He exchanged a few words with other workers, then donned rain gear and the annoyingly bulky PFD—the life vest, or personal flotation device—and went out into the cold and wet. Dawn was lighting the dark sky with a first hint of gray. The rain hadn’t relented at all.
He refilled the gas tank and felt a kick of relief when, once again, the motor came to life. There were too few boats, too many miles of countryside to be checked, for the aging Mercury to decide to be stubborn, something he’d already discovered it was prone to do.
He hadn’t been out half an hour when he found a whole family roosted atop the peak of a farmhouse. The two kids were tied to the chimney to keep them from falling, the parents huddled around them. God Almighty.
Getting them down was a trial with the boat bobbing a good twelve feet below their perch. The father eventually used the rope to lower first the kids, then his wife, and Alec managed to fight the current and keep the boat in place while catching the two small bodies and the woman in turn and lowering them onto seats. The children were sobbing with fear and scrabbled to throw themselves into their mother’s arms when she arrived, which nearly tipped the boat.
“Sit down!” Alec snapped then realized he’d sounded harsh. Damn, he was tired. He pulled several PFDs, including child-size ones, from a rubber tub and showed the mother how to put them on. As she strapped everyone into the vests, he maneuvered the boat into place.
The man gingerly backed down the steep roof like a mountain climber rappelling, the rope tied to the chimney above. But either he lost his grip or his feet skidded on wet shingles, because he started to slide. If he came down hard enough, he’d sink them. Alec shoved the boat away from the house and rode the wave when the man hit. He pushed the woman toward the tiller and yelled, “Hold it straight!” then leaned over the gunwale, waiting for the head to pop up. Where the hell was he?
She screamed and Alec swung around to see that her husband must have gone underneath the hull and was being swept away. He gunned the motor and steered in a semicircle, timed so he could lean over and grab the arms that were all he could see. The aluminum boat, too lightweight, swayed wildly; the kids cried and the woman sobbed and in the moments of intense struggle Alec was convinced they were going over. Somehow he managed to pull hard enough to drape the man over the edge while keeping his own weight as a counterbalance, and finally to roll the guy in. He felt as though he’d been in a war, and the family was in worse shape.
He took them to a designated landing, where volunteers waited to lead them to a shelter. He waited while they took off the life vests and offered incoherent thanks that he knew would mean something to him later, but not now.
WREN WOKE WITH A START and lay still for a long moment, trying to figure out what had penetrated the stupor of exhaustion. A sound? Yes, there it was again, an odd sizzle from the potbellied woodstove here in the parlor. As if water was dripping onto the fire she’d thankfully built. Rain coming down the chimney?
Drawing the comforter with her, she sat up on the old, dusty sofa to look. But when she put her feet on the floor, they plunged into water. Wren cried out. It was night now, and she couldn’t see, but… She tentatively reached her hand down. Oh, God, oh, God. Water was a foot deep or more. In horror, she grappled with the concept. How could it have reached the house? She’d climbed several steps to the porch. It had to have risen four or five feet to have reached this high. It was lapping into the stove, putting out her fire.
She needed the fire. It had been her salvation, finding brittle old wood heaped in a copper bin beside the stove, a bundle of yellowed newspapers with a date two years past and a box of matches abandoned atop the newspapers. The only food in the cupboards had been in cans and she hadn’t been able to find an opener. It was lucky she wasn’t hungry. The refrigerator was unplugged, which told her no one planned to be back in the near future. In fact, either the storm had taken out a power line somewhere or the electricity to the house had been cut off. But she’d been able to build a fire, and she’d dragged the comforter from an old bedstead in one of the two bedrooms.
Her back hurt again. The pain had been coming and going unpredictably, waking her periodically. Each time, she’d added wood to the stove. Kneeling on the sofa, she waited this spasm out. It had occurred to her sometime in the past few hours that she might be going into labor, but the thought had been so terrifying she didn’t let herself take it seriously. Early twinges were common, she knew that. Braxton-Hicks contractions. Except…were they felt in the back? She didn’t know. Wren didn’t think this pain was any more severe than what she’d had earlier—yesterday?—when she was still behind the wheel of the car. So she wouldn’t worry about that problem—not yet.
She laughed, and heard her own hysteria. Oh, yes. She had bigger problems.
She hadn’t seen a staircase, which meant there was no second story. But, frowning, she seemed to remember the house rearing higher above her than the single-story ranch houses she’d lived in. Old houses like this often had attics, didn’t they?
By the time she put her feet back on the floor, the water level had risen to her knees. Wren left the comforter on the back of the sofa and fumbled in the woodpile for a piece of kindling. When her fingers found one, still dry near the top of the heap, she opened the door of the stove and poked the kindling in to the coals, which sizzled as water inched in but remained alive. When the wood was alight, she went exploring, holding her torch high.
In a bedroom, she found the square in the ceiling she’d been looking for. A rope hung down, and when she pulled on it, she was rewarded with a creak and some movement. Not for the first time, she cursed her petite size, but being pregnant helped. She hung from the rope, and with a groan a folding staircase dropped.
She climbed the narrow, steep stairs and poked her head up. She was relieved to see a floor rather than open joists. Dusty bits of unwanted furniture and heaps of boxes. The glint of a reflection from a window. At least she’d have daylight when the sun rose. She’d be able to signal for rescue, if anyone came.
She eased down the steps, holding tight as she went, then waded through the house looking for anything she could salvage from the rising waters. More bedding. The matches, and some dry firewood, although she’d only be able to start a fire upstairs if she could find a flame-proof container like a metal washtub. Clothes—nothing that exactly fit, but the voluminous flannel nightgown she’d found in her earlier exploration was wet now, and she was beginning to shiver again. She grabbed armfuls and thrust them upstairs.
The piece of kindling burned down quickly and she replaced it. She grabbed a knife from the kitchen—just in case, although she didn’t know in case of what—and found her way to the staircase right before the flames reached her hand a second time. She cried out and had to drop the burning wood into the water, which quickly drowned it.
Climbing in the complete darkness was scary. She felt her way once she reached the attic. Her hands encountered cloth. Flannel, maybe a shirt, she decided, as she lifted. Denim beneath. Groping, she located the blankets and her comforter and an old quilt she’d found. She crawled toward the window, dragging the bedding with her, then went for the clothes and the knife.
She shook out the comforter and spread it, then folded it twice to make a pad. Sitting on it, she scrabbled among the garments for something, anything, that might fit her, settling finally on a flannel shirt. She tugged the nightgown over her head and discarded it, then hurriedly pulled on the shirt, rolled the sleeves half a dozen times to free her hands, then buttoned it. If she stood, she thought the shirt would reach near to her knees. Right now, she wouldn’t worry about putting anything else on. All she did was pull blankets and the quilt over her, and lie down facing the window. Praying for a pale tint of dawn that might allow her to see out.
ALEC
