“Nia,” June said, at my shoulder. “We’ll need to split the line. Half the kids to the church hall, half to the firehouse. Keeps the doorway from bottlenecking.”
“Got it,” I said, already moving toward Ms. Patel to divide the roster.
Behind us, the river found its new voice. It wasn’t louder. It was deeper, a bass you felt before you heard. The operator’s cable tone climbed a fraction, then steadied. The captain lifted her radio, waiting for a note only she could hear.
We were half a list into the split when the floodlights on the bridge fluttered like insects batting at a screen. The generator coughed. The wrecker’s amber strobes blurred. For an instant the whole scene breathed in and didn’t breathe out.
Then, from the dark upstream, a wide, low shape slid into the cone of light—something that had once been a shed or a deck, now a raft of boards stitched by nails and wire, big enough to be a question.
