Part 2
April flattened herself beside the barrier and went still. Jasper stopped pulling uphill. He held his nose at an angle, working for air, while Diane watched the tendons stand out above his paws.
A single claw scraped the ledge. Diane fixed her attention there. It was easier than watching his mouth.
April spoke into the radio. “He’s holding his head clear for now. We can’t use either end. We need a lower water level or a side exit.”
At the upper entrance, a flashlight beam crossed the wall. Brett came in with Valerie and helped carry her equipment to the dry part of the aisle. He had isolated the electrical circuits serving the damaged area. Portable lamps now lit the concrete in separate white patches.
Valerie took Diane’s place at the mesh.
“Tell me what happened while his head was under.”
“It was when the floor dropped,” April said. “He came up again quickly.”
Diane opened her mouth. She had seen the tips of his ears throughout. Surely that mattered.
Jasper coughed, a deep, rough effort that shook water from his whiskers. Diane left her correction unspoken.
Valerie watched him breathe. Her immobilization equipment remained packed. With a cat barely keeping his nose above water, sedation could take away the only thing supporting his airway.
Brett returned from the window before she could ask him about drainage.
“The yard’s spilling toward the pasture now. It isn’t rising as fast in here. But we won’t pump it down against that flow.”
A blockage farther down the wash had forced water out of its channel. Diane could see it streaming through the garden beside the loading yard. An empty compost tub drifted past the flattened zinnias, caught against a post, and rolled beneath the brown surface.
“Help’s coming up the ridge,” April told Valerie. “They’ve been told to stop outside the perimeter. We control entry.”
Diane heard the same clipped certainty she used when a volunteer forgot a gate check. She looked around for something she could lift, fetch, or count.
Then she looked at the wall beyond Jasper.
“The old tiger room has an opening.”
Brett turned toward her.
“We closed it off when we changed the layout. Martin framed a section low in that partition. It’s still there.”
She traced its position in the air. The empty night room stood beside the upper part of the passage. If they could remove the secured panel, Jasper would have a short climb sideways into a dry space instead of the steep climb toward the jammed return door.
Brett went to inspect it from the protected side. When he came back, he held his flashlight under one arm and had rainwater dripping off his jaw.
“I found your frame. Before we release anything, that section needs support.”
“The transport rig can do that.”
“It might. April, come look at the bearing points with me.”
Diane’s hand remained raised for a moment after he had turned away. She lowered it and zipped her raincoat higher.
April went with him. Valerie stayed at the lion, tracking the movement of his ribs. Through the wall came a few words, a pause, then the sound of equipment being moved.
Mabel struck her crate again.
Diane pointed toward the upper bay. Valerie nodded without taking her eyes from Jasper.
“Keep the keeper barrier between you.”
Mabel stood with her weight off her right hip. That uneven stance sometimes alarmed visitors who didn’t know her arthritis. She paid no attention to Diane. Her nose pressed toward the rear bars, following the sounds from below. Jasper coughed, and one of her ears flicked toward him.
Years ago, people on the occasional guided tours had assumed they were mother and son. Diane always corrected them. Mabel had arrived as an adult with damaged teeth and a history no one could reliably supply. Jasper came years later, from a separate surrender, thin and furious at every change in his world.
Their introduction had taken time. First scent, then sight through secure barriers, then carefully watched shared space. On that first afternoon together, he had crowded Mabel until she slapped him away from her shoulder.
By closing checks, he was sleeping against her spine.
Diane put a palm against the outside rail. Opening the crate would give Mabel what she wanted: a way toward the sound. Diane checked the supports beneath it instead. The high pad was dry and stable. She reported that over the radio.
April returned with a stripe of rust on her sleeve.
“The posts are carrying the load. Brett’s bracing the panel before he frees it.”
“Martin put a second—”
“Brett saw it.” April looked toward Valerie, then back. “Please stay here until we have the gear through. I can’t have anyone moving behind us where I can’t account for them.”
“I’ve worked in this building since before you could walk.”
April rubbed rain from her eyelashes. “And I need you in one place for five minutes.”
Diane looked at the clipboard tucked beneath her daughter’s arm. April had marked the occupied rooms and the route for equipment. Beside Mabel’s name, she had written dry.
“Here, then,” Diane said.
Brett brought the lifting gear through a separate service entrance. April inspected the destination room’s boundaries and asked Diane to confirm that its outside enclosure was empty and secured. Diane walked the entire sightline and checked the fastenings with her hands before calling back.
Behind the wall, Jasper made a small, strained noise. Mabel answered him.
Diane pressed two fingers into the tight muscle beneath her ear.
Valerie’s voice came over the radio. “He’s holding. Keep going.”
The panel resisted their first attempts. Diane could almost hear Martin explaining why the heavier steel had been worth the trouble. He had built for neglect, for storms, for the day some hurried person forgot a maintenance date.
They had been proud of what they could afford by doing the work themselves.
Brett asked whether there were photographs of the original frame.
Diane was already moving toward the office.
The binder stood above the desk, wedged behind a tin of donated postage. Rain blew through the damaged lower window, but the shelf was dry. To reach it, she shifted a stack of feed forms. The first one had tomorrow’s date across the top, in her handwriting.
She took the binder and left the forms on the desk.
In the protected work space, Brett spread it over a closed equipment case. Diane turned past pictures of walls before their cladding, a borrowed welder, a heap of gravel. She stopped at Martin kneeling beside the frame. Sunlight had washed the color from one shoulder of his shirt.
“Follow that seam,” she told Brett, touching the plastic sleeve. “It continues behind the plate.”
He studied the picture, adjusted his approach, and returned to the wall.
This time the steel moved. Its grinding scrape made Diane clench her jaw. A dark gap opened, with floodwater moving below the raised floor of the empty room.
Jasper’s mane appeared beyond it.
April guided Diane back into the keeper aisle. Working from protected positions, they placed a steel ramp across the short rise. Brett checked its support. April cleared the dry room and verified the doors again.
The ramp led directly from the water into safety.
Jasper kept his paws on the ledge…
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