Sighing, Mitch reached over and parted the shade, got a good look at the streets of Witcham.
Yes, even at midday the world was gray and misty. The rain was still falling, water sluicing along the curbs and filling the gutters, carrying leaves and sticks and garbage down to the iron-toothed mouths of stormdrains, which themselves had backed up now, creating lagoons of whirlpooling water and clotted debris.
The rain was falling and the dead were rising.
Jesus, of all things to say.
Well, he was half-right, Mitch decided, pulling off his cup of coffee and going back to his paper. The rain certainly was still falling and according to the Weather Channel, it wasn’t about to stop. For nearly a week it had been coming down like piss from a leaky pipe and from what they were saying, it would go on until the end of the week. Already, parts of Witcham were underwater…or nearly…and what was another seventy-two hours of this deluge going to bring?
“Mitch.”
He started, spilled a few drops of coffee in his crotch and swung around. Lily was standing there. Her red hair, always so fiery and brilliant, looked like old coals barely holding their heat. Her face was pinched from sleep and her green eyes no longer sparkled. The luster was gone from them, worn away by time and tribulation. But that was Lily these days, a reflection of the beauty she’d once been, but just a reflection. It had been that way ever since-
“Mitch,” she said again. “Did you hear that? Did you hear what that guy on the radio said?”
He pretended he hadn’t. Pretended he didn’t know that Lily had been listening to the radio in the other room just as she had been pretty much since the rain began. Listening to that especially irritating Jesus freak prophesying doom and gloom.
“No,” Mitch said, “what did that nut say now?”
Lily blinked her eyes rapidly. “He said…he said the rain is falling and the dead are rising. Why would he say that, Mitch? Why would he say something like that?”
“Because he’s about three plates short of a picnic, honey.”
“I don’t like it.”
She had enough going on in her head, she didn’t need that idiot making things worse for her. Mitch only wished he could get his hands on that sonofabitch. He would’ve kicked his ass on general principles.
“Shut the radio off,” he told her. “Or switch stations. Christ.”
“But what he said-”
“I don’t give a shit what he said. Last night he was talking about the righteous building a fucking ark for chrissake. You want me to get some two-by-fours and plywood, start making one?”
“But, Mitch…Mitch, Chrissy’s out there,” Lily said very slowly. “She’s out there in that…that rain.”
Mitch swallowed.
Chrissy was fifteen. She could handle herself. These were the things he wanted to say to Lily, but didn’t dare. He was almost afraid of how she might respond. Well, she’s not your daughter, is she? She’s mine and I worry. I can’t help it, I worry. Lily might have said something like that. Now and then she could still get up the gumption to be hateful, to be cruel, but when she did, Mitch knew, you had to grin and bear it. All those anti-depressants the docs had her on, they were doing funny things to her head. Mostly, she was withdrawn and glassy-eyed, but now and then she’d have mood swings so severe they were almost scary. You’d want to call the priest before her head started spinning and she puked up the green stuff. Almost like all those drugs were bottling up everything inside her, all the things you should be letting out when you were grieving. And now and again, they got out, all right. And when they did, cover your head and hope for the best.
Jesus Christ, Mitch, he thought, she lost her twin sister two weeks ago. There’s a connection between twins you can’t begin to know. It’s pulled the rug out from under her and shit down her throat. Be patient, just be patient. She’ll come back. Sooner or later, Lily will come back to you.
Sure, and that’s all he really wanted. Way he was feeling, the rains could wash Witcham right off the goddamned map if Lily would just get her feet under her again. Lily before her sister’s death was full of piss and vinegar. That red hair burned hot right down to its roots. She was a very passionate, energetic woman who took no shit from anyone. Now she was quiet, almost submissive, all that hot blood sucked right out of her and replaced with something tepid and watery. Mitch wanted the old Lily back, needed her back. He would have given his left nut and most of his right to have her suddenly snap out of it, to see those green eyes blazing and her mouth set sharp. Jesus H. Christ, Mitch, look at this place, will you? I drop the ball for a few weeks and you throw in the towel? Get off your dead ass and give me a hand cleaning this place up. You’re not in the Navy anymore and you’re not out on the boats, so let’s snap to it.
Mitch looked at her, wanting to tell her things, but he didn’t. Lily was gone and this frightened, shivering thing had taken its place.
One look in those eyes of hers pretty much stripped your gears. Lily was afraid of everything these days and if you looked in her eyes or listened to her long enough, that fear, that rampant paranoia, could almost be infectious. Yeah, certain parts of the city were flooding, just as certain parts of the Midwest were, but Chrissy was a sharp kid. She’d be fine. Maybe Chrissy was his stepdaughter, but he loved her like she was blood. And nobody could dispute that.
Mitch sighed. “You want me to go looking for her?”
Lily hugged herself, opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again. Then she sighed. “Yes… no…I don’t know, do you think you should?”
“Sure, why not. She take her cell?”
“Yes, but she’s not answering.”
“Don’t worry about that. Lot of the city is out of service now. We’ll probably be next, way this storm is going.”
Chrissy had taken off early that morning with a couple friends of hers, Heather Sale and Lisa Bell. They were going sightseeing around the city, seeing if the low-lying areas really had water up to their windows like people were saying.
“Mitch, it’s just, you know, the things people are saying…all those stories. I start thinking those things and I can’t seem to stop.”
Sure, all those goddamned rumors and that idiot on the radio was the black icing on a very ugly cake.
Mitch stood up, pulled on his rain slicker. “Don’t worry, Lily. I’ll find her.”
2
The rumors.
Well, they were flying hot and heavy, of course, and the conspiracy theories were rife. The facts of the matter were that an unprecedented storm system was sweeping over the Midwest and the main rivers-the Ohio and the Mississippi-were swollen and bursting their banks. Not that any of this was much of a surprise, for so many smaller waterways emptied into them. In Wisconsin, you had the Fox and Wolf Rivers, the Menominee and the big old Wisconsin herself. All of which either drained into the Mississippi or the Great Lakes and all of which were either past flood stage or quickly approaching it.
A little closer to home-Witcham, that was-you had the Black River which had already overflowed its banks and attempts by the Army Corps of Engineers to suppress those turbulent waters with sandbags and dike systems were only partially successful. The Black was flooding and Witcham just happened to lie in the Black River Valley. About five miles outside of town, the Black had been dammed to form the Black Lake reservoir which powered a hydroelectric dam run by Wisconsin Electric which in turn supplied not only the city and outlying areas with power, but cities as far south as Madison and Eau Claire. In an area where the average rainfall was roughly 28 or 29 inches, some sixty inches had fallen in the past four days and the Black Lake reservoir was near to cresting. Even diverting water into the elaborate series of nearby spillways had only lessened the danger minutely. Back in the old days before the dam was built in 1934, Witcham, which lay in the Black River floodplain, was swamped regularly from heavy springs rains and snowmelt. Particularly, River Town and Bethany, both which sat roughly dead center of the city on opposite sides of the river itself.
