Stormy World, page 20
He could see the church at the top of the hill. It was in worse shape than ever. More than half of the roof was fallen, and only a small section at the back of the building was still intact. Even some sections of the cinder-block wall had collapsed.
What if they’re all dead? What if the rest of the family died inside that church?
It was such a horrible thought that it cut through the brain fog, and for a moment, he felt the full weight of the danger all around him. He was trudging up a hill in the open, clutching his young daughter right in the middle of a hurricane. Madness. Absolute madness.
We’re all going to die. This is the end of the road for the McDonald family.
But he tightened his grip on Katie, dug the toe of his right boot into the muddy ground, and took a great stride up the hill. He brought his left boot down hard, trying to push through the mud to something firmer. It seemed to work, so he took another step. But then a gust of wind forced him to take a corrective step, and he slid back down.
It all seemed futile. He looked around, desperately trying to figure out some alternative. A number of trees had been knocked over behind him, and the air was full of pieces of building and broken branches. He couldn’t go back into the town. That seemed too dangerous now. And he had to keep his word to Grandma.
Okay, I just have to do this somehow, he thought.
He started up the hill again, but the brain fog had returned with a vengeance. He felt like he was moving through some hateful dream. An enormous shadow passed over them, the object moving so close that he felt it against his back and the top of his head. It hit the ground a few yards to his left, and he saw that it was the trunk of a sizable tree.
Finally, he went down on his knees and wrapped both arms around Katie. If he couldn’t get himself to safety, he could at least shield her through the storm. When he looked up the hill again, he was shocked to see someone standing there. He was waving his hands over his head and shouting. It took a second to realize who it was.
“Dad,” he cried, though the wind ripped the word out of his mouth and carried it away.
Shane started down the hill toward them, picking his way carefully. It seemed like he was aiming for the densest patches of grass, avoiding bare mud. That was smart, something Owen wished he’d thought of. When his dad reached him, he caught Owen under the arm and helped him to his feet.
“Son, are you okay?” he said, leaning in close to be overheard.
“I think so,” Owen replied, “but I can’t get up this damned hill.”
“I’ll help,” Shane said. “Follow my lead. Step exactly where I tell you to.”
Shane started back up the hill, using the same technique of stepping only where the grass grew thick. As he did, he pointed at places for Owen to step. In this way, they began to make slow but steady progress. Even Katie dared to looked up at her grandfather, and it seemed to calm her a bit. At least she stopped screaming. Another shadow passed over them, but Owen didn’t bother to see what new enormous debris had almost hit them.
When they reached the top of the hill, Shane waved him through the gap in the wall. Owen stepped inside, but he was shocked to see just how devastated the inside of the building was. So much of the roof and walls had collapsed that there was hardly any place to step. He stumbled forward, tripping over broken cinder blocks and pieces of the roof, until he found a flat enough spot that he could stop.
“Katie, we made it,” he said, patting her on back. “We’re inside now.”
“Daddy, I hate rain,” Katie screamed. “I hate the rain!”
“I know. Me, too.”
He turned to see Shane stepping into the sanctuary. The roofless space provided only a small amount of relief from the hurricane, and the walls around them looked unstable, close to toppling.
“Dad, where’s everyone else?” Owen asked.
“I’ll lead you there,” Shane replied. He bent over, his hands pressed against his thighs. “Let me catch my breath.” Only now did Owen noticed his torn and tattered sleeves, the scratches on his hands. He felt a pang of guilt.
“I’m so sorry I wandered off when the storm hit,” Owen said. “When I grabbed Katie, I tried to head into town. It was impulsive. I just don’t know what’s wrong with me. Something broken.”
Shane stood up, still grimacing, and laid a hand on Owen’s shoulder. “It’s fine. I’m not mad at you. I’m just glad you and Katie are safe. We should make our way back to the others.”
He started to turn away, as if to make his way through the room, scurrying through the mounds of collapsed wood like some kind of desperate animal. But Owen grabbed his arm. He couldn’t hold it in. He had to tell him what had happened, the worst of the news. Shane looked back.
“Dad, Grandma was with me,” he said.
“With you?” Shane replied, eyes widening. “We left her here.” He gestured at the room around them. “I assumed she was buried under all of this.”
Owen shook his head. He picked up Katie again. “She crawled outside somehow through that gap in the wall, and I found her out there. I took her with me, but...”
“Where is she now?” Shane said, but Owen could see on his father’s face that he knew where the conversation was leading.
Owen took a step toward his father, hoping to be better heard over the wind, but when he did, his foot came down in what felt like a deep puddle. It startled him, and he almost fell. He stumbled to one side, his right shoulder slamming into a beam. In the process, he almost dropped Katie, who cried out. But Shane rushed up, thrust one hand out to prop Owen up, and grabbed Katie around the midriff with his other arm. He pulled her away, as Owen regained his balance. However, in the process, he stepped into another deep puddle.
“What happened to Beth?” Shane asked again.
“I carried her into a school down the hill,” Owen said, stepping away from the beam. There were puddles everywhere in the sanctuary. “She was having a heart attack or something. I guess it was going on for a long time. The last thing she did was order me to come back to the church and find the rest of you.”
“The last thing...” Shane said.
Owen nodded. “She’s gone. I can’t...” Owen stumbled in water again, and this time, he went down on one knee. His knee sank into inches-deep water. As he looked around, he saw standing water all over the sanctuary. Had the rain done this?
He couldn’t think about it long. The brain fog was getting intense again, and everything felt dreamlike and surreal.
“I couldn’t do anything to help,” he said. “I failed to save her. She just sat down and died, just like that.” He snapped his fingers.
But Shane reached down and took his hand, helping him to his feet.
“You did everything humanly possible,” Shane said. “You came back for her. You carried her to safety. Beth had a bad heart. That’s not your fault, son.”
As Owen looked around, he saw glints of water all over the room. In some places, the water was already as high as his ankles. When he looked up, he could see just how little of the support structure for the building remained. This place wasn’t going to last much longer.
“Dad, the school down the hill is in better condition,” Owen said. “There’s a second story. I left Grandma there. Maybe we should all move there before this place falls on top of us.”
But Shane shook his head. “It’s so bad out there right now, I doubt we’d all make it.”
“But look at all this water,” Owen said. Even as he said it, he took another step into a puddle, and this time, the water seeped over the top of his boots and down inside. “It’s only going to destabilize the building further.”
Shane pointed across the room, where a broken door was just barely visible through gaps in the piles of debris. Owen thought he saw someone standing there. However, as Shane was pointing, there came a loud creak and groan, and suddenly, a section of the sanctuary collapsed in front of them. It seemed like an inner wall had fallen inward, pushing some of the existing piles of debris right in their way. A great surge of water, almost like a wave, was pushed by the force of the collapse and splashed them. Owen turned, but he felt the wave hit as high as his hip.
“Water is coming up through the pipes,” Shane said. “Combined with all this rain, it can’t drain fast enough. Come on. We have to get to the others.”
“Where are they?” Owen asked.
Shane pointed right where the brand-new wall of bricks and wood now stood before them, rising out of the growing water like an evil bulwark. Owen looked behind them. It seemed the sturdiest part of the church was the outer wall of cinder blocks. Those walls were still mostly intact, but this had created a problem, because it trapped the water inside. And the rain was coming down stronger than ever. Some was escaping through the gap that he’d used to enter the building, and some through the doors at the back of the sanctuary, but in both instances, debris now stood in the way, impeding the flow.
This place is a death trap, he thought. We’re not getting out of here alive.
When he turned back around, Shane was staring at him with a hopeless expression on his face. He held Katie tightly, shielding her as best he could from the rain. Owen felt strangely disconnected from the moment. Even as he realized the danger, he couldn’t seem to access his emotions. It was a cold realization, but he was neither scared nor sad. He wasn’t even angry, as he had been for weeks. Now, he just felt empty.
“We’ve got to get through that pile,” Shane said. “We have to get to the rest of our family. They need our help.”
Emotionally, Owen would just as soon have walked out into the hurricane and kept going, but the last words of his grandmother rang in his ears. At that moment, when the brain fog was severe, it was the only thing that kept him on track. He nodded at his father and gestured at the wall before them.
“Let’s do it,” he said. And his voice seemed distant and alien to him. “Let’s do it before we drown in this trash heap.”
28
Shane could see the strange distance in his son’s eyes, the expressionless mask his face had become. And he knew the word for this condition: dissociation. Shane was no therapist or psychologist, but he knew that dissociation was a common trauma response. Owen was suffering. He had been suffering acutely since Amelia’s death. The fact that he had somehow still managed to carry Beth to safety and then bring Katie back to the church was remarkable.
Even now, even with the distance in his eyes, Owen was still trying to save his family. He stepped past Shane and began picking away at the wall of debris before them. His movements were robotic. Shane laid a hand on his shoulder, and Owen paused, looking at him blankly.
“Thanks, son,” he said. “Thanks for keeping Katie safe. Thanks for trying to save Beth. I know it’s been hard.”
Owen shrugged and went back to working on the pile. “Sometimes, you just have to do what’s right, I guess, no matter how you feel. I suppose that’s the lesson, right?”
Shane didn’t want to let go of Katie. She’d been through so much. He couldn’t imagine what kind of mental and emotional help she was going to need in the future. Maybe she would prove more resilient than the adults. Either way, they had to survive this storm first, and he didn’t dare set her down now, not with the rickety nature of the building and the growing pool of water at their feet.
Finally, he had to swing her around onto his back to spare his arms. “Hold tight, sweetheart,” he said. “We’re going to get back to our family, okay?”
“I don’t want rain,” Katie said, in a sad, almost resigned voice, as she mashed her face against his back.
“You and me both,” Shane replied, as he began picking away at the pile. He worked carefully, pulling loose chunks and pieces out and setting them aside.
Slowly, Shane and Owen worked their way through the pile until they finally broke through and saw the door into the back room. By now, the water had pooled so deeply in the sanctuary that it was up to Shane’s mid-calf. The big hole in the middle of the door was clear, but he didn’t see any of his family standing on the other side. That was troubling.
“Come on, Owen,” he said, beckoning his son as he made his way toward the door.
When he didn’t hear Owen following, he looked back. Owen was standing there, wringing his hands, a totally blank look on his face. He was staring at nothing in particular. Shane grabbed his wrist.
“It’s time to go,” Shane said.
Owen blinked a few times and met his gaze. “I shouldn’t have stolen that van. Dad, we killed people. Why did I do that?” He shook his head, as if trying to clear his mind, and said, “I think I’ve gone crazy. My brain is all messed up.”
“You’re going to be okay,” Shane said. “We just have to get through this. Don’t think about anything else right now.”
And with that, he started back toward the door, and this time, Owen followed him. Shane reached the door and poked his head through the hole. The first thing he saw was that the roof which had been jammed in the window was now on the floor, which meant the window was now just a big, open hole, with rain and wind blowing through. There was standing water on the floor all the way across the room, and the open hatch seemed to be filled with water.
Shane stepped through the hole, hunching low so Katie wouldn’t hit her head. Once he was in the room, he turned toward the far wall and spotted his family. They were all huddled together on top of the tables. Corbin’s face was a hideous pink mask of blood and rain, but he was standing near the edge of a table and looking up at the ceiling. Jodi was helping to cover Kaylee, while Violet covered Ruby.
“Jodi, I got them,” Shane said, starting across the room. The water in here was already almost to his ankles. As Jodi rose up, he pulled Katie off his back. The little one was already squirming and trying to get to her grandmother. “Owen kept Katie safe.”
Jodi climbed down off the table, clearly still hurting, and came toward them. “Owen! Are you okay?”
Owen moved up beside Shane, but he was still glassy-eyed and lost. He scarcely responded to his mother as he started across the room. There was now a big pile in the middle of the room from the window plug that had crashed down.
“Where is all this water coming from?” Owen asked, as he met Jodi beside the pile. “How is it getting in here?”
“Honestly, I think it’s a broken water pipe adding to the rain,” Jodi said, wincing with every step. “The flooding might be backing up from drainpipes, too. It’s got to be more than just the rain coming through the ceiling. The basement flooded in minutes.”
She started to take Katie from Shane, but it clearly hurt too much. Instead, she headed back toward the tables, but the little one continued to squirm and reach for her, forcing Shane to keep up. When they reached the tables, Shane set Katie beside Violet, who seemed to sense her and pulled her in close.
“Jodi. Jodi.” Shane would have said her name gently, delicately, but the wind forced him to practically shout. Corbin helped her back up onto one of the tables, and she eased herself down. But when she finally looked at Shane, she saw something in his eyes and knew it was bad news.
“What is it?” Jodi said. Then a moment later, “You saw my mother out there, didn’t you?”
Shane waited a moment for Owen to reply, but he just stood there, staring off into space. Finally, Shane took Jodi’s hand.
“She’s gone, isn’t she?” Jodi said. “I knew it. We left her out there to die.”
“She’s gone, but it’s not our fault,” Shane said. “Owen tried to save her. He carried her down into the town, to a schoolhouse, but she...it seems to have been a heart attack.”
Jodi bowed her head, but after a moment, she just nodded. Shane heard the clatter and crash of wood smacking together, and when he looked back, he saw that most of the roof pieces were beginning to float as the water rose. It was well past his ankles now.
“We can’t stay in here,” he said. “This water is crazy.”
“I have a theory, sir,” Corbin said. He was standing on the table, bloody water dripping from his face. “I think all the rainwater is backing up through the sewer system. Maybe there are blockages, or maybe it’s just the volume of water, but it started in the basement for sure.”
“If we’d stayed down there, I don’t think we would have gotten out in time,” Violet said. “Maybe we would have drowned.”
Shane looked around. Indeed, there was some kind of churning in the water above the basement hatch, which seemed to bolster Corbin’s theory. “We have to get out of here,” he said. “I don’t know how high this water can get, but I don’t want to find out.”
“The school,” Owen said, in a dreamy, breathless voice. “The second story. Assuming the ceiling hasn’t fallen yet.”
“Nah, dude, we can’t take the whole family outside in this,” Corbin said. He pointed upward. “Our best bet is to climb up to the organ loft. We can use the ladder.”
“It looks rickety,” Jodi noted.
“Yeah, but we don’t have a choice,” Corbin said. And with that, he hopped down off the table into the water, which was now approaching his knees.
“I think Corbin’s right,” Shane said. The ladder was underwater now, set against the wall beneath the broken window. As Shane made his way toward it, Corbin at his side, he had to kick floating debris out of his way.
It was shocking how fast the water was rising. It had already reached the bottom of the hole in the sanctuary door, where it had met the rising water from that room. But it really had nowhere else to go, and if it was backing up into the basement from the drainpipes, then they didn’t have much time. Shane and Corbin grabbed the ladder and carried it toward the loft.
Jodi gathered up the others. Violet was carrying Katie now, and Kaylee followed with Ruby. Owen was standing in place, staring up into the void. If Shane hadn’t known better, he might have thought his son was drugged.
