Flood Plains by Mark Wheaton (best reads txt) 📗

•  •  •

“How long have you been married?” Scott asked as Muhammad led the way to the fire stairs.

“Seven years.”

“My wife and I were married twenty-four years. We were going to try and do something for twenty-five next year, but the money wasn’t looking right. We weren’t sure it was going to work.”

Muhammad nodded, unsure what to say. The carpet in the lobby had been soaked through, and even the water that rose around his shoe with each step had made him nervous. Once they were in the stairwell, the steps were metal, but a faint black stripe a couple of feet up the wall indicated a recent high-water mark. Muhammad didn’t want to be in there if the water began to rise again.

“You guys have any kids?” Scott asked.

“No, thankfully,” Muhammad replied but then bit his tongue.

“Nah, that’s okay,” Scott said, coming up to the second-floor landing. “I wouldn’t wish this on anybody. It’s the fatalist in me, but I think I’ve always known that my kids would go before me. Having been in the army, you get used to preparing for the worst. When we first had them, I knew losing them would be the worst. Every year they get older, you know they can take better care of themselves, but it doesn’t matter. You just never get to the point where you’re not thinking the world is just going to take them away for your sins.”

“So you think you’ll be okay?” Muhammad asked softly.

“I don’t know yet. Might be why I came with you. If I get killed up here, I’m some kind of hero, especially if I save you in the process. Then I never have to deal with it, right?”

Muhammad thought about this for a moment but then shook his head.

“That would put your death on me, though. I don’t want that.”

Scott burst out laughing.

“I’m just kidding with you, Muhammad. If I get killed up here, you’ll be killed, too, and you know it.”

•  •  •

Out in the dump truck, Big Time kept his eye peeled for sludge worms. The street that ran past Muhammad’s apartment building was parallel to Allen Parkway but elevated, the parkway having been carved through a hill that once stood on the west side of town. Though the elevated road was devoid of standing water, Allen Parkway was still flooded. Raging water clouded with dirt raced away from downtown, using the parkway as a culvert.

“There!” Tony shouted.

Sure enough, a thick tendril of pitch moving against the current snaked its way towards the central part of the city.

Big Time’s hand went to the gear shift, ready to pull the truck away, but the sludge worm seemed to take no notice of the people up on the frontage road.

“Me and Ed watched them for hours,” Tony said. “We didn’t see any tails either. We’d see one end going after a person, but the other end would just go and go and go. He joked there was some octopus down in the Gulf with a million arms.”

“Where the hell is it going?” Zakiyah asked.

“Joining up with the main mass, maybe,” Big Time offered. “Remember that thing reaching from the floor of the factory all the way to the ceiling? That wasn’t one of those little strings. More looked like a bunch of those pitch whips all pushed together into one. They pull together when they have to concentrate their efforts.”

The bang of the apartment building’s door startled everyone in the truck. Muhammad and Scott came tearing out the lobby like bats out of hell.

“Oh, shit,” muttered Big Time, gunning the engine.

“It’s all right!” Scott yelled, shaking his head. “They’re not in there.”

The pair, both out of breath, piled into the cab.

“Show him the note,” Scott said.

Muhammad handed Big Time a piece of paper. Scribbled across it was what he assumed must be Muhammad’s name in Arabic script but then the words “Brammeier Tower.”

“It’s that new building just on the other side of the 45,” Scott said. “Still under construction. The framing’s up, floors are there, but I doubt there’s a single water pipe in the whole place.”

“How’d your wife know all that?” Zakiyah asked.

“I don’t think she did,” Muhammad replied.

He pointed to the building in the distance. In one of the highest floors, a single light flashed off and on.

“We’re not the only survivors,” Scott said.

“But up in some sky rise?” Big Time asked.

“Why the hell not?” Scott asked. “You figure it, stay away water, stay off the pavement, take to the high ground, but as high as you possibly can where that shit can’t reach you. If you’re not in an airplane, where are you?”

“Brammeier Tower.”

Chapter 26

Something was wrong.

As Mia and Sineada, along with whatever help they could drag out of Alan, struggled through the hazardous floodwaters, the little girl sensed something new coming off the tendrils racing past. The tentacles of black oil hadn’t bothered them since Mia mentally rent them from her father. This seemed to lend credence to Sineada’s hive mind theory that they were being controlled as a collective. Once it had decided something, it was set in stone.

In this case, that decision seemed to be that the entire organism was retracting. She knew this because any “ends” or fingertips she saw were always pointed away from downtown, dragging back like tails.

As a particularly large section roped by, kicking up a hell of a wake as it went, Sineada glanced back to Mia.

Where are they going?

Mia shrugged. Though they were still in the eye of the hurricane, the haze of the rain at the rear eye wall filled the sky behind downtown. This only served to better clarify the steadily flashing beacon coming from near the top of one of the buildings on the west side..

“Do you see that?” Mia said, pointing to the light. “Right there!”

Alan turned around as best he could. The beacon was flashing. He recognized it as the only Morse code he knew.

“It’s an SOS. Means there are other