I nod, though Mike doesn’t see. He’s distracted by the sudden appearance of another man in the halo of the truck’s headlights. This man is holding in his arms what appears to be a giant, rolled tortilla. It’s a little girl, her face peeking out from the folds of the blanket, her eyes wide and white with fear. Upon recognizing her for what she is, Mike immediately wades over. Though the man won’t let Mike take the little girl from his arms, he does allow himself to be lead to the truck where Aaron already has the backdoor open waiting to receive the father and young child.
I look over at Tim. He’s not paying attention to Mike nor Aaron nor me. Instead, his eyes are turned to the illuminated stretch of lake in front of the truck where now some ten people, drenched and shivering like rats fresh from the sewer, have gathered, their various bags and suitcases of belongings slung over their shoulders or held by their sides.
Tim glances back at me. He’s thinking what I’m thinking.
“But I can’t let you—“ he starts.
I hold up a hand to stop him.
“Go!” I yell over the screaming wind. “They need you! I’ll be fine!”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure!” I point at a black, suitcase-sized box shoved under the boat’s middle row of seats. Inside are a satellite phone, a radio, a flare gun, food, water and several other survival necessities. “I have everything I need! I'll be fine!”
Tim, resigned, sighs. He swings his legs over the lip of the boat, only to freeze right as he’s about to drop back into the water.
“Go!” I shout again. “Two a.m.! I’ll see you no later than two a.m.!”
My argument is bolstered by the appearance of yet another group of bedraggled refugees in the circle of my truck’s headlights. Seeing them, Tim’s resolve hardens. Clasping my shoulder, his fingers conveying all the things we need not say, he climbs out of the boat and, bent against the wind, wades back over to Mike and Aaron. Knowing the others won’t be as easy to convince (admittedly, what I’m doing is pretty damn reckless), I flick on the boat’s headlamps, gun the engine, and skip off over the water before Tim can spill the beans.
Before I've even gone ten yards I hear a shout behind me, though no sooner does it sound than it gets swallowed by the rain and the incessant crash of lightning and thunder.
Another ten yards and it’s just me, the darkness and the hurricane, the light of my truck swallowed whole now too. Not two minutes after this, I lose track of the road entirely, so much debris blocking the way that it’s impossible to tell what’s what. I'm zipping along as fast as I can, driving with such reckless abandon that I have to hold on for dear life as the wind sends me careening every which way, more than once very nearly plowing headlong into a tree. Needless to say, I'm more scared than I've ever been.
But even though good sense is telling me to quit, I won’t. Not until every muscle in my body has given out and I’ve been dragged under. Compass in hand, fear pulsing in my veins, I peer ahead into the blackness, shoulders hunched, heart set, mind counting off the minutes, the miles, the moments until I will finally have Shannon by my side.
I’m coming, baby, I whisper. Hang in there. I’m coming.
13.
Shannon
As soon as I’m off the porch and floating free, I know leaving the house is a bad idea. Probably the worst I've ever had. The current is overpowering, the wind unforgiveable. Within seconds of letting go of the porch column, I’m swept ten yards to the right; only by a fortunate collision with the top branches of the fallen oak do I manage to gain control once more. Finding myself suddenly entangled, I use the opportunity to reorient myself. I'm doing everything I can not to think of how quickly I had just lost all control of the situation.
To my right is the trailer, to my left the flooded expanse of the yard, the trees lining its back edge no more than a smudge through the rain. It’s here I need to go, and quickly. Now that I’m outside the trailer, I can hear its walls cracking as it shifts on its foundation, the pressure from the risen waters almost too much to bear. This close, I’m still in danger of being crushed.
With the water up to my collarbone, it's too difficult to cross the open yard itself, so I use the oak to maneuver my way away from the house, climbing down through the tree’s branches until I reach its trunk. It's strange touching the oak like this, in parts I’ve never touched; in a way it almost feels like I’m saying goodbye.
I’ve moved just in time, for no sooner do I shimmy down the trunk to the base of the tree than I hear a rifle shot off to my left, the earth itself seems to crying out as a sustained series of rumbles and tears and screeches follow after.
I snap the light towards the source. Twenty feet away, a giant, deformed monster is lurching to one side. It’s the trailer. Having finally given under the pressure, my childhood home is lying half-crumbled, water rushing through its torn walls like rapids through a river canyon.
There’s no time to mourn, though I want to. I have to keep moving. Still, knowing this, I can't resist watching as the trailer shifts again and lets out another groan. The next moment, it shudders, shivers, and then collapses entirely, a tremendous spray of water shooting up into the air. The warm droplets of the flood mix with the ice cold rain as they splatter against my face.
Blinking back the rain, the spray, and now my fresh-flowing tears, I turn away from the white hot pain of what I know one day will just be a distant, aching memory. Later, I tell myself. Save it for later. Later is when you can get it all out.
I come upon my next predicament almost immediately. The oak, one of only three trees in the yard itself, has fallen in such a way that it’s fifteen feet of nothing from its massive disc of roots rearing up out of the water to the relative safety of the surrounding forest. When I see this, I hesitate, though again not for long. I can’t stop, or I’ll succumb to my fear of what might be lurking in the waters below. So without so much as a second thought as to what might happen, I scale the mass of roots and proceed to fling myself as far towards the line of trees as possible, my arms and legs pinwheeling as I scream up into the storm.
The instant I slice into the warm water, I snap my arms down to my side and suck in a big lungful of air. Somehow, miraculously, this keeps my head from going under, though naturally I still swallow a good bit of water as I flail about.
Mercifully, the current is at my back now, and so, reoriented, it takes only three strokes to make it to the tree line, whereupon I find myself suddenly embracing a sapling. I cling for only a moment because I can feel how tenuous the young tree's grip on the earth underneath is. Wishing it well, I reach out for the next nearest tree—an older, thicker oak—and pull myself to it.
I don’t cling to this one for long either, though not because I’m worried it will fall. I just know I can’t stay here. Already debris is starting to filter through the trees, and with the stuff on my back, it's only a matter of time until something snags me and drags me away.
So I have no choice but to head deeper into the woods, though I can't go too deep. With the trailer on the boundary between the suburbs of Houston and the undeveloped countryside, getting lost would mean not being found until my body had begun to smell. That is, if I were ever found at all.