Flood Plains by Mark Wheaton (best reads txt) 📗

or that someone had possibly stepped into Hansel & Gretel.

Zakiyah knew a lot of this was theatrics to dazzle the customers but even then, it was something to behold. Every time her daughter walked in, she could tell it was mere seconds before she fell under its spell.

“How long has the power been out?” Zakiyah asked, glancing at the candles set up on the kitchen table.

“About an hour,” Sineada replied. “I’d already turned off most everything. Only way I knew was when the refrigerator stopped humming.”

That’s when the previously enthusiastic Mia suddenly seemed to change her mind.

“So what’re we going to do all day?”

“Oh, I’m sure we can find something,” Sineada smiled.

Sineada was just about to suggest a “reading” but realized that might be something Zakiyah was hoping to avoid.

But Zakiyah wasn’t listening. She’d found a framed photograph of Clara, her late mother, sitting with Sineada on the front porch of this very house probably fifty years ago.

“You can take that with you if you’d like,” Sineada offered gently.

“No,” Zakiyah said, bristling a little as she turned away from the picture. “Thank you, though.”

Sineada nodded but was about to press the point when Zakiyah cut her off.

“All right, well, I have to get to work. Thank you for opening up your home for us. I’ll try and call in a few hours.”

Mia came over and gave her mother a hug. Zakiyah was surprised but tried not to act it when she saw Sineada noticing.

“It’s going to be okay today,” Zakiyah told her daughter.

“I hope so.”

Zakiyah dashed back out into the rain. Half a minute later, she was on her way back to the highway, her mind filled with troubled thoughts about her mother, her daughter, and her erstwhile what, boyfriend? Roommate? Baby daddy? She had no idea what to call him anymore.

As soon as she was out of sight, Mia turned to Sineada with an imploring look on her face.

“I need to know how my daddy’s doing,” she said. “Can you find that out?”

Sineada had imagined this was on Mia’s mind since she’d walked in the door. She nodded gingerly and indicated for the little girl to take a seat in the parlor.

“Let me make you a cup of tea and we’ll talk. I’m not making any guarantees, but let’s see what we can divine.”

•  •  •

“The rest of the lines just went down across South Houston. We’re getting nothing.”

Kenneth Veitch looked over at the assistant, Gloria Osorio, who was just coming in from the editorial bullpen.

“Not possible. Someone’s getting information out.”

“Nope,” replied Gloria. “Nothing from the airport on Galveston, nothing from NASA, nothing from any of our affiliates, nothing from the police.”

“This is the twenty-first century,” Kenneth scoffed, his veteran newsman’s cynicism rising to the surface. “Okay, so maybe the telephone lines are down and they’ve lost a few cell towers. We’re still talking about the fourth-largest city in the nation. There’s some kid blogging about this on his Twitter feed, someone’s posting videos, someone’s sending an e-mail. By that, I mean there are probably hundreds of people doing this. The power’s out? People have gas-powered generators. Even if there are failures across ninety-nine percent, those one-percenters start taking their roles that much more seriously.”

“Nope,” repeated Gloria. “There is absolutely nothing coming out of Houston. We’ve been checking all feeds, watching the blackout grow overnight from Galveston up across the mainland on its way to Houston. It’s expanding over a large area.”

Kenneth sank back into his chair to think about this. It was unfathomable to have this much of a communications blackout so far into the Information Age. Even during the last New York City blackout, there’d been signals getting out over official channels. He’d been at KHOU Channel 5 News in Houston when Katrina hit but hadn’t been able to reach the flooded areas for days. He figured this for one of the reasons he was now out in Austin working as a segment producer for their local NBC affiliate, KVRA.

“We’ve been looking for the story that’s going to get us picked up by the big boys, right?” Kenneth said, clicking his television to CNN, where they were covering the Houston hurricane with weather maps and satellite photos. “If the Houston stations aren’t getting the story and the papers aren’t, either, then what’s stopping us from driving down there and doing it ourselves?”

“A hurricane.”

Kenneth rolled his eyes.

“The Times-Picayune published all through Katrina and won a Pulitzer for their trouble. We could at least win a regional Emmy or something.”

“The roads are going to be washed out or blocked, Ken. You’ve got the Highway Patrol and the National Guard keeping people from entering danger zones.”

“I’m from Katy. I know all the back roads in and out of Harris County. Getting there won’t be a problem. What I need is someone to come with me. It’s our story for the taking.”

Gloria hesitated.

“What is it?” Kenneth asked.

“Before everything fell apart, we were getting crazy reports. Deaths, but a lot of them. Nine-one-one calls that sounded not like people drowning or getting caught up in the storm, but getting murdered. Weird stories, people seeing all kinds of madness.”

“Storms bring out the worst in people. There’s probably a lot of looting.”

Gloria thought about all this. She liked Ken. He had good instincts—he’d been embedded with the Marines for a while in Iraq and then in Afghanistan. On top of that, she’d heard whispers that station management had thus far been extremely impressed with his hire. Attaching herself to him might not be the worst idea.

“Okay, but we’ll need extra everything. Gas, batteries, food. We should approach this entirely self-contained even with a van.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way. See you in the parking garage in ten?”

Gloria nodded, wondering how much she might regret this decision later.

Chapter 11

All told, Alan’s night in County lock-up had made for a pretty shitty sequence of events..

Because of the storm, a bunch of transfers had gotten kicked back to Harris County after it