legs bent like rubber, and as he stumbled, he clung to the flaky trunk of a birch tree, cherishing the feel of something real and solid under his hands.
On the ground, his feet became ice. Then his ankles. He looked down and realized he wasn’t standing on the river bank anymore, because there was no river bank. There was only the river. He squinted into the cloud, and as the dust separated, drifting into the air, he could see a stain spreading over and consuming the land.
Water.
Water churned white.
Water leapfrogging itself, erupting through a jagged hundred-foot gap where the dam had pancaked into rubble. The thunder in his head was the near-bottomless reservoir, freed from its prison, cascading into the valley with astonishing speed, pouring out its guts like an open wound and drowning everything in its path.
Chris had only seconds to escape. He was already immersed to his knees. He splashed up the shallow slope toward his Lexus, parked on the shoulder of the highway. The river chased him, rising inch by inch at his heels. As he climbed into the car, fingers of water slithered onto the road like snakes. He fired the engine and roared into a U-turn, trying to stay ahead of the flood as it surged downstream.
He fumbled with his phone, driving one-handed, weaving on the road as his scrambled brain tried to right itself.
First he dialed 911.
Then he dialed Hannah. ‘
51
The emergency sirens wailed.
Olivia ran from house to house, pounding on doors in St. Croix, alerting their neighbors to evacuate. In the criss-cross blocks of the town, she could see Johan, her mother, and Glenn Magnus on the same mission of mercy. No one asked questions. Living in a river valley, everyone knew the risks; sooner or later, someone would tell them that the water was coming.
The danger was speed. Most floods rose with the river in a matter of days as the winter snow melted; now, with the dam gone, they had minutes. An hour. Maybe.
She heard car tires slipping and squealing on the roads as families headed east and west to outrun the river. She waited long enough at each house to make sure they took her seriously. No, she wasn’t kidding; yes, they had to leave
If you came back.
Some put up no fuss at all. She knocked on the door at Loren Werner’s house, and the eighty-six-year-old widower simply told her to calm down and catch her breath and talk slowly. She explained, and he nodded and took his car keys from a bowl near the door and walked with her back to the street. He patted her cheek, climbed into his 1981 Cutlass Supreme and waved as he drove away. That was that. He didn’t look back at the house once.
In half an hour, Olivia raised the warning with more than twenty houses. She found herself on the eastern edge of the town, across from the corn fields and the water tower, where the railroad tracks paralleled the southbound highway. From her vantage, she saw a speeding stream of traffic escaping from the lowlands of Barron. They’d moved fast. She wondered how many got out and how many were already trapped on their roofs. The lucky ones on the bluff over the town were probably saying prayers of thanks as they stood on the cliff and watched the disaster unfolding below them.
‘Olivia!’
It was her mother on the opposite edge of town, shouting at her, waving her arms. There was a glimmer of panic in her voice. They were running out of time.
Olivia took the river route back home, wanting to see how bad it was. She followed the railroad tracks to the bridge, where she used to meet Johan, and she got her answer. It was bad. The lazy creek had become a torrent. There was no gap anymore to jump from the bridge deck to the water; instead, the current swept an inch below the gray steel. Tree trunks pounded the bridge like missiles, shooting spray and splinters across the tracks. She heard wood crunching and cracking.
She ran along the trail behind the houses, and the ground was already soupy mud. She wasn’t looking down at the water anymore. She looked out across a stretch of brown magma at her feet, rolling into swells. She covered her mouth in horror as she saw the water carrying debris from the town of Barron, hoisted on its shoulders like a trophy. She saw light poles spinning like tiny twigs, suspension cables from the pedestrian bridge, shattered windows like shrapnel, and even a white Toyota Corolla doing somersaults in the current before the current carried it up the bank and dumped it at the fringe of the corn field.
‘Wow,’ she murmured.
Olivia looked down at her feet. The tentacles of the river wormed their way through the mud.
She sprinted away from the trail to their house. She eyed her bedroom window and thought about all the times she’d climbed up and down the drainpipe and knew she’d never do it again. She followed the lawn to the front porch. Her mother carried a box of soup cans to their truck. When her mother saw her, her face dissolved with anger and relief.
‘Olivia, where were you?’
‘I wanted to check out the river. It’s almost over the bank. We better roll.’
‘Run to the church and check on Glenn. I want to know what’s keeping him. Then get back here right now.’
‘Where’s Dad?’
‘He’s five minutes away.
Olivia ran across the street and up the swath of lawn to the church steps. The white steeple towered over her head, with its bird’s-eye view of St. Croix. She didn’t see Glenn Magnus. The town swarmed like a hive as residents frantically loaded their vehicles to join the escape parade. She hunted for the minister among the faces, but she didn’t see him.
She pulled open the church doors. ‘Mr. Magnus!’
There was no answer, and she called again. ‘Mr. Magnus! Hello!
She heard a groan. The oak door to the sanctuary was partially blocked, and when she yanked it open she found Glenn Magnus prone on the floor. He groaned again and pushed himself up to his hands and knees. The back of his skull was matted with blood.
‘Oh my God!’ Olivia clung to the minister’s arm, helping him to his feet. ‘What happened?’
His voice was weak, and he winced as he put a hand tenderly on the back of his head. ‘I came back to retrieve some things from the church. Somehow I hit my head.’
‘We better go,’ Olivia said. ‘Mom can help.’
Magnus slung an arm around her shoulder as she helped him out of the church. Their house was barely fifty yards away, but it looked far as they took baby steps. She was conscious of the water rising; it wouldn’t be long before their routes out of town were blocked. When they were halfway to the house, her mother jogged to help them, and they made their way inside the house. Her mother settled Glenn into a chair and got a damp towel from the kitchen to dab at the back of his head. Johan appeared from upstairs with a box in his hands, and he quickly put it down as he saw his father in the chair by the door, his eyes closed.
‘Dad!’
The minister gave his son a weak smile. ‘I’m okay.’
‘What happened to you?’
‘I don’t know. One minute I was in the church, and the next thing I knew, Olivia was helping me up. I must have slipped and banged my head.’
Hannah interrupted them. ‘There’s no time. We have to get out of here. Olivia, Johan, get the last boxes in the truck. That’ll give Glenn a minute to rest. If Chris isn’t here by then, I’ll call and tell him we’re leaving, and he can meet us on the bluff.’ She gestured impatiently at the two of them. ‘Hurry, let’s go.’
Johan picked up the box again. Olivia grabbed another box from the kitchen table. They headed for the front porch and across the lawn to the truck. The river was over the banks. They splashed through an inch of water, and
