Flood

by Joseph Monninger

  “This is weird,” Ellis said. “Nobody’s been by. We haven’t heard anything.”

  “G-Mom’s right about something breaking upstream. A levee or a lock or something. She says the Illinois River is famous for flooding.”

  “Let’s all push on the door,” Day said. “On three.”

  Ellis pushed and felt the door budge a little. He guessed something was behind it. Anything could have floated into position and blocked it. Of course, opening doors meant the snakes could move around more easily. He didn’t want to mention that to Kuru.

  They pushed again and the door opened enough to let them squeeze through. Kuru went first, then Day, then Ellis. The bakery was trashed. Water nearly covered the glass counters and it had lifted a bunch of free newspapers and floated them around. The newspapers swirled in the water like huge, white leaves in a spring flood.

  “This is insane,” Kuru said.

  “Do you have insurance?” Day asked.

  “How do I know if we have insurance?” Kuru asked, wading to the bakery counter and pulling out some white waxed bags. “Even if people have insurance, it usually doesn’t cover floods. Here now, hold these bags open and I’ll put whatever stayed out of the water inside them.”

  Ellis watched her move around the counter area. She knew what was what. In no time she had filled six bags and three boxes with crullers, doughnuts, cookies, and three pear tarts. She handed them to Ellis and Day, then told them to hang on a second while she went into the bathroom to get G-Mom’s pills. She sloshed away, the light disappearing as she went. Ellis stood in the water, in the darkness, waiting. He listened to the building, which groaned and popped. He knew water had pushed the building around, shook things that shouldn’t have been shaken, twisted boards and nails and tried to bring everything down. He also heard the rain still falling on the roof.

  He listened hard. And when Kuru screamed, it came as a surprise, a quick jolt of adrenaline passing through his body so fast it nearly made him drop his bags of baked goods into the water.

  Upstairs, Carmen heard the scream. It didn’t penetrate the walls easily and she only heard it as a distant noise, but she heard it. She glanced at G-Mom. G-Mom didn’t hear it or she did a good job of ignoring it. G-Mom was cagey in ways Carmen couldn’t quite define.

  “You hear anything?” Carmen asked.

  “Do I what?”

  “Hear anything?”

  G-Mom shook her head no. She still held the baby. Carmen was glad about that. Something was wrong inside her neck, and it was better, for the moment anyway, to let G-Mom tend the baby. Inside her neck it felt like a zipper had come off track, and now her neck was jammed or twisted in a painful way. It hurt more and more.

  “Give me a second, okay?” Carmen asked.

  “Where you going?”

  “I just heard something from downstairs.”

  “They calling?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ll be right back. You okay with the baby for a minute?”

  G-Mom gave her a deadpan look. Carmen realized it was a silly question.

  Carmen didn’t like leaving the small candlelight of the table. At least, she reflected, she didn’t have to worry about the orange shower curtain. Not with G-Mom around. G-Mom didn’t play like that, Carmen understood. She wouldn’t let things get out of hand.

  Carmen had nearly reached the door when she felt a small lightning bolt flash in her brain. She didn’t have any other word for it. She put her hand onto the doorframe and stood for a moment, not moving. The bolt came again. It was a brief flash, not truly painful, but disturbing in its intensity. It filled her mouth with the taste of metal and made her saliva run. Her right knee sagged a little. It made her dizzy, so she hung onto the wall until the sensation passed.

  That was not cool, she thought as she regained her equilibrium. Not cool at all.

  She rotated her neck and tried to get it back on track. It clicked when she moved. She didn’t like that sensation.

  She heard shouts downstairs. It wasn’t a scream this time, just loud, urgent speaking at top volume. Carefully, she walked down the hallway, keeping her right hand on the wall to guide her. When she came to the top of the stairs, she paused. The steps went down into the darkness.

  “You guys?” she called.

  They didn’t answer. Neither did they talk in a way that she could hear.

  “You guys? Are you all right?”

  No answer. She stood debating about what to do next. Part of her wanted to retreat back to the apartment, back to the baby and G-Mom. Another part of her pushed to go downstairs, to find the others, to help if they needed it. It wasn’t as if she wanted to go downstairs. She hated thinking about the water, about the water climbing like a slow, ugly fog, but they were all in it together and fair was fair.

  The lightning bolts decided it for her. A bright, heavy flash cracked inside her brain and she squinted at the pain. She felt dizzy, too. Her body convulsed. She tried to push away from the stairs, because she felt herself growing faint. Her neck made a series of angry, short jerks, as if the zipper had at last gone fully off its track, and she made herself back away so she wouldn’t fall down a flight.

  “G-Mom?” she called, but she wasn’t one hundred percent sure her voice came through her mouth. Maybe she just called inside her head. Before she could analyze that sensation, she felt herself sliding down the wall. Her right knee gave out, folded like a shaky card table, and the lightning bolts inside her head flashed in a bright, quick sequence.

  She fell down on the floor, her body limp and empty. The lightning bolt stuttered and frizzled, and she felt it pass up her body, up to her arms and fingers, then it turned around and roared back down the length of her body and shut down everything it touched.

  It was like a bad horror movie.

  Kuru could not even believe what she saw.

  She stood for a moment, her flashlight illuminating the bathroom, illuminating the mirror on the medicine cabinet, illuminating the thing she saw on the sill of the frosted window leading outdoors.

  Oh, no, she thought. Oh, no, no, no.

  She saw its reflection first. And that allowed her to tell herself that her mind had simply played a trick on her. She moved the mirror on the medicine cabinet slightly to get a better image of the thing on the windowsill.

  The snake on the windowsill.

  It had a cat in its mouth. A cat halfway down its mouth. Its jaws had flexed wide and now the snake simply slithered over the body of the cat.

  She took in a deep breath.

  Then she screamed.

  She did not scream for effect, or to get anyone to come to her aid. She screamed because she had to. She screamed to let off steam, like a whistle, like anything that built up so much pressure that it had to release something or bust. She moved the mirror away, then back, then away again. She didn’t want to turn and face the snake, because to do so would have made the snake real. Would have made the cat going down the snake’s gullet real.

  “Oh, no way!” Day said when he came flying into the bathroom, his voice a little too pleased and excited for Kuru’s way of thinking. “No way!”

  “That’s a cat!” Ellis said, stating the obvious.

  “Get it out of here,” Kuru said. “Get it away from me.”

  “That’s not so easy,” Ellis said. “Why don’t we just step away?”

  “What’s not so easy?”

  “Just easier to move away,” Day said.

  He held out his hands for the medicine. She stacked the pill bottles on top of the cardboard box of tarts. She felt light-headed and shaky. She felt so light-headed, in fact, that it took her a long moment to realize a simple truth: If one snake was out, others were out.

  “Anybody recognize the cat?” Ellis asked. “Did you have a cat, Kuru?”

  “No, I hate cats.”

  “Probably a stray,” Day said, his eyes fixed on the snake, Kuru saw. “Probably came in to get out of the water.”

  They like this,
Kuru slowly realized. Both of the boys stared at the snake. She looked, too. It was pretty extraordinary, she granted. The snake had its eyes closed, or rolled back, or had membrane over them, and its jaw had unlinked top from bottom. It looked almost as if the cat deliberately ran down the length of the snake, but had become stuck and now moved in slow motion. The snake grinned as it ate. She understood that was probably her own projection onto the reptile, but she felt it was true anyway.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Kuru said. “I can’t stand looking at it.”

  “It’s kind of beautiful, though,” Ellis said, his voice dreamy and soft. “I mean, if you kind of take a step back, it’s really kind of beautiful.”

  “You’re a sick pup,” Kuru said.

  “They must be hungry,” Day said, “to hunt so fast.”

  “Might have just been an opportunity,” Ellis said. “Might have been too good to pass up.”

  “I’m out of here,” Kuru said, giving one last look in the medicine cabinet to make sure she had everything her G-Mom would need.

  But there are snakes in the water, she realized as she closed the door to the medicine cabinet. You can leave, but the snakes might be out there, she reminded herself.

  “Let’s go,” Ellis said. “This water is making me cold.”

  Before any of them could move, the building made a loud, horrible groan. Something down below, down in the foundation, gave a shudder. Kuru grabbed the sink and held on for balance. As soon as the vibration stopped, she headed for the door.

  Carmen wouldn’t wake up. It was awkward, Day thought, because they stood in front of her, dripping from the water below, their arms full of baked goods, and Carmen lay stretched out against the wall, her body limp. Kuru was the only one who had the freedom of movement to bend down and touch Carmen. She put her hand to Carmen’s throat, feeling for a pulse the way people did on TV, and Day realized he didn’t have a clue how to assess someone’s state of health in a realistic way.

  “Why don’t you put the baked stuff in the apartment, then we’ll carry her back inside,” Kuru said.

  “You sure we should move her?” Ellis asked. “If she has a bad neck …”

  “We can’t leave her here,” Kuru said. “This is no place for her.”

  “She helped us lift your grandmother,” Day said. “She can’t be that bad.”

  “You never know,” Kuru said, her hand moving down to Carmen’s wrist. “I’ve seen stuff in the training room when people get hurt in practice and you think they’re okay, but they’re not, it turns out. If it’s a neck injury, it could be like an electric short. Something might have pinched a nerve or cut off some blood supply. I’m just guessing.”

  “Come on,” Day said to his brother. “Let’s put this stuff down.”

  “I’ll keep the light,” Kuru said. “Come right back. If I see a snake, I’m going to pass out.”

  “They’re not aggressive that way,” Ellis said. “Not unless they think they can eat you.”

  “That’s reassuring.”

  Day smiled. It was pretty weird to think about the snakes being around. He followed Ellis down the hallway and turned into the apartment. G-Mom sat beside the table, the single candle flickering in front of her. She appeared witchy, Day thought, but maybe any older woman with gray hair would have looked that way. It was hard to say.

  “Here’s the stuff,” Ellis said, sliding the waxed bags onto the table. “You okay, G-Mom?”

  “I’m fine. The baby’s fine. Where’s Carmen? She went out and didn’t come back. I called for her, but she didn’t answer.”

  “She passed out in the hallway,” Day said, adding his stuff to the pile of baked goods. “Your pills are here, too. And there are more candles. You might want to light some.”

  “We’re going to get Carmen,” Ellis said.

  “Is she all right?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Day said.

  Day hurried back out with Ellis and found Kuru in the same position. She hadn’t moved an inch. She had the flashlight pointed at Carmen’s face.

  “We need to be careful of her neck when we move her,” Kuru said. “As careful as we can be.”

  “I’ll take her feet,” Day said. “Why don’t you two take her upper body and try to stabilize it as much as possible?”

  Kuru nodded and waited while Ellis came around beside her. She pointed the flashlight back and forth so everyone could see what he or she had to do. Then she clasped the flashlight in her mouth and made a grunting noise to indicate she was ready.

  “On three, lift carefully,” Day said.

  He counted. They lifted Carmen and carried her slowly along the hallway. Day wasn’t sure they really protected Carmen’s neck as much as they should have. He tried to think of something they could have used as a stretcher, but his mind didn’t come up with anything. Her bottom sagged in between the two points of suspension. He couldn’t jerk her higher for fear of hurting her neck.

  “Put her down for a second,” he said. “My hands are slipping.”

  They put her down slowly. The next thing was to maneuver around the doorjamb and find a place for her in the apartment. Day told Ellis to go inside and find a place where they could put her. He came back a second later and said there was a couch near the table. He had dumped all the stuff off it, he said.

  “Okay, let’s go,” Day said.

  She felt heavier now. He had to spread his feet a little and force his hands to stay clutching her ankles. He told them to go through the door first and they did. When they came to the couch they lifted her higher for a second, then lowered her. Day had to readjust her feet once they had the upper portion of her body on the cushions. He doubted they had been particularly good at guarding her neck.

  “What happened to her?” G-Mom asked.

  “It’s her neck, G-Mom,” Kuru said. “Something’s wrong with her neck.”

  “A young girl like that? My, my. Put a cover over her. Find something. It’s getting colder.”

  “There’s no heat in the building,” Ellis said. “The boiler must be out.”

  “Why don’t you go down in the basement and fix it?” Kuru asked.

  Day smiled. He liked Kuru’s sass.

  Day watched G-Mom come over to inspect Carmen. She moved slowly, not particularly steady on her feet. She handed the baby to Ellis. Ellis took the baby and played with him. G-Mom told Kuru to shine the flashlight on Carmen’s face, then she thumbed back Carmen’s eyelids. Day couldn’t say what that proved or demonstrated one way or the other, but G-Mom nodded.

  “I studied nursing a long time ago,” G-Mom said, letting the eyelids go, but still inspecting Carmen. “That girl is out cold.”

  “Is she going to be okay?” Kuru asked.

  “Hard saying. She needs a doctor.”

  “We knew that, G-Mom,” Kuru said.

  “It’s not good,” G-Mom said, slowly standing straighter and moving away. “I know that much.”

  “What time is it, anyway?” Day suddenly asked. “Does anyone know? It feels like it’s been dark for years.”

  “It’s only a little past nine,” Ellis said.

  He held up his stupid pocket watch. It had a green face and could be set for an alarm, Day knew. It was a birthday present, sort of, a present he got when he took back two shirts their mom had given him for school. It had made their mom crazy that he would want a ridiculous watch more than a decent set of clothes, but she finally agreed it was his birthday and he could have what he wanted. At least it came in handy now.

  “Is it still raining?” Kuru asked. “I can’t hear anything.”

  “I think it stopped,” G-Mom said, taking her seat again at the table. “I don’t hear it anymore.”

  “That’s something, anyway,” Day said. “That’s a help.”

  Then no one said anything for a little while. It was an awkward silence, one that meant an angel passed by, Day knew. That was the superstition anyway. If you looked at a clock when things went silent, it w
as usually ten of, or ten after, or twenty of, or twenty after. At least that’s what Day had always heard.

  They might have kept standing there forever if Ellis hadn’t spoken.

  “I’m starving,” he said. “Can we eat?”

  We’ve got to get more organized about what we’re doing,” Kuru said, her elbows on the dining room table where they all sat. “Right now we’re just reacting to things, but we’ve got to start planning.”

  “It’s all just happening now,” Ellis said. “Nobody could plan for something like this.”

  “Did I say we were supposed to be prepared for this craziness? I never said that. We’re doing okay, given all the factors. But now we’ve got to get smart. We’ve got to think a couple steps ahead.”

  Ellis wanted another glazed doughnut. He had already eaten three, as far as he could track his intake. Maybe it was more. It didn’t really matter, because there was plenty to spare, that was for sure, and it wasn’t like they were going to stay fresh. Still, he didn’t want to be a complete pig, even if they tasted amazing. He kept his eyes on the plate at the center of the table. The candlelight made the doughnuts seem to dance.

  “Somebody will be by in the morning,” G-Mom said, poking at one of the tarts. “You can count on that. When the sun comes up, it will be a whole different story.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Day said, his upper lip flaked with cinnamon. “If this is a big flood, they might be a while getting to us.”

  “We got to get that girl some help,” G-Mom said. “That’s the top thing.”

  “Trouble is, we can’t call out. We can’t do much of anything except wait and try to keep ourselves safe,” Kuru said. “But that’s what I’m talking about. We should figure out how to have a water supply and how to keep it warm here. It’s getting cold and we don’t have any way to make it warmer. Things like that.”

  “And food,” Day said. “We have the baked goods now, but we’re going to need more if we’re trapped here for a while.”

  “We should make an inventory. Examine the fridges and make an inventory,” Ellis said. “And we need more flashlights. There must be some more flashlights in a building like this. It only makes sense.”