Before anyone could react, a sound rose from beneath the road—a deep, grinding groan, as if the mountain had finally decided to wake up angry.
“What the—” someone yelled through the comms.
The road vanished.
Not cracked. Not split. It simply gave way.
One second there was pavement, the next there was darkness and falling rock. Bikes skidded, tires shrieking, metal scraping as riders fought to stay upright. Cars behind them slammed to a stop, horns blaring, headlights swallowed by dust and rain.
Caleb was off his bike instantly, boots sliding on loose gravel as he ran forward. The air smelled like wet stone and fear.
Then he heard it.
A sound that didn’t belong anywhere near a mountain road.
A child crying.
“HELP! PLEASE—HELP ME!”
Caleb dropped to his knees at the jagged edge, heart pounding as his flashlight sliced through the dark. Far below—forty, maybe fifty feet—a small figure clung to the broken earth where the road had collapsed.
A little girl.
Her yellow jacket was soaked and smeared with mud. One tiny hand gripped an exposed tree root, fingers shaking as dirt crumbled away beneath her. Her legs dangled over nothing.
She looked impossibly small against the mountain.
Caleb swallowed hard.