“I’ll get your dog,” he shouted to Jess as the storm door screeched
and slammed behind him in protest to the metal-warping cold. The temperature had dropped more than seventy degrees since a
frontal passage the day before. Half a foot of rain flooded and then
flash-froze the acreage behind the farmhouse. Hidden beneath a silent sheet of endless
blue glass, fallow fields kicked up glare from the waning January sun.
“Just perfect,” Marty said in a disgusted burst of steamy
breath. The river was over its banks, indistinguishable from the ice-covered
land, but rushing beneath its solid surface was a torrent of muddy water,
overflowing Wilke’s dam about a hundred yards upstream. Marty walked cautiously over the rapidly thickening new ice. Thunderous cracks
echoed beneath his feet as the shifting surface settled and groaned. He glanced
at the growing logjam building behind the dam. Broken branches from yesterday’s storm and
mounting ice floes combined in a powerful trail mix of inertial mass.
“That won’t hold for long,” he muttered, nervously
continuing his search for the dog.
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