Michael Koryta - So Cold the River

“See if one of them works?”

Kellen’s didn’t, and wouldn’t-the face was cracked and it was soaked with water, wouldn’t even turn on. Eric’s still functioned but couldn’t find a signal. No surprise down here in the hole, and who knew if it would change once they got to higher ground. The tornado might have taken out a tower or two.

Eric’s left arm was shaking now and the pain buried in his head made it hard to focus, his vision starting to swim. He blinked and stared down at the gulf.

“I think it’s still rising.”

“Coming up fast,” Kellen said without even giving it a look. “We’re going to need to get me over to the other side.”

“No way you’re walking on that,” Eric said, looking at Kellen’s massive frame and wondering if he’d be able to carry him.

“No, but you get me up, and I can hobble.”

It took three tries and some intense pain to get him upright. Then Eric dipped under his arm and tried to drag him along, but Kellen was large and heavy and the going was awkward. Every time they took a step, Kellen gave an unwilling gasp. His right foot just dangled below the ankle. They made it around the rim of the gulf, into the tall grass that grew along the flat bottomland near the trail, and then Kellen told Eric to stop.

“Any chance you can make it to the car?” Eric said.

“Maybe. But I doubt there’s much left of the car.”

Shit, he was probably right. Both of Eric’s hands were shaking again. Behind them the water in the gulf gurgled and boiled around one of the fallen trees.

“You need to get to the road,” Kellen said. “Going to be police and firefighters out checking on the farms. Tell somebody I’m down here.”

He’d lowered himself down into the grass and leaned back on his elbows, grimacing and studying his unresponsive right foot. Eric saw he was digging into the mud with his fingers. The pain had to be brutal.

“That water comes up much higher, it’ll drown you,” he said.

“I can get up higher if I need to. But I’m not making it back to the road.”

“All right,” Eric said. “I’ll get help.”

He went on up the hill alone.

JOSIAH FOUND THE STREETS of town damn near deserted, everyone taking heed of that storm siren and seeking shelter. He blew through a red light, not giving a shit because wasn’t anybody out to notice, and then hammered the accelerator when he cleared town, sped past the West Baden hotel without so much as a look. He’d be back for it.

At Anne McKinney’s house Campbell’s instructions had finally clarified, the reality of this whole fucking mess becoming crystal clear: Josiah didn’t need anyone’s money. Didn’t need their explanations either, didn’t need a damn thing from a soul in the whole valley, the whole world.

What he needed was to listen. And now, finally, he was starting to. He heard the goal now, warm as a whisper in the ear. Take this place down, and watch it burn. They’ll know your name when it’s done, better believe that. They’ll know it, and remember it.

Eric Shaw’s wife was in the bed of his truck, bound with tape and wrapped in a tarp and pushed up next to the dynamite. Way that rain was coming down, the bitch was probably a tad uncomfortable. The wind was coming at him strong enough that it was hard to hold the truck in the proper lane, and he thought it was a damn good thing the roads seemed to be deserted. Fact was, this looked like a hell of a storm. He punched on the radio.

… Once again, we have a confirmed tornado touchdown just west of Orleans and there are reports of significant damage. Unconfirmed reports of another touchdown just south of Paoli are coming in. A critical reminder: this is only the leading edge of this storm front, and it’s already produced tornadoes in Missouri and southern Illinois. We have more activity on the way in, and the National Weather Service has declared that the tornado warning will remain in effect for at least another hour, if not more. We’re being advised that there is a strong possibility of multiple tornadoes associated with this front. Please seek shelter immediately.

He punched the power button and shut it back down. Hell with that shit. Storm would be the last thing anyone spoke of by evening.

The fastest way out to the gulf was to take US 50, but he’d barely gotten on the highway before he heard police sirens. He turned off onto one of the back roads just as a pair of cruisers shot by with lights going, doing at least eighty. Out on some sort of storm-related call, surely, not looking for his truck, but it was better to avoid the risks when you had a kidnapped woman and a stack of dynamite under tarps in the bed.

This detour north was pulling him far from the hotel, but he knew it was necessary, felt that in his bones. Eric Shaw was a part of this, had been from the start and needed to be at the finish. Campbell had placed the man’s wife in Josiah’s hands just as he had the dynamite, and both would have their role by the day’s end. The course was already charted, and now it was merely a matter of listening to the directions as they were issued.

The route change that was forced by the police sighting would have him approaching the gulf from the south now, which would take him right past his own home. He opened the truck up again, curving along through Pipher Hollow. The storm seemed to have died off a bit now, at least here. Out to the northeast the sky still looked fierce, but here things were settling.

He was on his own road and a half mile from his house when he started to see the damage. The first thing that caught his eye was a great gray gouge ripped through the earth in the fields ahead of him, and then he saw downed power lines sparking on the side of the road and a steel farm gate that had been torn loose and bent as easily as if it had been made out of aluminum foil.

He let off the gas and stared around himself as the truck coasted. The row of trees that had grown here was gone, obliterated, the trunks split and the bases pulled from the ground, their mud-covered roots pointing at the sky. He looked past the grove and up toward his home and then he took his foot off the gas completely and put it on the brake.

His house was gone. Any sense that it had been a house was gone, at least. The foundation and portions of two of the walls lingered but the rest was scattered in chunks across his yard and the field beyond. Pieces of his roof littered the yard. His couch was some eighty feet from the foundation, upside down, rain drumming down onto it. The old aerial antenna, no longer functional but never removed, was lodged in the upper branches of a tree in the backyard. The rest of the tree was adorned with pink bits of insulation. Amidst the litter of debris across the yard he saw flashes of bright, stark white. Pieces of the porch railing he’d painted.

He sat there in the middle of the road and stared at it. Couldn’t find a thought, really, couldn’t do anything but look. This place shouldn’t matter-he’d already known he could never return to it-but still, it had been home. It had been his home.

The sirens finally broke him out of it. They were wailing behind him, to the south, coming this way. Somebody coming to see if anyone needed rescuing.

He punched the accelerator and the truck fishtailed on the wet pavement and then found purchase and sped on. He swerved around one downed limb in the road and drove right over the top of another and on toward the gulf. He gave the house one last look in the rearview. It was the only thing out there, the only physical structure in most of a mile in any direction, and it had been destroyed. In the distance, the Amish farm looked solid, everything still standing. Something like that, it seemed almost personal. Seemed like the damn storm had been hunting him.