She followed Rhonda back into the living room and Rhonda sat back in her chair, drawing her legs up to her chest. She watched Lily, but did not say anything.
“There’s no reason to be afraid,” Lily said under her breath.
Rhonda said, “What?”
“Nothing. Close your eyes.”
Sucking in a deep breath, Lily went to the front door and unlocked it. She stood there, leaning up against it, filled with conflicting emotions.
“You can’t go outside,” Rhonda told her.
“Close your eyes,” Lily said.
Then she stepped out into the chill drizzle, feeling the individual drops breaking against her face. She walked out into the yard, wet leaves brushing her ankles, then her calves. She stepped off the curb and into the swirling water. As she got near where she knew the sewer lid to be, the water came up above her knees, cold and numbing. The water pooled and sluiced and flowed, gaining momentum, rising and rising. Something brushed her leg and something splashed behind her.
“Marlene,” she said.
In the house, Rhonda watched her from the window, wondering what it was all about but thinking maybe she would be better off not knowing. Lily just stood out there in the falling rain, the water coursing around her, whirlpooling. Dressed in her white nightgown, she looked like a vampire woman from an old movie.
“What’s going on?” Rita suddenly said.
Rhonda turned from the window. “I don’t know…I don’t know.”
Lily could feel the water, cool yet warming, filled with leaves and branches and unseen things, rubbery things and sliding things. And from between her legs, just breaking the surface, she saw a face…or something like a face. It could have been Marlene. It was corpse-white and blurred, huge peeled black eyes staring up at her with a barely-concealed hunger. Slimy fingers gripped her ankles and that mouth, blown open wide and blubbery, formed itself into a grin.
“No,” Lily said. “Oh dear God…not like this…”
Inside the house, Rhonda turned back to the window, but Lily was gone. Just that slopping sea of water and discharge, leaves and drifting things. A great ripple expanded out from where Lily had been standing.
She watched the rain come down, bleaching the color from the world. Then she quickly closed the curtains.
30
If Witcham had been flooding that afternoon, now it was flooded.
Maybe Crandon wasn’t as bad as River Town or Bethany Square, but it was gaining, oh yes, it was certainly gaining. Chrissy and Lisa Bell were making their way through the outer reaches of Crandon and the water was up to their waists, sometimes deeper. Leaves were carried over its surface along with debris and garbage of every kind. They moved up streets and down avenues, past empty shops and deserted houses and submerged cars, knowing that if this had been normal, dry Crandon, then they could have made Kneale Street in twenty or thirty minutes, but with the way things were going, it might take hours.
A tree went drifting by and Chrissy pulled Lisa out of its path.
“Oh God,” Lisa said, “what was that?”
“A tree,” Chrissy said.
“We’re going to drown out here, I know we’re going to drown out here and I’ll never get to make out my senior will.”
Chrissy maybe wanted to remark on the absolute absurdity of that statement, but she didn’t bother. That was just Lisa. She was a walking panic attack. You had to forgive her her excesses. Her world was small and tight and scary on a good day, let alone this madness.
“We’ll get out, it’ll just take time.”
Lisa made sobbing sounds in her throat, but she didn’t start crying. She held it in and Chrissy knew it took great effort on her part.
Arm in arm, they splashed forward into the wetness and darkness.
There was no life anywhere. Buildings rose up dark and silent around them like gravestones and coffins, the corpses of cars and trucks huddled beneath them, webbed in shadow. If there was anyone out there, Chrissy had seen no sign. As they plodded along, she was struck by the feeling that they were the last two people on earth. That this deluge had swallowed them all and what she was seeing now?the flooding, the devastation?was all there was, nothing else. The rain fell and the swelling river continued to expand, drowning the city inch by inch.
“Heather’s dead,” Lisa said, as if it had just occurred to her.
“Yes,” Chrissy said.
And how did you take that in without screaming? Just today it had been business pretty much as usual, except for the rising water, and now it was this. Perpetual darkness broken only by an occasional struggling ray of moonlight, the ever-present rain and wet dog stink of the city…and Heather was dead. Neck broken or head split open, dead was dead. Yes, just today it had been the three of them as usual, Heather, Chrissy, and Lisa. And now that was gone forever, it was just wiped right?
What the hell was that?
Both Chrissy and Lisa were stopped now, out front of a maternity shop, the windows reflecting the world darkly.
“What was that?” Lisa asked.
But Chrissy didn’t know.
She thought it sounded like something in the alley across the street, but she couldn’t be sure. She pulled Lisa closer up against the building until they were veiled in shadow. Whatever was over there, splashing away like a fish rising and descending, was not good. She instinctively knew that.
“Let’s get out of here,” Lisa said.
“Sshh!”
Across the street now, Chrissy could see weird, murky forms moving against the facades of buildings. They looked like people, but there was something there she did not like. Three of them had come up from the water now and here came a fourth. They waded along moving up the street, making hissing and gibbering noises that might have been speech. They were towing something behind them and Chrissy knew it was a body.
That was bad, of course. But what made her go cold right to her marrow was that she could not honestly say that those people were individuals. They almost seemed to be connected with the fourth being a child or dwarf, all wired together from a single skein of flesh.
What the hell did that mean?
“What?” Lisa said.
But Chrissy would not let her see.
Could not let her see.
She took hold of her, pressing Lisa’s head against her shoulder, hugging her like a child and Lisa did not seem to mind.
Those people over there climbed a set of steps out of the water and into a building, dragging that body behind them. There was no doubt, then…all of them were parts of a single whole. Paper dolls.
Then there was silence for a moment or two.
Rainwater dripped from the overhang above, running down Chrissy’s face. A light wind blew and the water roiled and snaked with unseen currents. Then from that darkened building across the way, chewing sounds. Meaty tearing and crunching sounds like a dog gnawing on a bone in the darkness.
Chrissy held Lisa even tighter to her.
