Flood Plains

by Mark Wheaton

  “Holy shit!” Elmer cried, hopping backwards as shattered plastic fired in all directions.

  As the back-up generators kicked in, casting the factory in a dull orange glow, Big Time could see the computer was a wash. It had splashed out its motherboard, drives, and wires across the ground as if they’d been busted out of a piñata.

  “This one’s fucked big time, Big Time,” Scott said, looking it over.

  “How long have you been waiting to say that?”

  Before Scott could answer, Dennis appeared on the second-floor catwalk over the break area.

  “We all right?” he called.

  “A unit was up on the lift when the lights went,” Big Time yelled back. “Don’t think we’ll be able to resuscitate.”

  “All right. Pull the chips and the belts and write up the rest.”

  Big Time was about to reply in the affirmative when gasps of astonishment started coming from the front of the line. He looked out towards the break area windows and saw people racing by in the driving rain.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Elmer asked, angling for a better view.

  A handful of folks became a flood. A car whipped past, only to spin out of control and bounce onto the curb. Its driver piled out and kept running.

  That’s when they saw a middle-aged woman in a print dress stagger past. She was covered in blood, her right arm hanging from its socket by little more than a tendon.

  “Oh, shit. There’s been an accident,” Big Time surmised.

  Everyone on the line moved away from their stations, as if worried that whatever violence was being visited upon the people running by would hit them next. Several grabbed for their cell phones and frantically dialed numbers, only to get no signal.

  “Big Time!”

  Big Time wheeled around as one of the night-shifters, a fellow Katrina survivor named Bud-something, came in a side door that opened onto Line 10, a door everyone in factory knew was broken but never fixed.

  “There a tornado?”

  “Something’s in the water,” Bud said, catching his breath. “Coming up the pipes, coming in with the flood water, maybe coming down with the rain, even. But whatever it is, it’s killing people.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” asked Scott.

  “The Wal-Mart started to flood, but they were taking care of it,” Bud said, shaking as he spoke. “Then people started screaming. I was seeing shit I ain’t never seen. Folks getting lifted off the ground, blood everywhere. It was crazy.”

  “What do you mean it was ‘in the water’?” asked Big Time.

  “I caught a glimpse. It was like an eel but lots of them. Solid black. They shot through the water, grabbed people, and just pulled them right under. A second later, they’d come back for someone else.”

  • • •

  As people in the factory building began to panic and run around like chickens with their heads cut off, Zakiyah was trying to call her grandmother. Like the rest, she couldn’t even get a dial tone.

  Outside the building, people continued to run past, and the floodwaters were rising, water splashing up the windows. Even from her temporary station on Line 9, Zakiyah could see the fear on the people’s faces as they went by, some beating on the glass as if to warn workers in the factory of what they saw.

  “What the hell is going on?” someone two stations down cried, already hysterical.

  What made everything worse was that people had stopped working. This only amplified the terrifying sound of the rain blistering away at the roof

  “Listen up, everybody!”

  It was Big Time. He was standing up over Line 10, addressing both lines.

  “We’re going upstairs to the second-floor conference room. Something happened at the Wal-Mart. Couple of pipes burst. People got hurt. There’s a chance we might flooded out, too, so we’re going to take to the high ground.”

  Zakiyah wondered why Big Time was lying and what he was lying about, but grabbed her purse and began moving towards the break area regardless. Like a flock of birds, everyone began moving from their posts to follow her out until it was a human traffic jam between the lines.

  Over on Line 10, Big Time flipped open his cell and tried to call home but got nothing. The faces of his co-workers betrayed real fear now, like worried animals being driven to slaughter. Big Time tried to smile reassuringly when their gazes fell on him, but it was doing little good.

  He bumped into Elmer for the third time. Elmer moved aside a little to let him pass.

  “Go ahead, man. I’ll see you up there.”

  Elmer looked just as scared as everyone else. Big Time nodded and pushed ahead.

  “Hey! Where’s everybody going?” Dennis yelled from the catwalk. “Big Time? You starting a panic?”

  “Just trying to be proactive,” Big Time called back. “We’ll discuss when we get up there.”

  Outside the window, the gray skies had gone almost to black, and the water was now at least two feet high. A car floated past. Water seeped under the fire doors at the front and the garage doors on the loading dock.

  Big Time’s heart rate accelerated. He felt death’s hand like he had only one time before. In that instance, he’d lost everything but really nothing. His family had survived; they’d picked up and moved. They’d started over.

  If he believed even a quarter of what Bud had just told him, he didn’t think his odds of surviving this would be anywhere near the same.

  He tried to focus on one memory in particular. It was the drive to Texas across the twenty-mile stretch of bridge between Baton Rouge and Lake Charles that crossed the Atchafalaya Swamp. He’d made this drive four weeks after Katrina in the dead of night in bumper-to-bumper traffic. He’d counted the yellow lines in the middle of the road and tried not to imagine the black water below rising up to swallow him. It had taken eight hours to go twenty miles. He’d almost wept when they made it to the other side.

  It took everything in his being not to simply push everyone ahead of him aside and race to the second floor, just as he hadn’t been able to bounce onto the curb of the bridge and try passing everyone in his borrowed truck as some had done.

  As people reached the break area ahead of him and started up the stairs to the catwalk, he knew it would be less than thirty seconds before he was there, too. This eased his mind.

  That’s when all hell broke loose.

  It started with a rattling in the pipes that ran above the factory floor, both ones that fed the sprinklers but also that ran water to the faucets on the back of the building. The rain was coming down so hard that it had obscured the sound until the pipes had just about burst out of their C-clamps and shackles. People only noticed once screws began dropping onto the lines.

  “Shit, what’s going on?” Mandy asked after a screw dropped directly on her head.

  Before the pipes could come down, there was a different sound from the front of the building. Inside the kitchen and restrooms, a series of small bangs could be heard. A faucet was blasted off one of the sinks, firing water up to the kitchen ceiling.

  “What the hell?” Dennis cried, pushing past everyone to get down the stairs to the kitchen.

  “Dennis!” Big Time cried. “Stay up there!”

  By now, the water had filled the sink and even more was starting to push under the restroom doors to flood the break area. The smell of raw sewage permeated the air. Down over Lines 1, 2, and 3, the pipes broke, showering the far side of the factory with black water. It knocked over tubs of parts, triggering a domino effect that sent tools and drives and instruction booklets into the spreading water.

  “There!”

  Big Time looked where Bud was pointing and saw a black shape slipping through the water from under the restroom doors. It got longer and longer with no tail end, only a tendril that seemed to be headed straight for Dennis.

  “Dennis! Look out!”

  Dennis turned just in time to see the black mass rise from the water and engulf his entire body.
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  • • •

  Down in Fifth Ward, the streets flooded over an hour ago before they had at Deltech. Anticipating this, Sineada and Mia had swept through the house, shoving towels under doors and taping windows. They worked feverishly, as if fearing something more significant than mere water damage would come from the rising tide.

  Sineada had picked up on the “presence” within the water right away. She avoided looking out the windows as she worked, but was struck time and time again by what could best be described as a psychic scream when her neighbors were consumed by it. This included poor Viola, who’d been huddled next to a candle perusing a months-old National Geographic when death came for her.

  There came a point, however, when the screams began to recede and the attention of the monster on the other side of the door turned its focus on Sineada and Mia.

  “We need to head into the attic,” Sineada calmly informed her great-granddaughter. “You don’t have to be frightened.”

  Mia nodded.

  “We went up to the attic in our old house, too.”

  “It’s not going to be like that this time. The floodwaters will recede a lot faster.”

  They moved into the hallway to pull down the attic door. Sineada shuddered at the idea of climbing up the rickety wooden ladder but then chuckled at the thought that that’s what the voice meant by it being her time. Death by ladder.

  “What’s funny, Abuela?”

  “Not a thing. Just had a funny thou…”

  Sineada was about to explain further when she heard a gurgling in the bathroom. The faucet over the tub sputtered, then spat liquid into the bath.

  “Oh, Lord,” Sineada said, fumbling for the porcelain bird Christmas ornament that hung from a chain on the attic door.

  She finally grabbed it and pulled but had little strength after a morning filled with activity. The sputtering had become a steady stream in the bathroom, and neither she nor Mia needed to be told it was bad news.

  “Help me, Mia.”

  Mia reached for Sineada’s hand and helped tug the bird downwards. The springs let out a metallic groan as they finally managed to lower the door. Sineada drew down the hinged ladder and planted its wooden feet squarely on the hallway carpet.

  “After you,” she said, nodding to Mia.

  Mia scurried up the ladder and then looked back down from the darkness of the attic.

  “Hurry!”

  Sineada nodded and slowly began her ascent. She looked over her shoulder at the bathroom and could hear, with terrifying clarity, thousands of voices calling in unison to strip the flesh from her bones.

  Chapter 15

  People in the factory building had no idea which way to run.

  Before Dennis had even fully disappeared behind the solid curtain of black tar, the day-shifters began to scatter. Some ran back onto the line, others made a beeline for the parking garage, while still others continued up the stairs to the second level. As the pipes above the rest of the factory floor burst, water poured directly onto the heads of many on the line, inciting even more panic.

  Zakiyah had chosen the stairs. Mandy was two steps ahead of her and reached the catwalk just as one of the garage doors gave in to the water building up on the other side. It was bent then torn from its moorings, sending it clanging against a forklift and a concrete column on its way to the water below.

  “We’ve got to get to the parking lot!” Mandy cried.

  But Zakiyah wasn’t so sure. Big Time was still pointing people towards the second-floor offices past the catwalk, and a number of them were taking his advice. Of anybody in the factory that she felt would make the right call, Big Time was it.

  “Come on. Let’s go to the conference room.”

  “And get trapped in here with that thing? No way.”

  Mandy’s words seemed to resonate with several others around them. They all moved quickly down the catwalk towards the parking garage.

  Meanwhile, Big Time had just reached the break area. There were now several tendrils of black pouring out from the men’s room. They were moving quickly towards the steps leading up to the factory floor and seemed to ride up the current to chase down the people fleeing towards the back of the building. Big Time had no idea why they were choosing them over the handful splashing through the water to the stairs leading to the catwalk but postulated it was because those on the stairs were far fewer in number.

  “Come on, Elmer!” Scott yelled.

  Big Time whirled around, not realizing how far back Elmer had fallen.

  “Shit!” Big Time yelled. “Elmer! Move your ass!”

  But even as Elmer reached the steps leading down to the break area, he was in water up to his knees. He didn’t see the tendrils of black racing up from behind him.

  “Elmer!”

  What surprised Big Time wasn’t that Elmer flew face-first into the water. Instead, it was that he did so before the tentacles even reached him. It was as if he’d been struck from behind by a pipe, just nailed between the shoulder blades, pitching him forward.

  “What the hell…?” murmured Scott.

  Elmer was just trying to find his feet again when the tendrils lassoed him around the feet and dragged him under. Elmer screamed and struggled to get to the surface, but the black liquid quickly swept over his entire body. The large black-covered mass got smaller and smaller as his body was dissolved until it finally became a tentacle again

  Big Time couldn’t believe his eyes. A rapidly expanding circle of blood was spreading around the spot where Elmer had been only seconds before. He’d seen Dennis taken down but for some reason, it hadn’t registered in the same way. He’d been attacked by the black tentacle creature. Elmer had been slapped down by some invisible force first.

  How did THAT work?

  Scott clapped him on the shoulder.

  “We have to go, man.”

  Big Time nodded and allowed his friend to lead him up the rest of the stairs.

  “Everybody! Conference room! Now!” Scott barked.

  Part of Big Time remembered that Scott spoke about being in the military at the tail end of the Reagan years. He’d actually believed him because instead of tales of heroics, Scott only claimed to have “warmed the bench” at Fort Hood up in Killeen before coming out a sergeant.

  “You go in there and you’ll be trapped!” someone yelled from down the catwalk. “Those offices all dead end. You’ve got to get to the parking lot.”

  But Big Time had made up his mind to follow Scott. If he led him to destruction, they’d all go down together.

  • • •

  Muhammad was the last one to follow Scott into the second-floor offices. Only a few years before, he’d obsessively watched video after video of the tsunami damage done around the Indian Ocean. He’d been fascinated by the number of cameras that captured the full weight of the sea being thrust upon the land. Everything that followed had interested him as well, from the variety of previously-undiscovered deep sea life that brought to the surface to the variety of deep ocean alert systems that coastal nations invested in at great expense to bring back the badly needed tourist trade.

  The images now filling his eyes were just as otherworldly.

  The day-shifters who had run back onto the factory floor, likely with the idea of escaping out the loading dock doors, were all being torn to pieces. He saw them raised aloft, heard their screams, and then watched as they were manipulated into positions that didn’t account for an intact skeletal system. There were explosions of blood as people were squeezed like sponges, their skin unable to handle the anaconda-like grasp of the black oil tendrils.

  He surprised himself by witnessing all this at a remove, never once worried about his own safety. He wasn’t a devout Muslim in any sense of the word, but he had a strong feeling that it simply wasn’t his time.

  Like many, he’d imagined the rituals he would go through when he knew he was about to face Allah. Someone, somewhere would prompt him with the Talqeen, and he would reply with
the Shahaadah: “Laa ilaaha illa-Allah” or “There is no true god except Allah.” It was said that whoever spoke these as their last words was to enter paradise no matter what their sins from the rest of their life.

  He was not yet ready to say these words.

  As the screams subsided, he finally turned and walked back into the warren of offices beyond the second-floor catwalk.

  When he reached the conference room, Muhammad saw that only a handful of people had chosen this route: Big Time; Scott; Zakiyah; the woman whose birthday it had been the day before, Ro-Ro; and a woman he thought was named Amber.

  “What do we do?” Zakiyah asked.

  “First, we have to figure out if there are pipes in these walls,” Scott said.

  Muhammad looked at Scott. Scott with the mullet and the Wile E. Coyote shirts. Scott with the tinted glasses and the racist comments. Scott, who suddenly looked like a string theoretician working out an equation in his head involving elliptical curves.

  “There’s a men’s room next door, I think,” Muhammad said. “That would mean pipes in the walls.”

  “Aw, shit,” Big Time said. “What now?”

  “This is going to sound crazy,” Scott said evenly. “But we need to get to the roof.”

  “What about the storm?” Ro-Ro asked. “What about all that shit that was eating everybody?”

  “If whatever-that-was travels through in water and has found a way into the pipes, the ground and everything on it is fucked,” Scott replied. “You have any idea how many pipes run under this city? Fresh water? Sewage? Sprinklers? Hook-ups for your sink and washing machine? If the building or road you’re on has even a toe in the twentieth century, these things can get you.”

  “What are these ‘things’?” Muhammad asked. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

  Scott looked at him like he was an idiot for a moment, then spoke to him in the same fashion.