He leaned forward and pecked her on the cheek. “And well done on rescuing him. God knows, there’s going to be some dark days ahead, but you did right by him.”
She returned his hug and, without another word, slipped into her cabin.
The sun was streaming in when she was woken by a knock on the door. It was Jodi. “The boy’s awake,” she said. “He’s called Lewis, and Pat’s given him something to eat, but he told me to come get you.”
Truth to tell, Ellie could easily have stayed where she was and delayed facing the day for as long as possible, but she dragged herself out of bed, tied her hair back and followed Jodi out.
The boy was sitting up in his bunk sharing some peanut butter toast with the dog.
“Hello, Lewis,” Ellie said, as Patrick got up from the little stool beside the bed and gestured at her.
“This is Ellie. She was the one who saved you.”
Lewis looked at her. He had deep brown eyes and a gaze so intense that she felt as though he could see through her, as if he could divine her innermost thoughts. “I thought you was a dream. Thanks.”
She grunted. “Not exactly. And you’re welcome. Now, can you answer some questions?”
“Ellie!”
“I’m sorry, Patrick, we’ve got to know.”
“It’s okay,” Lewis said. “I ain’t got much to say.”
Ellie sat down beside the bed and absentmindedly stroked the dog, throwing up a stink of seaweed and other things. She caught the sneeze before unleashing it, then took the boy’s hand. “Just tell me what happened.”
“Well, I was on the beach…”
“Where?”
“Miami. I…I work there. Helping Gramps …”
She stroked his arm, forcing her impatience down. “What happened? Was it a tsunami?”
“I dunno. I didn’t see it at first. People started running, and I turned around. The…the sky wasn’t right. It was like it had gotten…smaller. Then I realized it was the sea. It wasn’t where it should be. Rising higher. Gramps grabbed me and we ran. But…but there was too many people, and it was too fast. The water…” Lewis, who’d been inflating like a balloon, finally let go and burst into tears.
“It’s okay, son,” Patrick said, leaning over and patting his head, then tickling the dog behind the ears. “You don’t have to tell us everything at once.”
“Yes, he does,” Ellie said, using what she thought was a stage whisper. “We’ve got to know all we can before we decide our course!”
Patrick shook his head.
“It’s okay,” Lewis said as his sobbing subsided. “There’s not much more to say. The wave caught me and when I swam up to the surface Gramps…Gramps was gone. Lots of people were in the water, crying out and then sinking. I got hit by a car, tried to grab it. But then I saw Hector.”
“You saw your dog?”
“He isn’t my dog. Well, maybe he is now. I just saw this dog floating on something, so I swam across. It was…horrible. Dead people. Then we were in the streets and I could see inside the skyscrapers. People looking out of windows. Then they were gone. Under the water. I didn’t reckon it would stop, and then it did. Everything went quiet, and I tried to get us over to one of the tallest buildings so we could wait for it to go out, and then we started moving back toward the sea again.”
“The wave went out again?”
He shook his head. “That’s what I thought to begin with, but it didn’t go down. Just out. Like more water was coming, but from the land, not the sea. And then it was just ocean. There were people. Lots of people swimming and then sinking. Some of them tried to get to me, but I didn’t want them to. There was only room for Hector and me. Was I wrong? But I couldn’t push Hector off. He saved me.”
“Don’t worry about that. Just tell me what you saw when you looked back at the city. Was it still flooded?”
He blinked as if not understanding her question. “It weren’t flooded, ma’am. It was gone.”
Chapter 7
Alone
Betrayal gnawed at Bobby’s heart as he paddled. Leaving Maria behind had been the toughest moment of his life, but he’d been given no choice. She’d begged him to let her come, but had, in the end, allowed him to hand her to Jacob, to whom she’d developed an unlikely attachment.
It had started when Hollick took Bobby to one side just as he was loading the raft.
“Don’t you think it’s too risky to take the kid with you? She’d be safer waitin’ here with us,” Hollick had said, tongue flicking lizard-like behind his teeth.
“Are you crazy? Maria comes with me.”
Hollick had shaken his head with mock sadness. “Well, now that’s gonna be a problem. You see, this is a matter of life and death and I’m not entirely certain you’d come back for us once you found help.”
“Of course I’ll come back. You’ve got my word! What more do you need?”
Bobby looked across to see LaToya produce Jacob’s shotgun from behind her, keeping it shielded from Maria, who was being distracted by Westbay.
“You b—”
Hollick raised his hands. “I suggest you keep it quiet so the little girl doesn’t get more upset than necessary. I give you my word she’ll be safe with us. Long as you come back, of course. No hard feelins. It’s just an insurance policy.”
Hatred gripped Bobby and he wanted nothing more than to strike the man down here and now. LaToya didn’t strike him as a killer, but, then, neither had Jacob and he’d shot a man only the day before.
“And I give you my word. If anything happens to her, you’re a dead man,” Bobby snarled, poking his finger into Hollick’s bony chest before stalking away. He might have been able to wrestle Maria away from them, but the risk was too great, and he didn’t know how the other survivors would react. Probably side with Hollick.
Now, as he lay on the makeshift raft, kicking with his feet to propel him across the fetid surface, he promised himself he would make the old man pay. He tried not to think about Maria’s tearful face, or to remember her sobs. He focused on getting his mission done as quickly as possible and taking his revenge.
Most of the raft was built from a pallet he’d grabbed as it had floated by, and there was not enough wood to build any form of seating. Chin resting on his folded-up pants, his sneakers sat one on each side of the raft, as far away from his nose as possible.
He cursed out loud as the body of a black and white cat floated up from the depths—perhaps disturbed by his passing. With gruesome grace, it rolled over and started to drift down again. He kicked out to try to get some distance from it, but then it suddenly disappeared. In his mind, he saw images of great white sharks and imagined how the banquet of rotting flesh would have attracted them. Panic rose in his throat and he thrashed with his legs so hard that they cramped, and he was forced to rest for a moment.
As he floated in the silence, stretching his calves, he twisted around to look at where he’d come from. Well, there was no question of going back now—his target landing point was certainly closer. He thought he could see Maria standing on the bank and waving at him, but it might have been his imagination. He didn’t want her to worry, so he began gently kicking out again, rotating toward his destination, forcing down the terror he felt at their separation.
It had always been that way with them. He’d spent every moment since she’d been born making up for the fact that her very existence was a betrayal of the woman he loved. Ellie had made it crystal clear that she didn’t want children. He hadn’t fully understood why, but she told him it was because she’d had a rough childhood and would make a bad mother. He hadn’t believed her, but she’d gone out of her way to prove herself right. Like a fool, he still harbored the belief that, if she only got to know Maria properly, she could be a wonderful mother, but his therapist—if he’d had one—would no doubt say that was his guilt talking, and that he was deluded.
He’d betrayed Ellie by deliberately compromising the protection he wore. She’d reacted badly to
every contraceptive pill, and she’d trusted him to take care. Then, one day, she called him to say she was pregnant and, as he knew she would when push came to shove, she decided to have the baby. The months of her pregnancy saw them grow closer and closer and he thought she’d become reconciled to being a mother. She talked about offering the baby for adoption, but without great conviction. And so, Maria had been born, a beautiful, healthy little girl.
But Ellie’s descent into depression was worse than anything Bobby could have imagined. He knew that some new mothers went through this, but it seemed to him that as her body began to return to normalcy, her mind shut down. She became like a caged tiger, pacing around and doing what she had to while others had freedom.
And then she discovered his stock of condoms. And the pinholes he’d made in the ends of them.
She left him the same day. She left him and their daughter and disappeared.
But though he knew he’d been wrong to deceive her, he couldn’t regret Maria’s birth, even though it had destroyed his relationship with Ellie.
He kicked toward the far bank, feeling more alone than he’d ever been. He had no idea where Ellie might be, though he knew there was a good chance she had been lost to the wave on the opposite side of the country. He knew where Maria was, but she was now out of reach, and he could only return to her with the help he promised. So, he kicked and rowed as the far shore came closer. Just as he came within twenty yards of the bank, he felt something brush his legs.
Panicked, he jerked, sending the raft tipping over, and he sank beneath the surface. He forced himself to keep his eyes closed as he dropped, then kicked upwards, bursting through into the air and spitting out a mouthful of rancid, oily water. He swam across to where the raft floated, grabbing his pants as they bobbed up and down beside it. His sneakers, however, were lost.
As quickly as he could, he got his body up onto the raft and used his hands as oars to get to the far bank as quickly as possible, only relaxing when he pulled himself onto the rocky shore. Had it been a shark? His rational mind told him it was more likely to be some debris floating suspended beneath the surface. A rotting corpse, perhaps. On balance, he preferred to think it was a great white.
He lay there, breathing heavily and looking back at the tip of the island he’d come from. It looked so far away, and his eyesight wasn’t good enough to make out whether anyone was watching, much less his daughter.
As soon as he’d gotten his breath back, he hauled himself farther up the slope, pulling his sodden pants behind him. Something hard slapped against a small rock as he dragged them. Cursing under his breath, he fished around in the pocket and pulled out his phone. He pressed on the power button with little hope and was rewarded in kind by absolutely no response. The salesman had recommended buying a waterproof phone, but he’d opted for a cheap Android, and now all he had was a useless chunk of plastic. He couldn’t quite bring himself to cast it into the water, so he put it back into the pants pocket and pulled them on. They’d have to dry as he walked. He didn’t have time to wait.
He found a dirt road at the crest of the slope and stood there, looking out at a landscape that had been hidden before. A flooded valley lay below his shoeless feet. To his right, he gazed along what had once been the summit of a low hill to a pair of narrow islands, but he couldn’t guess what lay beyond them. He didn’t want to go south, so he took the track heading east. The path was nothing more than an eroded walkway made by thousands of feet over the decades of people hiking up here, and he kept his eyes downcast to avoid stepping on anything sharp. Nevertheless, his feet soon ached, and he wondered how he was going to cover any distance before he’d be unable to continue.
Still, he stumbled on. It was a warm day, with a fresh breeze coming from the direction of what had once been the coast. It would have been a pleasant day for walking had it not been for his lack of footwear and the fact that his familiar world was now under water. He had time to think about what could have caused such a catastrophe, but he came up with no answers. If it had only struck the West Coast, then he could have put it down to an extraordinary tsunami, a complete collapse of the continental crust out in the Pacific. But there was no way that could possibly affect Florida and the East Coast. And yet, he could think of no other explanation. Nor could he imagine why the water hadn’t receded. A tidal wave, however devastating, goes out, whereas the sea surrounding this little island looked as if it had always been there and would always remain.
As he walked slowly eastwards, he could see that the more distant peaks came into view directly ahead of him and he began to believe he could take a direct path along the spine of the hills until he found civilization and help for his daughter and the others. The land was rising here, though the path he was walking along was getting narrower and the drop on either side precipitous. Ahead, he could see it compressing until it formed a narrow bridge. He wasn’t particularly bothered by heights, but he didn’t relish the prospect of making his way across the Bridge of Khazad Dum.
Then he spotted, to his right and down the slope, a terraced area with a single, iron-roofed building shining white in the afternoon sun. Around it clustered a collection of pickups, farm machinery and the rusting wrecks of cars. He could see no signs of movement, but he might, at least, find a pair of shoes down there even if the place had been abandoned. So, he began the difficult descent, scrambling downwards, holding on to the scrubby bushes that were the only form of vegetation he’d seen.
Halfway down, he trod on something sharp, lost his footing, and he plunged, head over heels, crying out as he collided with rock after rock, until he crashed into a huge boulder at the bottom of the slope and lay there, moaning with pain, fighting back tears of desperation and exhaustion. He was bruised and broken, and yet Maria would be looking out for his return.
After abandoning himself to despair for—how long was it? Seconds? Minutes? Hours?—he took in a deep breath, remembering the building he’d seen. He hauled himself to his feet, using the boulder as support. Then he noticed his foot was covered in blood from a wound in his sole. What had he stepped on? Glass?
“Now, you put yer hands up. You hear me? I ain’t gonna say it twice.”
Beyond the boulder an old woman stood unsteadily, shotgun pointed more or less at Bobby. The barrel vibrated as if it were taking a superhuman effort to hold it up.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I don’t mean any harm. My name’s Bobby.”
“Come out from …behind that boulder with your …arms up, you hear me?”
Bobby did as he was told and watched her eyes widen as she saw the blood on his foot. “You’re hurting. How …did you do that? Where …have you come from? Is everything gone?”
“Look, I’ll answer any questions, but please put the gun down. I’m just trying to get help for my daughter.”
She squinted at him for a moment or two, then nodded and lowered the weapon. “Well, you ain’t gonna find much help here. There’s only me. Everyone else has gone. But…” At this, she looked at him again as if making up her mind on the spot. “I don’t reckon you’re a troublemaker and I ain’t had a living soul to talk to for a couple of days now… Come on in. The name’s Pam.”
Bobby smiled, thanked her, and followed as she led him slowly toward the house.
He sat at the kitchen table, enjoying the sensation of being inside a normal house, though the room was lit by nothing more than the large window that ran along one side.
“Power went out with the water,” the old woman said as she lifted a black kettle from the range. “We got a generator, but we don’t use it none unless we got to.”
Bobby’s feet were in a plastic bowl filled with warm water and added salt. It had hurt like hell to start with—not only from the tear in his sole but also the blisters that had formed across the undersides of his feet. “Why are you here alone?” he asked as she deposited a mug of steaming coffee on the table.
“The boys went off to help, soon as they saw what was happenin�
��. I told ’em to leave it to the ’mergency services, but they wouldn’t listen. Not much happens up here as a rule.” She sighed, rubbed her chin and then said, in a quiet voice, “I confess I’m worrit. They tol’ me they’d be back soon as.”
“Where did they go?”
“Down into the valley. They wanted to get folk out of Filmore.”
Bobby privately thought the chances of any of “the boys” still being alive were remote at best. “I don’t reckon they’ll be back until the water recedes. This hill’s an island now. I had to swim to get here. Except for a narrow path there,” he said, gesturing in the vague direction of the natural bridge.
She sat down in the chair opposite and he watched as she gazed around at the empty places. “Where are you headin’?”
Bobby shrugged. “I’m going west until I find someone to help rescue the people I got stuck with. I’m hoping that’ll be across the next range.”
“Maybe. But it’s all mountains that way, there ain’t no cities. I reckon you’re best heading for Santa Clarita.”
“How far is it?”
“Thirty miles or thereabouts.”
Bobby slumped. Thirty miles? Might as well be three hundred with his feet the way they were.
“Say, why ain’t you wearing no shoes?”
“They fell in the sea when I was swimming across.”
The chair squeaked as she got to her feet. “Come with me. Lester is about the same size as you. Then we’ll bandage you up.”
“Thank y—”
The woman stumbled and fell sideways as Bobby tried to catch her. He lurched forward, arms outstretched, and managed to get his hands under her body to cushion her fall.
“I’m sorry,” she said, weakly, her head on the stone floor.
He helped her up a little. “Are you ill?”
“Yeah. That’s why they said I had to stay at home. It’s my lungs. Forty years of smoking and they’re blacker than a bear’s behind. My oxygen’s fit to run out, and I ain’t got much medication left.”
The Drowned: Deluge Book 1: (A Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Story) Page 7
