Flood Plains by Mark Wheaton (best reads txt) 📗

the ignition but no sign of its occupants, they’d driven it down the highway a few hundred yards. When the highway dipped low enough to flood, they’d parked to wait for the eye of the hurricane to pass overhead. The hope was that the floodwaters would recede at least a little, making it less dangerous to travel in a vehicle with all its windows busted out. The rain was steady, but the wind had already begun to let up.

Tony stared at the floor of the SUV for a moment as if looking for a starting point amongst the carpet threads. Finally, he shrugged.

“The rain was coming down pretty hard. The power had been off for hours. Water was coming in the back door and in from the garage. We kept putting towels down. I heard George screaming in the kitchen first and ran in to see. Those creatures were coming up from the sink and the dishwasher. It was tearing him apart. Grandma grabbed me and pulled me to the hall.”

Tony swallowed hard, holding back tears. Big Time put his arm around his shoulders.

“We ran through the house and saw it coming out of the sink in the bathroom. Robert and Wesley were waking up Mom, as they’d been in the kitchen with George. They got attacked from you guys’ bathroom. Grandma got me to the front door and pushed me out. She didn’t say nothing. The yard was flooded, but I could see it coming out of the sprinkler heads. Grandma closed the door and I got on my bike. People were coming out of their houses missing arms and legs. I saw a woman with a baby. They both got killed. I didn’t know where to go.

“You know that hotel that’s a crack house down by the highway? There were giant sludge worms tearing that thing apart. They were the size of trains. People were flying out windows, getting shredded in mid-air. Everybody was dying. They were running for the highway, so I followed. The rain was coming down hard. The guy from the gas station was warning everybody, saying to climb up onto the roof with him. He had a ladder set up, but everybody was ignoring him. Something told me he was right. The water was rising fast. These people weren’t going to outrun it.”

“It was just you two?” Big Time asked.

“Some guy joined us for a awhile, but when the floodwaters got really high, he panicked and tried to get to the highway. He didn’t make it five feet.”

Zakiyah was listening but couldn’t help playing this out with her daughter and grandmother in mind.

“You okay?” Scott asked, breaking her trance.

“Define ‘okay,’” Zakiyah replied, eliciting a twisted grin.

“’Okay’ means being able to keep going in hopes of finding your daughter alive even though the odds of us finding two of our people out here surviving feels improbable at best.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“Well, I’m telling you to shut that voice off. It’s not going to do you any good. It’s taking all my energy not to exit this car and jump off the bridge. You’re still in the land of hope. That’s where you have to stay. Everything else is bad enough.”

“All right.”

Zakiyah bumped Scott a little and he grinned.

“The rain is letting up,” Muhammad said. “Is this the eye?”

The darkness began to fade and the glow of sunlight began to illuminate the SUV.

“Yeah,” said Big Time. “Everybody’s eyes on the road. The second the waters part, we keep going. Anybody sees a vehicle worth stopping for, we’re on up and in it. Time to get this show back on the road.”

•  •  •

Sineada decided that the best way to get to Galveston was to try to pick up Buffalo Bayou where it met the White Oak Bayou on the downtown side of Fifth Ward. That would carry them to the Houston Ship Channel and from there, they’d ride the current out to Galveston.

Alan, even in his weakened state, couldn’t disagree more.

“I was on a bridge over Buffalo Bayou. It was nothing but junk racing down that river. It was raging, probably a hundred miles an hour. We try to get on that and we’ll be torn to pieces.”

“What about following it, then?” Sineada asked. “Get up alongside it, use it as our guide but stay in the floodwaters, easing into the Ship Channel at the mouth?”

“I’m sorry, but that’s nuts. I’m surprised this thing has held on as long as it has.”

He indicated around their makeshift raft.

“Well, what would you suggest?” Sineada asked, exasperated. “This storm’s on the move, and every minute that we don’t use our knowledge to do something about it is another person dead.”

There it was. Alan was the bad guy if he didn’t go along with this. If he didn’t willingly sacrifice himself to this mission, he painted himself the villain who wanted to let people die so he could live. Worse, he was in no condition to protest. If they left him somewhere, he would be just as likely to die. He’d risked his life to save theirs, and now they expected him to do it again.

“How do you know this thing won’t just go away when the storm dissipates?” Alan challenged.

“It’s got a foothold now,” Sineada replied. “The hurricane is an afterthought. If it’s using the water, it can go up any sewer, river, or waterline. If it’s going after people, what does that mean for Conroe? Huntsville? Heck, even Dallas? When it’s done with Texas, what’s to say it won’t roll out into Louisiana? How many dead are there going to be in Shreveport? Then it’s on to Little Rock, then maybe St. Louis. I can keep going.”

“And you think the one thing standing in its way is you and Mia?”

Sineada didn’t have to read much of Alan’s body language to know where this was coming from. She saw it all over his face and heard it in his voice.

“As you said, it’s already killed a lot