Flood Plains by Mark Wheaton (best reads txt) 📗

of people, maybe even millions,” Alan continued. “I under being selfless, but that’s suicide.”

“Every time they kill somebody, it gets stronger,” Mia began, walking over to her father. “When it started, it had about maybe ten thousand souls. Now it’s gotta be millions. At that rate, it could keep going until it ate up everybody on the planet.”

“Then why isn’t this about the three of us getting to the top of a mountain somewhere? We should be thinking about survival. We get to Galveston, then what?”

“That’s where I come in,” interjected Sineada. “It’s a collective, but one that’s easily led as no one knows what they’re driving to. They’re just moving. But think about it like birds. One bird gets spooked and changes direction, and the whole flock blindly follows. That’s what we’re dealing with here.”

“Follows you where?” Alan asked.

“Straight to the bottom of the sea,” Sineada replied matter-of-factly. “We just have to get them in the door first.”

Alan stared at Sineada with incredulity, then turned to Mia expecting to see the same expression on her face. Instead, he saw only disappointment. She knew exactly what her father had been thinking and didn’t understand why he wasn’t a better man.

This is who I am, baby, he thought. Someday you have to learn that no one’s going to look out for yourself except you.

Mia looked unconvinced.

Chapter 25

They found the dump truck midway between where they rescued Tony and the exit for Sineada’s house. It had a full tank of gas, was higher off the ground than the eighteen-wheeler, and just as difficult to maneuver.

The even better news was that it had a bucket of cleaning supplies stowed behind the seats. No aerosol cans, but plenty of flammable liquids that could be used as accelerant if and when they came across more sludge worms.

The sludge worms.

Since they’d been inside the eye, they’d actually seen very few.

“Maybe they’re following the front wall of the storm,” Scott suggested. “Could be miles from here.”

Big Time shook his head.

“I don’t think so. They’re there in the water—we just don’t see them. Something that big isn’t going to be easy to move.”

Scott was about to reply when he heard Zakiyah gasp.

Though Big Time and Sineada both lived in the area known as Greater Fifth Ward, Big Time was farther to the north in a more wooded area, whereas Sineada was right off downtown. An area that, due to the flooding of Buffalo Bayou, was now completely underwater. Only the tops of trees remained, a handful of islands across a lake that stretched all the way to the skyscrapers. A church steeple was the only manmade structure in sight. Everything else was easily sixteen feet underwater.

“Oh, my God,” Zakiyah whispered, covering her mouth.

No one spoke. Scott rubbed at his jaw, while Muhammad looked down at his hands. Big Time reached over and put his arms around Zakiyah letting her cry on his shoulder. Her entire body was shaking as tears poured from her eyes. After a moment, her sobs became a high-pitched, keening cry.

“Just go,” she whispered after a moment. “Just go…”

But Big Time didn’t move. He held Zakiyah as if she was his own daughter who’d just lost everyone she’d ever called family. After a moment, Scott nudged Big Time aside and they switched places.

“Muhammad?”

Muhammad reacted as if surprised to hear his name. He nodded quickly, pointing out the window.

“Fourth Ward. Off Allen Parkway.”

“We’ll take the 45.”

“No, no,” Big Time said, shaking his head. “It’ll be nothing but cars. Take the surface streets.”

Scott chose a route that took them back through the Heights to come at Allen Parkway from the northeast. If it had been a typical day in Houston, the drive would’ve taken forty-five minutes. Today, however, Scott made it in ten, swerving around thousands of cars, bouncing curbs, and splashing through puddles large and small. At every turn, Scott expected to see somebody. A person on the street, someone staring out from the front seat of a car, or just a face in a house window, it didn’t matter. The absence of people was its own unique claustrophobia.

Where’d they all go? Scott kept asking himself. How could it take every last shred of a person and leave nothing?

It was like they never existed at all. Like Big Time, he hoped that when it came to his family, it was quick.

“That’s it.”

Muhammad pointed up ahead to a large, fairly recently constructed building on the south side of the parkway. It looked relatively intact, all things considered.

Scott pulled the dump truck up onto the apartment’s front lawn, right next to the front door. The lobby had been flooded at one point but was dry now. The row of buildings was elevated over the Parkway and had been the first to drain when the water began to recede.

Scott set the parking brake but shook his head.

“I know it looks all right from here, but it’s got as many pipes as the factory. The second we’re in there, that could be it for us.”

“You’re right,” said Muhammad. “I’ll go in alone.”

Big Time was a second away from protesting, but then he glimpsed his son and reminded himself that things were different now. He fell silent as Zakiyah did similarly. Muhammad nodded, reaching for the door.

But that’s when Scott made a big show of sighing and opening the driver’s-side door.

“All right, let’s go.”

“You don’t have to,” quipped Muhammad. “It isn’t my time to die, but I don’t know about you.”

“What floor are you on again?”

“Third.”

“Fuck, man,” Scott said. “You’re not making this easy on yourself.”

Muhammad shrugged and moved towards the building.

“Good luck,” called Tony.

Scott resisted an urge to flip the bird at the kid.

•  •  •

It was gathering.

After spending so much of the day stretching itself thin to cover miles and miles of ground, devouring everything in its tendrils’ paths, it discovered a task that required all of itself. An impulse traveled the lengths of its millions of threads, a reflex more than a command.

Come back…come