“A child,” Dani whispered. “She was a child who saw her older sister turn away all the time, but I was a child and I was told—silently—to turn away. Because of our aunts, because of my mother’s mistakes, and because of advice that was given from a pathological denier.”
“I was supposed to protect her. It was my job to look past the bullshit and take care of my little sister.”
“You were a kid, too.”
“I was broken,” she whispered, her fingers curled into her skin. “We were all broken,” Dani admitted, for the first time, “I wasn’t ever a child, Jake. I was just…surviving.” She asked, “Is there a time when you get over it? When you start to put it all behind you?”
“Yeah,” Jake breathed out as his radio sounded static and a call from headquarters. He switched it off.
“When?”
“When you learn what’s broken you down and you start to rebuild it.”
“Is that easy?”
“No, but it’s the only way if you don’t want to live half-lived.”
“Half-lived,” she echoed. “I wasn’t even living before.”
“She saw your momma. She told me that she was there—your momma. That’s what she said to me. And you weren’t, so she knew you were alive, Dani. Erica told me that you were alive and that your momma said that you were coming home.” He took a breath. And continued, “Erica told me that you’d be home real soon and then—I’d lost hope. I started to think that she had just gone crazy in that time, but then…”
“I came home.”
He nodded, aged and wise in that moment. “She’s around, you know. I feel her and sometimes—when I’m not thinking—I’ll hear her. She’ll call my name like she’s just come home, but I’ll walk down the stairs and she’s never there…but I heard her.”
“I didn’t do right by Erica and I should’ve.” She took a breath and uttered, “I loved my sister.”
“She loved you too.”
Those were the words that Dani had been waiting so long for. Love. She realized, like so many emotions that had been buried and were now finally being unearthed—she missed her sister. She missed the ability to breathe.
“Well,” Dani laughed, needing a short reprieve, and remarked, “That’s over now.”
Jake joined her and nodded, “Yeah, it is.” He laughed again and shook his head. “I’m relieved, actually.”
“Me too.”
They leaned against his squad car as Dani remarked, “I thought there’d be more tears.”
“Way more tears.”
“Tons.”
“Buckets.”
“Waterfalls.”
Jake grinned, “Oceans.”
Jonah had been right—Jake was the one who she needed to talk with. And Dani suddenly felt so many words to share to her sister. Maybe she was around. Maybe she wasn’t. Dani liked to think she believed in the after-life, in a heavenly paradise, but from a world so cold and bleak, sometimes Dani thought that death just meant rest. Eternal rest, which might not be a bad thing.
“I’m tired,” Dani announced. “I’m really, really tired.”
But Jake cleared his throat and asked what he’d been working the courage for, “So, how are things with Bannon and that other guy?”
“Oh my god,” Dani breathed out. “Is that why you stopped? You didn’t even mean to talk about Erica, did you?”
He shrugged, a small grin on his face, and then his radio crackled to life. He still saw and knew even though she didn’t. A code orange was called for the Craigstown County.
Jake froze.
“What?”
He didn’t move.
“Jake. What?”
It was bad and everything that had coiled tight inside of her burst free. Dani knew what it was, before Jake uttered the words, but it didn’t stop the sting or the ghosts to slam back.
“A code orange means…the dam burst.” Jake raised horrified eyes to her. “All that flooding, the erosion—it burst the dam.”
“The town…”
“…will be destroyed.”
“Those people went home.”
“I know. My god, I know. I have to go and warn them—” Jake scrambled into his car, gunned the engine, but turned back around as he yelled, “Get to safety, Dani. Find Jonah. He’ll take care of you.”
She stood, staring at his red taillights as his words echoed in her ears. Dani stood there, caught in her nightmare that had become reality for a second time. Water was coming, but this time, she got warning and this time, her loved ones were at stake.
Jake’s sirens cut through the town. She sprinted towards the boating store and she was prompted to crash a rock through the window panel, reach inside, and then take a hammer to the keys’ locker.
Desperately she fitted each key to the right engine and searched for life jackets, as many as could be. A sporting good’s store sat to the right and Dani yelled as she dashed inside that the dam had burst. Everyone fled and Dani raided the backroom. She grabbed life jacket after life jacket and sped back and forth until each boat was nearly overflowing with them. She grabbed everything.
Duct tape. Flashlights. Candy bars. Flares. Even prepaid cell phones. Anything that might save for the impossible.
And then she grabbed another round of matches, lighters, and anything that might provide heat.
It took nearly two hours and in the midst—she heard nothing though she saw so many panicked as they sprinted past.
The town was silent as if in the eye of a tornado. The eerie calm before the storm and Dani braced herself, knowing that what was to come could be livable.
She hadn’t another minute to spare before the first wave crushed and Dani realized, as the wave stood above her by thirty feet, that the dam had been a miraculous invention. The wave was the first of many and she started each and every boat, Jet Ski, and pontoon.
As the waves crashed over and threatened to topside her own boat, Dani chained one boat behind her and drove until she found stranded and drowning.
She returned again and again until the flood rose above the community center’s highest rooftop.
Dani still drove her boat and she continued to find people who were frantically swimming or lying adrift anything that floated.
Soaked, frozen, and her teeth stammering from the cold inside, Dani finally relinquished her last watercraft to a grateful family of six. They crawled inside and promised to seek out their own survivors to rescue.
Dani nodded and knew that her own boat needed to be filled.
She filled it, there were bodies everywhere. They left who was already dead and took on who they thought could be saved.
The flooding actually didn’t take that long, but it was still steady, caught by hills, buildings, anything to slow it down, but it was nearing midnight before another boat’s headlights shone on them, blinding them.
A shout sounded out and Dani nearly sagged in relief as she saw Trenton’s pale and soaked face greet them with renewed life.
He left the steering and grabbed Dani’s boat.
“Come on,” he called out to her rescued victims. “We’ve got more room and a faster engine. We’ll take you to safety.”
They climbed over, eager, grateful, and exhausted.
Dani watched each and every one slowly move onto the sturdier boat.
She understood what wasn’t going through their heads. This was real. This had happened. And this was only the beginning.
She understood that because she had lived that and was just now starting to wake up.
“Dani, come on!” Trenton yelled. “Leave the boat. It’ll get capsized pretty soon anyway. Only half of the river’s here. It got slowed by Northkin, but its coming.”
“I can’t, Trent,” she yelled back.
“Dani!” he cursed. “I can’t leave you here. Jonah will skin me alive, now get in the goddamn boat.”
“No.” She shook her head, saddened and yet—accepting.
Death had come a’knockin. S
he’d answer the door, but she’d take her time to do it.
“Dani! Seriously!”
“No.” And Dani swiftly kicked his boat free. Trenton nearly fell into the water from the sudden force of her kick, but his crew quickly caught him and righted him.
Across the open water, he yelled, “What are you doing? I could take you to safety.”
The water splashed ferociously around them and earth’s prowess was astounding.
They were ants.
Dani thought that, not for the first time.
She cupped a hand around her mouth and called back, “What about my sister and aunt?”
“The hospital was crushed. It was one of the first buildings to go. I’m sorry, Dani.”
“No, Aunt Mae. She went back to Mae’s Grill.”
He didn’t answer and that was the answer she didn’t want.
“Trenton!” Dani called again. A command.
“It’s right on the river, Dani. It was already under water from the first flooding. I don’t think….”
She was unbreakable in crisis.
Mae was gone.
Dani would be joining her soon, so she remembered her mission.
To fight.
She asked her next question, “What about Julia?”
He didn’t wait as long for his answer this time. “They’re not far from the river and they’re just south of town.”
Among the last in the dam’s pathway.
Her aunt—her adopted mother—or her sister.
One probably lost for one that might not be lost.
It was her choice to make, so she chose…
Dani swallowed tightly and shouted back, “I’m going to find her.”
“No, Dani! That’s suicidal!”
It wasn’t the point, but it wasn’t scaring her away either.
The child glanced back and the monster had raised its head, but it watched her cautiously. The child stopped and turned back…
“Dani—! You’re going to die—!”
But Trenton’s shout was lost as she gunned the engine and tried to find her way to her sister’s home, atop the waters that had crushed nearly everything in its trail.
She used the spotlight and saw so many bodies surfaced in the water. They were all gone and hadn’t survived the dam’s burst.
Jonah knew what might have happened. It’s why they wanted the community in one central location. No doubt, they had plans for a disaster such as this, but they hadn’t shared their concerns.
It didn’t matter.
People would’ve still scattered, if they’d been told or if they hadn’t, but—they wouldn’t have gone far enough from the flood’s vengeance.
People still would’ve died if they’d been told. They just would’ve been scared a lot earlier.
To be honest and to be scary—Dani wasn’t scared.
She’d been ready and prepared for too long. The water hadn’t taken her the first time and a part of Dani thought—the water was back for a second go at her.
The water wanted her and would be damned before it got her.
Julia’s house was completely overcome, but one tree still stood rebellious in the path and Dani trained the spotlight on that tree.
What she saw there defied everything she might’ve thought possible—Julia hung by one arm to a branch as Mrs. Bendsfield was securely tied to the branch that Julia dangled beneath.
Mrs. Bendsfield looked vanquished and depleted while Julia struggled and Dani saw the tears that streaked her sister’s face.
They both came alive as the light shone on their faces and Dani never thought she’d see her sister grateful to see Dani.
Julia was and she clung in a heart-wrenching hug to her sister and buried her face in Dani’s neck.
The last time that Dani had been hugged by her sister was at her fourth birthday party.
Julia was six and the next year—she was ‘too cool’ to hug her ‘lowly’ sister.
Dani had wanted a hug, but she never asked again.
This time, Dani hugged back and Mrs. Bendsfield watched, perplexed and a bit irate.
“Can we go?! I’ve already watched GoldenEye get swept up by this crush; I don’t want to follow my favorite cow, if you please?”
“Shut up,” Julia rounded fiercely. “You shut up. Just because you have no family doesn’t mean that I can’t stop to hug mine!”
And Nanery Bendsfield, one known to be senile and impervious to intimidation, shut up and sat down.
Julia sighed a dramatic breath and ran a soaked hand through her just-as soaked hair.
“Trenton said that they’re safe somewhere. We have to go and find them,” Dani spoke.
“No. We gotta go south,” Julia argued. “God, we have to go south.”
“Why? That doesn’t make any sense. We need to cut across the current, it’ll flatten out—”
“Listen to me, Dani! We have to go south! I was told that,” Julia cried out, at her brinking end.
“Who? Who told you to go south?”
Her sister sat down and muttered, tiredly, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Julia, I am not turning this boat for more flooding. If we cut across—”
“The wind is too great. If we cut across, we’ll capsize and we’ll drown.”
Julia had the survival instinct of an extinct species.
Dani asked, “Who told you that?”
“Just trust me!”
“No!”
“Dani!”
“Oh my god!” Nanery stood irate. “Are you serious? Go! Just go!”
Julia stood up quickly and said, earnestly, “Go south, Dani. I was told to go south. And…”
“And what?” she snapped out. “And when we die, we’ll all be one happy family?”
“Just…” Julia slumped down, crumbled. “Go south.”
“Julia…”
“Do it, Dani. When have I ever lied to you?”
Dani stopped at her words. It was true. Julia had never outright lied. She’d play games, she’d dance around the truth, she’d manipulate the truth, but she never lied. Not outright.
Dani sat down and muttered, “We’re going to die because of this, Julia. You know that, right?”
“We’ll die if we cut across.”