Back outside, Charlotte was completely disoriented in the upside-down car. Black water was beginning to fill the upturned car and she was hanging in her seat belt. She was struggling to release the buckle, but being upside down, it would not disengage under the weight. Water was filling the car and her head was becoming submerged in the rising water at the headliner as she struggled to get free. Panic had begun to arrive, and she felt this was it. Floating debris was pounding the car as it washed past. She had to do something quickly. She remembered that Cal had prepared the family vehicles in case they rolled into a canal, since they lived in an area that had canals on every street.
She reached for the glove box in the wet darkness and fumbled for the latch. Straining against the binding seat belt, her fingertips flipped the latch and a spring-loaded center punch rolled out and dropped to the car ceiling, out of reach. Cal somehow anticipated this could happen and always tied the punches to a piece of neon orange parachute cord that had a folding rescue knife tied to the other end.
She fingered the orange cord and pulled it close as she fought to grab breaths in the rising water. The knife had a seat belt cutter built into the handle and she hooked it onto the black webbing and pulled at an angle like Cal showed her.
The belt cutter easily sliced the thick webbing and she fell to the ceiling with a splash. She gasped a big breath and knew she had to get out of the submerged car. She slipped her hand to the other end of the orange cord and felt the pointy end of the center punch. Moving to the side window, she placed the punch in the corner of the glass and pushed hard, until she felt a click. A nanosecond later the glass erupted, dark water and thick mud flowed in mercilessly. She had thought she was only in a couple of feet of water and was not aware that she had sunk to the bottom of her own pond. There was no way she could swim against the torrent of muddy water. The timing had to be just right. When the car eventually filled with water it would equalize, and she could swim out the window. As the water replaced the last inches of airspace, she made her move and swam down and out the window. Charlotte found herself tunneling through muck. All she could do was take the path of least resistance and hope for the best.
Cal couldn’t wait any longer. He jumped from the RV and half swam, half dodged the dangerous debris floating by. He almost swam right into a floating tree but dove under at the last moment. It did not matter, there was no stopping him from getting to the one he loved. He finally made it to where the pond should be and began diving down, trying to find the car. After the third try he touched a wheel and followed it down, trying to get to a door handle. The car was settling into the silt and mud at the bottom. The door would not budge. Having no choice, he went for another breath to try again. He would not give up.
In the darkness, Charlotte found herself disoriented. Where was up and where was down? She was running out of air trying to find the surface. “Bubbles!” She remembered from her scuba class when she was a teenager. “Follow the bubbles!” It was dark, but she blew out some air and felt the bubbles slip past her cheek. She followed them with her lungs screaming for a gulp of air.
As she broke the surface in the dark of night, she felt a nearby splash and a gasp. Cal had surfaced nearby and saw her, he reached a hand out to grab her and pulled tight.
“Oh god, love, are you ok?” He said still gasping for his own air.
She gurgled and nodded in the moonlight, unable to use any words just yet. Cal pulled her into a rescue swim and dragged her toward the elevated road. Tim was halfway to them in waist deep water with a flashlight, pushing debris out of their way. As they reached dry ground, Cal and Charlotte fell on the dirt road, exhausted. Cal pulled himself up and set about checking her for injuries.
“I’m ok,” she said breathlessly.
Cal pulled her tight again. “I thought I lost you.”
As Tim and Heidi were bringing towels from the RV, they all heard Rusty yelling for help over by the house.
Immediately, Charlotte remembered that Amber had gone into the house. “Oh God, where’s Amber!” Charlotte began to panic and jumped up.
“Isn’t she still in the RV?” Cal asked. He did not know she had gone to the house.
“She went back to the house to get the baby’s doll,” she answered.
Cal jumped up and ran through the water toward the house. The panic was back, and it was causing his heart to throb heavily in his chest. He had to find Amber. Tim and Charlotte were trying to keep up with Cal. It was dark, and Tim was holding his flashlight high and aimed at the house ahead of Cal.
Another flashlight was casting eerie shadows through the broken windows, with beams of light dancing on the ripples of water that were everywhere.
Amber was still inside and had rooms of floating furniture pressing her so tight she was not able to get a full lung of air. It was dark, and she could not move to find her way out.
Rusty had pulled Glendora up to the porch and now that the current had slowed they were safe for the moment. He heard a yelp from inside and remembered that Amber had gone in after something just before the wave came through. He pried the door open and called out.
“Amber! Can you hear me!” A faint sound came from where the dining room used to be.
“We need help over here! Hurry!” He yelled toward the road as he climbed through the door. It was pitch black but Rusty always carried a small tactical LED flashlight in his pocket. He flipped it on and the room was awash with 300 lumens of brilliant white light. He moved the light from side to side as he crawled over and through the remnants of a loving home.
“Amber! Where are you!” He caught a slight movement to his right and saw Amber trapped, with only her head and one arm visible.
“I’m coming to get you,” Rusty reassured her, as he navigated the floating debris. He found a way through and had to pick his way through the pile of wet furniture and building materials.
“I got you,” he said, as he arrived in close. “Are you hurt?”
She gurgled and coughed as he pulled the last of the debris from her chest.
“I think I’m ok,” she replied.
Rusty did a quick visual assessment like they taught him in his Community Emergency Response Team training. He noticed she was bleeding on her left thigh. At least it was not spurting, he thought, thankful it was not an arterial bleed. He tore a wide strip from his t-shirt and wrapped the laceration with a pressure knot.
As he was working to get her out, Tim, Cal, Glendora, and Charlotte were at the door with a flashlight, working their way in.
As he and Amber limped toward the door, she saw a familiar sight along the way. It was the doll she had been looking for when the flood almost killed her. It was marooned on an island of flotsam. She pulled it loose from the tangle of curtains it was wrapped in and held it tight for her sister.
“She’s ok. Got a cut on her leg but otherwise seems to be ok. I’ll check her out in the RV,” Rusty said to the doting parents who were all crowding Amber for a hug.
“Oh, Sugar, are you ok? I love you so much,” Cal blurted out, with tears forming in his eyes as he squeezed her.
Charlotte cut him off with a big hug and wiped the hair from Amber’s eyes. “I’m so glad you are ok. I love you very much.”
Amber was awash with emotion as she realized how fragile life had become. She began to cry as the adrenaline subsided, not yet able to say anything.
“Thanks, buddy,” Cal said to Rusty with a hug. “I guess all that CERT and medical training came in handy tonight.”
“Yeah, well, don’t let me fool you, I was scared to death back there,” Rusty replied.
“We all were,” Cal added.
Back in the RV, the friends all regrouped and checked each other for injuries.
Cal added another blanket to Charlotte, Glendora, and Amber, as Tim once again took Glendora’s hand.
“I must say, good lady, it would seem that I cannot let you out of my sight.”
“I was perfectly fine until the tsunami swep
t in,” she replied coyly. “But next time, maybe you should stay a little closer. Just in case I find myself a damsel in distress once again.”
“Well, I never thought that would happen,” Cal said, referring to the dike breaching on the big lake.
“I would add that technically we still had several hours, according to the alert,” Rusty said.
“I’m just glad everyone is safe. We will need to get Amber’s laceration cleaned up. There could be all kinds of bacteria in that water,” Cal replied.
“I have a trauma bag in the Deuce. I’ll go get it,” Rusty said, on the way out of the RV.
Minutes later, the group heard the sound of the Deuce chug to life. Cal stepped out of the RV with Tim to see Rusty attempting to drive the big green truck over piles of wet debris in the yard. The truck pulled up behind the RV and the recognizable whistle of the engine stopped as he shut the engine down.
“I just realized how much stuff we lost when the water washed away the two SUVs. They both ended up in the pond, sunk,” Rusty said.
“In the rush to pack, I don’t even remember what was in them,” Cal added.
“It looks like most of the stuff in the back of the Deuce is okay, but there is a lot of water dripping out of the cargo bed. Guess we’ll see how bad it is when we go to unload,” Rusty continued.
“Well, it is what it is at this point. It is now a come-as-you-are apocalypse. If we don’t got it, we don’t get it,” Tim added, prophetically.
The other two men looked at Tim in unison. “You don’t always say much, but when you do, it just sounds sexy,” Cal said to Tim.
Once Amber’s wound was cleaned and bandaged, the group prepared to finally hit the road.
“OK, everyone has a walkie-talkie tuned to the same channel, right?” Cal asked. The drivers all nodded.
“Let’s do a radio check once we are all in the driver’s seats. Keep in mind, the range on these is really only a mile or so unless we are within range of a HAM repeater, so let’s work to stay close,” he added.
“We do not all have maps so if we get separated, pull over until everyone catches up. It will be up to all of us to not get too far ahead of each other,” Rusty added.
“Our plan is to head east toward the turnpike, then north toward Orlando. Since Google Maps and the cell phones are down again, we will use the one map we have. It gets us out of Florida, but we will need to scavenge a Georgia map along the way,” Cal said.
“Do we need to think about our route? Will there be traffic? Should we go near big cities like Orlando? What about fuel?” Charlotte asked.
Everyone looked around for a second, realizing this was turning out to be more complicated than planning a day trip to the beach. Cal was embarrassed that he did not think of these things.
“This is why I love you. You keep me in line,” he said to her.
“Someone needs to,” she replied, with a slight air of feigned superiority.
“She’s right,” Rusty added. “I know we need to pass Orlando but the traffic there is always gridlocked and since it has hundreds of hotels, I bet a lot of people are headed that way. I know it might be bad for time and fuel but maybe we should see about skirting it.”
“You’re right,” Cal replied, after a moment of thought. “It would be better to work the edges than get swept up in a city that might be in chaos. If we take another day or so to get to the cabin, that is still better than being stranded in an urban hell. If that is even a thing. For all we know, the road might be smooth sailing all the way to the hills,” Cal said, trying to be positive.
“Well, we are jinxed now. We’ll be lucky to ever get there. Thanks, man,” Rusty jabbed at Cal.
Shane led the convoy down the dirt road and toward the Turnpike. At first, the drive was looking good. Hardly anyone on the road. The group felt as if things were already getting better. About fifteen minutes down the road, the traffic began to build and then slowed to a crawl.
Shane was ready to take it off-road and scout ahead to see what the problem was.
“I think I can find a way to scout ahead, what do you think?” Shane asked into the radio.
“If you think you can and get back to us, go for it. Remember, the radios may not reach if you get too far away and there is no repeater in the area. But we don’t seem to be going anywhere fast,” Cal said.
“I’ll see what I can find out and head back,” the Irish accent replied on the radio.
With that, Shane pulled out of traffic and took to the dirt right-of-way to pass the line of cars. He heard honking and cussing along the way and some others decided they, too, should cut the line. The two-lane road turned into four lanes as people filled every space a vehicle could fit to go the same way. Both surface lanes and both right-of-way easements were filled with bumper-to-bumper traffic.
The stretch of road they were on had limited options to detour and the large M-1 canal running alongside the road coming from the Big Lake was at flood levels after the levee break. For a short while, traffic picked up and they were able to make some headway. Shane and the rest of the traffic leaders soon discovered why traffic was gridlocked.
The first trailer-mounted sign was in the right lane immediately behind a taper of orange cones that was forcing traffic back to one lane again.
The orange variable messaging board scrolled through several screens of information:
“Prepare your identification.”
“Wear masks at all times.”
“Anyone with symptoms will be directed to the right lane ahead.”
“All firearms will be surrendered upon entering the staging area for your safety, no exceptions.”
“Any violation will be cause for immediate detention.”
Shane pulled to a stop on the dirt along the road and tried to get an idea of what lay ahead. It was dark tonight, but there was a glow of light pollution up ahead. In the distance, Shane saw light towers glaring over a small sea of portable structures and tents. The green tents were the type the military used.
The orange cones on the road led to what was normally a large county park with wide open spaces, sports fields, and a competition water skiing lake. Tonight, the park was transformed into a containment area filled with a sea of camouflaged soldiers in chemical masks and thousands of civilians being segregated into quadrants. They were told it was for their safety, so if anyone became ill, the exposure would be contained to their block and not spread to the other areas. The scene was more reminiscent of a one from a contagion movie than a South Florida tourist attraction.
The lines of troops were working to admit the traffic into the encampment. In some cases, cars seemed to be pulled out of line and the occupants searched, along with the vehicle, by gowned troops in Tyvek suits and masks.
Shane noticed one group of people ordered out of a pickup truck and troops removing a stack of rifles from the vehicle. The driver was angry but severely outnumbered by the security.
Helicopters were lined up in the dark sky for approach and landing. They were only on the ground for a few short minutes before lifting off again. Shane noticed that the left lane was being checked in while the occasional vehicle was directed to the right lane. He did not know where they were going, but there was triple-strand coils of razor wire as far as the eye could see on that side of the road. “I don’t want any of that,” Shane grumbled, as he felt increasingly trapped in the traffic funnel.
Shane was holding up traffic on the side of the road and people were honking for him to move forward. After seeing what lay ahead, he had no interest in advancing toward the admission line. He knew he wanted to turn around and go back, but when he passed the line of cars, he started a chain reaction and there was little room left on the road shoulder. Worse, he still had the small open trailer loaded with boxes of food and gear from the house. He could not turn around with the trailer attached and he was being forced to inch forward in the line.
“This is shit,” he said to himself.
If he dropped
the trailer he might be able to turn around and go back, but he would be abandoning the much-needed supplies. He was beginning to worry about his options.
“I should have known a scout vehicle should not have a trailer,” he muttered angrily to himself, amid the honking from a fancy Land Rover behind him.
“Piss off, arse weed!” Shane replied angrily, as he leaned out the window.
Shane eyed a small road with a plastic barricade placed at the entrance about twenty yards ahead on the right. He had no idea where it went, but it had to be better than where he was now. He gassed the 4-Runner and sped toward the barricade, flattening it under the big tires.
The road was more of a trail and as the small SUV crashed through the brush, he happened upon the maintenance area of a golf course. He rolled to a stop and tried to come up with a plan. He picked up the radio.
“Cal, come in, over.” Nothing.
Shane wondered if the thick trees were blocking the signal, so he turned out of the maintenance area and drove across the golf course in the direction he felt would get him closer to the convoy. He found a green fairway and followed it until it ended at a putting green with a red flag in a hole.
The greens keeper would be pissed if he saw me parked on his fancy grass right now, he thought to himself. He picked up the radio and tried again.
“Cal, Rusty, can you hear me, over?”
The radio beeped, and a familiar voice responded.
“We hear you, over.” It was Cal.
Wasting no time to get to the point, Shane replied. “You need to turn around, I repeat, do not follow the traffic. It goes to a FEMA camp, over.” He realized how conspiracy that sounded, but what else could it be called? People were being forced into a military-styled encampment and herded together, “for their safety.”
The Unraveling: Book 1 of the Bound to Survive Series Page 27
