He added, an afterthought, “I wish you would’ve known that Erica. You would’ve been friends. It was that Erica I loved.”
Dani felt the first tear.
Jake continued, hoarse, “She’d always put cloves in our food. I hated it. They were awful, but Erica said that they had to be in there. They had a purpose and I should just be patient. She loved lilies. She had them in vases all over the kitchen, and she even put up a wallpaper border of lilies in our bedroom.”
Jake was allergic.
“I hated them, but—”
“You loved her.”
“She was mine. She was a part of me.”
Dani drew a ragged breath. “You were my best friend, and I lost you to her, but I’ve never admitted to myself that it wasn’t you I lost that night. It was her. I didn’t know her, and we never had a chance. We were never given a chance. So much shit in our family.”
A hole was there. It was widening.
“Erica kept a wall to the world. She lost her mother, and she had two older sisters. Julia kept it together by controlling everything. Erica told me she had to play along or Julia would’ve ‘freaked.’ Her words. And then she had you, but you pulled away before Erica knew what was going on. She was the youngest, Dani. She didn’t know better. It was too late when she did.”
Dani was already gone.
He added, “You were a kid, too.”
“I was broken.” Her fingernails curled into her skin. “We were all broken.” She looked at him, wiping away her tears. “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, then a call from headquarters. He switched it off. “When you learn what’s broken you down and you start to rebuild it.”
“It’s 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 mom. When she was close to going, she told me that your mom was there. You weren’t. Erica told me you were alive, and that your mom said you were coming home.” His voice hitched on a note. “Erica told me you’d be home real soon, but time kept passing. I lost hope. I started to think that she just went crazy in that time, but then…”
“I came home.”
He nodded. “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. I always know better, but I’ll walk down the stairs. I know she’ll not be there, but I still do it anyway.”
“I didn’t do right by Erica, and I should’ve.” She drew in some air, filling her lungs. “I loved my sister.”
“She loved you, too.”
She missed her sister. She missed the one she knew. She missed the one she didn’t know.
“Well.” Dani laughed. She needed a reprieve. Looking at Jake, he didn’t seem like he had more to say, and Lord knows, she was running empty on the tear tank. “That’s over now.”
“Yeah, it is. I’m relieved. Been waiting a while for that conversation.”
“Me, too.”
They leaned against his squad car. “I thought there’d be more tears.”
“Way more tears.”
“Tons.”
“Buckets.”
“Waterfalls.”
Jake grinned. “Oceans.”
Jonah had been right—Jake was the one she needed to talk with. Dani suddenly felt so many words to share with her sister. Maybe she was around. Maybe she wasn’t. Dani liked to think she believed in the afterlife, but from a world so cold and bleak, sometimes Dani thought that death just meant rest.
“I’m tired,” Dani announced. “I’m really, really tired.”
Jake cleared his throat, and then his radio crackled to life. A code orange was called for the Craigstown County.
Jake went still.
“What?”
He didn’t move.
“Jake. What?”
It was bad. She felt it in her gut, and she knew it now. She was just waiting to hear the words confirming it.
“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.”
“This is what Jonah was worried about. Those people went home.”
“I know. My God, I know. I have to go and warn them.” Jake scrambled into his car and gunned the engine. “Get to safety, Dani. Find Jonah. He’ll take care of you.”
Her nightmare was coming true. The first storm missed her. The flash floods were the warm-up, and now the second storm was coming for her.
The water was coming.
She threw a rock through the boat store’s window. There was no time to waste. They would need boats, lots of boats. Her heart pounding, it seemed to take forever for her to reach inside, unlock the door, and take a hammer to the keys’ locker.
Her hands trembled as she tried to find too many keys to too many boats. They wouldn’t fit. They’d fall. She nearly wept when one sunk in, fitting. Then a second, then a third. She was sweating, and biting down on her lip. She needed more boats than this.
Life jackets.
She needed those too.
Raiding a back room, she grabbed everything she could.
Duct tape. Flashlights. Candy bars. Flares. Even prepaid cell phones. Anything that might be needed. Then she grabbed another round of matches, lighters, and all items that would provide heat.
It took nearly two hours, and in the midst—she heard nothing. She was listening for something, anything, someone, anyone, even as she hit the releases on the boat carriers.
No one sprinted past.
No one was screaming, or crying.
Nothing.
The silence was eerie. It was like the town was in the eye of a tornado. But it was coming. She knew it was coming. The hairs on the back of her neck were raised, and hadn’t fallen back down.
The first wave would crush the streets. She was just waiting for it. She did as much as she could before running back outside.
She looked up, and there it was. Her heart stopped. The wave was thirty feet above her, and it was then she realized how miraculous a dam was. She ran inside, just as the first wave hit the pavement. It swooshed past her, filling into the store. The two main windows were still intact, but they’d shatter any second.
She climbed over each boat, and started them.
She couldn’t drive all of them, but she looped a rope between a few. She could pull three or four behind her boat. She just had to wait until there was enough water. And then it happened—the windows broke under the weight. The water rushed in, and Dani gunned the engine. She had to get the first boat out of the store. The water was rising fast, so she didn’t have much time.
She cleared it. The second did too. The third struggled, and the fourth was caught behind. She gunned her engine again. It was just enough to yank the fourth free. There were more inside that she released from their carriers, but she couldn’t corral them all. She’d have to go back for them.
As she drove through town, the people came out.
They were everywhere now. It was such a stark contrast from before, but as she saw people, she gave up a boat. She’d stall. They’d climb up into a boat and unhook themselves from the rope. The only thing she yelled was for them to help pick up others. They stayed with her, helping to pick people up as they all headed to the center.
A wall of people lined the center when they got there. They were standing at the edge of the water.
Dani knew these people were alive, but not in her mind. She was back there with the first storm. These people were waving. Those people had been floating in the water, already dead. The bodies were everywhere.
Dani was mixing them together in her mind. The dead were raising their arms now.
“Dani!” Jonah crashed t
hrough the crowd and ran to her boat. He jumped inside, crushing her to him in the next breath. He held the back of her head, holding her against his chest before he kissed her forehead, then her lips. “I thought you were dead. My God.” He went back to just holding her, wrapping as much of himself around her. “I tried the phone, but I couldn’t reach you and then Jake said you were in the town.” He was touching her pockets, but she forgot about the phone. His hand found it, and he pulled out. “The battery’s dead.”
Dead. She’d never get away from that word.
The town was gone.
Dani pulled away. The center would soon be as well. “We have to go.”
“Jonah!”
Hawk and Trenton were running toward them.
Hawk separated, leaping into one of the last empty boats. He revved the engine and swung next to where Dani and Jonah stood. He yelled, “We got a distress call!” He stopped, his eyes flicking to Dani.
She growled. “Who?”
“It’s Mae.” He said to Jonah, “We can get them if we go now.”
Jonah looked to Dani, but she was already pushing him away. “Go. Get her, please.”
He was torn, but grabbed her for one more hug. He crushed her to him, and said, his lips brushing against her forehead, “I will come back for you. I will find you. Do not die. Okay? Do not die.”
“I won’t.” She pushed him again. “Go. She’s my family.”
He did, tearing himself away. Hawk half-lifted him into the boat as Jonah grabbed the edge and swung himself up. He didn’t stop looking at Dani. He never broke contact. Hawk turned the boat and left.
Jonah was slowly swallowed by the darkness.
That wasn’t real. He’d come back. He went to save Mae. Dani kept reminding herself of that. Then Trenton leapt onto her boat. He was yelling at her. She wasn’t hearing him. She couldn’t. All she could see was Jonah heading away from her.
There were people streaming around her.
She recognized the looks on their faces. Fear. Uncertainty. Anger. Panic. They were all thinking the same thing: this wasn’t real. This wasn’t happening.
They were all wrong.
This was real. This was happening, and it was just the beginning.
She sat down, saying to herself, “They’re all going to die.” Everyone was going to die.
“Dani, come on!” Trenton was screaming at her.
She half-heard him. People were climbing into their boat. She just sat there. She was the eye of the storm now. She was the middle of the tornado. The winds would ripple. They’d snarl. They’d curse. They’d be angry with her, because it was her that they wanted. This whole storm was about taking back what was theirs.
Her. The water was coming for her.
“Julia.”
Dani heard Trenton say her sister’s name, then someone climbed into the boat. A second person was behind her. Trenton was saying, “Jake, who else?”
Dani looked up. Her sister was there, but she left? Dani remembered seeing her go…
Julia yelled over Dani’s head to Trenton, “The nursing home?”
“It was one of the first to go. It was crushed. I’m sorry.” He swept his gaze over both of them. “Sorry, you guys.”
Dani sat there.
People were swimming past them, but she didn’t know where they were going. There was no hope. For any of them. She was alive, and that meant they’d all die. The storm wouldn’t stop, not until it claimed her.
“We have to go!” Jake was yelling.
The boat was moving. They were gliding over the water. Dani knew it wasn’t peaceful. Waves and ripples broke over the surface, but she looked down. She saw the calm beneath. She could see them, the dead already. They were in the water, their arms and hair hanging loose. They were content. Their eyes were calm.
They were home.
“My house.” Julia collapsed beside Dani. Her hand covered her mouth.
She heard and lifted her head. There it was. Julia’s house was completely overcome, but one tree still stood up. It was a rebel, in the path of the water. It refused to sink below. Dani didn’t think. She moved, going to the front of the boat where the spotlight was.
“Dani? What are you doing?”
She turned it on the tree, and there was another. Mrs. Bendsfield was tied to a branch, one that Dani remembered swinging from as a child.
Julia gasped. “Mrs. Bendsfield!”
Trenton steered the boat over, and Jake grabbed the older woman. He had to cut away at the rope she used to tie herself to the tree. Hauling her into the boat, Mrs. Bendsfield looked vanquished and depleted. She was soaked. Her arms looked like twigs, and her lips were so blue. She was shaking from the cold.
“Can we go?!” she snapped at Trenton. “I’ve already watched GoldenEye get swept up by this crush. I don’t want to follow my favorite cow.”
Julia yelled, “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!”
It had been Trenton arguing with her. Trenton who was driving, but it was Dani who Julia spoke to. She was so earnest. “We have to go south! I was told that.”
“Who told you to go south?”
Her sister sat back down. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Julia,” Trenton leaned closer, yelling over the water, “I am not turning this boat around for more flooding. If we cut across—”
“The wind is too great. If we cut across, we’ll capsize and drown.” Jake was staring at his fiancée. “Julia, who said that we need to go south?”
“Just trust me!”
“No!”
Julia had the survival instinct of an extinct species. Dani didn’t blame them for their disbelief.
“Dani!” She turned to her.
Trenton was waiting. They were all waiting. Somehow it became Dani’s decision.
Mrs. Bendsfield screamed as a sudden wave crashed over her. Dani saw her slipping before she could scream again. Dani woke up. She didn’t know why, or how it happened, but she woke up. She’d been okay with dying, and then she wasn’t.
Suddenly, she was fighting. She had to live.
She surged across the boat and clamped a hand on Mrs. Bendsfield’s leg. Trenton was trying to steer the boat toward calmer waters as Dani wrapped the anchor’s rope around Mrs. Bendsfield’s leg.
“Ahh!” Mrs. Bendsfield’s body lifted from the wave’s force. The anchor held. It didn’t move, and she slammed back down.
“Grab on to a rope and wrap it around yourself. We have to stay in this boat—” Dani was looking around. She thought she put more rope in this boat.
“Unless it capsizes right here and now!” Julia shouted back.