He bumped into her, and brushed her as he bent over, feeling out the obstacle. She wrapped her arms around herself and shook.
“You found it, darlin’.” He straightened, pulled her into a tight embrace, chafed her back. “Steps. It’s a high bulkhead door, which means it may not be underwater. You ready to check it out?”
She nodded. “Okay.”
“Good girl.” He released her.
She shuffled forward until her boots struck something hard beneath the water. She stepped up. “Take my hand,” she said. He interlaced his fingers with hers, and she steadied him as he mounted the first step. Stretching out one arm in front of her, she took a second step. The third was above the water. “It’s right here,” she said, thumping a wooden door with her knee. Russ stepped up beside her and she let go of his hand. Stretching up and down, she made out two crossbeams, bracing the vertical planks. “It must go right up to the ceiling.”
She heard his fingers tapping several inches above her reach. “It does,” he said.
The wood was soft and pulpy. Reaching left, she found out why. Water was rolling through the crack between the door and the jamb, running in swift rivulets down to the stone step below. “This thing is leaking,” she said. “There’s water backed up on the other side.”
“Not at the top. Lets see how high it goes.”
She traced the edge of the door upward, past one set of hinges, until her fingers moved past the running water onto damp, flaky wood. “It’s about as high as my neck,” she said.
“I figure there are two possibilities,” he said. “It could be water’s collected in the well created by the outside stairs. In that case, when we open the door, we’ll be hit with a gush. But we’ll be able to walk out once it’s drained.”
“And the second possibility?”
“The river’s risen above its banks here.”
“So when we open the door-”
“It floods the cellar. Right up to your neck.”
She didn’t point out that she was standing on steps that raised her a foot and a half above the floor. If the cellar flooded, it would be well above her neck.
“If that’s the case,” he went on, “the best thing we can do is hang on to the door until the water levels have equalized. Then we can pull ourselves out and hopefully hang on to the building. Once we’ve got our footing, we’ll just walk out of the water to the end of the street.”
“Sure thing. No sweat.”
“Look, I’ll be more than happy if you want to get back up on the top of the stairs and wait. You’ll be above the water there.”
“We’ve already been through that.” She reached to her right and hit his arm. “How do we open the door?”
“There are two wooden bars resting in brackets. Maybe eight inches long, two inches high. One above the door handle, one below.” He shifted. “They’re swollen with all the water. So they’re going to be hard to move.” He stood, silent. She let him think it through. “This is how we’ll do it. I’m going to kick the lower one out of its bracket.”
“How are you going to do that with a broken leg? Maybe that should be my job.”
“Your job is going to be standing behind me and hanging on as tight as you can. The only place we can get a grip and not be washed away to the back wall is the door handle here. I’m going to hold that and you’re going to hold me. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“All right, get underneath my arm here and help me balance myself.”
She ducked beneath his shoulder and took as much of his weight as she could, while he drew his uninjured foot off the floor. His breath hissed between his teeth, and she winced for what he must be feeling.
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! He tilted forward and stood on his good leg again.
“Did you get it?”
“I think so.” He bent over, feeling for the bar. “Yeah. The door is bowing out down here. Whatever’s behind it, it’s got plenty of force. So hang on.”
She wrapped her arms around his waist and clasped her hands over her wrists. “I’m ready.”
He sidled closer to the door, until his chest was against the planks and she could feel the spongy wood against the backs of her hands. He bent his arm.
Whump! Whump! Whump!
“Shit,” he hissed.
“Stuck?”
He blew his breath out in frustration. “I wish I had my work gloves.”
She could feel his muscles tensing, his whole body weighing in behind the palm of his hand as he beat against the stubborn bar. Whump! Whump! He grunted.
“Anything?”
“Yeah. It gave some. Hang on tight, this next one may do it.”
He brought his arm down a final time, clipping her shoulder, then struck the bar. She felt a shudder, and the door exploded open.
Clare and Russ were flung backward and to the side as the pent-up water crashed through the bulkhead doorway into the cellar. The freezing water battered her, yanking her away from Russ, who was swinging one- handed in the torrent, clawing for the door handle. She dug her fingers into her wrists, locking herself around his waist. A wave slapped her face, leaving her blind and choking, and before she had the chance to hack the water from her mouth another one broke around her, and her head was underwater. She scrabbled at Russ’s shirt, dragging herself up his body. She broke through to the air and gasped.
“-around my neck,” Russ was shouting, and she flung one arm, then the other, around his neck and pushed herself up until her head was level with his. She wrapped her legs around his waist and hung on as they tossed in the torrent hurtling through the confines of the doorway. They pitched from side to side, water sluicing over their faces, floating higher and higher as the river sought its level. She felt Russ’s arms straining downward against the flood tide, clinging to the door handle that had been their lifeline, but now threatened to anchor them under the rising water.
“It’s too low!” she shouted in his ear. “You have to let go!”
“Hang on!” he shouted. She tightened her arms and legs and felt a jolt as he let go one hand and the water tried to sweep them away. He whacked his free hand against the door, fingers scratching for some purchase. His back shifted, he heaved his other hand forward, and they were head and shoulders above the water again. His arms were trembling with the effort of tethering them to the door.
She blinked the water out of her eyes and looked through the doorway, where a patch of steel-wool sky threw off just enough light to limn the bricks of the outer wall and the white froth of the river gushing over the rocky embankment and whirlpooling through the doorway. Russ held them fast through the suck and slop of the water crescendoing in dark currents between the stone walls. They bobbed higher. The cascade eased, from a dam spill to a millrace to a stream. The flow from the river outside eddied around them.
“Hold on,” Russ said. “I’m gonna try to get us out of here.” He released his hold and pulled them, hand over hand, along the upper edge of the door. They were floating so close to the ceiling that Clare bumped her head when Russ hauled forward.
They reached the edge of the bulkhead door. Russ jammed his fingers between the door and its frame. “I’m not going to try to swim across this. The cold. It’s making it hard to move.”
She jerked her head in a nod. From here, the bulkhead opening looked to be a mile wide. Her arms and legs felt heavy, detached. Her hands, clasped around her wrists, seemed to belong to another person. She had stopped shivering, stopped hurting. Instead, she felt numb. Numb and exhausted. And she hadn’t even been working, like Russ had. She had just clung on like a limpet.
“I’m going overhand along the top of the door frame,” he said. “Once we’re out of the bulkhead, I think we’ll be able to walk through the water toward the higher ground.”
She nodded again.
“You okay?”
“Cold.”
He rolled over, facing upward, and reached for the frame. Clare clung to his back, her hair trailing in the water,
