Chapter 2 - The Edge of Miller Creek
The screaming siren of the ambulance pierced the storm, but for Officer Natalie Vance, the noise paled in comparison to the terrifying lightness of the child in her arms. Ashley was rushed toward Saint Jude’s Children’s Hospital under heavy escort, her tiny hand clutching Buddy the plush puppy, which Natalie had carefully tucked beneath the blankets beside her.
While the paramedics worked frantically to stabilize Ashley's plummeting blood pressure and organ distress, Natalie made a decisive call to Dispatch.
"Eric, I'm heading straight down to the Miller Creek bridge on Route 17," Natalie barked over her radio, her vehicle tires splashing through deep puddles. "Tell Search and Rescue that Andrew didn't run. He went into the river."
When Natalie arrived at Miller Creek, the scene was chaos lit by strobing red and blue lights. Rain lashed down in relentless sheets. The creek, normally a peaceful twenty-foot stream, had morphed into a roaring, muddy torrent overflowing its banks by forty feet.
Sergeant Miller was standing at the mud line, his flashlight cutting through the downpour toward the half-submerged wreckage of a silver Ford F-150.
"What do we have, Sergeant?" Natalie asked, pulling her heavy waterproof jacket tight.
"Truck slid off the old timber bridge during Thursday night's flash flood," Miller reported, his voice grim. "The bridge guardrail was already rotted out. The truck flipped twice before lodging against those submerged boulders. Drivers door was pried open from the inside."
Natalie walked carefully along the slippery bank. She shone her tactical light down at the raging waters. Andrew's blue denim coat was still snared on a jagged Oak root sticking out of the mud.
She scrambled down the embankment, sliding past torn branches and thick silt, until she reached the jacket. Pulling it free from the branch, she inspected it. The right sleeve was torn raggedly, soaked through with grease and blood. Inside the inner pocket, preserved inside a zip-top plastic bag, was a prescription receipt for severe pediatric antibiotic suspensions and insulin—Ashley's medication.
"Look at this!" Natalie yelled back up to Sergeant Miller. "He had the medicine! He was driving straight back to her on Thursday night when the bridge gave out!"
"If he got out of that truck four days ago during a Category 2 flash flood, Natalie..." Miller shook his head, looking at the black, rushing waters. "The current down here runs at twenty knots. Nobody survives four days in water like that."
"He didn't drown," Natalie said firmly, pointing her flashlight toward the opposite bank. "Look at the mud, Sergeant. Look closely."
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Up on the muddy slope opposite the wreckage, barely visible through the torrential rain, were two deep dragging marks in the earth—drag marks that moved upward, away from the raging riverbank and into the dense pine wilderness of Blackwood Ridge.
Andrew hadn't drowned. Injured, bleeding, and fighting against time, he had pulled himself out of the deep water.
