The whistles woke Charlotte before dawn on Tuesday morning. They stopped for a few seconds, then started up again, strident even above the steady beating of rain on the roof. In the brief pauses she heard church bells ringing, every bell in town from the sound of it. “Papa?” She tumbled out of bed. “Mabel?”
The other bed in the room she shared with her sister creaked and a loud sigh told her the noise had roused the older girl too. “Mabel? What’s going on?” Charlotte asked.
“Don’t know. But it isn’t good.”
Charlotte bit back a retort. She might be only nine, but she wasn’t a dunce. Sometimes Mabel didn’t seem to realize that.
They stumbled downstairs, where their father stood at a window, watching the rain.
Mabel’s eyes went round. “We’re going to get flooded, aren’t we?”
“Flooded?” Charlotte twisted a strand of wavy blond hair around a finger.
Their father turned from the window, an unlit pipe in his hand. “I don’t think we have anything to worry about here, girls. But I suspect those closer to the river will have to move to higher ground soon, if they haven’t already.”
Mabel jerked open the pantry and peered inside. “Perhaps we’d better lay in some food.”
“Nonsense,” Papa told her. More a mother than a sister, fifteen-year-old Mabel worried over the slightest thing. Charlotte let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “The high water won’t reach here,” Papa said. “It didn’t in ninety-eight.” As soon as he spoke, the whistles stopped. “See? Probably a false alarm. Why don’t you girls go get a little more rest before it’s time to get ready for school.”
An hour later the whistles started up again. It was still pouring outside as Charlotte dressed and rushed downstairs. Mabel told her a neighbor boy had stopped over, bearing news that school was canceled due to the threat of high water.
As soon as Charlotte sat, Mabel pushed a plate of eggs and bacon across the table to her, then handed her a glass of water. Charlotte held it up, one eyebrow raised. “No milk?”
Mabel shook her head. “The milkman must be running late this morning.”
“Where’s Papa?” Charlotte asked. “And Dewey?” It was unusual for their little brother to sleep past dawn, even when the skies were gray and rainy.
She had scarcely finished eating when Mabel pressed a few coins into one hand and thrust an umbrella at the other. “Get some bread and cheese.”
By the time Charlotte reached Henry’s Market, Seventh and Harrison Streets were filled with water, enough to cover her shoes. The din of the whistles and bells continued.
But inside the shop, it was dry. Struggling to close the awkward umbrella, she walked up to the counter.
“Why hello, Charlotte,” Mr. Henry said. “What can I do for you today?”
“Mabel wanted me to fetch some bread, sir. And do you have any cheese?”
“I’ve some cheese in the back, but the bakery wagon hasn’t come yet.” He placed a curled finger on his chin. “Should’ve been here an hour ago... I wonder what’s keeping him?” He turned a smile to Charlotte but it looked fake. “Oh well, I’m sure he’ll be here soon. Do you want to wait? You can come sit back here if you like.”
Charlotte thanked him and hopped onto the stool behind the counter.
She watched him scurry back and forth, tidying shelves and stacking canned goods in a display.
Then she saw the water. “Mr. Henry?”
He looked down. A rivulet of brown water had seeped in under the door and was stretching toward the dry goods aisle. “Oh, mercy... I guess we’d better start moving things off the lower shelves... I heard it was getting bad up north, but I never thought we’d get water here.”
Charlotte jumped off the stool to help him stack the lighter merchandise on the counter.
By the time they cleared the bottom shelf of the first aisle, the water was up to her ankles, and icy cold. Mr. Henry had just ordered her back to the stool when a man in a top hat entered, along with a surge of more water. “The levee’s broken!”
“How bad is it?” Mr. Henry asked.
The water was already several feet deep up north, the man told them. “I was at the coffee shop, eating breakfast... the owner’s wife rang the shop and told us to get out of there, said it was like a wall of water coming down the street!” He shot another glance at the door. “Be here before you know it—”
Charlotte looked down. The water was already inching up to the first rung on the legs of her stool.
By noon the water had chased them onto the counter, then up to the attic. Ringing her family to let them know she was safe—and find out if they were—was out of the question, for the phones were out by the time she thought of it. The lights followed soon after.
She crouched next to the lone window above the store’s porch roof and watched the torrent of muddy river that East Seventh Street had become. The water carried all kinds of things by—furniture, crates full of groceries, pianos, even automobiles. Lots of wood, she hoped from the lumberyard, but some looked as if it had been part of houses. The poor horses were the worst. They bucked and struggled, and made horrendous shrieks, but Charlotte doubted they’d be able to swim far in the fierce current.
She rubbed her hands up and down her arms. Lordy, it was cold. All up and down the street, as far as she could see, faces lined the windows. Some of them might have been shouting, but the noise of the rushing water and driving rain made it impossible to hear. Henry’s Market creaked and groaned from the constant buffeting of the river's forceful current. Objects caught in its rush banged hard against the market walls.
Mr. Henry and the other man spoke in low whispers. She thought she heard Mr. Henry say “don’t think she can take much more of this.” Charlotte didn’t think he was talking about her.
Something banged into the shop, shaking the building hard enough Charlotte stumbled. The two men examined the rafters. “We’ve got to get out of here,” said the man in the top hat.
“Mr. Henry?” Charlotte forced her voice to be steady. “Is the store going to fall apart?”
He’d grabbed a rope and was coiling it over an arm while the other man helped gather it up. “I don’t know, Charlotte.” His voice was grim. “But if it does, we’ll be long gone by then.”
Something made a loud crash nearby. Charlotte hurried back to the window in time to see the waters hurl an upside-down streetcar against the corner saloon across the street. The building’s wooden walls crumpled inward as if they were made of paper. Charlotte watched, too horror-stricken to do anything but open her mouth, as the tavern splintered into bits. Lumber swirled in a huge whirlpool where Harrison Street crossed Seventh. The streetcar broke free of the debris, and with the help of the endless, rushing water, tumbled across Seventh Street. Charlotte sucked in a breath. “Mr. Henry!”
The streetcar was headed right for the market.
AN INHUMAN SHRIEK JOLTED TONY AWAKE. His gaze darted across sloped rafters, to the end of a long room where dim light filtered through a dusty, mud-spattered window. Church bells rang amidst the roar of hard rain, and whistles were going off everywhere, but they weren’t what woke him. He clutched the quilt. Where was he?
He sat up. Then the scream came again. Outside. It started as a loud groan, then escalated to a grating, high-pitched howl that cut to his soul.
It went on and on then faded as whatever it was passed. Tony threw off his blanket and scooted to the nearby window.
A torrent of muddy water coursed through the alley below, coming halfway up the doorway of the warehouse across the street. He’d never seen so much water where it wasn’t supposed to be. “Holy Noah’s Ark!”
He stood, then regretted it when his head smacked into a rafter. With a curse, he rubbed the sore spot as his memories of the previous day fell into place. The Saturn Society. Taylor Gressman. The wanted posters and Theodore Pippin. Goodwin’s Smoke Shop in 1913.
What had he warped into? He twisted ar
ound to search the rafters, as if answers hid in their dim recesses. The only reply was the beating rain. Then it hit him. March, 1913. He’d escaped the Saturn Society only to wind up in the middle of the worst natural disaster in Ohio’s history.
The horrible shrieks started again. He crouched and peered out the window. In the raging waters, a horse struggled to swim, its reins caught on the crossbar of a streetlamp. The yellowish-brown waters came to within a couple feet of the light globes. The horse raised its head, its lips drawn back over its teeth, and let out another ear-piercing cry. Tony cringed. A wooden crate bumped the helpless animal, knocking it free, then the current carried the crate and the horse away.
The view out the other window was much the same. A barrel floated by. Small, dark shapes clung to it. Rats.
Tony leaned against the window, the glass cold against his hand and forehead, and stared in morbid fascination at the water below. The rain churned its rushing surface between pieces of broken furniture, crates and unidentifiable flotsam. Bumps and clunks came from below, probably furnishings, floating around in the shop’s lower level.
He slumped against the gable wall. His stomach hollowed. How would he get out of that attic and find a place to warp safely home? He didn’t know how long Dayton had remained flooded. Had he traded one prison for another?
He walked to the stairwell and peered down. It was half-filled with water. Icy cold, judging from the temperature in the attic. There’d be no escape by that route.
He’d have to warp from the attic, then. But...
His first warp had been on the pyramid at Chichén Itzá. He’d later warped in his living room, and this time, wound up in... he sniffed. A light, earthy smell hung in the motionless air. Tobacco. The smoke shop.
He remembered Taylor Gressman telling him he traveled only through time. His physical location didn’t change.
Which meant he’d wind up right back in the Saturn Society’s locked conference room.
He stared out the window. He had to get back to his own time. No telling what might happen to him if he remained in 1913. Hundreds of people had died—would die—in that flood.
He clenched his fists, shut his eyes, and pictured the windowless room where he’d been imprisoned in the present. Imagined the credenza, the beat-up conference table and the photos. Maybe that woman had come back and unlocked the door. Conscious of his heart banging in his ribcage, he waited for dizziness to hit.
He squeezed his fists and closed his eyes. Come on! He opened his eyes. The attic room remained unchanged.
He concentrated again. Nothing. After several minutes he gave up.
He was stuck. In the midst of a flood, in an attic, a century in the past. When he’d gone back two years, he hadn’t been able to return to the present at first. Of course then, he hadn’t realized what had happened until he’d been in the past for several hours. But even once he’d begun to accept it, no amount of wishing had taken him back until a day later, when his parents’ furniture was different and the walls started to change color, as if the present had begun to break through. Anxiety ballooned in his chest. How long would he have to wait?
Fear sluiced down his body like the rain on the tin roofs. What if the dizziness never came and he was never able to return home? His parents would never know what happened to him. Nor would Lisa or the boys... even Dora.
He had to get back. Somehow.
He moved to the window, his fingers unable to decide whether to form fists or clutch at the window jambs. His breath formed a foggy circle on the glass. Another loud crash, then a few seconds later, a piano floated by, followed by a mass of splintered lumber that had once been a building.
The water swirled and eddied around the debris, lodging it between a telephone pole and the Smoke Shop. In the pile of wood beneath his window, a broken sign read ry’s Market. They wouldn’t be doing business any time soon.
Something moved in the wreckage.
Tony leaned closer, and his fingers found purchase on the window frame. His hair clung to the moist glass. Oh, no. He shifted again for a better view.
A small arm sheathed in a clinging, ruffled sleeve emerged from the water, and little fingers clutched at one of the larger pieces of wood.
Slipped.
Grasped again, lost purchase.
A little girl. “Oh my God.” His voice echoed in the empty reaches of the rafters. The child groped again, failed to latch on, started to slide.
He had to do something.
He grabbed the window sash’s blackened handle and pulled. Stuck tight. With a grunt he leaned upward and pulled harder. “Come on, open, dammit!” The sash didn’t move.
He could barely hear a thin, plaintive wail over the rushing water.
He pulled his sleeve down over his fist and was about to break the window when his gaze lit on a piece of tarnished brass atop the window’s center rail. Locked. He gripped the protrusion, tried to twist it. It moved a tiny bit, enough for him to wedge his hand behind it, get better leverage. Finally it flipped around with a thunk. He grabbed the sash handle, yanked upward, and this time the window obeyed.
The girl’s cry reached him again. Helplessness pinned his feet to the floor. Fear he wouldn’t reach her in time mocked him. He’d have to climb out onto that haphazard pile of wood. One misstep could plunge him into the icy, raging current. Compared to this, the pyramid in Mexico was nothing. If he didn’t go out there, that little girl would die.
He yanked off his suit jacket. Cold as he was, it would only get in the way. “Hang on!” He climbed over the sash. She tried to grab hold of a broken timber. Missed. Then slipped into the water.
“No!” Despair stung him. The same way it had the night Bethany hadn’t come home, and a state trooper rang their doorbell. Tony had known his daughter was dead before the man said a word. “Hang on!” This little girl had a chance. “I’m coming!”
He lowered himself onto the pile of debris. The wind buffeted him, and the wood shifted and cracked as he planted his feet on it. He picked his way across the rain-slicked wood to where the girl had fallen. The rivers pushed at the hulk of the former storefront and dislodged a plank or chunk here and there, forcing him to retrace his path and find a new route twice. Finally he reached the spot where she’d gone under, and knelt down to peer into the floodwaters’ murky depths.
The water was so muddy it was opaque. Hopelessness ate at his soul, but he kept searching. The driftwood settled again, and he stumbled. He caught himself and picked his way a few steps to his left, praying the current hadn’t carried her away. Then he spotted a swath of dark blue—her coat. He crawled to it, reached into the chill water, and grabbed an arm.
He pulled. When she started to come out, he almost lost his balance. Bracing one leg against a piece of drift, he shifted until he was over the small body. He wrapped his arms around the child and lifted her to his waist as he straightened. Icy water poured off her coat.
She could have already drowned. No! He couldn’t think that way. Whatever it took, no matter what the risk, he’d save her. He laid her on one of the larger boards and pressed his finger to her wrist. “No...” His voice came out a croak. He made a choking sound and lowered his chin. Too late. He’d taken too long, let fear make him hesitate. He started to relax his grip on the small wrist when vertigo burst through him. Was he going home? He stumbled, barely caught himself, and gripped the child’s wrist tighter. His hand tingled where he held her, like a thousand needles pricking his skin. The sensation moved up his arm and through his body, then dissipated. The vertigo passed.
No warp. He still clutched the child’s wrist. It was still raining, and the muddy river still swamped the Dayton, Ohio of a century in his past. There was nothing he could do for the kid. Despair stabbed him as he started to let go of her. Then... was that a pulse?
He squeezed her wrist tighter. Felt it again. She was alive.
Her head lolled to the side, and water drained out of her mouth. He did a quick visual survey for in
juries. Thankfully, he found nothing more serious than a few scrapes and bruises on her ankles, hands and face.
He rolled her onto her back. “Hey.” He grasped a small shoulder and gently shook. Cold pinpricks formed on his back where rain was seeping through his shirt. Her eyes remained closed, and her muddy hair lay plastered to her head in a tangled mass.
She lay still. No rise and fall of the chest. Had he pulled her out of there just to watch her die? He pressed two fingers to the side of her neck. The pulse was weak, but there.
He leaned over her to confirm no breath escaped from her mouth or nose, then straightened and gazed over her inert form, trying to remember the sequence of actions they’d taught in the first aid class he’d taken at work last year.
Somewhere, a father would be looking for this little girl.
Tony would do anything he could to spare another man the grief he’d gone through.
Watching her chest, he tipped the girl’s head back, pinched her nose shut, and puffed two short breaths into her mouth.
It rose with each breath. Good. He sat up.
Her chest didn’t rise again.
He breathed into her a second time, checked for motion afterward.
Still nothing. He felt her carotid artery, and her pulse beat faintly beneath his fingertip.
He leaned down and gave two more short breaths. “Come on, breathe, dammit!”
This time he thought her chest expanded a tiny bit. He waited. There, it went up again. Her eyelids quivered, and a shudder racked her body.
“Hey!” He grasped her shoulder and shook. After he made sure she was still breathing, he shook her other shoulder. “Hey kid, wake up!”
Her mouth opened, and she let out a spastic, gurgling cough as her eyelids slid open, revealing round, brown eyes like a frightened doe’s.
He’d seen those eyes before. But where?
“Mama?” she whispered.
“It’s all right, honey.” Tony’s heart knotted. She made a little whimpering sound. Another shudder convulsed through her. “You’re going to be okay.” She had to be freezing. He was, and he wasn’t as wet.
Time's Enemy: A Romantic Time Travel Adventure (Saturn Society Book 1) Page 9