by Tom Abrahams
Danny stopped the playback. He didn’t care about another déjà vu. These were the same questions Derek had asked him. There was a pattern there, symptoms of something. Side effects? And the whole idea that there was some underground facility beneath the cliffside Getty Villa sounded ludicrous. It was science fiction.
But wasn’t all of it science fiction? The clandestine interrogations, the weblike connections amongst a plane crash and a flood, a jail inmate and a so-called prepper? And somehow he was mixed up in all of it? How could that even be possible?
He’d never agreed to a study. He didn’t even like Derek or have a clear handle on what exactly it was the dude did for a living. He’d thought he knew. He didn’t. He wondered if his ex really knew.
The thought of his ex sent a sharp pain between his shoulder blades. He took a deep breath and exhaled. He thought about Gilda. Gilda Luster. Gilda. Luster…
He hopped up from the bed. Opposite the foot of it, on a rectangular writing desk pushed as far into a corner as he could fit it, was his laptop. It was refurbished. It was slow, another thrift-shop find. He’d bought it at Venice Beach from a shopkeeper who went by the name Filter. The guy was an ex-con with a drug habit, but he was good at fixing up junk. He’d wanted seventy-five bucks for the computer. Danny had paid him fifty.
He sat on the cheap plastic swivel chair at the desk and tapped the computer’s space bar. The display came to life and Danny entered his passcode. He waited for the operating system to cycle and boot up. It did, eventually. He clicked the icon for his web browser. The bar at the top of the screen slowly appeared with the invitation to enter a keyword into a search engine. He did, then typed Gilda’s name and the word OASIS.
His Internet connection was ridiculously slow because he was logged into the open network of someone else in his building. While the old plaster walls of the apartment house didn’t do well for wireless signals, the Internet was free this way, so Danny lived with it. He didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t afford it otherwise. The only reason he had a working television was because basic cable was included in the rent.
The engine stopped spinning and displayed the results. The top of the list was populated with references to cosmetics. The farther down the list of sites he scrolled, however, he found a couple of references to Gilda Luster. There weren’t any connections to anything called the OASIS.
One of the references was a people finder website that didn’t offer anything of value. The other was a link to an article in a preparedness magazine called Off The Grid.
Danny skimmed through it, looking for the mention of Gilda. He gave up, hit CTRL+F, and typed in her name. It highlighted several references, including the caption of a photograph of Gilda working in her garden. It was more a greenhouse with elevated tables and complex hydroponic systems, but that wasn’t what caught Danny’s eyes. What fixed his attention was Gilda.
She stood behind the tables in a tank top. Her broad shoulders, tanned and muscular, carried a thin, fit physique. Her white blonde hair was pulled back tight against her head into a ponytail. And glaring into the camera, contradicting the broad smile on her face, were intense ice blue eyes that radiated concern, authority, and a hint of paranoia.
Danny wasn’t sure how much of his own thoughts and fears he was projecting onto her. It didn’t matter. She looked exactly as he’d imagined her. He knew he’d never met her. As he stared at the full-color image on his crappy laptop display, he was confident he’d never seen her in person before. Yet she was familiar. He could almost smell the loamy soil under her fingernails and the dried sweat behind her ear at the nape of her neck where the ponytail began.
He closed the computer and slid out of the chair. He was sweating again. This wasn’t science fiction, it was his truth. Somehow, he was embroiled in some weird mind-altering experiment, if that was what it was. He didn’t know what it was. He only knew he was experiencing side effects similar to two people he’d never met, one of whom he recognized down to the sharp gaze of her eyes.
He’d always disliked Derek for tangible reasons. Now there was something less so. The gazillionaire jerk had done something to him he couldn’t quite figure out. And as much as he wanted to confront him and grill him with a litany of questions, he also wanted nothing to do with any of it.
He stepped back to the bed, dazed. He was aware enough to step over the dog before hopping back amongst the dune of sheets piled to one side of the bed. He picked up the recorder and rubbed his thumb along the smooth plastic casing.
His life was tough enough, lonely enough, on-the-edge enough that anything that tipped the scales the wrong way would send him spiraling out of control. It was better to attempt to ignore it, smarter to pretend it was fiction.
Danny stared at the recorder. He considered clicking through the clips and randomly starting another then decided against it. He held the power button until the LCD display went blank. He dropped it onto the bed, amongst the tangle of sheets, and lay back, staring at the ceiling fan.
He focused on the chain flapping, dancing, to the rhythm of the revolving blades. The blades were spinning, a warbling disc above him. He picked one of the blades and tried to isolate it as it moved around and around and around.
He yawned. It was late. Or early. Whatever it was, he’d had enough. He didn’t want to think about anything. He wanted to sleep and to dream happy dreams. He drifted off with the image of Maggie in his mind, her feet kicking in short spasms.
He should be so happy.
CHAPTER 16
April 5, 2026
New Orleans, Louisiana
The tightness in Bob Monk’s chest worried him, but he couldn’t say anything. His arm tingled, and he was clammy. At least he thought he was clammy. It was hard to tell in the damp chill on the roof of his daughters’ rented house.
He flexed his fingers in and out, rolling his shoulder in circles.
“You okay?” asked Kristin. “You don’t look okay.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Just uncomfortable. We’ve been up here forever.”
The four of them were huddled near the roof’s peak. There were four or five feet between them and the waterline. The rain had stopped, and the subsequent mist was dissipating. But they were stuck in the chilled air, wet and exhausted. And the water was still rising.
“Mom?” asked Katie.
“Yes?”
“Why were you a waitress?”
Bob knew his children did this when they were frightened. They’d always done it. When his mother had died from Alzheimer’s and they were on their way to the burial, the girls were talking about Chevy versus Ford. They’d pressed him on the differences and why one was better than the other. He’d always been a Chevy man. Always. He’d considered at the time, as the ninety-five-dollar-per-hour limousine carried them on gliding wheels toward the aboveground plot, that they were trying to take his mind off the day’s melancholy.
They weren’t one of those New Orleans families who celebrated life with colorful parades or carried the casket on their shoulders triumphantly from block to block. They were grief-stricken. Despite the length of Bob’s mother’s illness, they’d been floored by the loss of the family matriarch.
He’d decided then, in the darkness of the air-cooled backseats, that they were trying to take their own minds off the pain. They’d been too young to really empathize enough and think of him and how he felt. But now, as they huddled together on the roof, he reconsidered the notion. They were intuitive girls. They were kind, if not spoiled and a little jealous of their baby sister having flown the coop. They were trying to take his and his wife’s minds off the danger that crept toward them. The girls could swim, after all. Bob and Kristin could not.
Still, asking about Kristin’s job as a waitress was a seemingly random question that had come from nowhere. She hadn’t been a waitress for more than a year now, and there had never been a discussion about why she’d waited tables for twenty-two years. She’d just done it, pure and simple. Maybe K
atie was bored and couldn’t think of anything else to ask.
“We needed the money,” Kristin said flatly. “Raising a family isn’t cheap. Never has been.”
“But Dad makes good money,” said Kiki. “He supported us.”
Kristin wrapped her arm inside her husband’s and held him closer to her. They were both shivering. “He does make good money. Your dad works hard, always, and he’s a good provider. But everything is expensive. We had three girls and a two-bedroom house. An auto mechanic can only make so much, no matter how many transmissions he rebuilds.”
“I should have gone out on my own,” said Bob. A wave of nausea crept up from his gut. He winced, trying to keep it from his wife. “Your mom always told me I could make a go of it. But the money was steady. I could fix cars, which I love, and not worry about the business end of things.”
“You can be good at whatever you put your mind to doing,” Kristin said. “But it’s fine. I understood. I didn’t mind the work. It paid okay, and the tips were under the table. People were nice. I wish I’d been able to spend more time with you girls though. I do regret that.”
“Don’t regret it, Mom,” said Katie. “I didn’t bring it up to drudge up regrets. You shouldn’t feel guilty. You were—are—a great mom.”
A gust of wind swirled through the trees, rustling the leaves and rippling the water near them. The water was three feet away now. Bob wondered if he was the only one watching it. His neck ached. He stretched it to one side and rubbed his shoulder with his thumb. He took in a deep breath and then exhaled, suppressing the urge to vomit.
“I hate to break up the trip down memory lane,” he said. “But the water is getting closer.”
Kristin tugged on him, pulling him back toward the peak of the roof. The girls scooted back. They were essentially at the apex now. From that vantage point, even in the dark, they could see the water surrounding them. It was endless, save the tops of houses, trees, and power lines, which hung low over their heads now.
“The rain stopped,” said Kiki. “The water should be going down.”
“Depends on where it’s—” Bob’s muscles tightened and he grabbed his arm. He bit the inside of his cheek and tasted the warm, coppery flow of blood filling his mouth.
His wife screamed. His daughters cried out. He couldn’t be sure who said what. He couldn’t focus on anything but the pain, a tightness in his chest unlike anything he’d ever felt. It wasn’t pain so much as a heaviness. Someone was sitting on his chest. The pain, which was acute, was in his shoulder and neck. His jaw throbbed.
He was cold. Shivering now. He was sure he was sweating, even though he couldn’t distinguish it from the floodwater and rain on his face and under his arms. His groin pulsed with every unusual-feeling heartbeat.
“I think…” he squeezed out through clenched teeth, “I’m having…a heart attack.”
He exhaled again. Each breath was thicker than the one before, more concentrated, more precious. He sucked in the humid air despite the weight on his chest, despite the overwhelming nausea that washed over him like a series of waves, one after the other.
They should have evacuated. The mayor was right. The Evacuspots might have worked. They could have gotten out. They could be high and dry without water at their feet. He could be asleep right now instead of dying. In his mind he cursed the mayor. He cursed the Evacuspots. He cursed the modernist, fourteen-foot sculptures that denoted the gathering points. He cursed butter and cholesterol. He cursed the years of smoking menthols. He cursed himself.
He saw his women trying to communicate with him. He couldn’t understand what they were saying, what they were telling him to do, what they wanted from him. How could they want anything from him? He was having a heart attack. How could they ask him to do anything? They couldn’t be making demands, could they? He couldn’t move, couldn’t clench his fist. He couldn’t breathe now. He blinked his eyes. Or they blinked for him. Everything was working, or not working, on its own. He wasn’t in control. He couldn’t feel or do anything other than focus on the pain and the nausea and the dull ache.
But there were hands on the back of his head now. Cold hands on his neck and on his forehead. Even though he was cold, the hands were cold. How many hands were there?
His mind raced. His breathing was quicker now, more shallow.
His eyes blinked again. Slower this time. And again, even slower. It wasn’t a blink. He was having trouble keeping them open. He couldn’t focus. He couldn’t see more than blurry faces looking down on him, blocking the milky black sky above.
Then he couldn’t see anything at all.
***
Keri told Louis to turn right onto the next street-turned-borderless-canal. He spun the helm, guiding the jon boat in a looping turn that puttered ninety degrees.
Frank was in the bow of the boat, keeping watch for potentially damaging debris. He was dragging one hand in the water beside the starboard side of the boat next to the bow. But since he didn’t know exactly where their destination was, and he was as bad at street names as Louis, he wasn’t doing much else.
Keri was his navigator. She knew the way. At least she thought she did.
The city was unfamiliar to her now, like an alien planet whose surface was water and whose long-ago civilizations had drowned in it. There were only the remnant reminders of buildings and lives long ago sunk. The darkness and heavy, moist air added to the grim illusion of being on a foreign moon far from the warmth of a centering star.
This wasn’t an alien planet though. It wasn’t some foreign moon. It was her hometown, and somewhere in the far end of the city, her parents and sisters were alive and needed help. They had to be alive. There was no other possibility.
They’d traveled for miles now, edging closer to the outskirts of the central city where her sisters’ rental home was cemented to the shifty earth. The tops of houses, or their second stories, passed by, and Keri ducked under branches and sagging power or phone lines, challenging herself at every intersection.
Was this the turn? Was it right? Was it left? She couldn’t be sure. She told herself she was sure. She wasn’t.
The rain hadn’t returned, which was good. It made it easier to see in the dark, and somewhat more tolerable to troll the nasty water in search of her family. She did notice the water wasn’t receding though. Whenever they were close enough to a house, especially one painted white or yellow, she searched the siding, or brick, or wood, for the hint of a waterline that would tell her the water had reached its crest and was receding. She hadn’t seen one yet. Not even a hint.
Although she wasn’t a flood control expert or a meteorologist, she knew enough about the way floodwater worked to know it either rose or it sank. It didn’t sit stagnant. Not for long, not when the rain stopped.
Then all of her doubt about their path evaporated. She knew where she was at last.
“Turn again,” she said, looking past Dub and pointing at the approaching intersection. “I think that’s the one.”
There was a pole but no street sign. It was familiar enough though, the large aged magnolia on the corner that rose above the white two-story house and protected it with its outstretched branches.
“This is it,” she said. “I’m sure.”
Her pulse accelerated in her chest. Her breath felt thin as she drew it through her nose. She took Dub’s hand and squeezed. This was the street. Four houses in, on the left.
“Go slow,” she said to Louis, as if it were her charter. “Real slow. It’s hard to see.”
The air was warming up again. It was dense with the odor of swamp and rot. Keri didn’t smell any of it. Or if she did, she didn’t notice. She was too focused on the houses to the skiff’s port side. They’d past the first house and the second.
“Do you hear that?” asked Frank. He was staring up to the sky and off to the distance somewhere. Something he’d heard had him straining to focus on it.
“What?” Keri asked, almost standing in the boat, then thinki
ng better of it. “What do you hear?”
“Cut the motor,” Dub suggested, “please.”
Louis shut off the power, and the boat drifted forward. The only sounds at first were the distinct chirp and croak of insects and reptiles that had been their soundtrack the length of the trip. There was the distant rumble of thunder that felt a thousand miles away. And then she heard it, a woman’s voice calling for help. Keri looked to the left, two houses down, but she didn’t see anything or anyone. The cry was from farther away.
“I think it’s down and on the right,” said Dub.
Barker agreed. So did Gem.
Keri resisted the urge to dive into the water and speed to her mother. But why would they be on the right side of the street? Why so far down? Was it her mother? Or was it someone else?
She scanned the house tops and the trees. She was second-guessing herself now. How was she wrong? How did she screw up and fail her family?
“That can’t be,” she said. “They should be here. On the left. At that house. At that—”
She saw the house, fourth on the left. It wasn’t her sisters’ rental. It was a different style. It was a two-story with a rounded cupola at the top.
Keri slumped, her head felt heavy. Her arms weighed too much and her shoulders ached. She wanted to puke.
But the cry kept coming. The woman ahead and to the right needed help. Her call, louder as they drifted closer in a slow but steady current that pulled them in the right direction, was desperate. Keri could hear it in the woman’s voice. There was pain, fear, urgency. She was calling for help, though not for herself.
“My husband!” the woman cried. “He’s sick. We need help. Help!” The voice echoed, carrying across the water. It was distant but not so much so. It was on this street.
“We should help them,” Gem said to Keri. “We should help and then go find your family. We have to be close, right?”
Keri nodded blankly. She’d heard Gem but wasn’t really listening. She was trying to figure out where she’d gone wrong.