by Isa Marks
Falling Water
Isa Marks
Copyright © 2021 Isa Marks
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
CHAPTER 1
HOSPITAL 2
“Okay, this is what we prepared for people. Get your go bags, we can’t stay here any longer. We need to get to higher ground immediately. Go, go, go! The first barrier has broken, we cannot wait any longer. We need to move.”
Cathy hadn’t seen security make such a serious evacuation attempt in a long time. She had only been five last time a dike broke. All she remembered was the fear in the guard’s eyes as he carried her to the first secure area. She recognized that look in the eyes of the security guards now. Was there another dike breach, or was it worse and why didn’t they tell them what was going on? She wasn’t even born, last time an outer dam of the country collapsed. She had heard her parents’ evacuation stories but she never seriously considered it to happen in her lifetime.
The last official government funded dam was drawing its last breath. The only thing standing between them and the ever rising sea. She remembered visiting it once with her parents when she was younger. It had been a strange sight, such a massive construction, with the high water on one side and low on the other. Full of wonder she watched the scene before her, how could such a massive body of water be held back by just one wall?
That afternoon she sat on the dike with her little brother watching the water seep through the cracks that had started to appear years ago. She remembered how it looked hurt, like it was weeping and sorry for what it was going to do to all the people that depended upon it. Sad for not being able to fulfill its life goal. Murphy always laughed at her when she spoke about buildings as if they were human beings, but she knew he saw it too.
“Better a sad dam than an angry one I guess,” he said eventually, “wouldn’t want it to get up and eat us.” They laughed and rolled over the sand until their parents demanded them down, warning them not to damage the dike. “What’s it going to do, eat us?” Murphy said.
Up until now they were able to live with the consequences, the rising water in the inlands, by raising the dikes and putting emergency protocols in place. There was no pumping back the water anymore, not since the turbines got clogged by sediment and stopped working altogether. No one had known how to repair that.
She knew when they reached the next tipping point the first dike would overflow, or worse. It would not be enough to protect them any longer. They had to get to higher ground, behind the second layer of dike protection. Was this it? The tipping point? The moment the first dike would give? Something inside her felt off. Weren’t the guards supposed to calm them down instead of rushing them into leaving? They had practiced the evacuations often enough and usually they were fooling around while telling everyone to remain calm and find the exits, before gathering at the rendezvous point. Why were the guards so panicked if they were just executing standard first wave evacuation protocol?
“Cat we have to go!” She felt a pull on her arm.
“Daryl, why are you here? You shouldn’t be here.”
“You weren’t outside Cat, I came back for you.”
I must have zoned out again, she thought. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
“We have to get to the rendezvous point first, I’ll explain later.”
They ran through the empty corridors of the old hospital that their parents had claimed as their home decades ago. She had grown fond of this place with its cracks in the plaster that had started to flake off the walls. Now she had to leave it all behind. All the memories created in this place, this would be the end of an era and the start of a new one.
This was more than just the first wave, she thought, Daryl wouldn’t make such a fuss if it was just the first barrier overflowing or even breaking. That would leave them with wet feet at most.
Daryl knew more, he had to. He was the best watcher they had and his intuition was usually right. He must have picked up something, or have seen something coming when he was keeping watch around the dam area in the last weeks.
On the door before her, she saw the pamphlets all of them had to learn by memory when they were kids. She remembered reciting the lines to her father:
. . . . . . . . . .
When the first barrier is compromised, take your go bag and gather outside the Hospital. Follow the instruction of the guards.
In case of an overflow or break in barrier 1, seek safe refuge behind barrier 2. Gather at rendezvous 1, the Farm House.
In case of an overflow or break in barrier 2, seek safe refuge behind barrier 3. Gather at rendezvous 2, the Spring Cabin.
. . . . . . . . . .
She flung the door to the street open. A couple miles in front of them people were running to safety. The group had already gone, how long had she zoned out?
The Hospital was at the edge of the village. Hospital was a big word for the small village medical facility, but it was what their parents had used when they moved from the city hospital to the village hospital. They had to evacuate the city hospital, because of the deadly heat in the city. They moved their group but they kept the name, though officially it was Hospital 2, which no one used anymore.
They ran down the main street that led to a heavily cracked road, the asphalt was buckled and warped by the heat. There were two routes. The left one went through the former forest, where there were once trees. But now, it is just sandy grounds and charred tree stumps. The right one was a steep climb over the bare mountain rocks. Although it was only used as an escape route in case of forest fires, like the last one that had cracked open the road. They had a long way to go, to where the trees still grew.
Daryl grabbed her arm again and pulled her to the right, following the route to the bare stones.
“Protocol demands the former forest route for the first wave, Daryl, you know that.” Cathy tried to keep up with him, tripping over the uneven road surface.
“I know, but we are behind so we’ll skip the Farm House. Now save your breath for the climb.”
Climb? She looked at her heavy bag that had slowed her down. He wanted her to climb with that?
The stones were still hot to the touch. They were glad that autumn had begun, bringing back a more comfortable temperature. The first part was mostly rubble and big rocks, which was exhausting, but as they got higher the wall became almost perpendicular; forcing them to climb.
Cathy grabbed the edges of the stones above her head, staying as close to the wall as possible. She remembered the lessons but had never been any good at climbing, unlike her brother who was a real mountain goat. She knew how he loved free running through the city when gathering supplies. She would have rather gone through the former forest, with her feet on the ground.
Daryl wasn’t the best climber either, Cathy thought as she heard pieces of rock fall into the depths below them. He was there, behind her, to catch her if she fell. That was the kind of guy he was, he had always been like that.
They were almost at the top, from there it would be an hour’s walk to the Spring Cabin.
“Have you been there before?” she asked.
“I’ve been to the Spring Cabin often enough, but I usually take the long way around,” he smiled. “I’m taking it you haven’t been there very often?”
“No, only to the nearby field, during evacuation practice. I’ve studied the plans though, but this route does seem a bit harder than it looks on paper.”
She tried cooling her burned hands, holding
them in the increasing wind one by one, before making a final attempt at mastering this mountain. A group of birds skimmed past them, circling in the wind to get over the mountain. If only they could fly like those birds, that would make this a lot easier.
Daryl was beside her on the small piece of rock protruding from the mountain wall. His big hands between her back and the go bag she had now strapped around both shoulders like a backpack. He pushed her in the back, making her belly touch the surface of the wall.
“I’ve got you Cat, just one more, you can do this.”
“If I was a couple inches taller maybe,” she sighed while reaching up as high as she could, standing on the tips of her toes.
“Put your left foot on my knee, and push yourself up. Then grab the top rock and I’ll push you up further.”
She did as he suggested and slowly lifted her knee. She placed her foot on his knee, then pushed herself upward. It was just enough to reach that high rock. She took a slow shallow breath and pulled herself higher, to the top of the rock. It was hard to remain balanced. That heavy bag was pulling her back.
“Hug the wall,” she heard from below, while she felt the pressure from Daryl’s warm hand increase, pushing her forward and up as best he could.
She tried but going up and staying close to the wall was hard. Her stomach scraped against the hot rough rocks and hurt. Pebbles fell from the wall’s surface, hitting Daryl’s shoulders and face. She pushed up from the foot still on Daryl’s knee, pulling herself up with her arms. Finally the top of her body lay flat on the mountain. She rolled onto her back exhausted from the climb, her legs still dangled over the edge, but she had made it.
The push on his knee had destabilized Daryl. Pebbles hitting him from above disoriented him for a moment and before he knew it he groped for the walls, looking for something to hold on to while slipping and sliding down the mountain wall.
“Daryl!” Cathy screamed. Her heart was pounding, as she watched him tumble down the mountainside.
He had landed a couple of yards down on a ledge. It was just big enough to hold him, but small enough to keep crumbling away beneath him. His backpack had helped to break the fall. He was conscious, alive . . . at least for now.
The crumbling continued and he could feel the edges of the place where he had landed narrow. He had to move before the ground beneath him would give way. Pulling himself up by his arms he secured his grip just in time. His legs slid down with the crashing sound of rubble, that disappeared in the depths below. He tried to find some sort of foot hold, but he had no feeling in his left leg. He tried lifting it but it was not cooperating. He stabilized himself with his right leg and finally stood firmly against the wall. When he looked down he saw a dark stain running all the way down to the bottom of his leg.
“Well that’s not good,” he sighed. He took a deep breath and started working his way back to the top, using the last energy he had left in his arm muscles.
Cathy’s hair was blowing in the wind. The rocks had made her hands sore and red, blisters started to form but she didn’t even notice the pain. She just sat there at the top of the mountain, staring straight ahead. Her attention was fixed on something in the distance.
This was even worse than she thought.
CHAPTER 2
PHASE 2
“Cat, are you alright? Cat, Cat!”
Daryl dragged himself beside her. He tried shaking her, to snap her out of her current state but there was no response. He had noticed it too, this was worse than either of them had imagined. He put his arm around her, pushing her to his chest while staring at the violence coming towards them.
In the distance he saw windmills crumble and walls collapse. Trillion gallons of water worked its way through the streets, obliterating everything and everyone in its path. It came crushing through the stain glass windows of the church, until the spire could not take the pressure anymore. The broken spire was swept up in its stream along with everything else that hadn’t been fixed in place. Masses of boats, electric cars, wooden sheds and trees all piled up, moving along with the stream as foam on the waves. Sparks flew from the electricity cables that ran to the neighborhood batteries, as the poles broke and hit the water.
They had lived far enough from the coast to escape before the water reached them. Before it got so high that it crushed the first barrier and flooded the entire village. But the first barrier was gone now and it was just a matter of minutes before the water, that filled the ground floor of the Hospital, would come crushing through the first floor windows. And it would only take a few hours before it was high enough to endanger the other barriers.
Evacuation protocols had a full worst-case scenario contingency plan, but the dry text had not done it any justice. How different this was from when they had practiced calmly moving outside the building in rows of two. Most training involved a small dike fracture leading to migrating behind barrier two. Every worst-case scenario training had gone just as calmly.
Strange how you do not fully fathom the impact if it’s just a drill, Cathy thought. There had never been chaos and screaming during practice. And now she could hear them in the distance, their voices carried over the water. She heard the screaming of those who were trapped in the buildings below. Murphy, where was he? she thought. Did he get out? Was he even in the village or was he still out scavenging for supplies? And Daryl, what about him, was he okay?
“Daryl, oh my god, Daryl,” she mumbled out loud, her eyes were still staring ahead.
“I’m here, I’m here.” His head felt light and the world looked like he was looking through milky glass, everything faded into each other. “Cat I need you to snap out of it. I need your help.”
She shook her head, as if waking from a midday spring snooze, before reality started to set in. His arm was heavy around her neck. She smelled his sweaty body beside her. His face looked pale and his skin felt cold.
“How did you get back up here? You fell, you . . . what . . . how?”
She looked at him and saw the light in his eyes was almost gone. One of the strongest men in the village was just a big hump of flesh now leaning against her. He was so heavy she could barely manage to keep him from falling over. She looked down and saw one of his legs was darkly stained, almost black. Beside him were reddish black drag marks tracing back a couple of feet to the side before disappearing over the ledge. Had he dragged himself all the way up here?
“Daryl, stay with me, I’ll get us out of here.”
“I need you to put pressure over the iliac artery, Cat, can you do this?”
“Your what? I don’t even know what that is?”
“It’s okay, I’ll ehm . . . I’ll talk you through it.” He tried to remember his medical training, but everything seemed jumbled in his head right now. “Tear off my sleeve and tie it around my leg to slow down the blood flow. Tie it just below where I hold my hands and make it tight.
Cathy made a hole in his jacket and ripped the fabric. She tore it into long strips and tied them together.
“Take this.” He felt along the inside of his jacket and took a flask out of his pocket. “Finally found a good excuse for carrying my home brew around,” he grinned. He took a sip and gave the rest to Cathy, to clean the wound.
“And. . . ehm gauze in my bag.”
His bag was filled with most of the Hospital’s medical inventory. In her mind she compared the contents of his bag to hers. How selfish she had been, carrying around such unnecessary things like her favorite clothes and books and all the other things that she thought held precious memories, while she could have brought things to help people. All that stuff, it felt so useless now. He hadn’t even packed spare clothes.
“Is this too tight?”
“You’re doing good, darling. Here, put my knife on top . . . now twist and lock it tight.”
She cleaned the wound on his leg and dressed it as good as she could. Daryl clamped her arm, pulled her close and whispered in her ear, before passing out. “You get to the Spr
ing Cabin now, alright? Leave me here, I’ll only hold you back.”
◆◆◆
Murphy paced the room, he raised his voice and pointed at those around him. “Oh and why didn’t the guards say anything, why did they make everyone think it was just a simple overflow or first barrier rupture? They knew it was worse than some extra water seeping through the dam, reaching the tipping point. They never even mentioned full evacuation, what’s up with that. I’m just saying, they could have an alternative agenda.”
“Murphy calm down! We made it to the first rendezvous point. Let’s just wait and ask the guards when they are back. They have to focus on getting everyone out in time. We have at least an hour before the sea level reaches this second barrier and we have to make our way to the Spring Cabin.” An old man sat across the room from him, now standing up to put some extra strength behind his words.
Murphy had barged in on the group of village elders meeting in the Farm House. He was all worked up, his tanned face made him look even angrier than normal. He had overheard one of the guards on his walkie talkie, while he was coming back from ‘scavenging for supplies’. He had heard rumors about the state of the dam before, and the widening of its top cracks. He had been sneaking out the past weeks, making it as far to the coast as the dam, where he had seen the increased security with his own eyes.
When the demand came for him to visit the library in one of the unexplored parts of the nearest city, he knew something was very wrong. They would never ask someone to risk being in the city’s heat for that long, not unless the situation was very severe. They could only need one thing from the library, repair manuals, books on building construction, a way to fix these old machines. Were they really asking him to risk his life for a solution that was not really a solution at all?
“I mean, don’t you get it. You send me to the city to get books on techniques we can no longer use. We simply don’t have the energy and building materials to fix the damn thing. You know that! So what then? Were you just trying to get rid of me, is that it? I nearly burned to death for those shitty books, and I couldn’t even get half way to the library. That city is a bloody heat island. I told these guys at the dam, they can’t fix in a day what our parents couldn’t prevent in a lifetime,” Murphy shouted at the old man.