Landfall (12 page)

The truck seemed to stop for just a moment, then started sliding again. Maggie watched, mouth open, as it slid underneath the deck and bumped into one of the concrete pilings on which the house sat. She waited for her house, her memories, her dog and her rooster to come crashing down in front of her eyes, but the square pillar was solid and it was deep.

Maggie looked away from the Jeep and back to her kids, who were struggling to get their footing. She looked past them to Boudreaux’s and David’s trucks, still sitting where they’d been left, as far as she could judge. She didn’t trust them not to go at any moment. They weren’t an option for getting out of the water, even if they managed to get to them against the flow of the surge.

Maggie looked to her right, rethought a strategy she’d never actually formulated, then yelled at Sky.

“The bushes, Sky!” Sky looked at her without understanding, and Maggie waved her free arm toward a stretch of overgrown brush and Hibiscus bushes that had been a nice hedge in her grandmother’s time.

Less than thirty seconds had passed since the truck had taken down the stairs, but to Maggie’s legs it felt like hours. She could feel her muscles convulsing from the effort spent to remain standing, and if her kids hadn’t been in the water, she might have let the water take her and hoped to end up someplace good.

She spread her feet a bit wider and tried to dig in as the water pushed her kids, stumbling, toward her. She saw that Sky had grabbed one of Kyle’s wrists and she reached out for Sky’s free hand.

“Don’t let go of him,” she yelled, as Sky grabbed her right hand. Kyle kept moving toward her, and she instinctively opened and closed her left hand, though her left arm was wrapped around Boudreaux’s waist.

She felt Boudreaux’s right arm lift off of her shoulders, and she didn’t know if it was intentional or accidental, but she felt him push her between her shoulder blades, and the weight of him left her side as he fell backwards.

She started to turn to grab him, but then Kyle crashed into her and she just managed to grab the back of Kyle’s shirt with her now free left hand, as she kept a death grip on Sky’s hand with the other.

The small impact from Kyle almost knocked her off her feet, but she righted herself, and stayed standing despite Kyle accidentally kicking her shins as he got his feet underneath him. When she turned around to look for Boudreaux, he was gone.

For just a moment, Maggie wanted to try to look for him, but which of her children would she let go of to do that?

Although Sky was just at the end of her arm, Maggie yelled to be heard over the rain and the wind, which refused to let up even a little.

“We need to get to the bushes!” Maggie yelled, her voice breaking from the strain. “Try to stay on your feet, but let it take us to the bushes!”

Sky looked at her questioningly.

“The tree! We can make it to the coon tree!”

The coon tree was a huge oak that grew near the corner of the back deck. It had gotten its name due to the mama coon and three babies that had liked to climb it in the evenings a few years ago. None of the branches overhung the deck, so it wouldn’t get them back up into the house, but the trunk had split decades ago, and the low “V” made it an easy tree to climb. They could at least get out of the water. If they could get to the overgrown line of bushes that ran along the back of the yard, they could use them to make their way to the tree.

The three of them, connected by cramping, white-knuckled hands, let the water push them toward the bushes, while trying to stay on their feet. This was most difficult for Kyle, for whom the water was almost chest high, but Maggie gripped his one wrist and Sky his other, and they eventually washed up against the overgrown hibiscus, volunteer oaks, and other bushes that were now half-submerged in water.

Sky got there first, and grabbed onto a thick trunk with her free hand, then Maggie let go of her hand and grabbed some branches. By silent agreement, all three of them rested there a moment once Kyle had a grip on the shrub Maggie was holding. She still held firmly to his left hand. The water passed through and around the bushes, but the growth was thick enough to keep them from being carried through.

Sky looked over at Maggie, her chest heaving, her loose bun now plastered to her head like a small, sodden animal. “I am not drowning in my own yard!” she yelled angrily at her mother.

“No, you’re not,” Maggie yelled back. “Just hang on, and move toward the tree.”

She watched Sky reach out her left hand, grab a bunch of branches on the next bush and pull herself over, then Maggie looked over at Kyle. She moved his hand to the back of her shorts and put it on her belt. “Grab onto my belt!”

She felt the tug as he wrapped his fingers around her leather belt. “Do not let go, do you understand me?” The boy nodded. “We’re going to make our way as close to the coon tree as we can, okay?”

Kyle nodded again, and Maggie used both hands to grip the branches as she followed Sky. It took several minutes, and one battle with a drowning lawn chair that Maggie didn’t recognize, but they finally managed to get to the end of the line of bushes.

There was a good six feet between the last bush and the base of the old oak. Maggie and Sky stared at the space between them, and Maggie wished they still had Sky’s rope. Sky turned and looked at Maggie, and Maggie tried to look like she wasn’t as frightened as she was.

“You can do it, Sky,” she said. “Just stay on your feet.”

Sky nodded, and stepped toward the tree, still gripping her branch in her right hand. It bent beneath the water, and she didn’t let go until she had to. Then she pushed toward the tree trunk and grabbed at the small hole in the “V”, now underwater, where she and Kyle used to tuck apples and raisins and other treats for the raccoons.

Sky swung her left leg through the split trunk and straddled it, then scooted up the trunk a bit until she could reach the first decent branch. She grabbed it with her left hand, then leaned out just above the water and stretched out her hand. It wasn’t close enough for Maggie to reach, and with Kyle hanging onto her, she was afraid they’d pull Sky out of the tree. She turned to Kyle.

“We need to switch places, baby,” she yelled. She reached underwater and grabbed his wrist, pulled his hand from her belt and put it on one of the branches in front of her face. He grabbed it, and she pulled him in front of her. For the briefest moment, she buried her face in his neck, then helped him pass over to her left.

“Okay, listen,” Maggie said, grabbing his right hand in her left. “I need you to get as close as you can to Sky and get her hand. I’ve got you, do you understand?”

Kyle nodded. “It’s okay, Mom,” he yelled back, his already high-pitched voice cracking with the effort.

“Okay.” Maggie held his poor hand in a death grip, and watched him get as far as he could before letting go of the branch he was holding. Maggie followed, felt the weightlessness through his hand when he lost his footing, started breathing again when he got it back.

She got as far out as she could without letting go of her branch, and her and Kyle’s arms were both stretched to the limit, but Sky was finally able to grab his other hand.

“I’ve got him, Mom! Let go!”

“Are you sure you have him?”

“Yes! Let go!”

Maggie let go of Kyle’s hand, and watched without breathing as Sky swung him through the water to the trunk. He grabbed on, and scrambled up the other side of the trunk to a decent-sized branch. When he looked back at Maggie, she almost felt as though all was right with the world again, save the rain and the wind and the water.

“C’mon, Mom!” Sky yelled, and she grabbed onto a smaller branch beside her, leaned out a little bit farther, and stretched her hand just a few inches closer.

Maggie tried to plant her feet a bit more firmly before she let go of her bush. The water seemed to be moving less quickly, but there also seemed to be more of it. It was up to her waist now, and it wanted to go down to the river. The weight of it against her legs, as it kept moving toward its goal, was unbelievable. It didn’t need speed; it had the power of its volume and the power of gravity.

It took two good steps, then she was able to stretch up and grab her daughter’s hand. Sky swung her back toward the trunk, and then Maggie let go of her hand and pushed forward to the trunk’s “V” and grabbed it. She stood inside the split and hugged the tree a moment, her head leaning against it, as she tried to let her legs recover. They shook as though she’d been running for an hour. She took a few deep breaths, then looked over at Sky.

“We need to get higher,” she called out hoarsely.

W
yatt turned the windshield wipers on high as the rain began to get heavier. He was on US-19, which would eventually take him to Hwy 98, which would eventually take him straight to downtown Apalach, but eventually was starting to seem very far away.

He was one of very few drivers on this stretch of highway, which was lined on both sides by a seemingly endless forest of scrub pines. He made a mental note to never come this way at night, as he’d probably start having hallucinations, or just pull over and kill himself to avoid having to drive it much longer.

It had been raining for the last fifty miles or so, but the rain had picked up quite a bit the further west he drove. He was a good fifteen miles from the coast, and Hurricane Faye was a good ten miles from the coast in the other direction, but she was making herself known. To Wyatt, it was starting to feel like it was just the two of them there on US-19, and he was grateful when his cell phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Wyatt. It’s Gray,” Maggie’s father said.

“Hey, Gray. Have you heard from Maggie?” Wyatt hoped Gray had, but he was all set to get pissy if she’d just shown up in Jacksonville.

“No, we haven’t,” Gray answered. “I was calling to see if you had.”

“No,” Wyatt said, sighing. “I’ve called a couple times. Straight to voice mail.”

“Is it raining in Orlando?” Gray asked.

“I couldn’t say,” Wyatt said.

“Where the hell are you, son?” Gray asked quietly.

“I’m on 19, just outside Chiefland.”

There was a short pause on the line.

“You’re on your way to Apalach,” Gray said.

“I am.”

“I thought you said we should stay put.”

Wyatt pulled into the right lane to avoid a branch from a scrub pine. “No, I said
you
should stay put, because she was supposed to be headed to Jax,” Wyatt said.

“I see,” Gray said. “And what about your surgery?”

“They’ll have to have it without me,” Wyatt said. “It’ll be good practice.”

“Maybe the airport will be clear tomorrow and you can fly back in time.”

“Maybe,” Wyatt said, though he had no intention of scrambling to make it. He’d simply reschedule. “I tried getting hold of Dwight and a few other people at the SO, but I’m just getting ‘all circuits are busy’ or somebody’s voice mail.”

“Well,” Gray started, then paused for a moment before going on. “I got in touch with Bennett Boudreaux about an hour and a half ago, and he said he’d go check Maggie’s house, but I haven’t been able to reach him again. It’s ringing; he’s just not answering. I’m a little concerned about that.”

Wyatt stared out the windshield a moment. “Why would you call Boudreaux?” he asked.

“Because I knew he’d be there.”

That sounded simple enough, but it didn’t really sound true enough. It also didn’t explain why Boudreaux would care to go driving around in a hurricane. Wyatt decided to let it go, though. Maggie’s parents were stressed enough.

“Wyatt?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll let you focus on driving,” Gray said. “But thank you. You’re a good man.”

“Basically, I’m an idiot,” Wyatt said. “But it serves the occasion well.”

“Well, drive carefully,” Gray said. “We’ll wait to hear from you.”

“You’ll know it when I know it,” Wyatt said, and hung up the phone.

Freaking Boudreaux. Every time he turned around, there were Maggie and Boudreaux, connected by invisible string. It was frustrating enough to know that Maggie felt some kind of connection to or even liking for Boudreaux. But Gray was about the most straightforward and transparent man that Wyatt knew. So what the hell was up with
him
calling the local killer to check on his daughter?