Water splashed against her face, freeing her from her paralysis. She let go of the downspout with one hand and reached skyward, toward Dub’s hand. It wasn’t enough. She couldn’t grasp it from that distance.
She tried repeatedly to reach his hand without letting go of the downspout. She couldn’t. It was inches out of her reach. Slowly, apprehensively, she pulled herself up onto her feet and stepped around the other side of the downspout. The composite tiles on the porch’s roof were coming loose and she slipped twice, but managed to maintain her footing long enough to reach Dub. She grabbed hold of his arm above his elbow and planted one foot on the windowsill he’d used to launch himself onto the roof above.
Her stomach scraped along the edge of the gutters as Dub lifted her up. She collapsed into his lap, and the two of them lay in the rain, free of the floodwaters.
After what felt like a quarter hour, but might have been only a few seconds, she inched her face closer to his. She rolled onto him and kissed his lips, holding the sides of his wounded face in her wrinkled, dehydrated hands.
Out of breath, she said, “I love you,” then rolled off him and onto her back next to him. The rain was steady and hard on her face and body. Her torn shirt and underwear were all that kept her from lying nude in the elements. The cramps in her feet and toes were gone, but the soreness remained, and she could sense the muscles might seize again.
But she was alive. Dub was alive. They’d made it. That thought was comforting for a moment, only a moment.
“We can’t stay here long,” Dub said amidst heavy, chest-heaving breaths. “The water is still rising. The rain isn’t letting up. If somebody doesn’t rescue us, we’re screwed.”
Her stomach tightened and, despite her complete exhaustion, she leaned up on her elbows, the rough composite digging into her skin. Oblivious to the pinch, she gazed into the darkness. In the near distance she could see the sheet of rain in the dim yellow streetlight, as well as that same light absorbed into the water that had drowned her childhood home, the place where her parents lived.
Dub was right. The water was moving higher. The danger was real.
CHAPTER 2
April 3, 2026
30,000 feet above Fort Meyers, Florida
Ellen Chang had always, half-jokingly, said that if she could choose her own death, it would be in an airplane crash. When challenged, she’d argued that the adrenaline spike for those final moments would be exhilarating. She might enjoy knowing the end was close.
“What a rush,” she would say. “So frightening yet exhilarating,” she would suggest. “Epically violent and final,” she would defend. Such was the contention of a woman shamelessly bored with her existence. If any of her friends, who looked upon her with contempt, could step into her existence for a month, or even a day, they’d understand the attraction of death by plane crash.
Yet as the passenger jet aboard which she flew dropped altitude faster than she could down a bottle of Prosecco, Ellen Chang reconsidered her position. Her final moments were not in any way exhilarating or epic.
She gripped the armrests of her first-class seat, digging her freshly manicured nails into the leather, and clenched her jaw. Her stomach lurched with the shuddering pitches of the aircraft as its pilots fought to maintain control. A wave of nausea coursed through her Pilates-thin body, and bile crept up her throat into her mouth. She fought the urge to vomit, especially when she heard the man behind her retch.
This unplanned descent wasn’t as she’d imagined. Instead, it was ear-piercing. The engines whined, the fuselage rattled, and passengers prayed or cursed the heavens. Grown men howled with fear. Women screamed and cried.
Ellen had the oxygen mask around her face. The yellow cup dug into her cheeks and chin. She’d pulled the band too tight above her ears, but she wasn’t about to let go of the armrests to adjust it. She closed her eyes and tried to block out her senses.
In the early minutes of the flight, as the plane climbed to its cruising altitude at the Florida peninsula’s western edge, the captain had warned of turbulence. He’d suggested a growing storm over the Gulf of Mexico might slow their trip from West Palm Beach to Los Angeles.
That hadn’t bothered Ellen. She wasn’t in any hurry to get home, and extra time in first class meant extra pours into the glass flute she kept at arm’s length. She was on her third glass, rubbing the stem unconsciously with her thumb, and had been warned by the flight attendant it was her last for a while when the captain had corrected himself.
“Hello again,” he’d said in the familiar tone and cadence of an airline pilot. The mic was too close to his mouth as he spoke, and his overmodulated words were drawn out between long pauses. “We’re going to have to adjust our altitude pretty significantly to avoid this storm ahead of us,” he’d said. “That’s going to mean keeping your seatbelt on for now. I ask that you remain in your seats. No moving about the cabin for the time being. I’m also asking our flight attendants to move to their seats and buckle up as well. If you could, please avoid punching the call button for a bit. Could be bumpy until we find smooth air. Bear with us. I’ll be back to let you know once it’s okay to get up and stretch your legs.”
That announcement never came.
The plane shifted to one side and then tilted sharply, as if they were banking hard to one side. Ellen’s seatbelt strained against her hip and she used her core to keep herself centered in her seat.
The plane dropped suddenly as it banked, and behind her she heard a loud thump, an air-filled grunt, and a woman’s cry. That’s when the masks had dropped. Above the high-pitched whine of the engines, someone announced a passenger was unconscious and bleeding. Multiple voices called for help.
The inertia of her body, fighting the turn of the plane, prevented her from turning around to see what had happened. Then the plane surged skyward, forcing her back against her seat. The aircraft pitched up and then abruptly leveled and dove. Ellen’s body rose from her seat, lifted weightlessly, and the belt strained against her hips.
The urge to vomit surged and waned. She closed her eyes, cursing herself. Her doctor husband had long told her to be careful of getting the many things for which she’d wished. Of course, she’d always gotten what she’d wanted and scoffed at his witticism, much as she’d scoffed at much of what he’d said.
She had the house perfect for entertaining and praise in Los Angeles Magazine. The most recent accolades had proclaimed the Brentwood midcentury modern revival a “loving ode to Herman Miller and George Nelson.” She’d smirked at the praise but framed the article nonetheless and hung the piece above the toilet in one of the two powder rooms on the main floor.
Ellen always drove the newest imported sedans, save the one time she’d deigned to buy a Cadillac, and never sat behind the wheel of one older than twenty-four months or with more than twenty-thousand miles on its engine. At that point, she’d explained to her husband, she might as well drive a Honda.
She attended gallery openings and donated charitably to causes. That is, she gave to charitable causes so as to attend the associated “see/be seen” galas. The giving was as much charitable as it was a way to appear engaged and concerned.
The carousel of galas and openings required the requisite attire. Ellen was a regular at many of the high-end boutiques peppering the western enclaves of Los Angeles. She had a collection of bunion-producing heels and designer handbags. Balenciaga was among her favorites, and she had lunched with the head designer, Demna Gvasalia, at the Getty more than once.
These were the things that preoccupied her frightened mind as the plane’s movements deteriorated into spasmodic jerks and rattles. The sour acid climbed her throat once again while she swallowed hard against it. She knew definitively that none of that had brought her happiness; none of it filled the holes that existed deep within her.
Her son, whom she’d cajoled and guilted into attending UCLA despite scholarships on the East Coast, was spending an extra semester overseas and hadn’t come home
for Christmas, opting instead to stay longer to strengthen his relationship both with the Spanish language and with his Catalonian girlfriend. Ellen resented him for that.
She resented her husband for the long hours he worked and the time he didn’t spend with her. On the rare occasions he was available, she chose to be otherwise occupied. They’d long since stopped communicating beyond the mundane, the logistical workings of their daily lives.
Ellen Chang chose not to think of those things, focusing her final moments on the newest collection opening at the Hammer Museum. It was the next Tuesday. She had tickets to the VIP cocktail reception. Rather, she had a ticket. Her husband had a surgery scheduled for that afternoon and would likely have missed it had she bought him one.
She thought about the landscape architect with whom she had a scheduled consultation on Wednesday morning. They were interested in xeriscaping the front yard. Many of the neighbors had converted to the low-water landscaping as the drought had worsened. Although Ellen wasn’t much for the look of it, it far exceeded the side eyes of judgmental party guests who commented on what they imagined was a hefty water bill as they ate canapés and sipped fruit-infused cocktails.
If she died here and now, she’d miss out on the exhibit. She worried other guests would talk about her for not attending or, worse yet, not even notice her absence. She bit her lip underneath the oxygen mask at the thought of mourners at her wake traipsing up the long path that cut through the center of her thirsty yard, thinking as much about her environmental neglect as about her death. How many mourners would there be? Would anyone attend?
The plane rattled so hard Ellen bit the inside of her cheek and drew blood. Alarms sounded, the cabin lights flickered, and the warm metallic taste filled her mouth. She turned to look out the window at her row and saw slaps of rain against it. A red light strobed from somewhere farther back on the plane. Then there was a deafening bang, followed instantly by a blinding explosion of light outside the window and the sound of grinding metal. The cabin shuddered violently. Her ears popped painfully.
Ellen was certain the plane was coming apart. A rush of cold air filled the cabin. She trembled from the drop in temperature. People behind her were screaming in terror. Men and women made noises that sounded painfully inhuman, their voices indistinguishable from one another. Babies cried.
She couldn’t see what was happening behind her, but from the sucking sound, the amplified volume of the whining engines, and the bitter cold that caused her teeth to chatter, she knew the cabin had been breached.
Her ears popped again. A thick ache in her throat crept behind her jaw. Ellen was crying now too. Tears welled in her eyes and traced the outer edges of the oxygen cup on her face.
As the plane violently shook and threatened to break apart, she couldn’t tell whether they were pitching up and down or shaking from side to side. Her head pounded from the disorientation and the loss of air pressure. Her pulse thumped against her temples and her neck. Her heart was beating thickly against her chest, her breathing labored now, each intake more ragged than the one before. Ellen was on the verge of hyperventilating.
And then she wasn’t.
The violent storm, an upper-level low, which had widened unexpectedly and trailed from west to east across Florida’s Gulf Coast, had captured the plane. It struck it with force, its winds and lightning lashing out and pummeling the craft. Those threats and the captain’s misplaced confidence in his ability to circumnavigate the widening threat had doomed them.
The plane’s nose pitched downward steeply, and the wounded bird dove toward the angry Gulf, accelerating toward its terminal velocity with a gaping hole in its port side. It began to spin out of control and, at that moment, most all of its two hundred and ten passengers and crew were unconscious. It slammed into the inky black water, exploding into countless pieces large and small, among them Ellen Chang.
The woman whose life was about rising above the tide of wannabes and has-beens that littered the Southland sank deep beneath the surface of the bubbling ocean. She was part of the deep now, part of the storm that had killed her and everyone aboard that plane.
CHAPTER 3
April 4, 2026
New Orleans, Louisiana
Dub glanced up at the scoreboard. There were three minutes and forty-eight seconds left in the game. UCLA trailed North Carolina State by seven. He calculated in his head the combination of possessions that could give his Bruins the lead over the pesky Wolfpack.
Keri elbowed his side and tugged on his sleeve. “Hey, why are there so many time-outs?”
“TV time-outs,” Dub replied. “There’s one every four minutes, or the closest dead ball to every four minutes.”
“This game is taking forever.”
Dub turned his body toward hers but referenced the court with big sweeping moves of his hands. “You’re not loving this? It’s the Final Four.”
“Meh,” Keri said. “We’re in the end zone. We’ve been standing all game. We haven’t slept much. I—”
“I thought you loved basketball.”
“I love watching you play basketball,” she said, pinching the back of his arm.
He leaned over and kissed her on the side of the Bruins’ baseball cap she wore on her head backwards. Then he looked past her to his friend and roommate Barker, who stood on the other side of Keri. Barker was rolling his eyes.
“What?” asked Dub. He checked his wristwatch, a gift from Keri he wore every day.
“Nothing,” said Barker, waving his hands. “You two, though.”
The buzzer sounded before Dub could respond. The two teams worked their way back onto the court to thickly syncopated music laced with heavy, chest-pulsing bass.
On the opposite end of the court, the NCSU pep band was playing a brass-heavy fight song. Their fans, which primarily occupied one decidedly red corner of the arena, were chanting something Dub couldn’t understand.
Three rows in front of him at the court’s baseline were half of UCLA’s cheerleaders. They were chanting into megaphones, eliciting an 8-clap cheer from the assembled Bruins in the student section.
“Fight, fight, fight!” they chanted, moving their hands in the prescribed movements of the cheer.
One of the referees motioned for the cheerleaders to move, which they did, and he handed the ball to the Bruin’s star player, Mark Helms. He was a freshman who everybody believed would enter the NBA draft after the season ended. He inbounded the ball to the point guard and then trotted up court.
The guard moved the ball into the front court and passed it to the tallest of the Bruins, a six-foot-eleven junior named Kevin Boxell, who blocked shots more than he made them. Boxell was standing at the top of the key, near the free throw line. He faked to his left and then, without looking, bounced the ball behind him to his right as Helms bolted toward the basket, caught the pass, and elevated toward the basket. He slammed the ball through the basket, a thunderous dunk, which shook the backboard. The Bruins were down five.
No sooner had NC State inbounded the ball than Helms stole it. He took two steps back and launched a long three-point shot, which sailed through the net without touching the rim.
The Bruins were down two. There were more than three minutes on the clock. The Wolfpack took a time-out.
Keri planted her hands atop her cap, lacing her fingers, and drooped her shoulders. She sighed audibly. “Another one?” she asked rhetorically. “You have got to be kidding me.”
Dub’s phone buzzed inside his front pocket. He plucked it out and tapped the screen. There was a link to a weather alert at the center of the display. Dub, surprised he had any cell signal at all, tapped the alert. The phone cycled, trying to load the new page, and he looked up. Many of the attendees in the arena were all looking at their phones. Barker was too. He held up his phone in front of Keri, apologizing, and showed it to Barker.
“You get the alert too, Barker?”
“Yeah,” said Barker, nodding. “It’s taking a while to load th
ough.”
Dub nudged Keri. “You didn’t get it?”
Keri shook her head. “My phone’s deader than a doornail. No service. Haven’t had any since tip-off. Too many people trying to Snap and livestream.”
Dub looked at the court. The players were huddled at their respective benches, listening to their coaches. The referees stood at the scorers’ table talking amongst themselves.
NC State’s cheerleading squad was on the floor, performing some spirited routine that Dub could swear they’d repeated twice already. Their mascot, a comically angry wolf, was prowling along the sideline opposite the benches.
“Hey,” said Barker, drawing his attention. “Mine loaded.”
Dub checked his display. His had loaded too. He read the warning on the screen. Then he read it again. He showed it to Keri.
EMERGENCY ALERT
FLASH FLOOD WATCH UNTIL 11:00 PM SATURDAY, 4/6/2025
STRONG STORMS EXPECTED ACROSS SOUTHERN LOUISIANA
ROAD CLOSURES EXPECTED IN LOW-LYING AREAS
Keri shook her head and shrugged. “Okay,” she said, apparently not concerned. “Not unusual. We get those all the time when it rains.”
Being from Houston, Texas, Dub was no stranger to flash flooding. He had been in elementary school when Hurricane Harvey put his hometown underwater for days. There were countless storms and extended rains subsequent to Harvey that threatened to do the same.
It had gotten to the point that any time it rained, a subconscious uneasiness crept outward from his gut. A lack of rainfall had weighed heavily in his decision to move to southern California for college. Among all the things there were to love about Los Angeles, the dry weather was at the top of the list.
He didn’t share Keri’s “laissez les bon temp rouler” attitude toward the weather. Nonetheless, she had experience in New Orleans that he didn’t. This was her hometown. She should know better than he about which watches or warnings meant something and which didn’t.
The Alt Apocalypse {Book 3): Torrent Page 2