Author's Note: Hi, everyone, I hope you all had a great holiday! Like a lot of you, I'll be heading back to school on Monday, but I'll do my best to keep up the once a week schedule. Now here's the second chapter, I hope you enjoy!
~Lou

Disclaimer: I don't own the Tracy boys or their Thunderbirds,nor do I pretend to. This story's just for a bit of fun and I'm not making any money by posting it.

Floodswept

Chapter Two- Connelly

"Of course, I will make sure Mr. Connelly gets your file. Yes, I understand the importance." Melanie said politely into the phone even as she was rolling her eyes at the redundancy. Every file was important.

Ending the conversation as quickly as possible and hanging up the phone, Melanie took the fresh stack of papers from the fax machine and placed them in a manila folder to take to her boss, high heels clicking quickly as she went. Oh, the glamorous life of a secretary-assistant.

She knocked lightly on the large oak door of Mr. Connelly's office. It was silent for a few seconds, and Melanie could almost hear her boss trying to gauge her importance through the door. Finally he spoke in his deep, clipped tone. "Yes, Melanie, come in."

"I'm sorry to disturb you, sir." Melanie said as she entered the large office. "I understand that you're busy." Mr. Connelly was in the process of orchestrating a merger, but it was proving to be problematic as one of his mines, his largest one at that, was currently out of operation due to a mudslide a few days before.

Mr Connelly looked up at her from his computer screen, unsmiling. "Yes, I am Melanie. So, please, explain what it is you need so I can get back to work." Straight to the point as always. At least he was consistent.

Melanie quickly made her way forward, placing the file on his desk. "A representative from the town council just called, it's concerning Firesong, your campgrounds in Trinity. Apparently, there are risks of flash flooding and they need you to close the trails inside the flood zone."

Mr. Connelly fixed Melanie with an unimpressed stare as he finished examining the file. "The trails within the flooding zone are already closed, as they are every year at this time." He said, obviously irritated at this waste of time.

Melanie flushed, her temper flaring at her boss' obvious assumption of her incompetence. She pulled a paper to the top the stack and showed it to him. "No, sir. The flood zone is wider this year due to a bad storm, and you need to close an additional trail." She explained, showing him where the trail crossed briefly into the danger zone.

Mr. Connelly sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Melanie, what are the chances of a hiker being in this exact spot at the exact moment a flood hits?" He paused as if to give her chance to answer, but she knew better than to speak. "Next to nothing. There is no need to close this trail. With the mine out of commision I have much bigger problems than this. Now, if that is all, please excuse me, I must get back to work." He said turning back to his computer screen as if Melanie had already exited the room.

Melanie nodded stiffly before she turned and left, fuming internally at being dismissed so rudely. Her heels clicked a bit faster than usual as she made her way back to her desk, the anger making her forget the way her stomach had turned when Mr. Connally had refused to close the trail.

~TB~

Gordon was eternally grateful that John had remembered to tell Dr. Burrell to bring a pickup truck to stow all the equipment Scott had forced him to bring, because Gordon would not have wanted to make this trip twice to pick up the rest of his stuff.

You'd think driving around on literally every terrain on the planet would prepare him for all the many, many, bumps and holes one finds on a forest path. But apparently the excellence with which Brains and Virgil engineered the Pods had spoiled him, making him blissfully blind to the discomfort of riding in a civilian vehicle on anything except asphalt. Until now, that is.

"So, what brought you to Trinity anyway?" Gordon asked raising his voice over the rattling of the trailer behind them. "You said there weren't any rare species in the area."

"We've actually been here before, when we initially started studying the effects long-term mining has on an ecosystem." Dr. Burrell said, glancing over at Gordon then back at the windshield. "We found impacts of pollution like we expected, but when we returned this time also found evidence of sinkholes from the collapse of stripped mine tunnels."

Gordon frowned. "Aren't there laws to prohibit that sort of thing? Like for public safety?"

"Of course. But all the sinkholes are directly over the mine, on company owned property. Civilians aren't supposed to go over there. The animals do though. We've found more than one dead deer at the bottom of a sinkhole."

The truck rattled as it drove over a particularly deep pothole, and Gordon grasped at the handle above the door. "Why not go to the town council or mayor or someone? If the holes are causing deaths, why wouldn't they make Connelly fill the tunnels?"

Dr. Burrell clutched the steering wheel in a tight grip. "Connelly would take it to court, and his pockets are lined. Until the sinkholes actually injure a person, the town's not confident they can win a lawsuit."

"But with all the hikers and tourists in this town that's only a matter of time." Gordon said grimly.

Dr. Burrell nodded. "But all of that's taken a back seat for now, if we don't divert this flood water, they'll be nothing left here to fight for.

The truck slowed to a stop as they arrived at the river bank, Gordon could see from the truck how quickly the river was swelling.

There were three people already there, members of Dr. Burrell's research team Gordon assumed. There was Dale, their logistics expert, a tall, built man with dark skin, a bald head, and a beard; Zack, an enthusiastic kid who looked fresh out of high school, who worked their communications equipment; and Olie, a red-headed animal tracker with an Australian accent.

Gordon shook hands with each of them by way of greeting, then crouched down on the edge of the bank, observing the logjam with a critical eye. This was not going to hold for very long at all. Gordon estimated maybe three hours tops.

"Is this area clear?" Gordon asked over his shoulder.

"Yep." Olie said. "Mayor closed up all the trails in the flood zone when we found the jam."

Gordon stood, wiping the dirt off his hands. "Good, then we can get started. Let's unload this stuff. Quickly." Gordon added, eyeing the river again as he jumped into the trailer.

"What is all this anyway?" Zack asked as he hopped into the trailer with Gordon, who was passing a barrel down to Olie.

"Nanocrete, in case we need to seal the dam to buy us some time to get out of the flood zone."

"And those?" Dr. Burrell pointed to a crate in Zack's hands with very obvious warning sign. Explosives.

Zack's eyes widened as he realized what he was holding and he nearly dropped the crate before passing it quickly off to Dale.

"To blow the dam. So we can minimize the flood buildup." Gordon said,

Zack backed away from the crates, very obviously choosing to only unload the barrels, muttering something about the irony of "minimizing damage with explosives."

As they finished unloading the equipment, Gordon pulled on his helmet and attached his rebreather, taking a set of explosives.

"You planning on going for a swim, mate?" Olie asked with an eyebrow raised, nodding towards the rushing river.

Gordon grinned, attaching a tether to his belt and tossing the slack to Zack. "Always." He stepped backwards of the bank plunging into the river.

The tether jerked forward out of Zack's hands, and for a terrifying split second he thought that Gordon's life had literally slipped through his fingers. Then Zack turned around to see the other end was secured to a tree.

Zack grinned, turning to the river and watching Gordon carve expertly through the water as he set the explosives on the dam. He could appreciate a good joke.

"Gah, that's cold." Gordon said as he resurfaced, shivering some as Dale grabbed his hand and hauled him up over the bank. Gordon zipped up a jacket over his wetsuit and shoved his hands in the pockets. "Alright, that's done. Time to head out."

Dr. Burrell sent Zack back up to their camp, which was a little ways upstream and up a hill, just out of the flood zone. If they needed more time, it would be his job to seal the dam.

The rest of them Gordon, Dale, Olie, and the doctor, piled into the pickup and moved out to the first dig site, a lightly wooded area just off the bank of the river a couple miles downstream.

~TB~

"That is not a normal bulldozer." Dale said, staring at the machine and shaking his head as Gordon opened the trailer. "No kidding. You should see it fly."

Dale's eyes widened and Olie laughed, clapping Dale on the back "He's pulling your leg, mate." Olie's laughter died down when Gordon just smiled, a glint in his eye as he hopped into the Pod.

The work was slow going. To dig the trench, Gordon needed to have relatively clear ground. That meant that Olie, Dale, and Dr. Burrell were taking chainsaws to the trees to clear a path. Every once in a while, when Gordon dug as far as he could, he hopped out of the Pod to help clear the ground.

It was sweaty work, even with the cool breezes, and as they finished up, Gordon was glad to hear the trench on the other side of the river would run along a trail, and they could skip the lumberjack logging.

Gordon was helping load the chainsaws into the back of the pickup when he paused, looking over at a group of trees off to the side, then at Dale. "Do you hear that?"

Dale placed a saw into the truck, and was about to say no, when he paused as well. "Voices?"

Gordon's stomach fell, instincts telling him what he hadn't yet confirmed.

Two people, a young man and a young woman, walked out of the bushes, staring wide-eyed at the fresh trench and felled trees. "What's going on?" The young man asked.

Dr. Burrell shut the tailgate and walked up to them, an urgency in her steps. "You're not supposed to be here."

"Yeah, we know." The woman said sheepishly, almost embarrassed. "We followed a deer a little ways off the trail and couldn't find our way back."

"No." Gordon said shaking his head. "You're really not supposed to be here. All the trails in this area are supposed to be closed. You're in a flood zone."

"No, but, they told us- they said that this trail was safe." The man said, looking to the woman for confirmation.

She nodded, pulling a map out of her pocket. "This is where we were." She traced her finger along a trail outside of a red lined area.

Olie pulled out his own map, finding the same trail and showing the two hikers where it crossed into an extended red zone.

The woman's eyes widened. "That can't be right, they didn't close the trail."

There were people inside the flood zone.

Author's Note: I hope you liked my story, the next chapter will be up next Friday without a doubt. Enjoy your weekend! ~Lou