by Chelsea Cain
“That column tacked up above your sink,” Susan said. “I wrote that.”
“I know who you are,” Carey said.
“What column?” Archie said.
“About Ralph,” Susan said.
Carey yanked her head back by the hair and examined her face. “You look different than your picture.”
“I dyed my hair.”
Archie’s stomach knotted. “What was your grandfather’s name?” he asked, anticipating the answer.
“Elroy McBee,” Carey said.
“Vanport,” Archie said softly.
Carey’s face clouded. “My grandmother carried my mother and a suitcase for five miles. She lost everything. Her husband. Her house. Strangers took them in. No one remembers.” He looked past Archie at the boy. “Get your ass over here, Sam.”
Archie heard the boy get up off the chair, the soft splash of his rubber rain boots slipping into the water.
“Your name is Patrick Lifton,” Archie called to the kid. “Your dad works at a lumber mill. Your mom works from home building Web sites. You’ve got a black Lab named Fly. They’ve never stopped looking for you, Patrick. They want you to come home.”
“Bring it to me, you little fucker,” Carey snarled. “Or I will hurt you.”
Archie needed to distract Carey, give him something else to focus on other than the boy. “The skeleton from the slough hasn’t been identified,” Archie said. “You don’t know it’s your grandfather.”
“The flood got a lot of kids,” Carey said. “Women. A few couples, that worked the nightshift, died in their beds. There were only three men on the missing list. Two black. The paper said the skeleton was a white man. It’s him.”
“Are they dead?” Patrick asked.
“Who?” Archie said to Patrick, his gun still trained on Carey’s chin. “Your parents? No. They’re fine.”
Patrick’s voice wavered. “The blue-rings.”
Who knew how many murders the kid had witnessed, but he was worried about the octopuses. “No,” Archie said. “No. We saved them.”
Carey’s eyes narrowed. “He’s a liar, Sam. He’ll put you in jail.”
There was the briefest of commotions behind Archie. “Give that back!” the boy called.
“I’ve got the bucket,” Flannigan hollered to Archie. “It’s okay, Patrick,” Archie heard him say to the boy. “I’m a policeman. I’m here to help you.”
Patrick Lifton apparently didn’t buy it. Archie heard a flat splash—the sound of the chair getting knocked over. Then the frantic, spastic splash of small rain boots.
“What’s going on?” Archie called.
“He’s headed for the back door,” Flannigan cried.
Archie had to go after the kid. He had to leave Susan.
Carey’s forehead twitched. His baby face gleamed with sweat. He smiled. He knew where the kid was going, Archie realized. They’d find each other. Just like before.
“For fuck’s sake,” Susan said. “Go get him.”
Archie took a step back and then turned and ran toward the back of the store, the back door, the boy. He glanced back once, just in time to see Susan elbow Carey hard in the stomach.
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Susan had seen Patrick flee.
She was not going to lose him.
She hit Carey again, her elbow slamming into the soft flesh just under his rib cage. He gasped. She had pointy elbows. People had always told her that. His grip on her hair loosened a bit and she pulled away, squirming out from the deadweight of his meaty arm as he doubled over in pain. She winced at the sting of hair ripping from her scalp as she did.
She scrambled toward the back of the store, pulling empty aquariums from the shelves behind her as she ran. They splashed and some shattered, littering the path behind her with glass.
Carey was lumbering after her, a yarn-sized lock of her raspberry hair still in his fist.
The door at the back of the store was still closing from when Archie had gone through it. Susan threw herself against the door’s metal push bar. It was called a panic bar. Now she knew why.
The door opened onto a back hall leading to another door, this one with a green exit sign and a flashing emergency strobe mounted above it. Susan kept running, her heart pounding. The water wasn’t as deep back here. The strobe light bounced and flickered through the corridor. She waited for the sound of Carey coming through the door behind her, but it didn’t come.
When she got to the emergency exit door and pushed it open, she could hear Archie and Flannigan calling Patrick’s name.
The door opened onto a side street.
She had stumbled drunk down this street before, leaving clubs at two-thirty in the morning, looking for her car when she should have been calling for a cab.
The voices were coming from the east, toward the river, so Susan took a right and headed in that direction. It was pitch-black. If she hadn’t spent her early twenties throwing up on that street, she would have snapped an ankle for sure.
She clomped through the floodwater, trying to ignore the cold biting through her rubber boots.
Carey still hadn’t come through the door.
She considered calling out to Archie, but she didn’t want to scare Patrick if he was still around.
Her clothes were still damp and gooseflesh rose on her arms from the wind.
If she were a kid, where would she go?
Not far. That was for sure. Not in the dark. Not in this weather. Heil had told Susan about the kid’s fort under the bridge. He liked to hide. It was dark enough on that street that you could hide in plain sight. But there was another spot, a big green Dumpster parked next to the kitchen entrance of a bar, where Susan had been surprised more than once by some drunken frat boy with his dick out, peeing against the bricks.
Susan squinted in the darkness, barely making out the hulking shadow of the Dumpster, and headed for it.
“Patrick?” she whispered when she got close. “It’s me.”
She heard Archie yell Patrick’s name again. He was close, where the street met the parkway. Susan could see his flashlight beam cutting through the darkness.
The Dumpster stank, ripe from two days without garbage pickup. Susan put one hand on the slimy, cold metal and thrust the other into the dark emptiness where the back of the Dumpster abutted the building.
“Take my hand,” she whispered.
She waited, her hand outstretched, feeling like an idiot.
Archie’s flashlight beam was getting closer.
She was about to call to Archie, to let him know that she was all right.
Then she felt small cold fingers fold around hers.
She squeezed them. “We need to get out of here,” she said.
Patrick’s form materialized from the darkness. He stepped forward, and she pulled him into her arms.
Archie’s flashlight beam streaked past them, then doubled back and landed on Susan.
She peered into the light.
“I’ve got him,” she said. She scooped up the boy and carried him forward, following the light to Archie. “We’re okay. I don’t know where Carey is.”
At the intersection with Naito, the water was mid-thigh-high and moving fast. Susan had to fight against it to stay upright. Archie took her face in his hands and held it, not saying anything.
He put an arm around her shoulder. “Come with me,” he said. They started wading north. He was leading them toward the Burnside Bridge, she realized. There were rescue crews up there. She could see their emergency lights.
Archie waved his flashlight skyward, signaling them, then toward Flannigan fifty feet ahead, his own halogen glow bobbing in the dark.
They only had a block to go, but the strength of the current made it hard.
Archie tried to take Patrick, but the boy clung to Susan, refusing to let go, and she was secretly pleased not to give him up.
The two helicopters buzzing in circles over the river sent out rings of concentric rip
ples.
She turned back to look for Carey, half expecting to see him come splashing up behind her.
There was no differentiation between park or street or sidewalk. It was all underwater now. It would take months for the city to recover from this. Maybe years.
“Listen,” Archie said.
She didn’t hear anything but sirens and helicopters. And then, somehow, she did. Low, almost subsonic at first, like a stomach growling, and then, all at once, a vast white noise that seemed to bleed into all five senses. Every hair on Susan’s body stood up.
She couldn’t hear the helicopters or sirens anymore. Only the oncoming water. But she didn’t turn to look. She didn’t want to see it.
There wasn’t any point.
There was no time to run.
Archie wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug, and she put her forehead against the crook of his neck, the boy sandwiched firmly between them. Susan could feel the boy tense.
“Take a breath,” Archie said.
Susan braced herself.
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He lost them immediately when the water hit. It was like being swallowed, forced down a tube by peristalsis. There was no staying on the surface. Archie was sucked under, tumbling, the water thundering in his ears. He had no sense of direction, no clue which way was up. He managed to get his flak jacket off, and when he slammed against something hard he somehow had the instinct to grab hold of it and grapple his way to the surface.
It was a streetlight.
The water seemed to draw back, like the undertow of a great wave breaking shore, and Archie had to hug the streetlight with all his strength to keep from being sucked off toward the river.
And then it was over.
Suddenly everything was incredibly still, the water waist-high, cold, and black, without a ripple on its surface.
“Susan,” Archie called, his voice hoarse, looking around in the darkness. “Patrick?”
The damage was obvious all around him. Half the cherry trees from the Japanese American Plaza were gone, a car was on its side, half submerged, all the windows of the storefronts were broken. The chair from inside the aquarium store floated by.
He heard splashing nearby, and turned to see a man’s clawing hand emerge from the water. Archie reached for it instinctively. It grabbed hold, and Archie pulled the person to the surface, expecting to see Flannigan.
But it was Elroy Carey who came up bellowing.
He exploded from the water and got his hands around Archie’s neck. Archie was knocked off balance and fell back into waist-deep water. Carey fell on top of him, and Archie flailed at Carey’s wrists, trying to pry them off, but the water stole all his leverage.
It also stole Carey’s.
Archie held his breath, put his feet together, bent his knees, and kicked Carey in the shins. The force pushed Carey’s feet out from under him and he belly-flopped forward, losing his grip. Archie got out from under him and came to the surface for air.
But Carey got his footing back and turned and came back at him.
Carey’s head was matted and bleeding. He’d been knocked against something when the flood surge hit. His skull had been cracked open. Archie could see the pink shimmer of brain tissue where Carey’s wet brown hair parted around the wound. Rage and adrenaline were the only things keeping him on his feet.
Archie reached for his gun, but the flood had ripped the holster right off his belt.
Carey lunged for him.
But Archie was ready. Carey had killed Heil. He’d taken Patrick Lifton from his family. He’d tried to kill Henry. He deserved to die.
Archie clenched his fist and swung hard for Carey’s head wound. His fist slammed against bone and hair and something slippery. It knocked Carey over on his side, back into the water.
Carey pulled himself to his feet, doubled over, heaving, soaked in filthy water.
He lifted his head and looked sideways at Archie.
Blood gushed from his scalp, over his face, into his eyes, and down his chest. He adjusted the suspenders of his waders. His eyes rolled back. And he sank to his knees, disappearing almost completely beneath the water. He managed to stay there for a moment, only his forehead visible, the gaping wound pulsing blood. Then it sank below the surface. Archie watched until the bubbles stopped. It only took a few minutes. He waited a few minutes more, just to be sure. Then he felt for the body, and lifted it by the shirt collar.
Carey’s scalp was clean. Archie could see the full extent of his injuries now—a two-inch section of his brain exposed. The wound had stopped bleeding. He was dead. Archie looked around. He was alone. He released Carey’s body and watched it sink and vanish in the river.
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Susan surfaced and took in a great gasp of air. She was alive. She’d been tossed and tumbled and rolled underwater until she thought her lungs were going to burst, and she was still alive. Air—humid, fetid, flooded-city air—had never tasted so good. She was still in the water, but she was swimming, above the surface. She could breathe.
Then the absence struck her.
Where was Patrick?
She’d lost him when the water hit.
“Patrick?” she yelled. She paddled in frantic circles in the water, searching for him in the darkness, calling his name again and again.
But he didn’t answer.
“Archie?” she called.
He wasn’t there.
They were both gone.
Or maybe she was the one who was gone.
She looked around for landmarks, but couldn’t orient herself. She didn’t see any buildings. Rain pattered against the surface of the water. Compared to the water she was in, it felt warm.
The floodsurge was still moving, and taking her along with it. She could feel it all around her—a billion pounds of pressure all rushing in the same direction. She realized then that she wasn’t swimming. She was treading water, paddling against the current.
The muscles in her arms already burned. She was getting more exhausted by the second.
She strained again to get a bead on where she was. And then she saw the shadow of something overhead. A bridge.
She was in the middle of the river.
Frantic now, she swam for the shore, wide strokes, straight kicks, employing every ounce of energy in her possession. She swam like an Olympian. Like Esther Williams. But every force she exerted was met with twice the resistance. The current was too strong. She couldn’t fight it.
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Archie stumbled through the waist-deep water, calling out for Susan, for the boy, for Flannigan. He coughed after each name, as if even the effort of producing sound were too much for his lungs. He didn’t know if it was from his cold or all the water he’d inhaled.
The flashlight was gone, along with his shoes, torn away in the flood. His phone was dead. Some of the buildings had exterior emergency lights, and the flashing white and yellow beacons illuminated the scene in splinters of light.
He kept walking. Kept calling for them.
His knee jammed into something immovable underwater. He put his hands in the cold river and ran them over the obstacle. A concrete public trash can. He could see its former contents now, a trail of paper cups and red plastic straws, crumpled take-out bags and water bottles, stretching out in a vague trail across the water. Archie found his way around the trash can, and then nearly lost his balance going over a curb. A branch swept past and Archie grabbed it, using it to trace the ground ahead like a blind man.
He could wade out. Make his way up to the rescue crews on Burnside. Get help. But it would take valuable, maybe crucial minutes.
The Willamette had pulled them in opposite directions, Archie guessed. If he was right, if Susan wasn’t nearby, then she was in the river.
The helicopters still hovered overhead, only now their spotlights scanned along the edge of the waterfront. They were looking for survivors.
Archie cou
ld hear sirens. And see some kind of light gliding on the surface of the water, getting closer.
He saw other lights then. Skating along the water, appearing from behind buildings and dispersing.
Rescue boats.
The first light he saw was headed toward him, moving north down what had been the parkway.
“Here!” Archie yelled, waving his arms. “Here!”
A spotlight beam hit him in the face and stayed fixed on him until the boat was right at his side.
An arm reached under each of Archie’s armpits and pulled him, belly first, onto the black Zodiac. Someone put a blanket around him.
When Archie looked up he saw two National Guard soldiers wearing black life jackets.
“You find anyone else?” Archie asked.
They shook their heads no.
Archie coughed, and when he caught his breath he looked out toward the river. He knew what the current was like out there. If Susan and Patrick had been swept into the Willamette, they’d be a half mile away by now.
“How fast can this thing go?” he asked.
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Susan stopped swimming and let the river take her. She tried to inhale deeply and float on the surface like she’d done a thousand times in a hundred hotel pools, but the water was too rough, and pulled her under, and rolled over her face, leaving her even more exhausted and disoriented and sputtering. So she stayed vertical, her socked feet kicking, the boots long gone, arms shoveling water, her head like a human buoy on the surface. There was so much junk and wreckage in the river that she had to stay vigilant just to keep from getting beaned by a log or loose street sign. She kept her paddling arms near the surface and her strokes wide, so that she might brush with her hand anything headed her way. So far she’d swatted away split wood and branches and what felt like the rearview mirror of a car. Her hair was matted with twigs. Her hands felt like they were bleeding. Her skin shuddered. A frigid chill had settled deep inside her bones.