Mile Marker 212

Juno Haskett, 41, drove the same yellow school bus through the valley town of Carrow for nineteen years. When the dam failed, she became marshal of a 63-vehicle evacuation convoy that is now stranded at a dead toll plaza on Highway 9. The bridge ahead is blown, the river is rising, and only two days of diesel remain. She tracks 214 lives with a battered steel headcount clicker. Across the water, quarry boss Gage Merrow offers fuel and a ford crossing. In return, the convoy must lend him ten able workers for one week. Juno signs up first, and nine others follow. The hidden price soon emerges. Every injury on Merrow's crews restarts the week, workers' families are moved to a quarry 'safe lot,' and someone inside the convoy is trading headcounts and ration lists for extra fuel. Fighting the quarry would get people killed, and fleeing upstream means drowning. Juno must unite a teenage welder, a disgraced paramedic, a retired bridge inspector and suspicious neighbors behind a third path: sink the convoy's empty buses into the river as a causeway and trade skills with the quarry instead of bodies. Hook: on the first night, her clicker reads 214 but she counts 215. A stranger asleep on Bus 9 wears a quarry armband.