This Deep Panic

by Lisa Stowe

  “I have no idea,” Casey said. “But if it comes back, getting away from it is going to be a bitch. The town is too small, too confined.”

  Max glanced at the river. “So what you’re saying is, we need bigger guns.”

  Casey shivered. “I doubt bigger guns will help.”

  “Maybe we can get help from FEMA.” Albert managed a shaky laugh, the sound so unexpected that the other two stared at him.

  He shoved his hands into the pockets of his old jeans and shook his head. “We had this flood. Took out a lot of riprap here. To get emergency funding from FEMA, we had to do reams of paperwork. One thing we had to prove was that there were no Orca whales in the river.”

  “What?” Max asked. “What crazy idiot thought there would be whales up here in mountains and fresh whitewater?”

  “FEMA,” Albert said shrugging.

  “The next time it floods, you’re screwed,” Max said. “No funding from FEMA.”

  “Right?” Albert asked. “No Orcas. But, hey, we do have a Sisiutl.”

  Casey didn’t see the humor. She left them, heart-heavy, and walked up and over the railroad berm. At the general store she stopped, staring at the pools of blood and bits of bone and meat. The remains of two old people she had failed.

  Samuel came crossed the street, his face white with shock, his pupils so dilated his eyes looked black.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Casey turned from the proof of her failure. How did you explain monsters? She didn’t know and she hurt too much to try, so she decided on truth. “A Sisiutl. But it’s gone. Into the river.”

  “Oh…uh…okay. It’s not going to come back, is it?” He suddenly looked much younger than his twenty-three years.

  Casey didn’t respond. All she saw in her mind was the old couple looking to her for help. Grimly, she marched to the door and hammered her fist against the frame. After a long moment Betty slowly undid the locks and came out, shame and fear in her eyes.

  It flashed through Casey’s mind how many times she’d seen people, faced with terror, shut down, able to think of only themselves. She understood. She truly did.

  But still.

  She gripped the doorjamb and leaned toward Betty. “All you had to do was open your door. But you didn’t.”

  “That demon would have gotten in.” Betty’s voice was high and shaky.

  “I’m talking about coffee,” Casey said, leaning right into Betty’s face. “If you had shared one fucking cup of coffee. They’d have been safe inside with you when that thing came out. They’d still be alive.”

  Betty drew herself up. “And if you hadn’t run and left them, they’d still be alive.”

  The words cut deeply and Casey felt the agony, knowing she would carry that failure, that grief, forever.

  But she’d be damned if she’d show one ounce of weakness to this old woman. “One cup of coffee,” she repeated, then turned her back and walked away.

  6

  Sharon sat at the edge of the river under the few remaining trees, waiting for the flood from the breaching dam. But when she heard the sound of a truck engine, she stood in surprise. Who else would be seeking out the flood?

  Down the access ramp came a big old truck with a homemade canopy. It passed her and she caught a brief glimmer of a face, maybe a child, pressed against the passenger window. The driver, invisible to her, didn’t pause, and she doubted they’d even seen her in the shadows. Without letting up on the gas, the truck drove into the small river and kept going, slow and steady. Obviously someone figured this was quicker than the blocked highway.

  She gave a slight nod, wishing them luck. Children shouldn’t die.

  But then, when they were well over halfway across, the truck faltered, as if caught on something, and Sharon saw the water coming. Her heart raced. This was it. She ran forward and jumped into the path of the wave. The force of the water knocked her to her knees and she went under. Rocks shifted as she tried to regain her footing and she went under again. And then, right as her chest grew tight with coming death, right when she opened her eyes wide in the deep mossy green of underwater light, wide enough to see her ending, the wave passed.

  Sharon scrambled to her feet, lungs sucking in rain-laden air. The old truck was long gone. She stood, soaked to her neck, shivering with the shock of the bitterly cold river. The water level dropped quickly until it was only about shin deep. And still dropped.

  What the hell kind of flood was that?

  A loud rattling rumble came from behind her and she turned to see another old rig of some sort coming down the access road to the parking area by the river. It was wide and boxy and rusty. Sharon watched it, shaking with cold and wondering if everyone was going to try and cross the river.

  When the rig got to the water’s edge, it stopped and the driver’s window rolled down slowly, creaking as it went.

  “The Culmback’s breached,” a young man said. “You need to get out of here. Climb in. We’ll help you.”

  “The flood passed,” Sharon said in disgust, throwing out her arm. “Piss-ant river.”

  “No, no,” the young man said. “That was just the leading wave. We saw it from the highway. Probably from when the dam first cracked. The flood’s coming any second. We need to go, now.”

  A young woman in the passenger seat leaned across the driver. “We’ve got plenty of room.”

  Sharon stepped closer, cupping her elbows to hold the cold tremors in. Peering in the window she saw the young woman, plump, with brown hair and glasses. The young man was maybe eighteen but looked thirteen with fine tufts of whiskers, wide, scared eyes, and pimples.

  There were two more kids in the back. She caught a glimpse of their movements.

  But there was something else, in those few seconds that she looked at them. Something like gray shadows among them.

  Something that felt like death surrounding them. Something that pulled at her. Maybe a faster way to die than drowning.

  “Okay, thanks,” Sharon said, going around the back of the vehicle.

  A young man pushed open the small door so Sharon could climb in. The open space had a bench seat along each side. A girl sat there, clutching the edge of the bench. The young man pulled the door shut and then sat next to the girl. Scattered around the floor were backpacks and grocery bags.

  “Hang on to something,” the driver yelled, and hit the gas.

  Sharon stumbled and the boy caught her, helping her to find a perch.

  “Wow, man, like you’re really lucky,” the boy said. “We don’t have much time.”

  Sharon wondered for a brief second why she didn’t just wait for the real flood. But those odd gray shadows were still there, amorphous between the kids, fading around and through them like mist. It was only when she didn’t look at them directly that they took on vaguely humanoid shape. Whatever they were, if she was even seeing them, she was sure of one thing. Death would be wherever these kids were going.

  The front end of the vehicle dropped forward as if going down a steep hill, powered through the water, and then climbed the other side.

  “We’re following a friend of Tessa’s,” the boy said, gesturing up front toward the plump girl. “He’s with an old couple. She saw them cross here, and it’s, like, the only way to get out of town now the highway’s fucked. But it took us a while to find something that would go through the water.”

  “The fire department had this just sitting by the station,” the girl said. “It’s an old 1940s Willys Jeep. Connor borrowed it.”

  The driver, obviously Connor, took a hand off the steering wheel long enough to raise a fist in the air.

  “Where are you going?” Sharon asked.

  “No idea, man,” Connor said. “Just following Tessa’s boyfriend.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” Tessa said, and even from Sharon’s back seat view she saw the fire of a blush race up Tessa’s neck. “I don’t even know his name. He’s just a guy that comes through work. But they looked l
ike they knew where they were going and how to get there.”

  The jeep lurched sideways and Sharon fell against the girl, who caught her and then clung, as if Sharon could keep them both stable. When the jeep bumped up over a curb and made it to pavement, Connor hit the gas and followed rutted tracks into someone’s back yard.

  Sharon drew in a deep breath, teeth chattering, and finally looked past the shadows to actually see the young people. Connor and Tessa, and the two in the back.

  All in McDonald’s uniforms.

  The jeep rattled like it was going to fall apart, but Connor managed to keep hold of the big steering wheel. Sharon saw the tracks he followed, and wondered if the optimism of these young people would end up saving them, or if they’d find the old truck they followed stuck.

  But she remembered one of her father’s sayings about necessity being the mother of invention. More cars were taking to the side roads in panicked attempts to get free of the gridlock on the highway. The Willys jeep had an advantage with its broad wheelbase and big tires. Out the small back windows Sharon watched cars getting stuck in boggy back yards.

  “Dude, we’re running out of time,” the boy said, one hand splayed against the back window to hold himself steady.

  “We don’t need to get out of town if we can just find some higher ground,” Tessa said.

  Sharon wanted to lean back against the wall of the jeep, but they were bouncing around too much. She hung onto the edge of the bench seat like the other kids were doing, trying to brace herself. But where they were panicked, she was curious.

  What were those shadows floating around the young people in the back of the jeep? It was like watching wisps of fog that had intent, softly moving from one person to another, tendrils wrapping around their bodies, almost as if stroking them.

  “Something’s smoking back here, dude,” the boy said.

  “Nothing we can do about it.” Connor waved a hand. “Drowning or burning, take your pick, man.”

  Not smoke, Sharon thought. Definitely not smoke. If she looked directly at the shadowy movements, she saw only misty fog. But if she used her peripheral vision, looked out of the corners of her eyes, they looked human. She knew, somehow, that these shadows meant death.

  None of them were drifting near her, though.

  “Isn’t this a back road to Startup?” the girl next to Sharon asked.

  “Yes,” Sharon said, not really caring. “What’s your name?”

  It seemed somehow like she should know the names of the people who were about to die with her. Because whatever these shadow things were, they sure as hell weren’t there to rescue people from a flood.

  “Oh, uh, Bea. Bea Jenkins.” The girl reached out as if to shake Sharon’s hand, then stared at her trembling fingers as if wondering what she was doing. She dropped them to her lap. “And this is Randall.”

  The boy just nodded, struggling to stay on the bench seat.

  The jarring gait of the jeep eased somewhat as they reached pavement again, and Connor hit the gas. Then they were suddenly banged upward and slammed down as Connor barreled through a huge pothole that had opened up in the road. No one told him to slow down. When another car got in their way, he simply went out around it, over fences, down into drainage ditches, and at one point, straight through an outhouse-shaped board structure that looked like a homemade shelter for kids at a bus stop.

  One of the shadows draped itself over Randall, who was still bracing himself with a hand against the back window. Sharon stared, transfixed, as a piece of fog slipped in to his open mouth. It slid in and in and in, paused, and then slowly withdrew. It looked…fuller…when it softly floated free.

  A deep tremor shook Randall, and he bent suddenly, gagging.

  “You okay?” Bea asked. She made it to her feet and stumbled over to his bench, dropping down to sit next to him.

  Randall nodded, breathed in deeply, and then tried to speak. He coughed. “Just car sick I think.”

  “All this bouncing around and no side windows,” Bea said, rubbing her hand between his shoulder blades. “You’re freezing, too. Doesn’t help.”

  No, Sharon thought. It’s not car-sickness. It’s fog that wants to eat you. She moved a hand gently through one of the tendrils. Come on. I’m right here.

  The tendril coiled, cool and damp around her arm, sliding toward her shoulder. The piece shifted, took the vague shape of a hand, almost as if she was being caressed. She drew in a deep breath as it slid across her breast and paused over her heart.

  Yes. Take it.

  The ghostly hand withdrew, leaving her with a deep ache, with a sense of not-yet.

  Sharon’s nipples were erect, burning with pain, and ultra-sensitive to the cotton of her bra. She bunched her hands into fists, flooded with an almost over-powering urge to reach out and beg the shadow to come back, to enter her, to take her, to take her life.

  “You okay?” Bea stared. “You’re, like, almost hyperventilating.”

  Sharon hung her head, gasping for air as a sudden rage twisted through her. She wanted to scream for the shadows to kill her. She wanted to leap into the fog.

  But it was too late.

  The shadows were sifting through cracks around doors and windows. Leaving her.

  7

  Ethan stood in the chilly morning air and listened as the students reported in on injuries. Paul Larsen had a deep laceration above his right hip but Nathaniel Salvatore had done a good job bandaging and wrapping it. Lucy Hsu’s ribs were bruised but Ethan didn’t think they were broken. Over all, the remaining injuries were minor. And Payton, never prepared, cried as she worked on the boots of her dead friend.

  Gear was gathered and packed and the fire extinguished. Ethan looked at the site. John’s body had been moved inside the bus with Amy and both covered with the tarp the kids had slept under. Ethan worried that the wild animal from the night before would find the bodies before they made it back, but there was nothing else he could do. He turned his attention to the living.

  “Okay, listen up. We’re climbing up to the logging road. The bank isn’t stable. So go slow, double up with the injured. Test your footing before you commit, don’t use tree roots for support unless you know they can handle your weight. Once you get to the top, find a secure place and wait. Don’t wander off on your own. Questions?”

  There weren’t any. Ethan stood at the bottom of the slide waiting for each person to start the climb. Michael was going to have the hardest time, being the least physically fit.

  Once all the students were working their way upward, Ethan looked back at the bus one last time.

  No signs of Val.

  Just the damp woods, leaves falling slowly in a twisting breeze, and two young people with their futures stolen. Taken during his watch. Taken by an earthquake. Something he couldn’t retaliate against.

  Shouldering his backpack, he started the climb several feet below Michael, watching the young man carefully to make sure he got to the top.

  The logging road looked more like a narrow footpath but at least some of it remained. The slide had started high above them and rivulets of water ran downward, taking soil and rocks with them. The ground was clearly unstable, ready to give way if there was another aftershock.

  “Where to?” Jennifer asked. “Back the way we came? Do you think the old bridge over the North Fork will still be there?”

  Ethan thought a moment. “No idea. But if it’s gone, we can follow the river to Index. So get some distance between us and this slide.”

  Rowan led the way, picking her footing over the most secure spots, heading for the undamaged part of the logging road. Ethan brought up the rear wondering just how far they were going to get over all the downed trees.

  Although they made it to more solid ground, the forest around them was full of debris so solid ground didn’t equate with easy walking. Tree trunks had to be clambered over or quickly scooted underneath. Boulders had to be maneuvered around. And the logging road was difficult to find in the
traumatized landscape. Ethan pulled out his compass and took readings to make sure they were headed in the right general direction.

  Rowan stepped off to one side and let the others pass her and Zack took the lead.

  “What’s up?” Ethan asked when he drew even with her.

  “I think a wild animal or something is following us.”

  “Wild animals are going to be traumatized, too,” Ethan said.

  “I know.” Rowan shoved loose tendrils of hair back behind her ear. “But I’ve seen something out of the corner of my eye a couple times now.”

  Before Ethan could respond, Zack yelled for him. He saw the kids clustered around the young man. Jennifer sank down on a log and buried her face in her hands.

  “Oh my god! What are we going to do?” Payton’s voice carried back to Ethan and he heard the edge of hysteria.

  “Let me through,” Ethan said, working his way through the group to where Zack and Spike stood motionless.

  The logging road was gone. Another slide had simply taken out the side of the mountain in a more massive movement of earth than the one their bus had been involved in. Rivulets of water ran down the sharp sides of the slide, taking soil and rocks. As he watched, a tree toppled and went over with a loud crack, slowly sliding downhill.

  “Any great ideas?” Spike asked.

  Ethan shoved damp hair out of his face and studied the terrain. Even someone fit like Rowan would have problems, let alone injured kids. “We’re going to have a rough time crossing that.”

  “Can we go up and around it?” Rowan asked. “Bushwhack?”

  “Maybe,” Ethan said, thinking. “But we’re going to have to go back to find more stable ground. And we have to make sure we climb high enough above it. If another aftershock hits, we don’t want to be anywhere near the edge. That slide’s alive. It’s not done moving yet.”

  “We’re going to get lost,” Payton said, her eyes wide.

  “No we’re not.” Ethan shrugged off his backpack and unzipped a pocket to pull out a Green Trails map sealed in a Ziploc bag. “We’re going to take compass bearings before we move. We’re going to plot the route out on this topo map.”