Theo half stood and scuttled over to grab him under the armpits. “C’mon, Spencer, help me. Act like you give a shit!”
“I’m sorry, Woodchuck, but you scared the last of the shit out of me by swimming after the stupid cat. It just could be I have no shits to give.” He said it, but he was pushing with his legs and his feet, even though the rest of him felt as leaden as Theo had when in the water.
Theo braced his stomach and his knees and pulled. “You don’t look this heavy—there’s gotta be some bullshit hiding somewhere in there. Help!”
Spencer grunted and gave one more shove, and Theo was able to prop him up against the ice chest, Stupid cradled in his arms. “And I told you,” he panted, “the cat isn’t stupid. That’s just his name.”
Spence nodded and used his chin to cuddle the terrified animal against his chest. “Someday you’ll have to tell me how that happened.”
The Black Hawk was close enough to be loud now, and Theo had to spend most of his energy clinging to the post support and Spencer’s arm while the updraft from the blades rocked the little craft. For a terrible moment, Theo thought it overshot them, and then he realized the helicopter had paused long enough to drop a coil of rope, as Spencer had suggested, timing the drop to intersect with the craft with some serious precision.
“That’s impressive,” Theo said, letting go of Spencer to scramble forward and grab the rope. It had a carabiner loop and he darted to one of the corner four-by-fours that held the porch together and secured it, his heart pounding in his ears. He’d seen how far they’d come toward the valley bottleneck as the chopper had hovered, and oh… oh God. The water was getting rougher.
Rope secure, he looked up into the chopper to see the same woman—Elsie, he knew now—looking down from the open door with another man on the other side.
“How’s he doing?” the man shouted, and Theo looked worriedly to Spencer.
“Crappy!” he called back. “Injured, cold, infected already—you may need a basket!”
Spencer mumbled something, but it got drowned by the wind. It was most certainly an expletive.
“Fuck!” yelled the man at the cargo bay. “Elsie, what’s the maximum for the basket?”
“Five hundred pounds,” she replied smartly, and the man nodded.
“You get him in the basket,” he called to Theo. “And then sit on his sorry ass and we’ll pull you up. There’ll be a strap for you, but brother, we have got no time and no men, you hear?”
“I hear!” Theo said, with a worried glance toward Armageddon, which was bearing them onward with all speed.
The basket took a good two, three thousand years to lower, and Theo stood, holding on to the rail of the rocking platform, waiting for it like he could will it to go faster with his mind. When it finally got close enough for him to stand fully and guide it down, he had to haul with main strength to get it close enough to Spencer to be sure he could help him in.
“Spencer!” he shouted. “Man—”
“I hear you.” Spencer took a gasp of air, and with the hand not holding the cat, he shoved himself up enough to topple into the basket, turning at the last moment so he’d lie face up and not squash the cat, and making a sound like a wounded bear as he probably contorted the wound in his side. Theo started to make busy with all the straps when the raft started bumping and shaking too much for him to even see the blur of his hands. He glanced up enough to see that they had entered the churning bottleneck and looked to the man in the helicopter.
“The anchor line,” he called. “Do you need me to—”
“Get in the fucking basket!” his rescuer called. “And hold the fuck on!”
Theo threw himself on top of Spencer then, full length, grabbed the handles on either side and buried his face in Spencer’s neck.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Hope I’m not hurting you.”
“Isn’t that my line, virgin?” Spencer rasped. “If you’re saying it with our clothes on, this may be a bad idea.”
Theo’s shoulders shook, and he kept his eyes squeezed tight against tears as the world disappeared beneath him again, and he and Spencer fought the wind buffeting their bodies and threatening their safety as they dangled from the sky.
Other People’s Stories
FOR a moment, Theo thought he was going to be sick as the basket rocked inward and outward on a very short lead.
Then the motion stopped, and he and Spencer were deposited on the deck of the helicopter with a rude thump right before the copter practically jerked from the sky.
“The fuck was that?” Elsie screamed.
“Damie!” the man—blond and scruffy and most likely Glen Echo—hollered into his coms. “We’ve got a raft attached to the bottom of the chopper. Lift a little slower or you’ll yank the runners off this fucker!”
The pilot must have yelled something over coms because Glen and Elsie rolled their eyes.
“Because we were short on time, asshole!” Glen yelled. “No, we can’t cut it loose! The cable is attached to the outside frame. Because we were using the crane for other things, numbnuts! Oh yes, you can too get this thing out of here with that attached. Don’t bullshit me. Fine. You’re the king of the skies. Elsie, Spencer, and I will buy you a crown and sing you a song. Just get us out of here!”
The next jerk against the helicopter wasn’t so bad, and Theo opened his eyes enough to look outside the bay door before it was closed.
Behind and below them, their little raft headed for the waterspout that arced savagely out of the valley and into the canyon. As the helicopter gained altitude, the raft launched itself through the air, still attached to the cable they’d used to anchor it to the Black Hawk, and stayed, gracefully swinging underneath, with hardly a bobble in the chopper’s stride.
With a heave, Elsie slid the bay door shut and then joined Glen, both of them in flight suits and coms helmets, to kneel beside the basket.
“Kid, are you okay?” Glen asked. “Any broken bones? Hypothermia?”
“C-c-cold,” Theo chattered, and the next thing he knew, he was being pulled up by the armpits and wrapped in a heated wool blanket, stashed in a first-class, comfort-style seat.
“We’ll get you something warm to drink in a minute,” Elsie said, as she bent down with Glen to attend to Spencer. “Can you tell us what his injuries are—oh! Hello-o, kitteh! Spencer, give me the cat.”
“No,” Spencer mumbled. “This cat’s Stupid.”
Theo laughed shakily and hauled the blanket tighter around his shoulders, suddenly aware that he’d been cold and wet for a really long time. And scared. Mustn’t forget scared.
“He may be stupid, darling, but that’s why you should let us have it, don’t you think?”
“It’s the cat’s name,” Theo said. “It belongs to the lady you rescued earlier this morning.”
“Oh!” Elsie looked up at him, her sweet-natured face transformed into beauty when she smiled. “Oh, she will love hearing that he’s okay.” Her expression sobered. “But all your townspeople are stashed up in Sliver or Spelunker or whatever that town was by what’s left of the lake. You may have to hang on to that old lady’s cat for a while, kid. Those folks are crowding the high school gym and trying to find relatives out of town.” She bit her lip in the way some people had when they didn’t want to give bad news. “I’m afraid—”