Taken by Storm

by Tamara Mataya

Something dry and warm sounded heavenly, but standing underneath a hot shower for an hour sounded even better, so she headed for the bathroom and wrapped a towel around herself. No sense dripping on the floor. She padded down the hallway and into her old bedroom, and grabbed fresh panties and a pair of yoga pants. She’d brought nothing warm and snuggly, only bringing summer clothes for the wedding. I’ll borrow one of Dad’s giant sweaters, and live underneath a duvet until they get home. Screw ice cream, hot chocolate is on this summer’s menu. And something salty with way too much melted cheese.

  She’d taken two steps toward her dad’s room when the front door banged open, slamming hard into the wall. Heart tap dancing around her chest, she froze and breathed as quietly as she could, debating between running and hiding, or running and looking for a weapon and going ninja on the intruder.

  “Lani?”

  Relief sucked the air from her lungs, making her sag. “Kyle?”

  His footsteps thundered up the stairs and she went to meet him. He was frowning before he spoke, not a good sign.

  “Where the fuck were you?”

  Damn it. Busted. “Here?” She smiled the smile of the innocent.

  “Don’t give me that, Leilani! I know you were at Glitters! You lied to me, told me you were safe!” His flushed face didn’t hide the dark smudges beneath his eyes. He was exhausted, and probably hungry, and when Kyle was either, he was testy.

  “I, uh. You know, ‘safe’ is an ambiguously tricky word, open to interpretation, riddled with—”

  “Shut it! You’re safe now, but you’ve got to go.”

  “Dude, I’m taking a shower and living on the couch. I slogged my way through icy water, rode a forklift and a boat, spent the day and evening in a bar, bandaged a guy’s leg. I haven’t even rinsed the sludge off me.” She held her hand up to show him the dirt, and noticed that she still had a smudge of Ryan’s blood on her hand. I hope he’s okay. She blinked hard and focused on her brother. “I’m taking a shower. Notice the towel?”

  “No, you’re not showering. We’re evacuating. Get dressed.”

  “I don’t have time for a ten minute shower?”

  “Lani, you have fifteen minutes to grab whatever you can, and get the fuck out of town!”

  “What?” His words weren’t computing. The long days and nights had caught up with her; all she wanted was to do nothing and to do it in a warm, dry place.

  “I came because you weren’t answering your phone.”

  “It got lost in the river. Lake. Flood.”

  “The town, the whole town is under a mandatory evacuation.”

  “What? For how long?”

  He scrubbed his hands down his face. “No idea. You’ll be able to go home, so at least you don’t have to worry about packing anything.”

  “Why are we all being evacuated? We’re not flooding up here.”

  “It might. The canal by the high school just flooded, and they’ve evacuated the evacuation centre there, moving everyone there to Clackley.”

  “They’re evacuating the evacuation center?”

  “For the third time, look, screw the shower, throw on some dry clothes, and get the hell out of town.” He pushed her toward her room.

  “My car’s fucked.”

  “Take Dad’s jeep. The keys are—”

  “On the hook. What about you?”

  “I’ll be staying here. They’re sending in the military to help, but I don’t know the logistics.”

  “Do you really think we’ll flood here?”

  “The canal’s already gone. It will depend if the berm holds.”

  “Call me—well. I’ll get a new phone as soon as I get back to the city, but I’ll call you. If the cells are working again.”

  “They are. They were just jammed with everyone phoning, but they’ll get better as people leave town. It’s been a logistical nightmare getting everyone rescued.” He hugged her and headed for the door. “Ten minutes, Lani.”

  “Okay.” She was already getting dressed when the front door shut behind him. Jeans, tank top, socks. She hadn’t brought any shoes more substantial than the strappy sandals, so she jogged to Dad and Maggie’s room, and swiped a pair of bright blue sneakers from Maggie, glad they were nearly small enough. There wasn’t much in her room, she’d only packed for a week, but she threw her clothes into her bag, and dropped it at the top of the stairs.

  Ten minutes. What else, what else?

  If the berm blew, and the basement flooded, anything in there could be taken out. She sprinted down the stairs, stumbling on the last one, cracking her shoulder against the wall. Stupid. Break your neck after all you’ve been through getting here. Slow down!

  She headed for the den and grabbed all the photo albums, throwing them into a plastic tub she found nearby. These were things that couldn’t be replaced, taken in the days before digital files and backup copies. The negatives had been thrown out or lost, and Leila grabbed them as fast as she could, all too aware of time ticking away. Water could be flowing toward her right now.

  Hands shaking, she ran to the office, trying to remember anything about important papers, and grabbing the slim folder in the filing cabinet. Not much there, but it all looked official, and important, so she wasn’t leaving without it. She found a few flash drives in the top drawer, and grabbed those as well, not knowing what was on them, not daring to leave without anything she could save.

  The sounds of speeding cars down her street ran through her, destroying what little concentration she had. She stood, flapping her hands uselessly, spinning around, looking for something else to grab, trying to remember anything of value that was irreplaceable, anything vital that she couldn’t leave behind, all the while knowing she’d already spent too long there. She found her dad’s address book in the drawer and fired that in the tub too.

  Fuck it. She grabbed the computer tower and put it on top of the albums and paperwork. She hauled the blue tub up the stairs and dropped it by the front door. What else am I forgetting? What else can I do?

  She had food and water at home. Pretty much everything else was too heavy to lift on her own, or not worth the panic—Dad’s Chevy Chase collection was replaceable. If something happened to it. It should be fine. It will all be fine. Did she need to flip a breaker or something in case the power went out, then came back on suddenly? Didn’t that start a fire? Only if there’s too many things left on and it’s overloaded.

  She grabbed the keys to the jeep, locked the front door, and opened the side door to the garage. A hundred and one memories flashed through her mind of times she’d spent at this house. As much as she’d never really wanted to come back to Silver Springs, she’d always felt security in knowing her family had a place there.

  An all-too-short two-block drive away, water was sloshing over the road. Knuckles white on the steering wheel, she drove quickly, looking back more in a few minutes than she had in the past few years.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Two weeks later

  The worst hit area was Williamsberg, to no one’s surprise. But it had been nearly decimated, and no one could have imagined the destruction would be so brutal. Leila drove through it, barely breathing at the sight. Houses twisted and pulled from their foundations, frames tilting like half-collapsed houses made of cards. Mounds of filthy rubble, furniture, and belongings stacked high on front lawns as though they were nothing more than heaps of trash. Plywood nailed to windows like you’d see in places that are heavy hit by hurricanes.

  The whole neighborhood was sectioned off behind blue metal fencing, and each house had a red sign on the door, signifying it wasn’t safe for habitation. The roads leading into Williamsberg were dotted with police cars, and anyone going in needed to prove they were a resident of the neighborhood or they were turned away. People weren’t heartless, but they were curious, and unfortunately, some would be opportunistic. It was for everyone’s safety and security that the area was cordoned off.

  Nearly fifty houses, condemned, soon to be
torn down. Word was they were going to turn the whole area into a park when the houses had been cleared away. They couldn’t justify the expense of repairing the neighborhood only to lose it again in a future flood. It had been inundated one too many times to justify a rebuild. Fifty families were displaced from Williamsberg alone, many more in other neighborhoods, waiting for a government buyout so they could move on with their lives, whether they’d stay in Silver Springs remained to be seen.

  The road was still covered with contaminated mud, inches thick, sometimes a foot in the ditches. A good rain to wash it away would be welcome, but no one mentioned anything about wanting more rain. At least not in public. In some parts where the mud had dried, it had turned almost cement-like, and actually cracked the pavement underneath it. As well as water damage, the sheer amounts of heavy-duty vehicles rumbling along had taken a heavy toll on the roads.

  So much destruction. Only two small sinkholes had appeared so far, one in a park where it didn’t do any damage, the other on Second Avenue taking up a few feet of the road. If there’d been any traffic to divert, they’d have done it, but as it was the downtown business sector—if she could call it that—was a ghost town.

  Leila slowed her new jeep, a three-year-old wrangler she’d bought from a dealership after her car was written off by her insurance company, and waited to cross the bridge. The town was still only allowing one vehicle at a time on it, until they knew for sure it was safe, and the main bridge wouldn’t be ready for another month—and that was pushing it. If they’d learned anything in the past couple weeks, it was that things always took longer than planned.

  Always.

  Politics plus construction equaled delays of epic proportions. Leila drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and waited her turn to cross the bridge. Just across the river, the supermarket employees were working frantically to get the store operational. They moved faster than most people and were already on the rebuilding phase when most people were still cleaning out the rubble.

  But they were a franchise and had nearly unlimited resources and workers to clean and repair and restock. They were estimating being up and running in five more days and, judging by the amount they’d accomplished, that was likely. Everyone was looking forward to it. Driving twenty miles to the nearest town for groceries was getting old. Water goes fast when most places have no running water, and you’re running up and down stairs in July in a plastic Tyvek suit and full facemask, in off the charts humidity.

  Today was Thursday. The evacuation had lasted for ten days. The town had been divided into sectors, and Sunday had been the big day; the mandatory evacuation had lifted and the people were allowed to return to their town starting with sector one. Leila’s dad’s had been in sector two, so they’d had to wait until yesterday to get in and see the condition of their house.

  Thirteen days of being glued to the television, devouring any news footage. Leila hadn’t slept well since before the flood, and the stress of the not knowing took a toll on her. Small to begin with, she’d lost five pounds in the two weeks they were evacuated. Everyone in Silver Springs was on the Stress Diet.

  Ceaselessly combing through social media trying to find out what the hell was happening in Silver Springs. Hungry for knowledge, facts, but finding half-helpful articles and politicians posturing over the disaster instead of working together. One of the council members had used her position to get into the town and have a photo op downtown. Wearing rubber boots and jeans, she stood near the blown-out windows of Shiva’s Gift Shop, where Leila had ridden on Ryan’s back.

  The council member hadn’t given any new information, but Leila had been able to see the watermarks on the building behind her. By Leila’s rough estimate, the water had gone even higher than when she and Ryan were there. It blew her mind to think that more water had flooded in.

  But it was gone now, except for in Montons, the newer area of town. It was shaped like a bowl, and the water had settled there, and would stay there until it was drained. The town had a disaster response team in there pumping the water out, but they had to go slowly, as the river was still pretty swollen. If they pumped out too much, there was the risk of flooding places downstream, overwhelming their berms and dykes, creating more disasters in towns that had narrowly avoided their own.

  Nine a.m. Leila slapped the radio off and grabbed her coffee. Distracted driving my ass. No one was pulling anyone over for refueling. Everyone had enough problems without adding tickets and cautions into the mix. The military had come and gone, but police and firefighters from all over had come to help.

  Leila hadn’t seen Ryan and hadn’t asked Kyle about him, unable to find a way to casually bring him up. Kyle mentioned him once to tell her Ryan had been the one who told on her. That meant he was alive, but the fact he hadn’t gotten in touch with her said a lot. She hadn’t had time to seek him out yesterday with all the cleaning, and dealing with Dad and Maggie’s house.

  And if Ryan hadn’t sought her out, or thought to ask about how she was, maybe he didn’t care. He might be furious with her. He’d been hurt because she stormed off. Either he was furious and was waiting to cool off before talking to her or he never wanted to see her again.

  It was easier, and better right now, to picture him off helping with the remediation, too busy working to even spare her a thought. Three people in town had died during the flood, from drowning, or from injuries sustained during the event. Their names could have easily been on that list. It really put things into perspective.

  The car ahead of her eased onto the bridge, and Leila waited while the worker flipped the Slow sign to Stop. The railroad tracks ran parallel to the road and crossed the river on their own massive bridge, though the train hadn’t run through town in years. One of the scariest sights Leila had seen was a section of the tracks themselves, flipped over and twisted like the loop of a rollercoaster. Water had done that. Torn the tracks from the ground and flipped them, bending them like a twist-tie on a bread bag.

  The rest of the drive back to the house passed by in a zoned-out blur. Massive piles of belongings on everyone’s lawns. Porta-potties dotting the road every block. Restaurants, stores, businesses, houses torn apart. And the mud, always the mud. It hadn’t gotten easier to look at with more exposure. It only weighed Leila further down. People hugging, covered in so much mud that their tears washed bright tracks down their cheeks, visible pain in the most private moments. Witnessing it once was too many times.

  Slowly turning the last corner, she waved at Mrs. Ross, sitting in a lawn chair, delegating the sorting from a shady patch, fanning herself even this early in the day. The humidity had never been so high. Hopefully, it never would be again. Mrs. Lindsay next door had told them that’s how she knew the humidity was off the charts: after twelve days of being left on the counter, her open bag of brown sugar was still soft. She mourned the loss of a working kitchen more than most.

  Maggie had sent Leila to nearby Natoni for supplies. The grocery store shelves in Natoni had been a little bare, especially when it came to batteries and water, but it was the closest town to theirs, and everyone was hitting it hard. It would be so much better when the grocery store in town opened up again. Not just for supplies, but for a sense of normalcy. Nothing said, “your town is fucked” more than a distinct lack of essential services.

  Dad came out to greet her as she pulled up to the house, avoiding the porta-potty. She exited and slammed the door shut, opened the door to the back seat as he approached.

  “You get what I asked for?” he mumbled from behind his facemask, careful not to touch anything and contaminate it.

  Leila smiled. “Yes, I got your doughnuts.”

  “Shhh!” He ripped off his facemask.

  Maggie appeared. “You got his what?”

  “We’ve been rumbled!” Her dad’s eyes twinkled, and he pretended to talk into a lapel that wasn’t there. “Abort mission! The otter flies at dawn!”

  Maggie came over to investigate, saw the box of dough
nuts on the seat, and turned to Leila. “You shouldn’t enable him! His cholesterol is high enough.”

  “Stress is the big killer, Mags.” He looked mournfully at the box of sweet, doughy goodness.

  Leila nodded. “Not having doughnuts is very stressful.”

  Maggie threw her hands in the air then grabbed a ring from the box. “You get one. One!” Her dad smiled and opened his mouth. She popped one in, and he peeled off his gloves. Maggie handed him a napkin so he didn’t touch it with his hands.

  Maggie gave him shit, but Leila had never seen him happier, not even with her mom. While an artist, Leila’s mom had been more serious. She had to admit, Maggie was a better match for him. How they weren’t buckling beneath the weight of what they’d lost was a testament to the strength of their love. They supported each other, unflinchingly, choosing to make jokes and laugh rather than fall to their knees and cry.

  Leila wanted that kind of relationship one day.

  While they dove into their unhealthy breakfast, Leila squirmed into her white, plasticy Tyvek bodysuit, and stepped into a pair of rubber boots. She’d opted to wear jeans again, despite the heat. At the end of the first day, she’d sweated until her jeans were soaked through. She’d finished ten bottles of water, and hadn’t peed once—all the water had been sweated through her skin. The facemask made it worse, so hot, but necessary with the mold growing all over the basement walls.

  But wearing shorts underneath would be worse if anything punctured the suit and got her in the leg. It was better to be sweltering and protected than marginally cooler and more exposed. Either way she’d be sweating her ass off in about ten minutes. Better to be protected.

  Maggie dusted powdered sugar from her hands. “Leila, I don’t want you in the house today.”

  “What? But—”

  “No buts. You worked yourself to exhaustion last night, don’t think I didn’t notice. It’s not the safest place to be when you’re bright eyed and bushy tailed, and not emotionally involved.” She was talking about the groups of volunteers who had been moving from house to house, helping haul buckets of the mud, and ruined belongings onto the lawns. They cared, but weren’t attached to the house, and were able to move without getting bogged down by tears or regrets.