by Tom Abrahams
Keri took one last breath and pushed herself below the surface again. She could sense the cold tightening her muscles. Her joints stiffened. But she managed, somehow, to find the other latch on the corner window and flip it. She reached down and yanked on the bottom of the frame, gliding the window up on its hinges enough for her body to slip through.
Reaching through the opening, Keri grabbed both sides of the window frame on the outside of the house. Holding tightly with what little strength she had left, she pulled, launching herself through the gap and out into her flooded backyard. Her pants leg caught on the window ledge and tugged her backward as she lunged against the current toward the surface. She couldn’t reach it. It was so close. Somehow, despite the power outage in the house, the dim yellow light of a streetlamp danced above her and undulated above her flooding home. She reached back, the current catching her weakened, oxygen-starved body, trying to work at the stuck fabric.
Unable to loosen the denim, she struggled to find the looped button at her navel. She squeezed her eyes closed and unbuttoned her pants, unzipped them, and tried to kick free; however, the wet cotton was too heavy and she couldn’t free herself. The buzz in her head grew loud, and she could sense she was losing consciousness. There was no air left in her lungs as she worked to keep her mouth closed, to resist the urge to breathe.
From nowhere, a dark figure appeared next to her and pulled her pants free. Then strong hands grabbed her under her arms, propelling her up toward the surface. Together they broke into the night air, pulled by the current away from the house as they moved toward a large wooden fence struggling to maintain its hold in the ground. Only parts of the fence stood tall, at the posts cemented deep into the loamy Louisiana soil.
Keri gulped her first breath of air, catching a mouthful of rank-tasting brackish water that forced her to spit and cough. The man holding her was behind her now, having wrapped his forearm across her chest. He held her on his hip, helping her stay above the raging flood.
She couldn’t see him, yet as she blew the last of the water from her mouth and caught her breath, she recognized the firm grip that held her afloat.
“Dub?” she gasped, her voice breathless. “Dub? Is that you?”
“Yeah,” came a blurb muted by the water. “It’s me.”
She could tell by the bob of their bodies that he was diving his head underwater, digging with his free hand to move them somewhere safe. She heard him sputter as their bodies lifted. She kicked her legs as much as she could, trying to help propel them in whatever direction he was taking them.
The dim yellow streetlight glowed from above the water’s surface. As she stared at it, she wondered how the light could still have power despite the ubiquitous water. She wondered too how Dub had found her. How had he seen her and plucked her from the depths?
Dub swung her around to his side when they reached a section of fence flapping to one side like a stuck rudder. He helped her grab the top of the post, a pointed finial of smooth pine replete with countless layers of chipping paint and stain.
She grabbed it with both hands while holding herself there, her legs pressed against the handful of board connected to it. Dub had one hand on her as he moved to the other side of the finial. His grip now on her bicep, he treaded water in the relative calm of the waters dammed behind the section of secured fencing and her body.
From that position, he could face her. His face was drawn tight, his eyes wide with fear-fueled adrenaline, yet somehow sagged with exhaustion. His blond hair was dark and matted against his head. He had a cut along one of his cheeks. It was superficial, as well as the scratches Keri could now see on his neck and his forehead. Blood mixed with floodwater trickled from the corner of his mouth. The sides of his face and neck were red and swollen.
“You’re hurt,” she said, her voice airy. Her pulse felt thick against her neck and chest. “Are you okay?”
“Let’s talk about this when we get out of the water.” He motioned over his shoulder. “The house right behind me is two stories. As fast as the water is rising, I think we can navigate our way there; then we won’t have to climb much, not much more than a push from a second-story windowsill. Or something.”
She looked past him, beyond the reach of the light, and saw the gray outline of her neighbor’s two-story colonial. While the water was up to the roof that extended over the front porch, it hadn’t yet reached the quintet of second-story, shutter-framed windows that ran the length of facade.
“You think—” she exhaled “—we can make it?”
Dub nodded. The water was above the finial now. Their hands were underwater.
“Okay,” she said at the moment the remaining fence gave way to the rushing water. She lost her grip on the finial, and Dub struggled to hold her arm tight. He squeezed hard. She winced but didn’t complain. They floated for a moment, stunned by the sudden snap of the fence.
Keri kicked her legs and tried paddling to pull herself into Dub’s body. She managed to find his shirt and grab handfuls of it as the gnarled branches of an ancient live oak raked across them, tangling them in a swirling water threatening to pull them under. They navigated it, letting the current carry them closer to the colonial.
The rain, which had stopped briefly, was beginning again. Cold, heavy drops pelted them and slapped the angry surface of the rising water. Their legs brushed against metal under the surface, what Keri thought might be the top vertical bar of a neighbor’s cheap swing set.
Dub yelled something to her and tightened his grip, though between the rush of water and the din of the rain, Keri couldn’t make out what he was saying. His words vibrated against her, but they weren’t much more than that. She decided that as long as she held onto him or went where his arms guided her, she’d be okay.
The closer they got to the house, the darker it became. The dense curtain of rain and the barely visible sliver of the new moon that dipped in and out of the fast-moving black clouds high above made it harder for Keri to see where exactly they were.
She swallowed a gulp of the foul water and coughed again. Then she gagged and retched, suppressing the urge to vomit. She dipped beneath the surface, a rush of water rolling over her head, and held her breath. Water seeped into her nose and stung her sinuses. She shook her head like a wet dog as she resurfaced, disoriented and not at all sure where they were. Keri grappled for a better hold on Dub’s shirt, loosening and then reaffirming her grip. A wave of exhaustion washed across her body, and the backs of her legs cramped. Then the arches in her feet tightened as her toes curled painfully. She cried out in pain, a gargled shriek that drew Dub’s attention. He said something she could feel against her body, but she didn’t understand him. She did know, however, the intensity of his hold on her had tightened. His body betrayed his own fear. His movements weren’t smooth and controlled anymore. They were random and desperate.
The speed and power of the current was too powerful. She could sense that Dub wasn’t able to navigate it, and they were going to miss the house. They would slip into the wider, open water she imagined had swelled behind her neighborhood beyond the levy.
The cold beats of rain on her head and face were painful now, as if the device of some sadistic torturer fixated on her agony. The countless pellets stung when they struck her, each colder than the one before it.
It was the dark, though, that was the most terrifying. Unable to see now where they moved involuntarily, she was certain that some unseen obstacle under the water would catch them, that a tree would ensnare them, that a power line might entangle them, or that the water itself would swallow them whole. That, combined with the white noise of rain and rapids, made for sensory overload.
At the very moment her knotted, shivering body was about to give up, there was something solid under her feet. It was rough, and as Dub struggled to keep her relatively in place, it scratched across the tops of her feet and roughly across her bare knees. Then her shoulder slammed into something solid. The water pushed her against it, trappi
ng her there. It was the house.
They were on the roof of the colonial’s porch. Somehow—she neither knew nor cared how—but somehow Dub had gotten them there. He was next to her now, his body pushed against the siding and held there by the racing, rising water.
He took her hands with one of his and pulled them from his shirt, guiding them to a gutter downspout between them; then he led her to grab hold there, which she did.
Her vision hadn’t adjusted to the darkness, but here on the roof and under the protective soffit of an overhanging eave, the blur of rain was diminished. The dark figure of Dub’s body rose from the water and stood. He wavered against the rush at his calves but managed to pull himself up onto a window ledge and then climb onto the roof above, some three or four feet above the water.
He reached down, extending his arm to her. His fingers were wide and he called to her. She couldn’t move. She tightened her hold on the downspout, threatening to pull it free of its anchors. There was no way she could let go and risk being sucked into the abyss. No. Freaking. Way.
“Keri!” Dub called with more force, more urgency. “Keri!” He shook his open hand, imploring her to take hold.
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 w
ith 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.