by Tom Abrahams
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 though.”
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 ha
d 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.
“Seriously, Dub,” she said. “Nothing to worry about. It’s not even a warning.”
“Yet,” said Barker.
The buzzer sounded and the players returned to the court. The crowd, which had lulled into a low chatter, roared as NC State inbounded the ball. A series of passes took the shot clock down to five seconds and then the Pack missed a short jumper.
Boxell rebounded the ball for the Bruins. The student section at the baseline erupted, and Boxell fired a rocket downcourt to Helms. Helms stopped at the three-point line, checked his feet, and drilled another basket. The Bruins were up by one with two and a half minutes to play.
Dub was jumping up and down. His throat was sore now from the loud cheering and chanting he’d employed throughout the course of the game.
A lifelong basketball fan, who’d been a good high school player, he’d never been to a Final Four. It was a dream and, when his Bruins had earned a spot in his girlfriend’s hometown, he made it his mission to go.
Now he was here, sitting near the court, his team winning its semifinal game with time running out. He was, as his west Texas grandfather would have said, happy as a pig in slop.
Dub pumped his fists as NC State missed its next shot badly and Boxell grabbed another rebound. He ran the court and passed it to the point guard, who in turn lobbed it back to Boxell, and he slammed it home. NC State took its final time-out with two minutes left.
The student section and the yellow and blue clad corner of the Superdome were thunderously loud. The team was up three and had all of the momentum.
“No complaints about the time-out?” Dub said to Keri, cupping his hand around his mouth so she could hear him.
She winked and adjusted her cap on her head. “Not now that we’re winning. This is fun.”
Music blared over the loudspeakers, and the oversized display over center court replayed the last several Bruin highlights, further inciting the raucous crowd there to see their team advance to the final.
They weren’t supposed to get this far. Despite their talent, they hadn’t played up to expectations. Throughout the tournament they’d been underdogs. They’d defied the odds. Round by round they’d survived and advanced.
That was what tournament basketball was about, Dub had explained to Keri during the long flight from LAX to MSY: survive and advance. He explained that UCLA didn’t have to be the best team in the country to win the tournament. They just had to be the better team on the court each time they played.
Keri was sandwiched between Dub and Barker on the plane. Though Dub had offered her his aisle seat, she’d declined. He was six feet three. Sitting in the middle wouldn’t be fair for him. But given the conversation during the length of the four-and-a-half-hour flight, which centered on tournament history, she’d confided in Dub that she should have taken the aisle.
“Survival,” Barker had echoed amidst chomps of mini pretzels, “is all that matters. As long as you’re alive, you have a chance.”
“Sounds easy enough,” Keri had said.
“Survival is never easy,” Dub had replied. “It’s the little things, the unexpected obstacles that are the most threatening. When you least expect it, things turn, the clock hits zero, and it’s over.”
Now Dub watched the seconds tick down in the semifinal and the slumping body language of the NC State players. He saw the dejection on the faces of the lip-biting fans. It was in sharp contrast to the elation of the Bruins and the energy of the players on the court. It was the difference between survival and its antithesis. It was a fine line.
The final buzzer sounded and UCLA won. For several minutes the students chanted and cheered. They high-fived the players as they moved toward the locker room. And then ushers came to escort the students out.
Their tickets were only good for UCLA’s game. They’d have to watch the second semifinal, the University of Houston versus the University of Florida, on television. They shuffled toward the exits.
Dub followed Keri, his hands gently on her shoulders as she guided them up the steps and out of the arena. Barker was close behind them.
When they reached the concourse and the thinning crowds, the smells of overpriced fried food and spilled beer filling the air, Barker lamented the absence of their friend Michael.
“I wish he’d been here,” he said. “He loves basketball every bit as much as we do.”
“He wouldn’t have liked the noise or the crowds,” said Dub as they inched their way to the large glass doors that opened to the outside.
“True,” said Barker. “But remind me to get him a T-shirt.”
Michael, Dub, and Barker were roommates. Michael was on the spectrum. He was high-functioning and did well in small groups with familiar people. He didn’t, however, warm to strangers quickly or remain calm in crowded, loud places.
“I bet he was watching,” said Keri.
Dub’s phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out. He had three new text messages, all of them from Michael. He held up his device and shook it.
“He was,” said Dub. “He’s hyped. And he asked for a T-shirt.”
Keri and Barker laughed.
When they reached the door, it was then they saw it was raining outside. It was a heavy curtain of rain that made it difficult to see much beyond the immediate plaza outside the arena doors.
“Nothing to worry about, huh?” said Dub, pushing the door open and holding it for Keri.
She stepped out into the thickly humid evening, rain splashing off the concrete. Tucking her hair up underneath her hat, she tugged it lower on her head. Then she zipped up her white and yellow track suit jacket and motioned for Dub and Barker to join her.
“It’s just a little rain,” she offered. “You won’t melt.”
Dub flipped his hoodie over his head and tugged on the drawstrings. It was a useless exercise. The cotton would be soaked within seconds.
“It’s not melting I’m worried about,” he said and stepped into the pelting rain.
CHAPTER 4
April 4, 2026
New Orleans, Louisiana
Lane Turner adjusted his custom-molded earpiece and straightened his tie. Then he raised his phone, turned on the camera function so that the display showed a reflection of himself, and gauged his appearance.
He straightened a couple of hairs, checked his tie, then slipped the device into the breast pocket of his suit jacket. His mic was already clipped to the lapel.
“We have an umbrella lead?” he asked his newscast producer, who was in the production booth back in Los Angeles. He was referring to leading the newscast with two stories and not the downpour beating upon New Orleans. “We tease the plane crash latest and then get to the game here?”
The primary news anchor at LA’s n
umber two television station stood under a cheap pop-up tent that kept him dry, for the most part. He was outside the Superdome, waiting for his newscast to begin. Turner was there with his own field producer and a photojournalist, along with the station’s sports director, Tank Melton, who was getting postgame reaction from the players and coaches. He also had a photographer with him and would join Turner on camera later in the newscast.
“Yes,” the newscast producer answered. “You’re off the top with video of the search for survivors. Then we wipe to highlights from the game, and then you’re on camera for the hello. We have your package ready to roll. We’ll hit a quick weather with an outlook for Monday, you’ll throw to our reporter in Florida for the latest on the plane, and then you’ll toss it back to the studio and Courtney Leigh for the rest of the day’s news.”
Turner acknowledged her and asked his field producer if she’d added the last couple of sound bites he’d gotten with UCLA fans before the game.
“I did,” she replied.
He smiled and adjusted his jacket.
“The crowd’s starting to file out pretty good now,” said the photojournalist, who was manning the tripod-mounted digital camera aimed at Turner’s mug. “If they get rowdy, I’ll zoom in and frame you tight. That’ll keep them out of the shot.”
Over his shoulder, Turner saw the growing throngs of fans weathering the rain, figuring they wouldn’t be a problem. They’d be more concerned with getting out of the downpour and into an Uber to make their way to Bourbon Street or elsewhere in the French Quarter. That was where he’d be heading as soon as he had a chance. He’d started his day with beignets and chicory-enhanced coffee at Café Du Monde. Might as well end it with a hurricane and ogling at Pat O’Briens.
The producer spoke in his ear. “Thirty seconds.”
Turner repeated the countdown to his photographer. The field producer was on the phone, listening to the control room. She gave a thumbs-up to Lane and then motioned for him to adjust his tie knot. He obliged and she gave him another thumbs-up.