Flood Plains by Mark Wheaton (best reads txt) 📗

“Everybody! Conference room! Now!” Scott barked.

Part of Big Time remembered that Scott spoke about being in the military at the tail end of the Reagan years. He’d actually believed him because instead of tales of heroics, Scott only claimed to have “warmed the bench” at Fort Hood up in Killeen before coming out a sergeant.

“You go in there and you’ll be trapped!” someone yelled from down the catwalk. “Those offices all dead end. You’ve got to get to the parking lot.”

But Big Time had made up his mind to follow Scott. If he led him to destruction, they’d all go down together.

•  •  •

Muhammad was the last one to follow Scott into the second-floor offices. Only a few years before, he’d obsessively watched video after video of the tsunami damage done around the Indian Ocean. He’d been fascinated by the number of cameras that captured the full weight of the sea being thrust upon the land. Everything that followed had interested him as well, from the variety of previously-undiscovered deep sea life that brought to the surface to the variety of deep ocean alert systems that coastal nations invested in at great expense to bring back the badly needed tourist trade.

The images now filling his eyes were just as otherworldly.

The day-shifters who had run back onto the factory floor, likely with the idea of escaping out the loading dock doors, were all being torn to pieces. He saw them raised aloft, heard their screams, and then watched as they were manipulated into positions that didn’t account for an intact skeletal system. There were explosions of blood as people were squeezed like sponges, their skin unable to handle the anaconda-like grasp of the black oil tendrils.

He surprised himself by witnessing all this at a remove, never once worried about his own safety. He wasn’t a devout Muslim in any sense of the word, but he had a strong feeling that it simply wasn’t his time.

Like many, he’d imagined the rituals he would go through when he knew he was about to face Allah. Someone, somewhere would prompt him with the Talqeen, and he would reply with the Shahaadah: “Laa ilaaha illa-Allah” or “There is no true god except Allah.” It was said that whoever spoke these as their last words was to enter paradise no matter what their sins from the rest of their life.

He was not yet ready to say these words.

As the screams subsided, he finally turned and walked back into the warren of offices beyond the second-floor catwalk.

When he reached the conference room, Muhammad saw that only a handful of people had chosen this route: Big Time; Scott; Zakiyah; the woman whose birthday it had been the day before, Ro-Ro; and a woman he thought was named Amber.

“What do we do?” Zakiyah asked.

“First, we have to figure out if there are pipes in these walls,” Scott said.

Muhammad looked at Scott. Scott with the mullet and the Wile E. Coyote shirts. Scott with the tinted glasses and the racist comments. Scott, who suddenly looked like a string theoretician working out an equation in his head involving elliptical curves.

“There’s a men’s room next door, I think,” Muhammad said. “That would mean pipes in the walls.”

“Aw, shit,” Big Time said. “What now?”

“This is going to sound crazy,” Scott said evenly. “But we need to get to the roof.”

“What about the storm?” Ro-Ro asked. “What about all that shit that was eating everybody?”

“If whatever-that-was travels through in water and has found a way into the pipes, the ground and everything on it is fucked,” Scott replied. “You have any idea how many pipes run under this city? Fresh water? Sewage? Sprinklers? Hook-ups for your sink and washing machine? If the building or road you’re on has even a toe in the twentieth century, these things can get you.”

“What are these ‘things’?” Muhammad asked. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

Scott looked at him like he was an idiot for a moment, then spoke to him in the same fashion.

“What else do you need to know? These fucking things just tore Elmer, Dennis, and everybody out there apart. These fucking things move through the water like an otter on meth, leap out and kill you by dissolving your flesh. These fucking things that, if they’ve been riding in with the hurricane, have probably killed just about everybody in Harris County. Those fucking things, you goddamn goat-fucking faggot.”

Scott surprised everyone then by breaking down into tears. Muhammad was confused, but then it hit him.

The ground and everything on it is fucked.

“My wife…” Muhammad began.

“My wife, your wife, Big Time’s kids, his mother, everybody’s everybody,” Scott said, spitting out the words.

Big Time blanched. He hadn’t thought of any of this, either. He looked at Scott, eyes wide.

“I’ve gotta get to my kids.”

Scott shook his head.

“Look around us, man. You’ve got to start thinking about them in the past tense.”

“My little girl is in the city!” cried Zakiyah. “She’s with her great-grandma. I’ve got to get down there.”

“Are you listening to me?” Scott roared. “This may be a survival-of-the-fittest event. I’m not talking about finding a way to rescue somebody out there in the storm. I’m talking about surviving the next thirty seconds. Once those things are done out there, I’d imagine they’re going to come looking for us, and they’ve already proven how good they are at that.”

Scott paused. This time, no one talked back.

“Now, if we want to live another few minutes so we can fight about what to do next, we have to get to the roof. Now.”

•  •  •

When Alan had reached the bridge over Buffalo Bayou, the river level was only a few feet below the bridge but was running fast. He couldn’t see any sign of the black tentacles and wondered if they had a problem with the current. Maybe his intuition about the bridge would prove lucky.

The problem now was the wind.

The rain was coming down something fierce. With the hurricane-force winds blowing it horizontally into his face,