Instead, Alan was stuck in a claustrophobic space smelling of blood, vomit, and whatever else was tracked in by the last prisoners to occupy the space. When he had tried to protest, the deputies ignored him and kept discussing the possibilities presented in the upcoming Houston Texans season. He considered saying something shitty about the Texans just to elicit a reaction, maybe start a conversation, but held his tongue. He couldn’t be sure if they’d take it in the spirit it was meant.
They’d been driving twenty minutes when, suddenly, the car nosed down into a wall of water and Alan was thrown forward, tumbling off the backseat bench.
“Holy shit!” cried the driver, jamming on the brakes. “Trash must’ve piled up in the storm drains.”
Alan righted himself enough to look out the window and saw in the dim light that the street was completely underwater. A couple of vehicles were wading through it, but a handful were already stopped dead.
“Dispatch, this is Car 717 out here on West Mt. Houston Road near Ella. We’ve got some serious street flooding. Over.”
“Car 717, we’re getting reports like that from all over the city. Suggest you take Veterans Memorial. Over.”
“Will do, thanks.”
The driver hooked the mic back up and spun the wheel.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen it this bad.”
The deputy in the passenger seat nodded and glanced at Alan in the side view mirror. Seeing him struggling to get back on the bench, the deputy turned his eyes back to the road and went right back to ignoring his prisoner for the rest of the ride.
• • •
In a kitted-out emergency services SUV, two police sergeants rolled through the dark, flooded streets of Galveston, windshield wipers whipping back and forth, looking for folks in need of aid. The electrical power grid was holding, but there was barely evidence of this in the downtown district, aside from traffic lights and the occasional street lamp. Eliza was expected to make landfall some time during the night, with the collective wisdom having it hit just before dawn. It seemed to have settled into a holding pattern, content to send waves of rain towards the island while swirling and gaining mass a few dozen miles offshore.
“We got anything on the broken pipeline?” Sergeant Kemp barked into the radio.
“They think it’s out past the breakwater,” came the voice of the dispatcher. “Gonna be a bitch to fix.”
“Jesus.”
Sergeant Burnett, clad in the same thick poncho, police hat complete with shower cap, and rain boots as his partner, let out a low whistle.
“I’ve been saying, oil’s gonna be the death of this place,” Burnett began. “How many derricks we got out there now? All it takes is one major fuck-up and that’s it. Good-bye, fishing. Good-bye, tourists. Got at least half a dozen complaints a day about ‘Little Billy’ or ‘Little Susie’ stepping in tar balls out on the sand.”
“Better that than a jelly fish.”
“Or dog shit.”
“One of Karen’s cousins works out on one of those rigs. Makes great money. Does that for a few months and then comes in and roughnecks out near Midland for the rest of the year.”
“Ain’t Texas without oil.”
Kemp snorted. Wasn’t Burnett from Arkansas or something?
“Got any more welfare calls off the sea wall?” he called back to the dispatcher.
“Yeah, one,” she replied. “Phil Snyder’s shack door is open and beating with the breeze.”
“Oh, that idiot’s probably passed out drunk,” spat Burnett. He’d picked up Phil on a bunch of drunk-and-disorderly charges through the years. Pain-in-the-ass type who thought he owned the beach.
“We’ll take a look,” replied Kemp. “Any more?”
“That’s it. Once you’re done, you’re on the bridge.”
Kemp grinned. “On the bridge” meant they were off-shift and crossing the Galveston Island Causeway back home. The long, curving bridge was the island’s only connection to the mainland. The northbound lanes had been completely jammed up for much of the day, but Kemp knew they’d be empty by now.
“Thank you, Carla. Keep your head down and stay dry.”
“You, too, sergeant.”
Kemp hung up the mic as Burnett shot him a bemused look.
“We could just hit the bridge. If someone took advantage of the storm to rob Phil, they’re going to be mighty disappointed.”
“Yeah, and maybe disappointed enough to take it out on Phil’s skull. People wait for opportunities like this to do their robbing.”
By the time the SUV made it to the sea wall, its headlights could barely penetrate the sheets of water crashing down around the vehicle, much less illuminate more than a few feet out onto the dark beach. Kemp hit the spotlight and angled it out towards Phil’s shack. Sure enough, the door was swinging back and forth with the wind.
“Shit,” sighed Burnett.
“C’mon, it’s our civic duty. He gave us those trout once, remember? Barbecued it that night?”
The two clambered out of the car and hurried down the sea wall steps to the beach. The rain had so infused the sand with wet that their boots sank deep as if in quicksand.
“This is ridiculous!” yelled Burnett.
Kemp reached Phil’s shack first, grabbing the guard rail as he climbed up. His hand found something sticky on the wood. Looking down, he saw that the stairs and railings both seemed to be covered in a thin sheet of tar.
“Watch it.”
Burnett was about to reply when he saw his partner standing stock-still in Phil’s doorway. Lying on the floor of the living room was whatever was left of Phil. He’d been torn to pieces as if by a wild animal, albeit one that had picked his flesh down to the bones. Only thin strips of sinew covered in blood and oil hung from his splintered skeletons. He looked like a turkey carcass the day after Thanksgiving.
“What the fuh…?” Burnett started to ask, only to find himself yanked backwards and out of the shack with great force.
The sergeant
