Page 99
“Stop that. ”
“Stop what?”
“Talking to me like I’m four years old. ”
“Sorry. ”
I shouldn’t have snapped at him. He was only trying to help. But I couldn’t muster an apology for it, and he didn’t act like he needed one, so I just walked beside him and tried not to notice that we were moving through water. It was higher even than earlier that morning—it was at the very doorstep of the shelter when we arrived.
Nick was right, they were moving people out.
Emergency personnel directed human traffic, and the bulldozers and tow trucks had cleared another lane of traffic to the interstate leaving town. It moved in a steady flow if not a heavy one—ambulances, fire trucks, police cars, and the occasional bus somebody scared up from a schoolyard or Greyhound.
They made up a caravan that moved in lurches. Park, load. Creep forward to the onramp. Follow the arms of the policemen and -women in their wet blue uniforms. Slow but steady. Running the race, if not winning it.
“Harry?” I called over the low-buzzing din. “Harry? Are you here?”
I thought of my cell phone and remembered it was dead and wouldn’t be of any help to me. I turned to Nick and said, “He’s a tall guy with white hair, wearing—I don’t remember. I can’t remember what he’s wearing—but he’s in his sixties, maybe. Real good shape though—thin, but on the tough-looking side. I think he used to be a boxer or something. He told me once but I don’t remember. ”
“All right, I’ll keep my eyes open. ”
Before I could holler too much more, Harry found me first. He got a good handful of my arm through the crowd and tugged, commanding my attention and Nick’s too—since Nick was still moving in “protective alpha male” mode.
“There you are!” he said, and Nick figured out that this was the guy we were looking for.
“You’re Harry?”
“I’m Harry. You two looking for me?”
“Yes,” I said. “Trying to find you. ”
“Well I’m trying to find your brother. Have you seen him? Crazy little bastard took off looking for you here. I tried to keep tabs on him, but you know what he’s like once he’s got some stupid idea in his head. ”
I don’t know what my face told him, but it gave him an inkling that all wasn’t well with the world. This would probably have been a good time to burst into tears again, but it didn’t happen.
“What’s going on? You’ve seen him. ”
I nodded and tried to answer, but nothing came out. Nick took over. “We’ve seen him. He helped us out of trouble, and it cost him. ”
Harry went still as a statue, then changed his mind and opened up that impressive, long-armed wingspan of his—herding us both off to a corner where we were out of traffic’s flow and could construct the illusion of privacy. “Where is he now?”
Nick answered again, and it was just as well. “Somewhere underneath Broad Street. He’s gone, man. ”
Harry exhaled through lips pursed in the shape of an O. “Oh. Okay. Oh. Are—are you sure?”
My turn to talk and nod. “Pretty damn sure. We were stuck down there, under the city—there was a tunnel, the old underground, you know?” I was babbling again, but it wouldn’t slow down so I let it flow. “We were down there because there were things down there—we saw them, and we were going to stop them from coming up underneath the city, out of that old building down there on the corner, which you can’t see from here but that’s okay because it’s not there anymore anyway. And Malachi helped us get out after the floor collapsed, but then he went back in because, I don’t know why because, but he was trying to help, or trying to make up for it all, that’s what he said. And he lit the fuse on the shells and—”
“Wait, artillery shells? Where did you get your hands on—”
“No, fireworks shells. Big ones, though. We stole them from the ball park, and we were going to set them off down there and close the tunnel because you have to bury them—you have to bury them again, it’s the only thing that’s ever kept them down and quiet. You have to bury them,” I said again, because hearing myself pronounce the refrain made the story something I cou
ld process.
“It was my fault,” I tacked on at the end. “Harry, don’t be mad at him, it was all my fault. ”
“Not mad at him, not mad at you,” he told me, trying to smooth it over or soothe it down. “Not mad at anybody. Calm down, okay? Calm down. ”
“Okay, I’m calm. I’m perfectly calm; there isn’t anything left for me to be. But it’s time for you to get out of here. You were here for him, and for me. But you should go now. They’re still coming and we’ve all got to leave—we’ve all got to move. ”
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99 (Reading here)
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111