by Joe McKinney
They went up and down the stairs in a rush, lugging boxes and pictures and the last of the food and fresh water from the pantry. Jim was still acting strangely distant, giving her the silent treatment, but she didn’t have time to get it into with him. There was just too much to do and not enough time to do it in. It was the cop in her that allowed her to ignore his moods and push on with the job at hand, even though the woman in her wanted desperately to get him to say something, anything.
She was hauling the last of their family photo albums up the stairs when the shutters started to rattle. Eleanor put the albums down on the table in the upstairs hallway and listened. They were getting the first sustained winds. It wasn’t gusting anymore, but coming on in a slow rumble, and she had the strangest feeling, as if she was standing in a passenger jet struggling to lift off the runway.
She went in to Madison’s room.
Ms. Hester had never really managed to shake her fever, so they brought her into Madison’s room and let her sleep on the bed in there. She was sleeping fitfully now, Madison sitting on a chair next to her, mopping her face with a wet towel.
“How’s she doing?” Eleanor asked.
Madison frowned.
“Not so good, Mom. She’s been asleep for the last few hours, but she keeps waking up. And I’ve heard her mumbling a few times. She says she’s cold all the time.”
Eleanor saw the battery-operated thermometer on the nightstand next to the bed. “What’s her temp?”
“101.3, last time I took it. That was about ten minutes ago.”
“It’s been high for a while.”
“Three days.”
Not good, Eleanor thought.
“Okay, anything else?”
“I’ve been treating the fever with Motrin and Tylenol, alternating them every six hours like you told me to. She won’t eat, but I’ve been able to get her to drink plenty of water, plenty of Gatorade, for the electrolytes. Dad went over to her house and got some of the Ensure from her kitchen and I’ve been giving her that, but it’s not really a substitute for eating, you know?”
They hadn’t realized it at the time, but when Eleanor pulled her out from beneath her bed, Ms. Hester had cut her left arm on the bed frame. The cut was deep, and Eleanor had been forced to use her first-aid kit to stitch it up. Madison had been a big help to her then, distracting Ms. Hester from the pain while simultaneously handing Eleanor the needed supplies, and together they had done a pretty good job. But the wound hadn’t really healed since then. Despite their best efforts, it was almost certainly infected. Eleanor just hoped it wasn’t something really bad, like staph.
“What about the cut?”
“No change. I’ve been giving her the antibiotics you got for her, but . . .”
Madison trailed off with a shrug.
“Is it still seeping?” Eleanor asked.
“Yeah. It doesn’t smell very good, either. I’ve been keeping it clean like you showed me, but it’s not healing. I’m kind of worried what’ll happen when we run out of bandages. I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep it clean.”
“We’ve got a ton of bandages,” Eleanor said.
“Umm, not really,” Madison answered.
“What do you mean? I had a whole case of them in the family disaster kit.”
“Yeah, I know. But she goes through them really fast. She’s been sweating so much lately. Every time I check the bandages they’re filthy from all the sweat.”
Ms. Hester groaned, and Madison turned to her. Eleanor watched as her daughter expertly mopped the older woman’s forehead. When Madison was done she got a bottle of water from the nightstand and tilted it to Ms. Hester’s lips.
When Eleanor had left for work eleven days ago, Madison had been a girl with posters of boy bands on her wall and stuffed animals in her bed. But now, here she was, the stuffed animals casually thrown to the floor, caring like a trained nurse for the woman who had been, in many ways, her grandmother. How did such a thing happen? How did it happen so quickly, and without Eleanor seeing any of it?
“Mom, you okay?”
Eleanor sniffled and tried to smile. “I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? Why are you rubbing your eyes? Are you crying? Ms. Hester’s gonna be okay. We just got to keep her hanging on until after this storm blows over.”
Eleanor nodded.
“You’re right, sweetie. You stay here with Ms. Hester, okay? I’m gonna go help Daddy get the last of our things upstairs.”
“Okay.”
Eleanor turned to go, but Madison stopped her as she reached the door.
“Mom, are we okay here?”
Eleanor turned her gaze to the top of the dresser next to the door. There was a little makeup mirror there. In it, she could see her reflection, and the face that looked back at her was dark with exhaustion.
“It’s gonna be a bad storm,” she said. “Maybe the worst one we’ve seen. But I think we’re gonna be okay. The house may flood, but we’ll be safe up here on the top floor.”
“I know that, Mom. I was . . .”
Madison trailed off.
“What is it, sweetie?”
“The last couple nights, when I’ve been staying up with Ms. Hester, I’ve been hearing stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“I don’t know. Stuff. Outside. People, I guess. I can hear them moaning. Sometimes it’s so loud I get scared. It’s a horrible sound. I . . . I can’t really describe it. But it’s like they’re scared and angry and . . . I don’t know. It doesn’t sound natural. Are we okay up here, Mom? Nobody’s gonna try to . . .”
“To what?”
“Well, get us. Are they?”
Outside, the rain was starting to come down hard. Eleanor listened to it whipping against the windows before she answered.
“Nobody’s gonna get us, sweetie. Your Daddy and I, we’re gonna be right here with you.”
“But there is somebody out there. Bad people. I’ve heard it on your police radio. They say people are eating each other.”
Eleanor tried to swallow, but couldn’t quite manage it. She was having a nasty case of déjà vu, her mind turning back to the meeting at the EOC and Captain Shaw lying to Joe Schwab about the cannibalistic attacks they’d seen. Christ, what was she supposed to say? How do you answer your daughter’s questions about people eating each other?
“We’re gonna be okay here,” Eleanor said. “I believe that.”
Madison nodded.
Eleanor went to the game room. Jim wasn’t there and Eleanor was relieved. Just a few minutes earlier she’d been looking for a chance to talk to him, but not now. Right now there was a nuclear bomb of a headache waiting to detonate just behind her eyes, and she needed a moment.
Lifting her shirt, she removed her Glock 22 from her waist and put it on the bumper pool table they’d pushed into the corner. It was her weapons table now, stacked with extra magazines for the Glock and for her Colt AR-15A3. There were boxes of ammunition, too. Leaning against the wall next to the table were the AR-15 and her Mossberg 500 twelve gauge. She looked from one to the other and finally settled on the twelve gauge. Then she took a box of 00 shot from the table and fed five shells into the Mossberg’s magazine tube. The shotgun felt heavy, solid, reliable. She muttered a silent prayer that she wouldn’t need it.
“I heard you in there,” Jim said from behind her.
Eleanor sighed, then put the Mossberg on the table and turned around.
“Are you talking to me now?”
“I never stopped talking to you.”
She huffed at him. Seriously? she thought. Seriously? She couldn’t believe it. This was just like him, so damn passive-aggressive.
“Ever since I got home you’ve been acting like I’ve done something wrong. What is it? Why are you mad at me?”
“I’m not mad at you,” he said.
“It sure seems like it. Jim, if there’s something wrong . . .”
“I’m mad, okay. Yes, I’m mad. Just .
. . not at you. It’s not your fault. I’m mad at all this . . . this . . . goddamn it. I’m sick of being locked up in this house. I’m going out of my head here. Eleven days now. Every couple of hours I go to the door and I look out and all I see is fucking water. It’s like I’m trapped on a goddamn island. At least you get to go out and see something besides the inside of our house.”
“Jim, that’s not fair. I have to work. I don’t get—”
“I’m not upset at you, Eleanor. I know you have to work. I know you’ve been burning yourself up. I know that. Trust me, I get it. This isn’t about you, okay? It’s me. It’s just me being stupid. I hear you talking to Madison about those attacks we’ve been hearing about on the radio, all those people eating each other, and I feel like I should be doing something. You know? I feel like I’m just wasting away, like I’m worthless.”
“I know,” she said, but even as she spoke Eleanor sensed that he was dealing with a level of frustration she couldn’t really get her mind around.
Until recently, she’d enjoyed her canoe trips back and forth from the EOC. There had been a peacefulness that came from gliding through the flooded ruins of the city that had recharged her mental batteries. He hadn’t had that opportunity, and it surprised her how willing her heart was to open up for him after only moments before lashing out at him for being a passive-aggressive boor.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Jim, I didn’t even think about how isolated you and Madison would be here. Jesus, I should have thought of that. I spent weeks planning what we’d need in the family disaster kit, and it never even occurred to me that the worst part of it would be the isolation. I’m sorry.”
He walked over to her and put his arms around her.
“We’re gonna get through this,” he said. “We’re all right.”
She pressed her face into his chest and then recoiled.
“What?” he said.
“You kinda stink,” she said. “You need a bath.”
“You and me both,” he said, and hugged her tightly once more.
Later that night, during the worst part of the storm, Jim knelt on the floor of Madison’s room with his wife and daughter. Ms. Hester was in the bed next to them, her groaning barely audible over the wind and rain. Outside the house the storm rumbled and howled, flashes of lightning coming through the gaps around the edges of the plywood boards that covered the windows and bathing the room in a purplish-white light. To Jim, it felt as if the wind were an avalanche coming down all around them . . . so constant, so powerful . . . it seemed to be trying to lift the house into the air.
They had decided not to move Ms. Hester. Her fever was still dangerously high and she was weak, and there seemed little point to removing her from Madison’s bed when she was already about as comfortable as she was likely to get.
Still, he had terrible thoughts about her dying in Madison’s bed.
He tried to reassure himself that she wasn’t going to die, that he was only torturing himself with the usual cruel fates one can’t seem to help envisioning for loved ones, but still, there was that voice in his head that just wouldn’t leave the thought alone. He kept coming back to it, the way the tongue continually returns to an injured tooth. What would happen if she really did die in here with them? Would Madison ever be able to sleep in here again? Would he expect her to?
Something big hit the house.
Jim glanced at Eleanor, who was holding Madison’s head against her chest. In the guttering candlelight, their faces had a yellowish tinge. They sat there for a long moment, stunned and frightened, watching each other and listening as the storm shook and battered their house.
The next instant they heard a prolonged ripping sound, like a wall being ripped away.
“Daddy,” Madison said, “what was that?”
He shook his head. Whatever it was—a tree limb or something—had almost certainly done some damage to the far side of the house. He could hear the wind pounding unnaturally over there, as though it had succeeded in opening up the house.
He glanced at Eleanor once again. She was frightened, he could see that immediately, and a part of himself that he didn’t like to own was thrilled by that fear. It gave him the chance to be the protector, for once.
“I’ll go check it out.”
“Jim, no!”
“It’ll be okay.” He stood up and gave her outstretched hand a squeeze. “I’ll be right back.”
He went down the hall and turned into the spare bedroom.
And there he froze.
The wind was very loud, like standing next to a jet engine. It had ripped a four-foot-long gash in the wall, and as he stood there in the doorway, he could feel it tugging on him, pulling him inside.
There were small tree limbs and leaves all over the floor, and the rain was swirling through the hole. Already it had puddled on the carpet. For years, they had been planning on turning this room into a craft room for Eleanor and Madison to share, and here and there soggy, colored pieces of Madison’s artwork clung to the walls and swirled in circles on currents of air.
A flash of lightning turned the room purplish-white, and in the lingering brightness that followed, he looked through the gash in the wall and could see a long ways down the south side of the block. Many of the houses over there were gone, nothing left but a wall or a roof tilting down into the floodwaters.
As he watched, the Beales’ house, two doors down from Ms. Hester’s, began to shake. He could see the roof trembling atop the walls like the lid on a kettle of boiling water, and then, with one sudden, ferocious snapping sound he could hear even over the roaring wind, the roof finally came loose and sailed free. It tumbled up into the air and was lost in the darkness and silvery blasts of rain.
Jim gasped.
My God, he thought, we were fools to stay. Our jobs be damned. They’re not worth this. They’re not worth gambling our lives on this. My God, preserve us please.
The next moment he felt Eleanor at his side. He put an arm around her and felt her shaking. Another blast of lightning lit the night, and in the flash he could see the tears on her cheeks.
“It’s all gone,” she said. “Everything. Gone.”
He pulled her close, only dimly aware that he was crying, too.
Later still, Eleanor opened her eyes, a little stunned that she could have fallen asleep while the storm was raging. Even now it echoed in her head.
Madison was sleeping in her lap. Her hair was damp with sweat and it had fallen in front of her face. Eleanor stroked her daughter’s bangs back from her eyes, and when Eleanor looked up, Jim was awake and watching her.
“You okay?” he whispered.
She nodded.
From the bed behind her, Eleanor heard Ms. Hester calling for water. Eleanor eased Madison’s head out of her lap and helped Ms. Hester drink from a plastic water bottle.
Ms. Hester was burning up and barely able to keep her eyes open, and she drifted back to sleep as Eleanor was sticking a baby thermometer into her ear.
“How is she?” Jim asked.
“Oh, Jesus,” Eleanor said. “Jim, she needs a doctor.”
“What is it?” he asked, nodding toward the thermometer.
“105.3.”
He whistled. “Damn.”
Eleanor put the thermometer back on the bedside table, wondering what she was supposed to do, if it was safe to move her.
From outside, she heard the sound of running water. She went down the hall to the craft room and looked out through the gash in the wall. The sky was a dirty white that made her think of dishwater. Still the sound of running water went on, even though there was no more rain, no wind. For a moment, she wondered if maybe a pipe had burst inside the walls. But she quickly dismissed that. The sound was bigger than a busted pipe, and anyway the water hadn’t worked in two weeks. As she stood there in the doorway, her mind went back to a camping trip they had taken two years before on the Red River. She had stood on the bank one morning, watching the huge majesty of the movin
g water, and she realized that was the same sound she was hearing now, the slow, relentless force of a great quantity of moving water.
Holding her breath, she advanced to the wall and looked down. She saw a wide expanse of water. It stretched off as far as she could see, only the tops of nearby houses and the canopies of trees visible.
The water was flowing around their house, moving to the north. But this was not the dark green murky water of Bays Bayou. This water was a greenish-gray, flecked with white foam, Gulf of Mexico water.
And it was rising quickly.
Her mind reeled at the implications. There seemed little doubt as to what had happened. The man from the National Hurricane Center had warned them two days ago that this might happen. Storm surges from Hector and Kyle had obliterated most of the natural barriers that kept Galveston and South Houston from disappearing under the sea. With those barriers gone, there was nothing to stop Mardel from pulling the ocean along with it. They had talked about the possibility that these storms might permanently change the geography of the Texas Coast, and now, it looked like that had actually happened. Eleanor was looking at high tide.
“Wow,” Jim said.
She looked back at him and managed to smile.
“Pretty incredible, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “There’ll be no coming back from this. That’s the Gulf of Mexico out there.”
“Well, you said you felt like you were stranded on a deserted island.”
He smiled and shook his head.
Then Eleanor glanced past him. Madison was standing in the hallway, and she looked frightened.
“Mom?”
“What is it, pumpkin?”
“It’s Ms. Hester. She’s in a lot of pain.”
“I know, baby. We need to get her to a doctor. I can’t do anything for her with what I’ve got here.”
Eleanor walked over to her and brushed the bangs out of her face again.
“I’m gonna try to raise somebody on my radio. You want to come with me?”
Jim and Madison followed Eleanor into the game room. Eleanor got her radio out of her gear bag and keyed it up. “Bravo eighty-three-fifty.” She smiled at Madison. “It’ll be okay, pumpkin.” Eleanor checked the radio. It was nearly fully charged. She keyed the radio again. “Bravo eighty-three-fifty to EOC.”
