Flood Plains (31 page)

“Come on, goddammit!” Zakiyah roared. “Just do it, bitch!”

The worm flinched as if to accommodate her request but just as quickly appeared to hold back, unable to advance. Zakiyah watched as the web of sludge slowly retreated into the floodwaters. It stayed just on top of the water and rejoined the rest of the worm slowly They could see it moving as it stayed just on top of the water and rejoined the rest of the worm at the large tank’s service hatch.

“What happened?” Big Time asked, coming down the ladder.

“It must be working!” Zakiyah cried. “Sineada’s pulling it down into the pipe.”

Big Time nodded and hurried the rest of the way down. When he reached the ground, he sloshed over to where Tony was kneeling next to an inconsolable Mia.

“It’s okay,” Big Time said, trying to comfort. “You’re okay.”

“It’s
not
okay!” Mia shrieked, shaking her head. “It was supposed to take me, not Daddy!”

Big Time stared at the little girl in surprise.

“What do you mean?”

“It was too strong for just great-grandma, now. It’s taken too many lives. So I didn’t cloak us. I wanted it to take me. I’m stronger than her.”

“What was that?” Zakiyah said, hurrying over. “You were
planning
to die?”

“Mama, I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

“Wouldn’t understand?” screamed Zakiyah. “We’re going to get on that raft and get out of here. I don’t care if we have to go to Cuba. You’re all I have in the world now. You’re too important to me.”

“But that would mean
Abuela
died for nothing!” Mia shot back. “Alone, she can’t fight it. With me, we can do it. I swear.”

“I don’t care!” Zakiyah cried, throwing up her hands. “I don’t care how many people this thing gets itself around. This is about you and me. Where were these people during the last storm when we almost died down there in the Ninth? We made it out because we never expected anyone to come and get us. We took care of each other and lived when others didn’t. That was it. We were right to do what we did. I can’t let it have you.”

No one said anything for a long time. Big Time could tell that his son was affected by Zakiyah’s words. They’d been screwed, and the whole world turned their back on them. Why not just give them a taste of their own medicine?

But slowly, Big Time shook his head.

“Your life after this might be short or might be long,” he began. “Whatever the case, if you walk away, you’ll be coming back to this moment for the rest of it filled with regret. Yeah, Katrina was fucked. Not going to disagree with you on that one. But we made it. I don’t know how much I believed in God, but we were saved and Providence—maybe God, maybe not—put us here. Not Memphis, not Dallas, not Chicago. I’ve worried ever since why we survived and others didn’t. Maybe this is the answer to that question.”

Zakiyah listened to this, but then looked down.

“How am I the bad guy because I want my daughter to live?” she finally whispered.

“You’re not,” Big Time answered. “Because that’s not what this is about at all. From the looks of things, we’re beyond the ‘finding somewhere we can hide’ option. We don’t do this, whole world dies. Doesn’t mean it’s an easy decision, but we’re all dead anyway. That’s the mindset you have to have. But, we just might give Lazarus a run for his money if we pull this off.”

Zakiyah wasn’t convinced. Mia walked over and put her arms around her mother, who hugged back. Finally, she nodded.

“All right. Let’s do this.”

•  •  •

The group climbed the ladder up the side of pipe, Big Time and Mia in the lead, Zakiyah and Tony pulling up the rear. When he reached the hatch, Big Time gingerly gripped the wrench, not knowing what he’d see below.

“We’re cloaked,” Mia said.

“I thought that was the case before. You could’ve let me know.”

Mia said nothing. Big Time cranked the wrench back, and the watertight hatch unsealed. He spun the wheel the rest of the way, held his breath, and then opened it up, fully expecting to be knocked off the pipe by the poltergeist force as he did so.

When nothing happened, he exhaled.

The light was even dimmer in the pipe now. Big Time pulled Scott’s lighter out of his pocket, made sure it still had fuel, then began climbing down the ladder on the inside of the pipe.

“See anything?” Tony asked once Big Time was halfway down.

“Nothing,” his father replied.

As Big Time descended, it came home to him how tired he was. The endless rushes of adrenaline had left him weary, and his muscles ached. His eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, and he was just able to see the sludge worm at the base of the ladder. It was about three feet wide and as thick around as a telephone pole. It seemed to be inflating and deflating, like a lung but wasn’t moving backward or forward.

It was as if it had gone to sleep.

“What do you see?” called Zakiyah.

“It’s not reacting to me, so I guess we’re good. But it’s also not moving. I haven’t seen it do this. They’re always moving towards something or moving away from it.”

He climbed off the ladder and saw a tuft of Sineada’s skirt pressed against the side of pipe. It was completely soaked through with blood and bits of sinew, all that was left of the old woman. Big Time felt overwhelming sorrow and had to look away.

He moved towards the stationary sludge worm and flicked on Scott’s lighter. It was the first time he’d gotten that good of a look at its surface. From a distance, it looked as shiny as a polished rock. Up close, it resembled any of the tar balls he’d seen on beaches most of his life. It wasn’t so much black as brown. And it was ugly.

That’s when he realized that it was anything but stationary. No, in fact it was under a tremendous amount of tension, straining to retract. It was like a fox whose paw had been caught in a trap and was trying to get free, except there was no visible reason as to why the tip of the sludge worm was nailed in place.

“What’s it doing?” Mia asked, walking up next to him.

“I don’t know,” Big Time demurred. “Part of me thinks your great-grandmother was stronger than you gave her credit for.”

Mia knelt in front of the worm, focusing on the area where it was held fast. She held her hand out over it, but nothing happened.

“Your grandmother thought I was just being polite when I offered, but I’m serious. If you don’t want to do this alone, I’ll go with you.”

Mia nodded as if knowing Big Time was going to say this but then shook her head.

“You’re the one who has to burn it once we’ve led it all the way down the pipe,” Mia explained. “If you don’t, all those people will be just as trapped as the ones who started it. Then it’ll happen all over again. This way, they’re free.”

“I’ll make sure it happens,” Big Time replied, still amazed he was speaking to an eleven-year-old girl.

“Stand back.”

Big Time rose and took a dozen steps back. He could barely see Mia, so swallowed up by the darkness was she. She sat down about a foot in front of the tip of the sludge worm and closed her eyes.

Abuela? It’s me. Can you hear me?

A voice came back immediately, hitting Mia so hard she almost toppled back.

It’s too strong! Mia, we didn’t know. It’s too strong, you can’t. Save yourself. Run away! I can’t reach it!

Abuela, it’s all right. I know you’re scared, I know you’re turned around, but it isn’t as you think it is. It’s working, what you’re doing. You’ve stopped it. You just need my help.

You’re wrong! Please…

But Mia didn’t listen. She dropped the veil, reached out, and placed her hands on the sludge worm. Her flesh began dissolving immediately.

•  •  •

The furthest tendril of the collective was 230 miles to the north in the town of Corsicana, 50 miles south of Dallas. Though the most recent census put the population as just past 25,000, the off-the-highway hamlet had lost half that number in the past ten minutes.

But then a miraculous thing happened that survivors of the Hurricane Eliza disaster would remember forever. A stopped-clock moment like none other. At precisely 5:24 in the late afternoon, the attacks ceased.

All across Texas, the hundreds of thousands of sludge worms began to retract. A thousand slowly became a hundred, a hundred became ten, ten became five, and five became one until there was only a single mass returning to the Gulf.

For the survivors, it was a moment filled with horror. No one could believe it was really over. The living ran for their lives. Some clambered into vehicles, but most were on foot. The injured, the maimed, and the dying were left behind to face whatever might come next.

In this case, it was nightfall, which meant coyotes, rats, and a deadly drop in temperature. By morning, the list of dead had increased by the thousands.

•  •  •

Zakiyah hadn’t been able to see when her daughter was consumed by the sludge worm, but she’d heard its movement and the cracking of her daughter’s bones. The sound echoed through the pipe like gunshots.

“No!” Zakiyah wailed as if wounded. “No, please God! Just, no!”

But she didn’t try to descend the ladder even as Big Time clambered back up. The fight had drained out of her. She put her fists on top of the hatch and lowered her head between them.

“I’m sorry,” Tony said, slipping his arm around her shoulders.

She nodded but was done talking. She felt lost, with no reason to keep on living. It was almost completely dark now. The sun was just a smudge of orange in the western sky, and the moon was obscured by clouds.

“Holy shit!”

Tony was pointing down to the floodwaters alongside the pipe. A thick rope of black sludge had bent the access hatch to the tank away and was now pouring inside. More was coming from the north but because of the relatively small size of the hatch, it was creating a pile up in and amongst the pipes. It was as if someone had taken a massive tube of toothpaste and, holding it over the refinery, began to squeeze. It wove in on itself as it pushed into the pipes, gradually bending more of the metal back but never enough to allow the whole thing in at once.

Whatever the case, Zakiyah could tell that whatever her daughter was doing was working.

Her daughter
.

It was crazy to try to rationalize the two thoughts. Her daughter was dead, but she was still able to be battling against this thing on the other side. There was a small part of her,
very
small, that took comfort in this. Here was evidence that her daughter wasn’t really dead. Maybe then, no one ever really was.

•  •  •

The sludge worm was changing shape. Big Time didn’t know how Mia was doing it, but she’d gotten the creature to flatten itself out completely as if she was rolling over it with a rolling pin. It slowly spread itself up the sides of the pipe, looking less like a worm now and more like someone had covered the interior in black paint.

As it neared the ladder, Big Time looked up and could just make out the silhouettes of Tony and Zakiyah. Realizing what had to be done, Big Time hurried the rest of the way up the ladder and grabbed the hatch.

“Dad! Are you okay?”

“Getting there. You’re going to have to take care of yourself, son. I love you.”

Before Tony could even register that this was the last thing his father would ever say to him, Big Time had closed the hatch and locked it from the inside.

“Dad! DAD!” Tony screamed. “
DAD!
”

But Big Time was already hurrying back down the ladder. Tony would have to be okay. He flicked on Scott’s lighter and saw that the forward border of the sludge tide had made a perfect circle around the circumference of the pipe and was slowly pulsing forward. Mia had somehow been able to arrest the poltergeist effect, but it was still coming towards him, hungry as it had ever been.

Big Time turned. The rest of the pipe was dark as oblivion. He knew it didn’t go much further before taking a sharp downward turn, but he’d seen already scoped out the service ladder that he’d take as far as it went.

Resisting the urge to glance back up towards the hatch one last time, he turned and began to run.

•  •  •

Tony’s face was hot with tears as he pounded on the hatch, screaming for his father as it became Zakiyah’s turn to hold him back.

“He knows what he’s doing,” Zakiyah whispered. “He wouldn’t have gone down there if he didn’t.”

“I can’t accept that. Why would he do this?”

“He must’ve believed there was no other way.”

Tony grabbed the hatch and tried to open it, but it held fast.

“Dammit!”

But suddenly, the hairs on the back of his neck rose, and he turned. Oozing up the side of the pipe was a thick tendril of sludge. They hadn’t even noticed it. They were lulled into the belief that the creature was completely under the sway of Mia and Sineada.

“Zakiyah,” Tony whispered.

“Back down the ladder. Hurry!”

Tony nodded and scurried away from the hatch. In his terror, he missed the third rung down and slipped. He fell the rest of the way down, about fifteen feet, striking his head on the wooden pallet and falling into unconsciousness as he sank into the floodwaters.

Chapter 37

M
ia was suspended in the same miasma as Sineada. She hadn’t been able to find her great-grandmother yet, but that was only because she was focused on one thing only: moving the collective down the pipe towards the frigid temperatures of the lower depths.

Mia…

She heard her name, but was afraid of losing her concentration and ignored it.

Mia…

MIA…

She finally reacted, allowing the voice into her mind. She had expected Sineada. She was shocked when it turned out to be her father.

Daddy?

Zakiyah. Baby, it’s Zakiyah. She needs your help.

•  •  •

Big Time had already fallen half a dozen times before reaching the service ladder that marked the beginning of the pipe’s descent into the Gulf. He could feel the fumes coating the inside of his lungs as he tried to breathe, but he just kept moving. The temperature had dropped significantly, but it didn’t bother him too much. Part of him was just happy to be out of the rain.