by Tom Abrahams
“I’m fine,” Shonda said. “I’m good.”
“What are you doing?” he asked. “It’s really not safe here, not with all of this water.”
“It’s my job. I gotta stay here until my relief shows up. Nobody showed up, so I came back here. I’ve been listening to music, trying to stay dry.”
“Nobody is going to show up,” said Doc, suppressing a chortle. “You know what happened, right?”
She shrugged. “It flooded.”
“You should come with me,” he said. “They’re evacuating people.”
“I can’t leave; I’ve got a paper due. I’ve got a midterm this week. Plus, I’m at work. I’m not leaving the hotel and the guests.”
Doc felt the tension building in his shoulders. “There is no hotel,” he snapped. “No guests. No school this week. You won’t have a paper due. No midterms. People are dead. The city is underwater.”
The reality of it, the scope beyond the flooded lobby and back offices, washed over her face in the bluish-white light. It appeared to hit her, as her tightly drawn expression sagged into disbelief, or finally belief, that staying perched in her elevated throne above the water might not be the best place to stay.
“Come with me,” Doc implored.
Shonda glanced behind her into the dark then back at Doc. She rolled the earbud around her fingers.
“How much battery life do you have left on your phone?” asked Doc.
She glanced down at the glow and pursed her lips. “Twenty-one percent.”
“Come with me,” he repeated.
She nodded, put the earbud back in place, and reached out for help. Doc took her wrists and guided her into the water one leg at a time. She seized at the chill and started breathing quickly. She cursed the water temperature, apologized, and then settled into the discomfort of it. She held her phone above her head.
“Your arm’s going to get tired,” he said.
“I’m not losing this phone,” she replied. “The case floats, but I’m not taking any chances. Everything is on this phone. Everything.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Doc wasn’t putting salve on a wound or stabilizing a cardiac patient. He wasn’t rescuing a drowning man or making a sling for a woman with a compound fracture. He was doing something good though. As he led Shonda through the water, he believed that he was saving her life. If he’d left her there, if he’d never sought out the singing siren, she might have become injured, or severely dehydrated, or died.
He led her through the lobby, and now that they were in the light, he could see the awe drawn onto her young face. She’d retreated before the worst of it. She hadn’t seen any of this. It was obvious to Doc as they carefully trod through the water.
“It stinks,” she said with a sour look on her face, her mouth turned downward. “This is next-level disgusting.”
Doc didn’t say anything, focusing on navigating the debris and ensuring Shonda didn’t fall or lose her balance in the water. He held one of her wrists gently, tugging her with him as they moved now from the lobby and out into the daylight.
Both squinted as they took their first several steps beyond the open entryway. Shonda drew the back of her hand up to shield her eyes. When she did, her phone slipped from her hand and into the water.
She gasped and started to dive for it, knocking herself into Doc. He held her up, turned, and saw the phone floating in the water toward the whirlpool.
“I can’t lose it,” she said, her expression having transformed again. Now she was pained. “My life is on that phone.”
“I’ll get it,” Doc said hurriedly. He quickly splashed toward the phone. It was moving too fast now, gaining speed toward the whirling circle of draining water. He hopped off one foot, using the advantage of the water to propel his mass farther than he would have moved on land. He splashed down, holding his chin up to keep his mouth from going underwater, and reached for the phone.
Doc touched it with his outstretched hand, but it dipped into the water and tipped away. He bounced again, leaping as far as he could, and reached again. He gripped it as he dropped into the water on his chest. When he landed, he held up his hand, waving the phone.
Searching for a place to put his foot, he slipped. It caught him by surprise, not finding the surface of the street, and he slid under the surface, swallowing a mouthful of floodwater. He resurfaced for an instant, coughing, but unable to suck in a clean breath of air. Shonda cried out. He heard that, muddied as it was.
He panicked, dropping beneath the surface again. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t find the street. The water swirled around him now. He was disoriented in the brown-hued dark of the water. His vision blurred; his chest burned.
He let go of the phone and tried pulling himself to the surface, but the drain had him now. The water was sucking at his legs, at his body. He fought against it. He kicked, he pulled, reaching for the surface. It was close. It was too far.
He was caught, spinning and sinking. It was a washing machine. It held him in place.
Doc tried to resist the urge to cough again. He couldn’t. When he did, when he opened his mouth, more water came in than went out. He was choking now.
He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t breathe. It was happening fast. Too fast. One instant he was chasing a phone with twenty-one percent battery life and the next he was drowning.
His legs gave out first, then his arms. And then his body twitched before it slackened. The drain drew him down, catching him in its jaws. It kept him there until everything went dark. Until Doc’s heart beat for the final time and his brain turned off.
His final thought was of the college coed he’d seen in the hospital and the knowing, familiar look she’d given him. They had met before, somewhere. As his life ended, he wondered if they would again. He believed they would. That was his last thought.
The last image in his mind, however, was the faintest hint of sunlight taunting him from beyond the surface of the water. Light before the dark. The morning had come.
CHAPTER 18
April 6, 2026
Los Angeles, California
The first rays of sunlight shone through the lone window in Danny Correa’s efficiency apartment. Maggie was on the bed, her body up against Danny’s legs. She was licking his bare foot, which was exposed amidst the toga of a sheet that twisted around his body.
“Thanks, girl,” he said. “I appreciate that. But no kisses today. I have no idea where my feet have been.”
She stopped licking and put one paw on his leg to hold it in place. She looked at him as if she understood him and wagged her tail. Then she went back to the job of cleaning Danny’s foot. Danny chuckled to himself. He turned onto his side and checked the clock. It was early. Too early. He’d worked late at the diner Sunday night. It was a holiday, so the double time was a much-needed boon, and Arthur hadn’t minded the day off.
He could feel the long hours in his back, even lying there in bed. But he couldn’t go back to sleep. He was awake now.
He grabbed the remote for the television, which was on from the night before, and turned up the volume. The morning news was on, and Lane Turner was reporting from outside the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. The banner at the bottom of the screen read that the men’s championship college basketball game had been postponed indefinitely.
“…game seems to be of secondary concern for everyone here,” said Turner. “Basketball is a sport. It’s entertainment. What happened here Saturday night into Sunday morning was much more than that. It was life and death. It still is. Even though the water has receded, for the most part, recovery has yet to begin. People here are trying to process the extraordinary extent of the damage…”
Danny sat up, propping a pillow behind his head. Maggie looked up at him, no longer in possession of his foot. She hopped down from the bed and crossed the floor to her bowl. She was thirsty, from the sound of her lapping at the room-temperature water.
“Th
is is among the more deadly floods in American history. From authorities, we know that in addition to the seven hundred and twenty-nine people who’ve died, sixty-four people are missing. Among them is at least one southern Californian.”
The screen switched from an image of the reporter in front of the dome, to video of a man wading through water, walking against the tide of people exiting a tall building that looked like a hotel.
“This is video of that man, Dr. Steven Konkoly,” said Turner. “He was here for a medical conference but sprang into action when the flooding started. He saved lives until he lost his own.”
The video switched from a shot of the doctor walking into the building, to one of him walking out. He was with a woman, who was holding one hand over her head. She tripped, pitched forward, and lost whatever it was she was holding in the raised hand. A phone maybe?
The doctor let go of the woman and dove into the water to retrieve it. It kept bobbing out of his reach. Then he caught it, and he went under. He resurfaced, waving his arms. The video froze.
“We’re not showing you the rest of the video,” said Turner. “This is where Dr. Konkoly lost his footing at a drain he couldn’t see. Paramedics tell me he was sucked into the drain and trapped there. They did pull his body from the water only a few moments after he slipped under. It was already too late.”
The frozen video dissolved to a still photograph of the doctor. His name was on the bottom of the screen. It looked like a picture taken from a social media account. It was a snapshot, not a professional photograph. Danny recognized the location of the picture. Chills ran along his spine and his mouth went dry.
The doctor was standing in the Inner Peristyle at the Getty Villa. Behind him was the Temple of Hercules, and beyond that the Atrium. There were Corinthian columns to one side of the snapshot.
Danny could see in his mind beyond the edges of the picture. There was the Outer Peristyle with its long reflecting pool. There was the herb garden. There were the galleries. Flashes of an elevator strobed in his mind. It was like a holiday slideshow, these images.
Then he saw a false wall and a place beyond it. He smelled soil. He felt the wind of a circular pathway play with his balance. He saw camels and a man dressed in traditional Middle Eastern garb. There was a room full of electronics. There was a woman named Gilda.
The reporter was back on camera, talking about other things now, something about the concern for disease spreading among the surviving population. That was always a threat after apocalyptic catastrophes, said the reporter. Danny wasn’t listening anymore. He was preoccupied with what had just happened, with the images in his head and the accompanying sense that he had experienced them before or would in the future. His stomach lurched and he swallowed hard.
Danny closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to shake free of the sensation he was somewhere else. He turned off the television and rolled from the bed, tripping on the sheet wrapped at his thigh. At the sink in his bathroom he turned on the cold water and splashed his face, slurping some of it from his hands. The water dampened his dry mouth, satiating the need to drink.
He pressed his hands onto the sides of the porcelain, wall-mounted sink, and locked his elbows. Water dripped from his chin into the sink. He sucked droplets into his mouth and looked up.
“What is going on?” he asked himself aloud. He was sweating now. He felt it under his arms. “What is happening?”
He looked into his own eyes, but what he saw was the reflection of the Getty Villa and all of those things that were not in the snapshot on television. He saw a place he’d never been, not even once.
At least, not in this life.
CONTINUE THE ADVENTURE WITH AFFLICTION
A RELENTLESS DISEASE. NO CURE. AND NO WAY TO STOP IT.
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LOOKING FOR A STAND-ALONE NOVEL YOU CAN’T PUT DOWN?
A FAMILY VACATION. AN EXPLOSIVE DISASTER. A DESPERATE STRUGGLE TO GET HOME.
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FOR A FRESH TAKE ON THE APOCALYPSE ENTER THE DARK WORLD
A COMPLETE THREE BOOK SERIES
No communication. Limited power. An unbreakable will to survive.
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Acknowledgements
Thank you to everyone who’s supported The Alt Apocalypse. It’s a challenging series to write and I’m so thankful to those of you enjoying the concept of new stories, same characters, different stakes. I’m honored by how you’ve embraced it.
Thanks also to my team of incredible professionals who help get this book into your hands. Felicia Sullivan, Pauline Nolet, Patricia Wilson, Hristo Kovatliev, and Stef McDaid are all amazing.
Of course, my family always deserves the most gratitude. Courtney, Sam, and Luke give up time with me so I can spend it with these characters, in this imaginary world. I love you three more than any words could convey.
To my parents, mother-in-law, and siblings, thanks to you for all of efforts to support my work and spread the word. I am always grateful.
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