“I’m getting more coffee,” he said. Before he could stand up, Derek put his hands on Danny’s to stop him.
His hands were cold, as if he’d dipped them into snow. “Don’t leave. Let me finish, please.”
Danny sank back down onto the cracked vinyl. He looked at Derek warily. “You haven’t said what this has to do with me. And it’s late.”
“I don’t know if it has anything to do with you. That’s what I’m trying to find out. You could be one of those little circles. You could be a pebble or a raindrop.”
“I’m totally confused.”
“I know,” said Derek. He was speaking with his hands, which hovered above Danny’s on the table. “It’s confusing and I’m speaking in metaphors.”
“So speak English,” Danny said.
“Answer a few questions for me, okay?” asked Derek. “Is it okay if I ask you some questions?”
“About what?”
Derek reached into a bag he had at his side between his hip and the wall that Danny hadn’t noticed until now. It was a black leather satchel that Derek unzipped along the top, underneath two extending leather handles. Derek pulled a small black electronic device from the bag and laid it on the table. He pushed a small red button on the front of the device and spun it toward Danny. “Mind if I record this?”
Danny frowned. “Yeah, I do mind. You’ve told me nothing other than waxed philosophical about pebbles and ponds.”
A smile curled at one side of Derek’s mouth. “Waxed philosophical,” he repeated.
Danny pushed the red button on the device, stopping it. “What?”
“That phrase sounded odd coming from—”
Danny glowered. “A fry cook?”
“You,” said Derek. “It sounded odd coming from you. I wasn’t about to disparage how to put food on the table. That’s not for me to judge.”
“Not for you to judge,” repeated Danny. “Sounds odd coming from an assho—”
“Okay,” said Derek, “I’m sorry. That was rude. Let me ask you the questions.”
“No recording.”
“Fine.” Derek reached into the bag again. He withdrew a yellow notepad and pen. “First question is about your health. Have you had any headaches?”
“What kind of headaches?”
“Bad headaches,” said Derek, “like migraines.”
“No.”
Derek scribbled on the paper in a compact, virtually illegible scrawl. Danny noticed Derek was left-handed.
“What about extreme dehydration? Have you been drinking a lot of water and still not able to quench your thirst?”
Danny shook his head.
“So that’s a no?” asked Derek. “I need verbal answers, even though I’m not recording. I need to be sure I’m accurately cataloging what you’re telling me.”
“No.”
“Exhaustion?” said Derek, looking up from his notes. “Have you suffered from exhaustion?”
“Yes. I’m always tired. I could always sleep. That’s nothing new. That’s probably got nothing to do with your pebble or your pond.”
“Describe the exhaustion,” said Derek. He was writing. “Is it muscular? Do your eyes burn? Do you feel as if you’ve been working out at the gym or been beaten up in a fight?”
“Never considered it,” said Danny. “Tired is tired.”
Derek stopped writing and locked eyes with Danny. His knee bounced. The cup rattled. “Tired is not tired. There is a difference between being tired and being exhausted. And there are different types of exhaustion. Describe yours to me.”
Danny sighed. “Okay,” he said, trying to focus on the outdoors through the window, trying to see through his reflection, “it feels like I ran a marathon, in the mud, uphill, with the wind in my face.”
Derek was scribbling more quickly. “Say that again, exactly as you said it before.”
Danny repeated it verbatim then asked, “All of this has to do with the company you invested money into? Interllayar?”
Derek nodded but kept writing. He was mouthing the words as he inked them onto the paper.
“What do they have to do with my fatigue?”
Derek held up a finger until he finished his note. He looked up and took a sip of the cold coffee. He smiled, or more likely winced, at the taste. He smacked his lips and wiped the corner of his mouth with his reddened fingertips. “You said fatigue,” he countered. “Is it fatigue rather than exhaustion?”
Danny folded his arms and clenched his jaw before spitting his response. “Yes.”
“Danny, help me here.”
“I’m not a doctor,” said Danny, “and as far as I know, neither are you. The difference is semantics. I think my uphill, muddy marathon description pretty much answers the question either way, doesn’t it?”
Derek bit the side of his fingernail and nodded. “I guess. What about déjà vu?”
“Déjà vu?”
Derek chose another fingertip and nibbled. “You keep answering my questions with questions.”
“You’re not particularly clear with these questions,” said Danny. “I’m getting some coffee.”
He scooted out from the booth, heading for the last remaining pot. Although it was hot, it was likely stale. He hadn’t seen Claudia brew a fresh carafe in four hours, or six. He took a clean mug from the rack above the pot and poured himself a steaming cup. He called back to Derek, “Sure you don’t want a refresher?”
“I’m good,” said Derek. “Too much caffeine already.”
“Suit yourself.”
Danny replaced the pot on the hot plate under the drip cup, and the black mud sloshed around in the calcium-stained glass carafe. He drew the mug to his face and blew little ripples onto the surface of the coffee. It made him think of Derek’s metaphor. Coffee was even better than a pond, he thought, given the inky blackness of the joe. What Derek was describing, or actually not quite describing, was dark. Whatever was happening was bad. He’d said as much. So coffee, in its light-sucking deliciousness, was a far better example for use in the metaphor than some random, glossy pond.
He reached the booth, set the mug on the table, and slid back into his seat. Then he held the mug with both hands, sliding three fingers of his right hand inside the handle. The steam rose and the cup warmed his hands.
“Yes,” said Danny.
“Yes?”
“Yes, I experience déjà vu.”
Derek’s face stretched with expression. Danny couldn’t tell if it was surprise or fright or resignation. It was such an odd look framed by his sunken eyes and sallow complexion. His hair suddenly looked grayer, duller somehow. It was as if Derek had aged remarkably in a short time.
The tremble in his voice was back. His knee bounced.
“How frequently?” asked Derek. “That is, how often do you get that sense that you’ve experienced something before?”
Danny considered the question and picked up the mug. He blew into it before taking a tentative sip. The liquid was hot, but not enough to burn his tongue, so he drew in a longer sip and then set the mug back on the table, maintaining his hold on it with both hands.
“How frequently?” Derek pressed, urgency in his voice.
“I don’t know,” said Danny. “I kinda feel like I’m having it right now. Like we’ve sat here and had this conversation before. It’s the taste of the coffee that sparks the sensation.”
Derek stared at Danny for a moment, his pen held steady on the paper. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t react. He didn’t move. It was as though he were frozen in time.
Danny glanced at the paper and then at Derek. Back at the paper. Back at Derek. “What? Did I say something wrong?”
Derek sat there another moment before he swallowed again. He looked down at the paper, hunching his shoulders and lowering his head. He scribbled furiously on the paper for what felt like, to Danny, a long time.
His fresh cup of old coffee was nearly empty, the warmth of it having evaporated, by the time Derek as
ked a follow-up question. This time he didn’t look at Danny when he asked it.
“Do you ever feel like you’re living someone else’s life?”
Danny laughed. That was ludicrous. If anybody at the table was living someone else’s life, it was Derek. He’d taken Danny’s wife. As a proxy, he’d taken Danny’s money. He was living Danny’s life.
“It’s not intended to be funny,” said Derek, his eyes on the paper. “This is serious.”
Danny didn’t think it was funny. The laugh was a nervous reaction. It was ironic. It wasn’t funny. Of course, he didn’t say any of this. He was officially ready to say goodbye to Derek and his delusions, but there was that nagging feeling in the back of his mind that understood that, for weeks if not longer, he’d woken up each morning as if he were in a foreign place.
Sure, it was his bed, his apartment, his shower, his clothing, his dog, his car, his job, his food, his loneliness. All of it was his. He knew this. But it had, in some undefinable way, become foreign.
“Yes,” he said reluctantly. “I have felt that way.”
Derek exhaled. “Go on.” He started writing again.
“I can’t describe it other than to say it feels like I’m living my life in the third person, like I’m watching myself from afar. I’m not, I know that. But I get these flashes of it here and there.”
“For how long?”
“A month? Two?”
Derek clicked the pen, retracting the ink. He stuffed it and the pad of paper into his briefcase and zipped it shut. He grabbed the handles, sliding out of the booth. He stood at the end of the table for a moment, straightening his clothes.
“I appreciate this, Danny,” he said. “You’ve been helpful. Really helpful.”
Danny looked at him incredulously. “That’s it? You ask me all of these weird questions, talk in riddles like some techno-sphinx, and then leave? That’s incredibly uncool of you.”
“I need to read my notes,” he said. “I need to put two and two together and figure out if they make four. I’ll get back to you when I can tell you more. I promise.”
“Do I need to be worried about anything?” asked Danny. “Am I going to die or something?”
It appeared to Danny as if the question of death transformed Derek’s face. It melted from weariness to profound sadness. Somehow the lines in his face were deeper, the circles under his eyes darker, his hair grayer.
Derek swallowed. “We’re all going to die. That starts the moment we’re born.”
“Sheesh,” said Danny. “You are a jerk.”
“Maybe so,” said Derek. “But don’t fret about it. Let me do the worrying. You’ve got enough on your plate as it is.”
With his free hand Derek reached into his pocket and pulled from it a fold of cash. There was at least a couple of hundred dollars there, if not more. He slapped it onto the table.
“Thanks for your time,” he said. Before Danny could protest, Derek was walking toward the locked door. He spun the deadbolt with one hand and shouldered out into the night.
The door clanged shut behind him and he was gone. Danny exhaled, sinking deeper into the vinyl. He spun his cup on the table, mindlessly playing with it for a moment while replaying his bizarre encounter with Derek, when he noticed the black digital recorder sitting on the table.
He glanced at the door and back at the recorder. He cupped his hands around his face and peered through the cold glass window next to him. It was as dark as it had been. He didn’t see Derek.
So, already pocketing the cash, he took the recorder with one hand, the two coffee mugs with the other, and went to close up shop. He looked at the clock on the wall. It was late. Too late. Maggie, his faithful mutt, would be wondering if he was ever coming home again to let her out of her crate or fill the bowl with cheap dog food.
CHAPTER 11
April 5, 2026
New Orleans, Louisiana
Bob Monk peeled back the sheer white drapes at the front window of his daughters’ rental house. He cupped his hands around his eyes and pressed the edges of his pinkie fingers against the cold glass. He could smell the ginger-ale-tinged whiskey in the vapor from his breath that bloomed and evaporated on the window.
The rain was so intense, so constant in its rhythm on the roof as well as against the glass in front of him that he couldn’t hear the drone of the weather report on the television at the other end of the room. His wife and daughters had fallen asleep leaning upon each other on the sofa.
He scanned the front of the property, unable to see much beyond the narrow yard. The street was barely visible through sheets of rain, but he thought he could see water pooling at the curb in the warbling reflection of the streetlight above it. He thought the water was creeping higher up the driveway, although he couldn’t be sure. Everything was dark, aside from those reflective, pale yellow, dancing ribbons of light.
“I don’t like this,” he said to himself. With the barefoot, heavy feet of a man who’d had his share of spirits, he trudged to the front door, unlocked the collection of latches and chains, and swung it inward.
A cool spray of water misted his face as he stepped onto the threshold. It was too dark to see from there, so, without looking down, he stepped down onto the front porch. It wasn’t the smooth-hewn pine of the porch that met his foot first. It was ankle-deep water. It was at the door. And it was lapping toward the house.
Instead of stepping back inside, Bob plopped his other foot into the water and shuffled a couple of feet out onto the flooded porch. His eyes adjusted to the lack of light, and then he saw the truth. The water wasn’t at the curb. There was no curb. It wasn’t creeping up the driveway. There was no driveway. He sloshed toward what he believed to be the edge of the porch, grabbing hold of its wrought-iron step railing, and surveyed the neighborhood as best he could.
Rain was hitting his face, dampening his shirt and pants. His arms were soaked, and the cool droplets were finding paths down the back of his neck. He looked up and noticed he was at the edge of the porch roof.
It was all he recognized. His car was half underwater, as were those of his daughters. The sound of the rain, which normally might offer a soothing salve at the end of a long day, sounding like the barrage of small-arms fire. Attacking. Attacking. Attacking relentlessly as it advanced. Its forces, gathered all around him, were closing in on him.
Suddenly chilled, an involuntary shiver rippled through his body and he took a step back. Like an encroaching tide, the water was riding up his legs. Unless his mind was fooling him, it was an inch or two higher on his ankles than it had been a minute earlier.
Was that possible? Could it be rising so quickly? He glanced over at his car, squinting to better focus through the obfuscating shower. He was certain he could see the surface undulating upward, filling like a basin. He stepped back again, wondering if it was the whiskey. He’d had two drinks more than he should have, that was certain. It was easier to drink when someone else was bartending and handing them to you.
He turned around, careful not to slip, and braced himself against the door frame with one hand. He stepped up onto the threshold, crossed it, and shut the door behind him.
He stood there for a moment in the dark, considering what to do. They had no cars, no boat, and neither he nor his wife could swim. He’d been meaning to learn. He’d always been meaning to learn. Yet he hadn’t. His chest felt heavy. His lungs squeezed.
He needed to awaken his women. He couldn’t deal with this on his own. One of them might have a suggestion, and both the girls could swim. They were smarter than him. They’d know what to do.
He reached to flip on the light to guide himself back into the living room when he saw it. He stepped back. His jaw slackened and his stomach rolled over on itself.
Water was leaching onto the floor now through the invisible gap between the front door and the threshold. It was moving amorphously, as if searching for him, seeking him. The Mississippi was in the house.
It was like the water k
new his secret. It knew he couldn’t escape it.
He backed away, his eyes transfixed by the spreading pool. “Kristin, Katie, Kiki!” he shouted, the desperation wet in his voice.
His voice cracked. He cleared his throat and called again.
“Kris-tin! Kay-tee! Kee-Kee!”
He stood frozen, hypnotized by the water.
“Dad?” asked Katie, shielding her eyes from the light. “What is it?”
Kiki followed. Then Kristin. The three of them stood together at the edge of the foyer next to him. They followed his stare. He didn’t have to tell them what it was, why he had called them, why he was petrified and anchored to the floor.
The drinks, the two too many, had been meant to ease his mind. They’d been meant to help him cope reasonably with his worst fear: drowning. That was why his daughter had been generous with the whiskey and less generous with the ginger ale. She knew his fear. She knew he didn’t fish, he didn’t boat, nor did he do many of the things that native Louisianans did. He didn’t see the state as a sportsman’s paradise. To Bob Monk, the state of Louisiana was a sea-level minefield.
But it was home. It always had been. And he couldn’t leave it despite the danger. Now the danger was swelling around him. No bridges, no levees, nothing to keep him from the water.
Kristin moved to her husband and nuzzled against him. She put one arm around his waist and the other in front of him, her hand touching his belly. Bob put his arm around her and pulled her closer. The four of them stared at the water leaking into the house. None of them said anything until a tendril of it reached Kiki’s feet.
“What do we do?” she asked, taking a step back as if the water might burn her. “Can we take the cars?”
“Flooded,” said Bob. “Water’s too high. It’s in the house. There’s no street; there’s no yard, nothing. We’re on a sinking island.”
“It’s okay,” said Kristin softly, in the reassuring voice only a mother of three could offer without sounding condescending or dismissive. “We’ll figure this out.”
Katie and Kiki tiptoed around the water, and Katie swung open the door. Water poured in over the threshold. It spilled onto the floor, racing for some unseen finish line. The sisters looked at one another and then out the door and into the storm.
The Alt Apocalypse {Book 3): Torrent Page 11
