A BRIDGE ACROSS THE STORM

The old man dragged himself up by the fence rail, hoisting the heavy garden spade with both hands. He swung it outward, tossing it down the embankment. The metal tool splashed into the muddy shallows a few feet from Leo's hips.

Leo lunged, catching the wooden handle before the current dragged it into the deep culvert.

Inside his coat, the black kitten let out a sharp cry as Leo braced himself against the car frame. ""Hold on, little ones,"" Leo muttered under his breath. He flipped the shovel, gripping the steel blade and aiming the heavy ash-wood handle at the rear quarter-panel window—the smallest glass pane, away from the driver’s head.

He drove the blunt end into the glass with everything he had.

The impact sent a jarring shock up his forearms, but the tempered glass only spiderwebbed into a thousand opaque fractures. Water was now lapping at the lower frame of the door.

""Again!"" the old man cried from above. Copper’s barking was deafening now, his body tense at the edge of the drop.

Leo drew back and struck the glass a second time. The center collapsed inward with a dull pop, showering small safety glass pebbles into the rear footwell.

Leo dropped the shovel and reached through the opening, unlatching the interior lock pin of the rear door. He braced his boot against the car's wheel hub and heaved the back door open.

A flood of brown ditch water rushed into the cabin, filling the floorboards. The woman turned her head, coughing through the smoke of a deployed airbag.