Of course they are.
Still, all her effort did leave a chip deadcenter, at least. Like when gravel catches a windshield wrong.
Through the smoke chugging all around her, Jade guides her hand to that powdery crater in the glass, pushes on it with her index finger, and, as if that were the release button, the whole window collapses in.
Jade nods thank you thank you to the slasher gods and follows that glass in, clambering over the desk that’s there, her knees and the heels of her hands gathering crumbles and shards, her eyes roving for dials and switches, levers and wheels.
They’re all there, and more.
And there’s no manual.
“Shit,” Jade hisses.
There’s no slasher movie that can help her with this, either.
Maybe there’s some submarine film or lighthouse movie that might could, but probably not. Dam control booths aren’t that damn interesting—the joke whispered before all of Jensen Banks’s talks at assembly.
All she can do, she supposes, because she has to do something, because something’s better than nothing, is… is push the biggest, most central lever from its three-quarters down point to “all the way up?”
When the two wheels on the back wall are mostly turned over to the right, it feels like, she hauls them back to the left until they stop, imagining the dam is a giant water spigot. And it sort of is, isn’t it?
To prove she’s doing it right here, a whole bank of lights start flashing alarm, and a robot voice comes from overhead, not asking if she likes scary movies—the question she’s forever waiting for—but telling Jensen to attend to the levels of “1” and “2,” as failure to do so will result in a reduction in flow that could lead to dangerous back pressure if left unchecked.
“Exactly,” Jade says, nodding about her handiwork.
She hovers her fingers over this big industrial dashboard like seeing what else she can do. When there’s nothing left to push, nothing left to turn, she opens the door from the inside, having to force it with her shoulder.
It spills her out into open air with too much momentum but she was expecting that, knew to have a good hold on the inner doorknob.
Now if only the control booth would blow up with a big mushroom cloud as she walks away from it, down the dam.
How long will the lake take to rise, though?
Will it be fast enough? What brick by the bank will the waters reach over in Proofrock?
It’ll be soon enough, Jade decides. And: it’ll be all the bricks.
When the control booth doesn’t explode—it’s not packed with demolition supplies, and there are no sparks in there anyway—Jade keeps walking all the same, her hands fists, eyes fixed on Camp Blood’s white bluff through the smoke, and she only stops when…
Holy fucking shit.
Galloping ahead of this fire is a grizzly. Not the trash bear that killed Deacon Samuels, part of her mind registers, because that cub she saw down in Proofrock earlier, it’s trying like hell to keep up. With its momma.
“Run,” Jade says to it again, and then realizes where they’re running: right to her, right along the top of the dam.
She turns, is running hard herself now, her one chance in a thousand to plant her bare foot on the round knob inside that door she left cocked open.
It catches her right in the arch painfully, the door swinging out with her weight, trying to send her down and down into open space, but now her midsection’s catching the flat roof of the control booth.
She starts to scrape back and down, the door coming back to hit her hanging legs, but… she scrabbles, she grabs, she pulls, she makes it up onto the gravel roof and whips her feet up fast, before any sharp teeth can snag them.
When she turns to peer through the gusting smoke, though —this momma bear and her cub aren’t even halfway to the control booth.
“Don’t fall, don’t fall,” Jade whispers to them, not wanting to give her safe place away either—nine feet isn’t much to a bear at least that tall—but… why have they stopped?
Jade looks behind them, down the line of the dam, and— they weren’t running from the fire, they were running from what’s running from the fire: the trash bear, a big ragged boar, his fur scorched and smoking, his face scarred from claws and teeth, or maybe fights with dumpsters, it doesn’t matter.
What does is that, just like with hamsters, Jade knows— everybody in Proofrock knows—Papa Bears eat Baby Bear every chance they get. They’re easy pickings, and tasty besides.
Jade stands, shaking her head no, no, please.