“The dam has failed!” Sky screams. “Flood! Flood! Get to higher ground! The cliffs!”

All I can see are shapes moving, so I follow them, my heart pounding like an insane drum.

Out of the darkness somebody grabs my hand. Somebody strong.

Sky shouts, “Got you, son! Climb, boy, climb! Quick as you can! Flood is coming!”

He lifts me up, shoves me against the cliff, and keeps me there until I find a foothold on the slippery rock. Some sort of instinct must be taking over, because without really knowing how, I’m scrambling up the cliff. Sky keeps shoving me from behind, pushing to lift me higher, guiding me to footholds.

I keep climbing, clinging like a magnet to the sandstone and using my fingertips to find the next handhold, because for sure I can’t see. When I get as high as he can reach, Sky stops pushing and shouts for Tony. I know that others are scrambling up the cliff, kids I think, but I can’t be sure. Panic is making me dizzy, and I’m terrified of falling, because the thunderous roar has turned into something else. Something far more terrifying. A continuous explosion that drowns out all of our screaming.

My hands find a ledge, and I pull myself over. There’s room enough to stand up, but I stay flat, afraid of losing my balance. Looking over the edge, blinking against the rain, I see dark shapes getting closer. Kids being shoved up to the ledge by the adults below. Tony makes it, his eyes bugging out with fear. I reach over, grab an outstretched hand, and drag Mia up onto the ledge. She’s shouting something, but I can’t hear her. All I can hear is the roar coming down the ravine, closer and closer. Rushing water, yes, but other sounds. Snapping and breaking and pounding, loud enough to shake the ground, and the cliff itself.

Deke is shoved up and climbs right over me, finding a place on the ledge.

Right about then, a strange thing happens. Clouds roll away, revealing the moon, and suddenly I can make out Imani, just below me, and Cindi Beacon shoving her up the cliff, onto the ledge. Cindi with a look on her face so determined and so terrified that it almost stops my heart.

She knows she’s going to die. She knows, but she’s still doing her best to save Imani. It makes me want to reach down and touch her hand and say “thank you thank you,” but I never get the chance. The shrieking roar gets louder and louder, and then it comes around the last bend in the river, exploding into the moonlight, and an enormous wave of broken trees and rolling boulders surges right up to the lip of the ledge, pounding at the cliff, threatening to snatch us away.

I close my eyes, expecting to die.