and things that could never have lived in the first place. They were lined up on shelves and lit by red light bulbs to enhance atmosphere and lend an uncanny, otherworldly illumination to things most definitely uncanny and otherworldly-freak births and bucket babies, parasitic twins and monstrous fetuses of every description. Drifting in their oceans of brine, here were things with too many limbs or not enough, one-eyed and two-headed and six- fingered, squid-babies and spider-babies, a menagerie of flesh twisted and mutated into the most abnormal shapes.
Costello’s Museum was just down the road from Hillside Cemetery and of all the buildings on that block, it took the worst beating. Its facade, which was little more than reinforced plywood and joists, was obliterated by the rushing wall of water, mud, and debris that had burst the banks of the Black River and pretty much sucked up everything in its path. The water crashed through the museum, destroying Barney’s collection of oddities and spilling into the Parlor of Pickled Punks, and with such force that nearly all the vessels and jars were shattered instantly. The backwash sucked everything out into the streets, out into that river of foul water and falling rain.
And for some time, up and down Angel Street, monstrous things that had not been free of their liquid prisons for decades were exposed to what fell from the sky. Things that had haunted the dreams of generations were set loose upon the world. They bobbed and drifted and long-curled limbs unfurled…
4
Bodies.
Oh, Jesus Christ, look at all those bodies.
That’s what Heller was thinking as the enormity of it all sank into him, piercing him and making him want to shove his fist in his mouth to stay the scream that begged to get out. A mire of bobbing bodies and mud and filthy black water and coffins.
Standing there in that dirty rushing water, rain spraying into his face, he said, “Have you ever seen anything like it?”
Next to him, Miggs just said, “Can’t say that I have. Now keep moving.”
Yes. Yes, that was important. Heller knew that much. They’d been sent down here to knock on doors and urge people to leave on account the river was cresting the wall and the sandbags were failing. It was the sort of shit job you pulled when you were a cop. Not even an hour into it, the wall had burst and that enormous wave of silt and water and grave matter had coming rumbling down on them. It hit the cruiser and spun it like a top, carrying it away like a paper cup. If it hadn’t wedged up against that house, it might have flipped right over. As it was, they’d had a hell of a time getting out without being carried away.
At least now, the ferocity of the flooding was spent. The water was still deep, but its current was gentle. Thank God for small favors.
But it was a mess.
Just an absolute mess. Entire houses had come apart like jackstraws. Trees and light poles came down. Cars carried away. Anything that wasn’t tied down was swept away along with a lot of things that were.
They still had their long-handled flashlights, though.
Miggs moved across the street, playing his light around. And what it revealed was a horror. A stone monument with a cross at its apex was jutting from the muck outside a cafe along with a couple smaller stones. Caskets were drifting past, bumping into one another along with the wooden wreckage of things that might have been caskets once. Across the street was a little neighborhood convenience store and two corpses, one naked and the other dressed in black rags, were standing upright in the doorway where the wall of water had deposited them. The roof from somebody’s house had gone through the plate glass windows of an insurance office and there were ragged, stick-limbed things trailing from it.
This was a nightmare, an absolute nightmare.
As they plodded along, Heller felt things bump into his legs in the water and he just didn’t want to know what they might be.
“Gonna be a hell of a job to clean this up,” Miggs said into the wind.
Oh yes. It certainly was. When the waters retreated, there would be a lot of mud and in the mud…oh, Heller didn’t even want to think about it. But one thing was for sure, if they thought that he was going to be down here fishing stiffs from the muck, they had another thing coming. He wouldn’t put up with it. He’d go to the fucking union.
“Hold it,” Miggs said.
Something came floating past…another corpse. This one was pretty fresh, floating like a board, legs together and fingers still intertwined at his or her breast. Miggs’ light passed over it and Heller saw yellow bone where the face should have been. It passed on by and he started breathing again.
“C’mon,” Miggs said.
The wind was picking up, whipping and howling, throwing rain around in a wild thrashing tempest. The street was a churning shadowy sea of mud. It came up past their thighs. Slopping and stinking and just as black as quarry mud. Good God. A river of sewage and foul water and grave waste. The smell of it was absolutely nauseating.
They were making for a little saloon that rose up out of the water. It would be a place to wait this out, anyway. Heller followed behind Miggs and then something caught his legs and he almost fell into the drink. He tried to untangle his feet, but it was like he was caught in fishing line.
“Help me for chrissake,” he said.
But Miggs wasn’t helping him: he was laughing. In the wind and rain, he was laughing at Heller’s predicament as he scrambled around, trying to stay on his feet, trying to shake whatever had snared him up. Not that that was any big surprise. Miggs made it no secret that he did not like Heller. From the first day he’d been partnered with him, the older man had looked down his nose at him. Heller thought it was because he had only three years on the force and Miggs had something like twenty. But that wasn’t it at all. Heller asked him once what his problem was and Miggs, being Miggs, had told him. “You’re a fucking whine-ass, Heller. Everybody knows it. I don’t know how I pulled a guy like you, but you just keep your pissing and whining to yourself and we’ll get along fine.”
And now Miggs was just loving it.
“Asshole,” Heller said to him, stuffing his flashlight into his belt and reaching down into that filthy water and taking hold of what had him. It felt like sticks. Like wicker or something. He yanked it up best he could and it wasn’t wicker at all, but the ravaged skeleton of a woman with long trailing black hair sprouting from her skull, something held together by scraps of gray meat and wound up in threads of her funeral dress.
“Yah!” Heller said and fell right into the water.
He’d stepped right into her, got his feet trapped in her ribcage. That stinking water in his face, his bicycled his legs until he felt that grim baggage break free.
“Oh, ha, ha, ha!” Miggs said, his light on Heller. “You ought to see the look on your face! It’s priceless!”
Heller scrambled to his feet, pawing mud off his raincoat. “Let’s just go,” he said, wanting nothing better than to take a punch at his partner.
Another coffin swept past them and this was a recent interment. In that yellow half-light coming out of the sky, he could see it was black and shiny still, the brass handles not tarnished in the least.
“That’s a nice one,” Miggs said, finding it all a little too amusing. “Don’t you think it’s a nice one, Heller?”
“Oh, shut up.”
Finally they reached the saloon and climbed the steps out of the water. The door was locked, but Miggs blew it open with his 9mm. Inside, it was dry. It smelled of stale cigarette smoke and old beer. A wonderful smell after being out in the streets.
Heller heard a creaking sound. “Hell is that?”
Miggs shook his head.
The back door burst open like a stick of TNT going off and a tide of surging ebon water flooded into the bar room in a tidal wave that knocked Miggs off his feet and put him under. Heller let out a high, girlish scream, swimming for the door, managed to squeeze through before it wedged close. Miggs came up gasping, alone, trying
