Dr. Akello moved at a glacial pace. He had been there when they woke him and seen how this man could react. So he did everything in his power to go slow.
Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.
The soldier was sitting on the edge of his bed, intentionally still. He stared straight ahead, as a good soldier would, as Akello came towards him with a tray of tools.
"You are doing very well, Sergeant Barnes," he soothed as he approached.
Blue eyes flicked over to meet his and it was apparent that he was already halfway to an anxiety attack. Akello could see it building behind his eyes, like a tidal wave. He recalled the brain scans they'd managed to get – and how this man's amygdala, the guard dog of the brain, was abnormally large and active. It was a symptom of chronic trauma and PTSD.
"Could you lean to the side for me? Ayo tells me you're still feeling something painful…?"
Barnes dutifully leaned on his right elbow, exposing his left side, and let out a short breath. "I-It's…It feels like something is…digging out of my skin," he answered tightly.
"I understand. I'm going to press here…" He started to probe around the scratched-up skin at the place where it met the metal prosthesis. He felt nothing sharp or alarming, but he did feel tension in the Wolf's muscles. It wasn't the kind of tightness from a well-honed workout. This was the tightness of a spring that was ready to snap.
"Do you feel it?" Barnes asked with a huff. "It's…There. Right there."
Akello paused, and then pressed again. "Here?"
Barnes' head bobbed.
Akello frowned and pushed a little harder, kneading the skin all around the spot.
The man's breathing hitched. "Yep, that's it," he hissed. "Like a..like a thorn."
It wasn't, though. There was nothing under his fingers except the deep gouges made by fingernails. The scans that had been taken weeks ago had showed a tangle of cybernetics in his shoulder but nothing there, and certainly nothing poking out of the skin.
Akello pulled his hand away and reached for an antiseptic soaked wad of gauze. "Have you ever taken clozapine before, Sergeant?"
Barnes' expression turned sour, his breathing going shallow. "I'm not sure…is that like Pervitin?" he ventured. "They used to give me that after I woke up."
Akello dabbed at the scratch wounds as he considered the name. It wasn't a medication he was deeply familiar with but it struck a chord in his memories. It would have been far back in medical history, perhaps as far back as World War II…
"Do you know the purpose of the Pervitin?" he asked.
Bucky shook his head. "They didn't really uh…explain anything. It was a pill that I took as soon as I could move." He frowned, eyes distant as he recalled the experiences. "It made me feel alert again."
It clicked then. Pervitin. It was a methamphetamine that the Nazis used on their soldiers. They drugged him to get him on his feet after thawing him out.
Akello sat back in his chair and regarded the poor man in front of him. Certainly, the Super Soldier Serum would help him counter any withdrawal symptoms and he'd been away from his captors for a long time now. But the idea of being given an addictive drug to make him more valuable…it galled him as a physician.
Barnes was watching him, guarded. "It's not the drug you're talking about…" he guessed.
Akello shook his head. "No. And you will not get that here. It has only been a few days since you have woken. I think we will wait a little longer to see if you are able to regulate again before we attempt any kind of medication."
The man looked stricken. "There's nothing in my side, is there?"
Akello put on a friendly smile. "There is nothing I can feel. But I am not ready to be alarmed yet. All I would like for you to do is to try not to scratch. Hold still now and I will put a bandage here."
The Wolf went stoic again as the doctor gently taped a wide swath of gauze under his metal stump. There was a very slight tremble now to his tensely held muscles.
"You should go for a walk, get some fresh air and sunshine. Eat a very good meal. Sleep. We need to remind your body how to be a body again," Akello said brightly.
"…thanks doc," he mumbled back, slumping there in a way that suggested he had no intention of going anywhere.
"I will check on you again in a few days. But please, don't hesitate to reach out if you need me sooner."
Akello gathered his supplies and held out a shirt to the man. Barnes took it without actually looking at him.
"Rest, my friend. The healing has started and there is no reason to rush. Be at peace here."
The troubled blue eyes flicked up to meet his, just for a moment, and then he nodded tersely.
And Akello left him with that.
When he slept that night, the nightmares came screaming at him in vivid color. They were memories of torture – the electricity, the smell of burning hair, the rawness of his throat from screaming, the ache of his jaw and the explosion of pain the first time he cracked a molar. The icy cold that never really went away. The heavy complacency that pinned him to the moments like a bug on a board, helpless as the sharpness went in and the monster came out.
When he woke, he did not dare stay prone. He bolted upright, his body trembling, and began to pace from locker room to locker room. He kept pacing until he couldn't hear his heartbeat in his ears anymore and then he went just a little bit longer.
When Bucky's legs felt like noodles, he finally sat down at the table and reached for his notebook. The words came fast and hot and thick as he bled out his dreams onto the paper.
It was frustrating. He had been making progress before, when he'd been on the run by himself. He knew that because it was written down in his notebook. A real man had been emerging. And now?
Now…He was back at the beginning, it seemed. Trapped again. Lost. Broken. And crazy now too. That was new. Maybe they'd finally found his limits. Not even Super Soldiers could be thawed and refrozen endlessly, like forgotten hamburger in the back of an icebox. The freeze, this time, had opened up the cracks in his mind a little too wide.
A noise caught his attention, yanking him into high alert. His whole body went perfectly still as his senses tuned outward.
There were people approaching, several of them, loudly. Not a strike team. They were whispering but hardly as stealthy as they were trying to be. Someone giggled.
Bucky frowned and pulled back the curtain on the window a crack. As he did, lights suddenly thunked on outside, piercing his night vision. He ducked back. Froze.
No one came rushing up on the fieldhouse, but there was plenty of rushing.
He peeked out again.
Young men. Teenagers, maybe. They were playing soccer. They wore the breathless thrill of sneaking into a forbidden space. It was just teenager mischief. It was the kind of stuff that Steve never let him do when they were kids, but Bucky would convince him to do anyway.
Buck gingerly eased himself back in his chair, the curtain pulled back just enough for him to watch the midnight match.
Then he went still again.
Someone was inside the fieldhouse with him. He hadn't heard them so much as sensed another warm body. Someone as silent as a panther, perhaps? Or a lioness?
Bucky kept his arm intentionally visible and made his shoulders relax, though his legs were ready to spring out of danger. And danger was certainly waiting for him to make a wrong move.
And while that made his gut churn with anxiety, he fully understood the reasons.
"I wasn't planning on going out there," he said quietly. "I'm not going to do anything."
There was a slight shift somewhere behind him – deliberately made. He didn't turn around but closed his eyes, waiting for the blade to finally take him out.
But nothing happened. No attack.
The tension held for the entire forbidden game. Bucky made no movements. His silent guardian made no movements.
Outside, the pickup game went on in oblivious, youthful joy. They played for nearly an hour before someone gave a shout, and they all scattered. The field lights thunked off and the teenagers vanished into the muggy Wakandan night.
Only then did Bucky take a deep breath, volunteering a release first. He finally chanced a glance to the side and only just caught a shadow as it disappeared into a locker room.
Bucky heaved another sigh and leaned back in the chair, his eyes sliding shut again as he let the moment wash past him.
They still regarded him as dangerous. That was good. But it alarmed him that the kids had even gotten close to his location. Why would they let that happen?
Bucky laid down on the floor as if he could catch any kind of sleep, but none came and he waited in exhaustion for the sun to rise.
When morning came, it brought with it a journey.
Ayo came for him in an honest to goodness diesel engine jeep. She wasn't wearing her armor this time but a practical pair of trousers and hiking boots and a loose button-up blue top. It was a startling departure from the last few days, and he was almost afraid to ask where they were going. But some normalcy returned when he climbed into the open-air jeep, only to be regulated to the back seat to accommodate another Dora Milaje warrior dressed in casual clothes who Ayo introduced as Aneka.
They drove for what felt like forever, over hard packed clay roads in the jungle. It was hard to hear past the wind and the roar of the engine, so Bucky let his mind wander as he watched the passing trees. The jeep felt good – the grind of tires, the smell of the diesel, the bounce and jolt. It reached back into a time that felt safe and normal.
After a time, they crossed into new terrain and the forest gave way to steep rolling hills and massive rock formations that climbed out of scrubby grasslands. And with the grasslands came animals. Of course, African countries had African animals but this was the first time he had actually seen them and Bucky grabbed the overhead rollbar and hauled himself upright to get a better view.
Zebra – an entire herd of them – were scattering as they came close, kicking up dust. And spotted in amongst the herd were the towering necks of giraffe.
Wonder lit across his features.
He'd seen a zebra before, hadn't he? A long long time ago…pulling a carriage? He must have been a boy. Maybe it had been a traveling circus… But never wild. Never free.
The jeep came to a stop and he glanced down to see Ayo smirking up at him.
"They're beautiful," the other woman remarked. She cast him a softer smile before looking out to admire the wildlife. "Look in those trees there. Do you see? A leopard."
Bucky squinted at the small stand of trees that she pointed at. It took a moment but then he saw the big cat draped over a branch, sound asleep.
"…wow," he breathed.
"Alright, sit down," Ayo barked at him. "Do you realize how much trouble I would get in if I let you fall out of the jeep? They will never let me drive it again. I will have to use a hover car everywhere I go and they are not nearly as much fun to drive."
Bucky dutifully sat and even found himself casting a wry smile in her direction at her chastising.
As they started forward again, the other woman handed a plastic bag to him. "Please, take one," she offered with the same gentle smile that made him wish he remembered her name.
"Oh, uh, thank you." He took the bag and peered inside, pulling out a fried triangle of dough that smelled like a donut. He wasn't hungry, and hadn't been hungry for the past couple of days, but he nibbled at it politely. It was lightly sweet and had a hint of the same spices as were in the tea.
Settled in again with his snack, the drive picked up a tone of…happiness? Joy? He wasn't sure what to call it, exactly, but he felt light and relaxed as the jeep jolted along the road. Bucky leaned back in his seat and watched the wildlife and enjoyed the peace of it all.
In the distance, the hot Wakandan sun was slowly covered up by dramatically dark clouds that stretched endlessly across the horizon. It was majestic and wild.
They drove for a long while until the road came to a series of outbuildings on the ridge of a gently rising slope. There were signs around but not in a language he could read. They stopped in a parking lot that was full of other vehicles, though not all of them were combustion engines. He spied an ox cart next to a hovercraft and marveled at the juxtaposition as he looked around.
"Where are we?" he wondered.
"Mdomo wa Mamba National Park," Ayo answered, climbing out of the jeep. "One day, when Wakanda is known to the world and the tourists start to arrive, this will be one of the destinations. We are on the land of the Mining Tribe now."
"…why are we here?"
"Because Doctor Akello told me that you need to go for a walk and it is my day off," Ayo answered. She reached back for the hand of the other woman. "We did not want to waste the day in the Golden City."
Bucky's eyebrows lifted up. "Oh."
"Do you remember her name?" Ayo asked with an arched eyebrow. She waved a dismissive hand before he could answer. "Aneka. Her name is Aneka."
"Aneka…Right."
Aneka smiled at him and muttered something to Ayo and the two women laughed. Bucky rubbed at his neck.
"Feel free to walk around, Barnes," Ayo told him. "There is not much here to get you in trouble. But don't go down into the gorge. With the rain coming, it may not be safe."
Bucky wasn't sure what that all meant. He looked back up at the clouds which were a lot closer now. It did smell like rain. But where was the gorge? And why would rain make it unsafe?
He opened his mouth to ask Ayo and looked over at her…but she was already walking away with Aneka. He could hear them whispering to each other in Xhosa. Buck watched them for a moment, parsing out the relationship there with something stirring painfully in his belly. Longing? Jealousy?
They walked to a covered pavilion and sat at a bench there. He decided not to follow.
Bucky frowned and surveyed the park. There was a pavilion, the parking lot, a building that might have been restrooms or maybe a ranger station. It wasn't busy but there were a few other pockets of people: a family with a picnic, a group of young friends, a pair of hikers with a dog. He started down a path, vaguely wishing he had something better than flip-flops to wear.
The path he was on wound along the slope and towards a clump of trees at the top of the ridge. He shoved his hand into his pocket as he wandered. Walking. The doctor was sure that walking was good for him. Bucky had always hated walking for no reason. Walking with no destination was a privilege of folks who could drive where they needed to go.
A light rain started as he was five minutes into his walk. He tilted his face up, eyes closed, and let it run down his cheeks and into his hair. Thunder rolled in the distance.
Bucky kept along the path and finally came up on what Ayo had warned him about – the gorge. But maybe canyon was a better word. It was a massive crack in the ground that wasn't as ostentatious as the Grand Canyon but it held its own as a national park feature.
From where he stood, the span was maybe twelve feet across but it stretched as far as he could see to either side of him, serpentine and organic. It was deep enough to make you pause at the top but shallow enough to see the smooth bottom.
Bucky stepped off the path to walk along the edge of the chasm, stepping carefully as he peered down. The walls were rippled from thousands of years of water. The rock here was mostly red but flecked here and there with patches of gunmetal gray that glinted iridescent blue in the light. It was at least thirty feet down to the bottom, if he had to guess.
Despite her warning, Bucky did want to climb down into the gorge and walk through the winding passageway. It felt like a mysterious adventure. It beckoned to him. Some part of him – the reckless young boy that hunkered deep inside him – desperately wanted to go running at full speed along the canyon floor.
Bucky squatted down at the edge, looking to see if he could find maybe some easy rocks to climb down. The sides were sheer, but the wavy texture made it look easy.
The rain came a little harder now, but he hardly noticed. Because, if he were honest with himself, Bucky knew he could just jump down and be perfectly fine. He'd jumped from greater heights at faster speeds and been able to sprint away, right?
On the other hand, if he jumped down and got stuck because he only had one hand to climb back out, that would be embarrassing…
Laughter caught his attention.
A girl and a boy were meandering along the canyon floor, kicking rocks into puddles and chattering in a rapid fire conversation. Surely kids would know a way down that he, a grown man, could navigate. What good was a national park with a gorge if you couldn't hike through it?
"Hey!" he called to them. "Hey, how'd you get down there?"
The kids jerked to a stop, heads swiveling in his direction. Their mirth fell flat and the girl tucked in behind the boy. They didn't say anything, just gaped up at him with guarded stares.
All of a sudden, Bucky saw himself through their eyes: a strange white man in a land that knew no visitors, missing an arm, looking for all the world like he'd waltzed out of the jungle. There was a distinct possibility that his side was bleeding again too.
He looked terrifying. He looked like the kind of psycho you called the loony bin to come and collect.
"Never mind…" he said, holding up his hand. "Never mind. Just…Sorry. Carry on."
Bucky made a face as he pulled away from the side of the gorge, his neck hot and his chest achy.
Stupid, Buck. That was real dumb. Way to go scaring the locals.
He shoved his hand back in his pocket and stalked away, any curiosity he had thoroughly squashed under a thick layer of mortification.
This was a waste of time. All of it. He wasn't going to be a normal person. He could never be normal again. The James Buchanan Barnes that used to be was long dead. Whatever he was now, whatever creature he'd become, would never be anything without a mission or a fight or a target or orders. The flashbacks, the memories? Just leftover postcards that would rot away one day, leaving behind only the vivid blood-soaked reality of who he was and what he had done. He was just a wolf, alone in the cold.
Sorry, Steve. Bucky's gone. You wasted your time.
The blackness in his heart squeezed like a vice across his chest, throbbing deep in his side. His hand went cold, and his feet. He barely felt the rough craggy ground as he stomped along the rim of the canyon. The rain picked up in earnest, coming down in buckets as the thunder rumbled closer. He walked through it blindly, letting the downpour swallow him up for as long as it would have him.
But then it slowly petered out into a drizzle again.
He looked around then at where he was. He wasn't on the path anymore but on truly wildly terrain, still following the rim of the gorge. The span was wide here, nearly fifty feet across – like a wide gash in the crust of the earth. It stretched on and on, well past his viewpoint. It was jagged. A mortal wound.
What if he didn't jump down into the gorge but over the gorge? And then kept walking? Where would he end up? He didn't even know where he was on the map or what countries bordered Wakanda but he could pick up the language quick enough if he had a few weeks to himself. He could just disappear…
…A new noise whispered at the edge of his senses. It wasn't rain or thunder but a rushing sound. It came from the canyon, echoing from wall to wall and he knelt at the edge to try and place the noise with a concept.
Then he saw it.
It was just a shallow spill of water at first, coming quickly down the canyon floor like someone had overfilled a bathtub somewhere. But then the spill turned into a gush and the gush exploded into an avalanche of churning, roaring water that thundered down the canyon in a mass of mud and debris It twisted and flailed against the walls of the gorge, shooting whitewater rapids in powerful eddies and sucking whirls – an angry new river in the ancient rocks.
Instinctively, he took a step back from the edge as he watched the flashflood thunder by, a good ten feet below the lip of the gorge. Caution warned against eroding banks, but he was easily safe on the higher ground.
…But the children weren't.
Bucky's mouth went dry and his vision narrowed, his body tensing to move before he even decided to sprint. In a moment, he was dashing back the way he'd come, racing the flood waters. The kids would stand no chance down there. They would be dashed to pieces on the rock walls or clobbered to death from the debris in the water. They would drown.
The water had a head start and he wasn't at his best – his legs were stiff, his stomach was too empty, he had limited balance – but he was still faster. The only thing he didn't know was if he had enough time to reach them before the water did.
With a shout of determination, he surged past the flood waters, eyes fixed on the floor of the canyon, senses straining.
There.
The kids were still laughing and playing, jumping now in the deepening puddles.
He didn't pause to yell this time, just leapt off the edge and into the canyon. He landed with a grunt, tucking into a sloppy roll before springing back to his feet.
The little girl shrieked – at him, at this monster of a man who had jumped down to steal her away – and he ignored her fear. Bucky swallowed the space between them, yanked her around the middle, and threw her as ineloquently as a sack of potatoes over the edge of the gorge.
He turned and—
THWAK!
A rock cracked across his forehead.
Bucky stumbled back, fist raised, instinct flaring as he whirled to face an attacker—But it was the boy. The boy, who couldn't be more than ten, holding another rock with gritted teeth and terror in his eyes.
There was no time for this.
The flood reached them.
The wave careened around the sharp bend in the gorge like a bellowing monster. Bucky sprinted for the kid—snagging his shirt, pulling him close, wrapping his arm around him—as the water clapped over them.
In 1972, the Winter Soldier had chased someone over Niagara Falls. It wasn't the plan. The target had led him on a wild hunt across Canada that resulted in five dead civilians, three car accidents, and one impressive but ineffective explosion. It took him a full eight days to run the man into the ground and then he'd taken to water. It was one final desperate escape plan – to take a swan dive over the falls in the dead of night. The man had probably hoped that the Winter Soldier wouldn't follow him there.
He didn't know that the Winter Soldier didn't have a choice in the matter.
In the end, it wasn't the crushing waves or the sharp rocks that brought an end to his target, but they made for a very convenient cover story when the sun rose the next morning on a corpse that was beaten to a bloody pulp.
That was the memory that flicked through him in hazy technicolor as Bucky Barnes curled around a child and tumbled through a muddy torrent of flood waters.
The motion was like the waterfall, but the waterfall had a definitive beginning and end. This only kept going and going, spinning his senses. He kicked out with his feet to try and find the bottom and bounced heavily off something bumpy and uneven instead. His shoulder found the bottom of the canyon for the briefest of moments as he scraped on by, only to be battered along by a tree limb littered with thorns before it got wrenched away in the flow. He kept himself curled over the kid as they rolled along, taking the hits, letting the rocks bruise him instead of the kid.
Bucky didn't know how long they had been underwater, but he knew it had already been too long. He couldn't swim, only kick, and he needed to get them up.
He thrashed out for the bottom again, trying his best to stabilize in the current. There. Something solid was under his feet and he shoved upwards, a bellowed burst of bubbles clawing out of him.
Air broke across his face and he gasped. The kid in his grasp went wild, thrashing and screeching. Buck took an elbow to his face as he tried to hold on and stay afloat and make any kind of plan.
"T-try—try to grab something!" he coughed out at the kid as they came rushing at the canyon walls again. If he could get the kid to hold on to a branch or the rocks or something and be his hands for him… "There there there!"
There was foliage up ahead that was spilling over the edge of the gorge and he tried to heave the kid up. Sense clicked in and the boy grabbed at the leaves and vines, jerking them to a halt as the waters rushed around them.
"Go! Climb!" Bucky barked, trying to anchor himself on the wavy wall with his elbow and feet as the kid scrambled for purchase.
The boy spidered up into the brambles as Bucky shoved him from underneath. As soon as his arm was free, he reached up for a handful of vines. Bucky planted his feet against the rock wall and pulled—
—but the vines started to snap and fall away and he slipped—
—the boy was shouting at him, pointing—
—and Bucky turned his head just in time to see a tree trunk bearing down on him, the rooted end out like a maw with jagged teeth—
The air whooshed out of him as the collision drove him back underwater, grinding him up against the uneven rock wall. He didn't feel any pain just then, or any of the pressure or the aching in his lungs.
Bucky only felt panic.
He clawed madly at the tree trunk, ripping at roots that tangled up in his hair and scratched at his face. He tried kicking at it from below but one of his knees was wedged between the trunk, the canyon floor, and the wall, and it bent at an unreasonable angle. He was pinned. The water was churning around him. His lungs were burning and his vision was going black a the edges.
No. Not like this.
Please, not like this.
He thrashed, kicking with his legs again, willing the tree to move. Something gave in his knee, but the pain was distant. The log was moving, slowly. Begrudgingly. It started to rotate away from him.
Bucky kicked again, and again, clawing and pushing, bringing his cursed super soldier blood to bear.
Then all at once, it twisted away in the eddies of the flood and Bucky surged upwards, breaking out of the water with a wheezing gasp, even as flood swept him along again, with all the other dead detritus in the gorge.
Bucky struggled to swim in any meaningful direction. He could feel the last of his energy draining away. Something was wrong with his knee and vertigo made it hard for him to separate water from sky. He wasn't sure if he could keep this up much longer.
The crush of water shoved him up against a section of canyon that had the narrowest of lips to hold on to and he clung there, panting like a drowning rat, willing his fingers to be frozen around the rock and to not give out…
"Barnes!"
Bucky's head snapped up. He scanned the waters, the gorge, eyes wild.
"Barnes! Hold on!"
There, he saw her. His cantankerous caretaker whose name he did not remember. She was on the opposite side of the canyon, staring down at him and shouting at someone else he couldn't see.
Something dropped onto his face, and he almost let go of the rock before he registered the bright orange rope with a loop tied into the end of it. He snatched it, forgoing his purchase on the rock wall and dunking back into the water in a wild desperate hope.
The rope snapped taut and held. He craned his head back to see folks on the edge of the canyon above him. They began to pull, and he squeezed his hand around the rope, refusing to let go as he was caught upwards and lifted free of the flood waters, his dead weight straining his grip.
It felt like a dream.
Many hands gripped him as he cleared the edge of the gorge and pulled him in to safety. He tried to get his feet up under him but his left leg buckled and he started to fall—but they held on to him. Bucky could see their faces now. Several men were lifting him bodily away from the canyon and carrying him to a clear space on the ground. Gently, carefully. And he wasn't sure what to do with that.
His head was spinning, and he hacked at the last of the water in his lungs as he was set down. His whole body felt stiff and heavy. Distantly, coldly, Bucky started to calculate the damage but then a greater need crept over his assassin training.
"T-The kids," he ground out, struggling to sit up. Someone pushed him back down again and panic began to rise. A wild thumping surge lifted his super soldier body up and he finally registered the growing crowd around him. Bucky forced himself to put both feet under him and he wobbled there in desperation, his weight planted on his right leg as his left foot dragged on the ground.
"Are the-"he coughed. "Are the kids okay?" He needed them to be. It was a startling slap to his consciousness. He needed the children to be alright. If he broke anyones bones, or caused them to drown—
"They are safe," an old man finally said in a heavy accent. He approached Bucky with widely held hands. "Safe. You saved them."
A strange relief rippled over Bucky and a keening noise hummed out of him as his resolve finally collapsed. He started to fall and the old man caught him before he hit the ground, easing him down gently again.
Bucky's eyes slid shut. His mind tumbled into a tenuous in-between space that was hyper-aware of the sounds and touches around his body but disconnected from time, from training, from…alarm. He did not feel alarm. And he knew he should be containing his injuries, shutting off his emotions, moving to a secure location…but he let them hoist him onto a stretcher. He let them strap him down. He let them peel open his eyelid to check his pupils and put a mask to his face that pumped fresh clean oxygen into his lungs. He let his body go limp and defenseless.
And he was not sure why.
Bucky Barnes surrendered then and finally let unconsciousness come in like the softest of kisses.
Authors Note:
That scene there was based on a real place called Hells Gate Gorge in Nairobi, Kenya. It's a safe google search if you'd like to find the visual inspiration. True Story: Once upon a time, I was one day away from being in Hells Gate when a flash flood came and overwhelmed a group hiking there. My booking agent swapped dates around and we were somewhere else on the day the flash flood happened. God is real, friends.