Meanwhile escapees fled to the mainland by the dozens. The haphazard armada included bodyboards and buoyed shopping carts and a group of fours in a racing shell (the coxswain’s chants — S-troke! S-troke! — variously interpreted by his rowers), inflatable rafts with the Municipal Works logo on their helms, some brave swimmers plowed into the Narrows, frontcrawl devolved to breaststroke, then to doggypaddle.
Above it all the sky seemed indifferent, the night’s first stars perversely sublime in the face of the chaos below. For a moment Griggs allowed himself to enjoy the evening: up there things were vast and beautiful, perfect and serene — and shattered by newscopters training spotlights on scenes of drama: a heroic windsurfer rescue of an infant from the branches of a poplar, a half-dozen families trapped in a rooftop garden, with their own clothes they’d spelled out HELP and waited shivering and half-naked to be saved.
And still People Park filled with water, pouring down from the surrounding streets in torrents. From the gazebo Pearl watched Helpers lower ropes, but even the heartiest citizens couldn’t traverse the churning currents. Out on the common surfaced the girl who’d been knocked off her feet, slogging toward the gazebo. Pearl lay on her stomach, extended a hand, hauled her onto the stage. Before Pearl could ask if she was okay, the girl cried, You’re alive! and rushed into the arms of another girl who was weeping.
The water came in, the water came up. When it began to wash onto the gazebo people shrank to the middle of the stage, from the shadows they cursed the airborne newscasters. They’re just watching us drown, someone said, and someone else suggested, You think it’s just them watching us? and a third person said, Wouldn’t you?
Yet Pearl, sitting amid puddles by Raven’s trunk, felt a sudden calm.
Water swam warmly up to her hips, stroked her kneecap through the hole in her jeans. Some people threw themselves past her, screaming, Save yourself! and frontcrawled to the bottoms of the hills, rebuffed by whirlpools like mismatched magnets. Helpers up top threw down lifevests — not donned but shared, two people to each one.
The gazebo had become a trap, people climbed onto the roof only to find themselves marooned, while Pearl rubbed her knee and waited, as Griggs, watching the dozen-strong crowd scale the Wheel, waited: she for magic, he with the defenceless surrender of a web-trapped fly, and here come the spiders, scrambling and famished.
FROM AHEAD, murmuring. The current tugged, the door slipped over the water, Sam didn’t need to paddle, it carried him along. The noise amplified, a hundred voices begging one another for quiet. Sam’s breath came easy. He was close, he knew it. With his ducktaped hand he held the remote ready. The door slid toward that rushing, shushing sound, a television on channel 0, the surf of static, a screen sparkling with a nonsense of nothing. This became rumbling, his ears filled with thunder. And Sam was lifted, he seemed to hover for a moment, everything stopped, a clear cool wind hit his face. And then the door angled down sharply and was falling. With his thumb he hit POWER, and held it, and the raft was gone and the water hurtled him down, and he was inside the roaring, and all he could see was white, and he fell and fell and at last Sam crashed grinning into —
THE YACHT POWERED through the Zone, The Know calligraphied on its hull, engines trailing yellow froth. Its single headlight illuminated the hundreds of people stranded atop Laing Towers, they responded with cheers of joy and relief.
Iθa Lanyeθθ, cried Dack, and a chant went up: Lan-yess, Lan-yess, Lan-yess!
Kellogg squeezed Elsie-Anne’s shoulders. There, Annie, you see? Just in time. We’ll be okay. They’ll take us to Mummy and Gibbles, don’t worry.
Edie Lanyess stood at the boat’s prow, hands on her hips, looking every part her mother’s daughter. She spoke in a matronly singsong: We’ve got room for everyone, don’t worry, just stay calm. We’re here! We’re going to get you all out safely!
This inspired a reprise of the Lan-yess chant.
Kellogg went to join the movement shipward, but was held back.
Elsie-Anne pointed in the direction of the IFC billboard, a ridge in the water swallowed even as they watched. There, she said.
Annie, he said, no, the boat’s here. They’re here to rescue us. We’re going to be okay.
But she wouldn’t look.
The first few people were helped onto the yacht’s deck. Boisterous cheers!
Annie, said Kellogg, look, everyone’s leaving, we have to go.
Plenty of room, called the girl, joined now by her mother, beaming, whose beauty, despite the chaos, remained undisturbed. Listen to Edie, whinnied Isa Lanyess, no need to push! Helpers too, Mr. Dack, easy now, there’s room for everyone.
Kellogg reached for Elsie-Anne, caught her arm. Come on, Annie, he said.
But the girl stood fixedly in place. She seemed apart from everything, facing north, almost hypnotized.
What’s out there, Annie? said Kellogg. If you’re looking for Mummy —
With a surprising burst of strength she squirmed from his grasp, stepped into the eavestroughs, and dove off the roof. A frothy channel furrowed the water as she zipped away into the flood.
Annie! Help! Someone, help!
Heads turned, Kellogg was regarded with mild confusion, but the line pressed forward as more folks were rescued. Kellogg peered into the dark. His daughter’s trail was fading. What could he do? He jumped in after her, swallowed a great gulp of bitter water, came up gargling.
His daughter’s purse appeared with a plop.
He splashed toward it. Behind him the yacht’s engines chugged, the stranded became passengers, celebrations abounded. The purse bobbed just beyond reach, the flood’s oily sheen pocked with reflected stars.
A ripple, a pause — and the purse was sucked under.
Annie?
Something brushed his feet. Down in the depths the purse whisked by. Sucking in a lungful of air he dove, swam, saw nothing, surfaced, wheezed, dove again. A shaft of light from the rising moon illuminated the IFC billboard: the screen in some subaquatic drive-in. Beyond it the water was bottomless.
Kellogg swam deeper down, lungs tightening. Far below something wriggled in the gloom, thick and serpentine, and released — what? A jellyfish maybe, which fluttered past. No: an Islandwear sweatshirt. Kellogg snatched it — empty — screamed his daughter’s name, three syllables the water muddied to bubbles. His face and throat had gone taut, his lungs burned. He looked down and up and around and everywhere was the same vast void.
And now the snakish thing appeared again, uncoiling. Was it summoning him? Kellogg’s head tingled, the blood fizzed through his veins, he felt limp and not quite there. Something ropy and thick tightened around his ankle and began almost tenderly towing him down, and the blackness opened up, it was ravenous, he had nothing left, he’d forgotten everything, why was he here, for whom, his vision blurred, and the last thing Kellogg saw, hauled down toward it, were parallel white bands aglow in the darkness. The lights of a bridge maybe. Or were they teeth.
ONE OF THE newscopters flew low over the Museum’s roof, nosing down for a spotlit shot of the two women waving at whoever might be watching, so whoever was watching might wish them saved. The water slavered between the turrets in a black skim, wetting their feet. The camera rolled. One of the women flipped an obscene gesture and the chopper whirled away into the milky night.