Dean's voice was low. "For backup."
Behind them, a crash sounded from the highway, metal on metal, a signpost finally giving up. Everyone turned their heads.
The road was half choked with limbs, insulation, and broken fence panels. Down the shoulder, a sedan sat nose deep in a ditch, hazard lights blinking weakly. Farther away, a power line drooped like a black rope, sparking occasionally in the wet grass.
Martha pointed toward it. "That line's live."
A few riders moved instantly, not toward the deputy, but toward the hazard.
"Hey!" Dean called. "Nobody touches it. Mark it off."
A woman rider pulled bright tape from a saddlebag, something she carried like it wasn't her first disaster, and started tying it to branches to keep people back. Another rider dragged a fallen limb aside with a grunt. Two more jogged toward the ditch where the sedan was stuck.
Martha followed, stepping through the mud with the careful speed of someone who didn't want to break a hip. As she approached the sedan, she saw a teenage girl in the passenger seat crying, phone pressed to her ear, no signal.
A middle-aged man in the driver's seat stared straight ahead like his brain had stalled. Dean crouched by the driver's window, keeping his voice steady.
"Sir, you hurt?"
The man blinked, slow. "My... my wife." He stammered, then shook his head hard. "No, no, just... we couldn't see. The wind."
"You're okay," Dean said. "We're going to get you out. Door's jammed?"
The man tried the handle. It stuck. The bearded rider stepped forward, glanced at Dean, and waited for a nod.
Dean nodded once. The bearded rider wedged his fingers into the door seam and pulled. Metal screeched.
The door popped open enough for the teenage girl to scramble out and stumble into Martha's arms without thinking. Martha caught her, held her, felt the girl shaking like a leaf.
"You're all right," Martha said. "You're all right."
The girl clung to Martha's rain-soaked housecoat as if Martha was the only solid thing left in the county. "I thought we were going to die," she whispered.
Martha didn't sugarcoat it. "You almost did, but you didn't."
The driver got out next, legs unsteady. He looked at the patches, saw the skulls, and fear flashed across his face.
Dean noticed. He kept his hands visible. "We're clearing the road. You got somewhere safe?"
The man swallowed. "The high school. They said the gym."
"Go," Dean said. "Don't cross that taped area. Live line."
The man nodded, grabbed his daughter's shoulder, and hurried away without looking back.
Martha watched them go. She felt something twist in her chest, not pride, not relief, something harder.
Because she knew what the town would say when they heard who had pulled that door open. They'd say it was intimidation. They'd say it was a threat. They'd say Martha was harboring criminals. They'd say whatever made the story comfortable.
A pickup truck rolled by slowly, tires crunching through debris. A local man leaned out the window, staring at the riders. His gaze found Martha. It wasn't gratitude. It was suspicion.
He kept driving. More vehicles crawled past slower than they needed to. Heads turned. Phones appeared. People filmed from behind fogged windshields the way Deputy Rusk had, as if recording could protect them from being involved.
Martha returned to her porch with Dean walking beside her. "You shouldn't be outside," Martha muttered. "You're soaked."