Betty got the cooking started, while the others sat and watched the rain fall. They were in a good spot, on an open hilltop with gently sloping sides that wouldn’t wash away easily in the flood, but they were essentially trapped.
The bridge behind them was gone, and the road in front of them was flooded. They could try to head off through the open fields away from the river, but that didn’t lead to the Academy, or to anywhere particularly useful that was within walking distance.
Betty tapped her spoon against the pot of rice and beans. “Well, the rice is ready, so we might as well eat. Who knows how long we will end up sitting here, but one thing that I have learned is that if you sit on the top of a hill long enough, someone or something will come looking for you.”
“Thanks for the words of encouragement.” Karl laughed as he looked out into the heavy rain.
“Just making sure everyone is aware. There is a huge amount of the grasslands flooded, and there are thousands of small creatures that live there. They all need somewhere to go, and we’re on the high ground, furthest from the water.” The cleric reminded them.
“You have a point, and I’m not sure that I’m happy about it.” Karl replied, making her smile.
“You will find that I am very frequently right, and you will very often not be happy about it. But that doesn’t change the fact that we need to pay attention so that we’re not caught off guard if something starts coming up that hill to get away from the floodwaters.
Too many of the animals have lost their homes for the day not to need to relocate, so it’s best if we just set a guard now, and expect that we’re going to be attacked at some point this evening while we wait to see if the rain is going to stop.
If it does, there is a chance that the flash flood will go down again fairly quickly, and the railroad has been built to withstand a fair bit of flooding.
But if the flow is too fast, then there isn’t anything that is going to save that road, and we will end up either walking it in with our driver, or waiting here for them to fix the road.” Betty reminded him.
“See, that’s the part that we didn’t want to hear. I wonder if we could just let Thor outside to chase off the smaller monsters.” He suggested.
“Thor, chase off monsters? You mean play with them, right? Thor is the least threatening monster I have ever met, and I had a pet Nekomata.” Betty laughed.
“Good point. I would suggest Rae, but as much as she would enjoy eating the small creatures and insects, I can’t see her agreeing to go out and stand in the rain.” Karl joked.
[You’re smart. But I doubt that even Thor would be happy about standing in that rain. The vibrations on his scales would drive him nuts. Heck, the vibrations of the heavy rain on his scales would drive me nuts, and I’m over here.]
[Well, be prepared for an emergency call out, in the event that we are attacked, and it’s more than a few spells can take care of.]
Karl could feel Rae rolling ALL of her eyes at him, but he didn’t mind. She would go out to defend the bus if he asked her to. She just wouldn’t be happy about it.
After two hours of sitting in the pouring rain, the torrential downpour began to taper off, which let them not only see more clearly into the distance, but to see the damage that had been done by the flood, which had previously been hidden by the thick curtain of rain.
The base of all the hills had been completely washed out. The road ended in a dramatic cliff that led down to the current level of the floodwaters, and in the distance, there were train tracks torn up and pointed skyward, barely visible to Karl’s enhanced vision.
“Well, that’s one question answered. We’re not driving out of here any time soon. But we can’t exactly just leave someone here to wait for them to build a new road. Even leaving the bus here would just lead to it being vandalized by monsters.
Hopefully, the train tracks coming into the school from the other direction are still in good shape because I can see from here that the tracks in front of us are demolished.” Karl noted.
The driver shook his head. “Fat lot of good it will do them. The supplies come from this side. If they go the long way around, they’ll be a whole day behind before they get to the academy, and with the limited amount of heavy equipment that the Government has in the area for this sort of emergency, it will take them weeks to get the tracks fixed.
I will have to rely on you lot to get me to the Academy once the water level goes down. They can replace the bus, but I can’t replace me.”
“Good point. The bus is just a bus, but it would be nice if we could keep it. I don’t fancy walking all the way to the Academy from here.” Karl agreed.
“Well, the bus is set up for some minor off-road travel, so it might be possible to wait a day or two for the ground to dry and then go around on the high ground.” The driver suggested helpfully.
Betty snorted in amusement. “We’ve got five strapping young warriors and a set of shovels in the belly. They have superhuman strength, so I’m reasonably certain that they can flatten out a few potholes and cliffs for us to get the bus through.
Once the sun comes up tomorrow morning, we will see what it looks like, and then we will ask them if they want to patch the worst spots in the road to get past the flood zone, or if they would prefer to walk the last eighty or so kilometres back home.”
The warriors laughed.
“I think we can safely say that if it’s at all possible, we would rather work a shovel for the morning than walk the distance. Plus, it will get a bit of the road fixed so that they can get more vehicles through here in the next few days.
If we play our cards right, the Academy might even thank us for taking a few more days off from classes to fix the road.” One of them suggested.
“Good point. We can call it strength training and flatten out a path good enough to get the bus through, which will let them get the armoured cars through as well. It might be a while before they fix the bridge or the train tracks, but we can at least do that much.
This part isn’t part of the river itself, I don’t think. It just flooded because those trees blocked everything up.” Another warrior agreed.
Betty looked toward the blocked portion of the river. “But before that, we need to send a Golem or something to pull that blockage free, so the river will flow properly. If we don’t, it will be days before the road is dry enough for anything to move through the area.”
She was disturbingly right again. That blockage was keeping the entire area flooded, and if it wasn’t removed, the water would never drain naturally, it would just remain stagnant here until a drought hit or the river found a new path.
