by Tom Abrahams
Bob reached out his hand to his daughter, her chin held up as high as she could hold it, and she gripped his wrist with her fingers. He pulled her onto the ladder and stood at its base while she climbed to the roof.
Once she was safely next to Katie, Bob called for his wife. Instead of suggesting she take the same path, he called her toward him on the porch.
A perplexed look on her face, her brow furrowed with confusion and worry, Kristin waded toward the railing to the left of the front door. Beyond the railing, Bob was holding the ladder with one hand and waving her closer with the other. The water was close to the top of his shoulders now.
“You can’t make it from the steps,” he said, speaking loudly. “It’s too deep now. Climb over the rail.”
The color drained from Kristin’s face. “What?”
“Climb over the railing,” said Bob, louder this time. “I can help you get onto the ladder from here. You’ll be okay. Just climb and drop. I’m here.”
Even through the rain, Bob saw the glistening sheen of tears welling in his wife’s eyes. Her chin trembled as she wrung the top of the twisted trash bag she carried in her hands.
“Hand me the bag and climb over,” he said. “Now. We don’t have much time.”
Kristin squared her jaw and nodded; then she bent over the top of the railing and, with one leg at a time, climbed over. She maneuvered onto her feet, maintaining her balance on one foot for a moment until she could grab the railing behind her. She held onto it with one hand and offered her husband the bag.
He took it from her and held it in the same hand that gripped the ladder. Then he looked skyward, his eyes blinking against the bullets of rain. “Girls, hold the ladder from the top. Put pressure on it,” he called to them. “Don’t let it move.”
He took one step and then another toward his wife. His pulse pounding, his sweat mixed with the rain, the whiskey long gone from his body now, he reached her.
She took his hand and slinked down, squatting against the railing. Then, without him expecting it, she jumped.
Bob lost his footing as she flung herself at him. He went beneath the water, sucking some of it into his nostrils. It burned and stung. He shook his head, still under the water in the blackness. Thankfully he found his footing and rocketed himself above the surface, emerging like an orca with a great, raspy breath.
He swiped the water from his face, hearing the cries of his daughters above the slap of the rain, and groped aimlessly for his wife. He found her a foot from him. She was bobbing up and down, struggling to stay above the surface.
She was thrashing and crying, gurgling and kicking, swinging her arms wildly.
Bob tried calming her, reasoning with her, working to get ahold of her. But she was panicking. She was flailing, on the verge of drowning.
Bob backed away, the water to his chin now, and stood on his tiptoes in the muck. He yelled to his daughters to keep hold of the ladder while keeping his eyes on his wife. She was a mess. She would pull him under if he tried to grab her again. He knew it.
So he waited, ignoring his daughters’ imploring, desperate cries to help their mother. He waited. The water rose above his chin to his lower lip. Still he waited.
For a brief moment, with her back to him, Kristin calmed herself. Perhaps she was exhausted. Or she came to her senses. Or she gave up. Whatever it was, it provided Bob the opportunity to sneak up behind her, fling his arm around her neck, and drag her to the ladder.
At first she resisted, albeit weakly. She submitted to him and let him work her body onto the bottom of the ladder, placing her hands along the rails and guiding her feet onto the rungs. She was crying, coughing, and shivering.
“It’s okay,” said Bob, his turn now to do the encouraging, the coaxing. “You’re okay. Climb. I’m right behind you.”
Both of them now soaked, the plastic ponchos sticking to their bodies, his wife tentatively ascended a single step. Her hands gripped the rails so tightly Bob thought her knuckles might tear through her skin. She started to climb another step but stopped.
“Keep going,” said Bob. “You can make it, Kris. C’mon, sweetie. One step at a time. The girls are up there.”
He was tilting his head back now to prevent the water from seeping into his mouth. The only thing keeping him grounded was his hold on the ladder.
Their daughters coaxed her upward, and Kristin took another step. Then a third and a fourth. Two more. Three more. Bob was on the ladder now. He was climbing up behind her. He couldn’t wait any longer. The water was too high. He climbed. One step, another, another. He closed his eyes, listening to the pounding rain on the plastic stuck snugly to his head. It was loud. So loud. But he kept moving. He urged his wife ahead of him, not looking but still climbing.
Before he knew it, but long after he’d have like to have known it, he was on the roof, flat on his back. His chest heaved. The rain pelted his face, but it no longer bothered him. It was cleansing. It was almost refreshing as he lay there, his family around him.
He opened his eyes and looked in the opaque blackness of the sky, the invisible missiles of rain streaming down from above. He opened his mouth and drank some of it, cleansing his palate and easing his mind.
They were safe. At least for the moment they were out of the water. Then it hit him like a tidal wave.
Where was Keri?
CHAPTER 12
April 5, 2026
New Orleans, Louisiana
The phone rang in Doc Konkoly’s room, its red message light flickering in the relative darkness. It startled Konkoly awake and, for several seconds, he lay there staring at the popcorn ceiling trying to remember where he was.
The stiff aroma of commercial detergent on the sheet pulled up to his neck reminded him he was in a hotel room in New Orleans. He had no concept of time, other than that the large rain-speckled window revealed it was still dark outside.
The phone stopped ringing before he rolled onto his side to grab the receiver, and Doc lay there on his back thinking about his night. He remembered drinking at the bar, remembered the loquacious, tip-seeking bartender. And he remembered the news anchor from home.
Then the phone rang again and he remembered the storm. He rolled onto his side, reached across his body, heavy with sleep, and drew the receiver to his ear.
“Hello?” he answered with a groggy voice that he didn’t recognize as his own.
“Dr. Konkoly,” replied the woman’s voice on the other end. She was pleasant sounding despite the urgency with which she said his name. “This is Shonda at the front desk. I apologize for calling your room at such an inconvenient hour.”
He cleared his throat. “That’s fine.”
“We have a somewhat urgent situation developing here on the property,” said Shonda. “Floodwater is threatening our lower levels. I know you are on a higher floor. You aren’t in any immediate danger, but—”
He leaned up on an elbow. “Immediate…danger?”
“You’re not in any danger right now, Dr. Konkoly,” she said. “You may notice, however, a loss of power, low water pressure in the bathroom, and—”
Shonda stopped talking.
“And what?” asked Doc. He was now sitting up in bed, his back resting on the wall-mounted faux-leather headboard.
Shonda didn’t respond.
“Hello?” He pulled the phone from his ear and looked at it briefly before holding it again in the crook of his neck. “Hello?”
The line was dead. He reached over to flip on the bedside table lamp, testing it as much as seeking light. It turned on, casting a dim yellow glow in the room. He found his eyeglasses and focused them on the remote, which was beside the phone. He punched the large power button at the top of it and moved his glasses up on his nose.
The flat-panel television opposite the foot of his king-sized bed chimed and powered up. The screen illuminated the hotel’s default channel, offering world-class spa treatments and the best jambalaya in the French Quarter. He doubted either clai
m was true and surfed the channels until he found the same weather report he’d been watching in the bar earlier in the evening.
The screen was split. Half of it displayed the rainbow-infused map of the central Gulf Coast and the relentless bands of severe storms that marched onward; the other half showed live video of flooding streets, of desperate people wading through the water with their children on their shoulders or in their arms, of emergency responders plowing through high water in trucks and boats. It resembled a third-world country, not the kind of thing that would happen in the United States, let alone the city in which he was currently visiting.
Doc turned up the volume and listened to the reporters describe what he could see with his own eyes. The city was sinking under water. And from the looks of it, even the spots that survived Katrina and the rainstorms of March 2018, August 2017, and May 2015 were sinking below the floodwater.
The city was a fishbowl. And the bowl was overflowing.
He pushed himself from the soft mattress, setting his feet on the floor. He walked the short distance to the television and stood directly in front of it, staring at the endless stream of men, women, and children evacuating their homes. He looked at their faces: bewildered, shocked, sometimes blank with anguish.
Doc reached out and touched the screen, his fingers lingering on the close-up face of a young boy. The child couldn’t have been more than three. He held his tiny hands over his ears, his eyes squeezed shut. He was floating in an open red Igloo cooler, bouncing in the wake created by the woman pulling him through the water. She was up to her waist in water and she was crying. Doc couldn’t hear her cries, but he could see them in her stretched expression and the tremble of her body as she moved through the chest-deep water.
He couldn’t know where in the city this was happening. The location description at the bottom of the screen didn’t help him. Yet he couldn’t stand in his room and do nothing. That wasn’t what people like him did. These survivors would need medical care. They would need a shoulder on which to cry. They would need much more than that.
Out the window, lightning flashed, illuminating the droplets of water that stuck to the glass and curled their way down it in trickles. They looked like converging rivers on the window, seen from high altitude. They swelled and shrank as the trails of water moved and slithered with gravity.
Water always finds the easiest path to its destination, he thought idly.
Doc blinked himself away from the window and found his pants hanging over the back of the desk chair, the belt strung through the loops. He slid into them and pulled on the shirt he’d worn the night before.
It smelled like the bar, a dank mixture of stale cigarette smoke and sour beer. It didn’t matter. Where he was headed didn’t have a dress code or care if he was washed and starched.
He shuffled to his suitcase, pulling out a folded raincoat. It was really an expensive fishing jacket meant for poor conditions, but it was what he owned. He slid it on, zipping it up, then found a pair of cheap slip-on sneakers he’d worn on the plane ride and put those on over his bare feet. No need to wear socks.
He withdrew some cash, a credit card, and his ID from his wallet, then locked the wallet into the closet safe. He grabbed his room key and phone, stuffed a prepackaged first aid kit into a jacket pocket, then headed for the elevator. The moment he left his room and the door clicked shut behind him, the hallway went dark. The power was out.
Doc cursed, realizing he’d have to find the stairs, as he tapped on the flashlight app on his phone. He used the narrow white beam to search the walls for directions to the stairwell. Then he noticed the glowing overhead signs pointing in the right direction. He picked up speed, half running, half walking, until he reached the heavy metal door that led to the stairwell.
He pushed open the door, it slammed behind him with a thud, and he stood in complete darkness. The echo of the thud cascaded through the well and Doc exhaled. This wouldn’t be fun.
He aimed his light down the first set of concrete steps and began the slow, lonely descent. He had sixteen floors until he reached the lobby. At least he wasn’t climbing up the stairs. That would be far worse.
Each of his heavy steps echoed in the well. He methodically took each one carefully. Even with the dim band of light from his phone flashlight, it was a treacherous descent. He’d been at it for a good five minutes when he heard the metallic thunk of a door opening on the floor below where he stood.
He stopped moving for a moment as the door slammed shut again, and he heard two people murmuring to each other. He put his free hand on the cold concrete railing and resumed his foot-by-foot trek down the well.
“Hello?” called a woman as he rounded the flight onto her level. She was standing on the landing with someone else. Doc couldn’t make out if the other person was a man or woman.
He accidentally shone the light in the woman’s eyes and she squinted, pulling her arm up to shield herself. He swept the light to the other person. It was another woman. Both of them appeared to be the types of guests who were paid to be there by the hour.
“Watch the light,” said the first woman, her voice shrill. “You’re blinding us here.”
“Sorry,” said Doc, pivoting back to the first woman. “It’s hard to see in here.”
“You’re a regular Captain Obvious, aren’t you?” said the second woman. She was taller, but appeared to be wearing the same sized skirt and top as her smaller colleague.
He frowned at them, though he doubted either of them could see it. There was no point in debating them as to education or profession. He let the snark slide.
“I’m headed downstairs,” he said, keeping the light at their stilettoed feet now. “You’re welcome to follow me if you like.”
Without awaiting an answer, he turned the corner in front of them and took the next flight of stairs. They mumbled something, the unintelligible murmur echoing off the walls, and started the descent.
Once they’d rounded a few more flights, he asked, “What floor were you on?” continuing to take the stairs one plodding step at a time.
“Nine,” said one of them.
“Ten,” said the other.
The two of them argued it another two flights before they settled on eight. Doc counted in his head, not having caught the last few floor markers with his light. They had to be getting close now.
Another five minutes and they were at the lobby level. That was, they were two steps above the lobby level, which was flooded. Doc’s light reflected off the brownish water, a thin rainbow film of grease coating its surface.
“Great,” said the taller of the two women. “It’s flooded.”
Doc turned to her, shined the light on his face, and raised an eyebrow. Then he turned back to the water and scanned the surface from the last dry step to the door.
“Touché,” said the tall woman, snickering.
“You and your French,” said the shorter one. “You don’t speak French. Stop trying to use French words. It’s embarrassing.”
The two women bickered about romance languages, and Doc came to a decision. Judging by the height of the water on the door, which was below the handle, he figured he could easily wade out into the lobby. The issue would be what was submerged under the water and what danger that might pose as he trudged through it.
It didn’t matter, he decided in that moment. He needed to help people. He took a tentative first step into the water, feeling the icy rush of it seep into his shoe, between his toes, and up his leg. His second step was more sure-footed, and then he made the plunge. The water was breathtakingly cold, but it was beneath his hips. Shivering, he made his way to the door, shining the light on the handle. He grabbed it and pulled. At first it didn’t give, then he braced himself with one foot against the wall beside the jamb, and it slowly swung open against the water.
The lobby was bathed in the devilish red of the emergency lights. The fiery glow danced on the surface of the murky water, giving it the appearance of being on f
ire from below.
He hadn’t waited for the women, but they were steps behind him. He could hear the splash of their movements.
Not needing the white light of his phone, he turned it off to save the battery and tucked it into a zippered pocket at his chest. It was a water-resistant pocket, and he hoped it was enough to keep his phone alive.
The lobby was surprisingly empty of guests. There were a pair of security guards standing atop the concierge stand. Both of them seemed to be trying to reach somebody on a walkie-talkie. They ignored Doc and his new traveling companions. But the woman sitting on the check-in counter acknowledged them.
“Hello,” she said in a familiar voice, and Doc recognized her as Shonda. She was sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest. Her arms held her legs tight, and her hands were clasped in the front. She was soaked and shivering.
Doc nodded at her, started to wade past the desk, and thought better of it. He waded across the lobby toward Shonda. As he approached, it was apparent how young she was. Twenty? Twenty-one? She had to be a college student.
“You okay?” he asked her.
She nodded the way someone trying to fend off an emotional outburst does. She bit her lower lip and squeezed her eyebrows together in a furrow above her dark eyes.
“Where is everybody?” he asked. “Your boss? More than…two security guards? I don’t understand.”
“I’m the night manager,” she said. “We don’t have a large staff this late at night. Our maintenance staff is working on emergency power and coping with the water.”
“You’re it?” he asked. “You’re a…college student, no?”
Despite shivering, Shonda appeared to bristle at the suggestion she couldn’t do her job. She tightened her grip around her knees and frowned. “Yes,” she said. “Xavier. But I’m perfectly capable of—”
Understanding he’d apparently offended her, Doc cut in. “That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I’m saying you shouldn’t be alone. This is too much for anyone by himself. Or herself.”
