Lord, as we set out to do that, in Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.”
“Amen,” was shouted as men cried in the office, some uncontrollably. The losses they had witnessed first hand that week were permanently etched in their visions, as if a video game image was burned into an old television screen that was finally turned off. The vision would linger, forever.
Lonnie grabbed a bag and walked to the door. “I’ll see y’all in a couple of weeks if all goes well,” he said as he walked out the door.
“Oh...Sheriff,” Freeman shouted, and walked to the door.
Lonnie stopped. “Yes, Freeman?”
“I—I heard from the medical examiner this morning,” Freeman said. “He said it’ll be at least a week, maybe more, before they get results on the dental records from that head— uh, the remains of that head that washed up down on Warwoman. They think it’s a young man but they’re not completely sure yet.”
Lonnie turned his head away. “Well,” he said with a quivering lip, “when you hear something, you call me and let me know, no one else.”
“Understood, Sheriff. Good luck down there.” Freeman reached to shake Lonnie’s hand but Lonnie pulled him for a hug. Then the sheriff walked through the door and drove with members of his church to help victims begin rebuilding in Savannah.
***
Clint sat alone in the conference room at the USDA building on Alabama Street as the meeting ended. His supervisor, Clarence Green, walked back into the meeting and sat beside him.