Flood Plains by Mark Wheaton (best reads txt) 📗

the required second to get his bearings, and he fell backwards.

Luckily, Scott had anticipated this and caught him.

“Careful, you dipshit!” Scott yelled.

Muhammad finally regained his balance, only to realize he’d accidentally kicked one of Scott’s shoes off the skyway and into the floodwaters below.

“Fucking great,” Scott crowed.

“Why did you take your shoes off in the first place?” Muhammad asked.

“To catch your fat ass. I had no tread. Barefoot, you get some grip at least.”

It made sense. It also just made Muhammad feel worse.

“I’m sorry.”

“Fuck yourself,” Scott snapped. “Zakiyah? You ready?”

She wasn’t, but she lowered herself down anyway. Muhammad moved in to help, but Scott shooed him away.

“Get back.”

At the same time Scott was securing Zakiyah, the sound of Big Time’s eighteen-wheeler echoed up from the side of the building.

“Jesus. Look at that!”

Zakiyah was pointing at the mass of black tentacles swarming around the truck as it drove. One of the sludge worms rose from water as if to attack the driver’s-side door, only to have it open and a burst of flame kick out at it. The flames shuddered through the worm in a chain reaction, igniting every inch that was above water. It flopped back down into the waves, giving Big Time a few seconds of peace as he churned his way through the water to the skyway.

In the cab, Big Time struggled with the wheel. The truck handled like shit, a man staggering through oatmeal. Still, it was like being in a battleship, seemingly impregnable to the elements outside. As he pulled under the skyway, he waved to Scott.

“Come on down!” he cried, though no one could hear him.

There were thuds as the trio landed on the back of the rig. Big Time slid over to the passenger side, shook the can of WD-40, opened the door, and blasted the nearest sludge worm with flame. As it sank back into the water, Scott leaped onto the cab’s roof and swung inside, Dukes of Hazzard-style.

“My man!” Scott said, hugging Big Time.

When his friend grimaced in pain, Scott eyed his arm.

“Broken?”

“Pretty sure, yeah.”

“Well, shit. Least you’re alive.”

Muhammad appeared next and helped Zakiyah into the cab as well. Once everyone was in, Big Time put the truck back into gear and rolled forward.

As they moved away from the factory, everyone experienced spasms of relief. The hurricane may have been pounding around them, the floodwaters rising, and the monstrous sludge worms patrolling not far behind, but for the moment, they were safe.

•  •  •

As soon as they’d left Austin in their news van, Kenneth and Gloria found themselves in a deluge. The entire southeastern section of the state was being pummeled by rain showers brought inland by Hurricane Eliza.

A few more miles towards the Gulf, and they discovered that Kenneth had been right about the difficulty of getting into the city. Roadblocks had been set up on the highways leading out of Houston to allow both lanes to become westbound-only as evacuation routes. But the reporter’s assumption that there would be plenty of empty one-lane farm roads ignored by other travelers was also correct. The only problem with the farm roads, as Gloria repeatedly pointed out, was their tendencies to flood from just the slightest bit of rain.

“Oof! Careful!”

Gloria bounced up in her seat for the umpteenth time as what had looked like a “puddle” had turned out to be much deeper.

“I’m being careful, but there aren’t a lot of alternatives,” Kenneth replied, creeping the van along at twenty miles per hour. “We pull off onto the shoulder, and we’ll get stuck in the mud. What’s the next major intersection?”

“Looks like something labeled FM 2920 up there somewhere that takes us into North Houston,” Gloria said, checking the GPS. “Should we try that?”

“If we get stuck out here, we’ll not only miss the story, we’ll also be a laughingstock”

“We wouldn’t have to tell anybody.”

“Definitely. We’re probably past the roadblocks by now. If we get stuck out here, we’ll not only miss the story, but I’d be your personal laughingstock for the next year. That’s almost worse.”

“Then you’d better get us out of this.”

Kenneth’s hand went to the radio, only to be reminded that they hadn’t gotten any kind of signal for awhile. Their cell phones were dead, too, but Gloria had had the foresight to download onto her laptop a map showing the projected route of the hurricane. They knew it could’ve unexpectedly turned at any point, but they relied on the map to choose their route regardless.

“Oh, my God,” Gloria exclaimed. “Is that it?”

Kenneth slowed the van. Up ahead, the white clouds churned in front of a purple-gray sky. Walls of rain seemingly misted down from the sky, though both reporters could tell this was an optical illusion. The rain must have been coming down in sheets. Kenneth had purposely dropped south a bit so they’d be approaching the storm at its west wall, which in theory meant less devastating winds. The speed at which the clouds were moving suggested that if this was “less devastating,” whatever was at the front of the storm must be cataclysmic.

“Pretty spectacular, isn’t it?”

“Spectacular” wasn’t the word Gloria would’ve chosen. Terrifying. Massive. Foreboding. Yes, these were closer to how she felt as she stared at the monster through the windshield.

“Are we really driving into that?” Gloria asked.

“When you’re in it, it’s just like driving through a really bad rainstorm. Also, it’s already slowing down. By the time we get there, it might be downgraded to a Category 2.”

“But that’s still a hurricane.”

“I’m not saying it’ll be a walk in the park, but it looks far worse than it actually is.”

Gloria wasn’t sure she believed him. As her boss drove on ahead, she actually began to pray they’d get stuck in some ditch or sinkhole.

Chapter 20

The National Hurricane Center was the first institution to become significantly worried about Galveston.

“We’re getting readings back from our hardened equipment just fine, but there’s nothing from our monitoring staff on-site,” went a report to the Coast