She returned to the bulkhead. Since she had crossed the room with Christian’s body and covered him up, the torrent of water increased several times over, exponentially gushing and splashing against the hard steps. It sounded like a waterfall. The rushing sound actually hurt her aching, muddied ears, trapped within the tightly bound confines of the bulkhead.
With a deep breath inside her chest, Annie stepped up, and then reached up to the slanted bulkhead door, turning the latch that held it sealed. She tried once and then twice, to push using just her arms, but the thing didn’t move a centimeter. There was still a ton of snow on the other side of it. She might have to wait.
Wait? Wait for what? Wait to drown? Wait so that creep can come down here and finish what he started on Paulie? So he can give you a taste of that same pain, that same purposeless violence? That sicko’s got nothing to lose.
She shook the thought away, pushing once again with all her might, this time throwing her right shoulder and the side of her head into the effort. The rush of water got heavier. Gone were the drip-drips, replaced by a screaming banshee of echoing water, hollow and innocent sounding, but deadly all the same.
Annie looked back down the stairs. Paulie was stirring again. “Mammah? Too much watah?” he asked.
“Yes, it’s way too much water,” she said, not at all amused at just how much water it really was. It was more than four inches deep on the floor now, coming up closer and closer to her knees. If it kept up this pace, they’d be drowned in less than an hour, if she didn’t get the blasted bulkhead open.
She screamed out loud, thinking of those stories about women lifting the dead weight of an automobile off their pinned children. Her brain filled with hopeful thoughts of adrenaline, acting like a mother bear protecting her cubs at any cost.
“Push, Mammah,” Paulie’s wavering, miniscule voice rooted her on. The poor kid could barely speak, wincing in pain as he cheered for his mother.
And that was when it overcame her. It was a rush of energy, like nothing she’d ever felt, flooding over her body, warmly euphoric. Her entire body jolted with an incredible strength. This was it. This was that Herculean moment, presenting itself to her. This is what all those old wives’ tales had been talking about—she was certain of it.
With a grunt, she threw everything she had into the door, giving way to a whoosh of frozen air, soon followed by sloppy streams of icy snow and water crashing against her lower body, sending her to topple down the stairs.
Landing in a frigid, but refreshing pool of water, she looked up and saw the sun.
It shined through the remaining clouds. It was going to be a marvelous day.
Annie gathered Paulie into her arms.
With what she thought might be the last of her strength, Annie took one step at a time, climbing towards the glorious, golden sunlight.
Chapter Five
The sounds engulfed him as he slept, intertwining into his occasionally rational thoughts and breaking up the places his mind dared to go. He dreamed of being on a wooden raft, where there was nothing to eat but a little boy with cowboy boots on his feet. Edgar dreamed of eating the boy and throwing his bones over the edge (he’d of course hang on to the boots), into the ocean where the sharks would pick away the last sinews and tendons, getting every last ounce of protein from his tiny corpse. Somebody, off on the ocean’s horizon, kept ringing a strange sounding dinner bell in odd intervals, no so much a ding-dong, but reminding him instead of a rushing river that could not be blockaded by dams or rocks or sandy beaches.
Something was changing. Something was coming for him.
Edgar woke with a splitting headache, as if somebody had taken an axe to the back of his skull while he was sleeping. “Zing-a-ling,” he stammered, folding his legs over the edge of Paulie and Christian’s bed. He couldn’t remember much from the night before, and didn’t really care to. He licked his parched lips, unbuttoning one eye, slowly, and then opening up the other. There was some alien stickiness clinging to his eyelids, something he usually felt when he drank too much. The next thought seemed vaguely familiar: the dead fellow had a liquor cabinet that would make an Irishman weep.
He supposed that was what happened. Seemed likely. Sounded just like an Edgar kind of evening. He’d had a lot of those lately, especially since the snow first came.
A hazy fog thinned out, with sporadic recollections returning to him, broken and shattered, but real all the same. A woman. She’d come through the door, asking about his boy, talking about a whole lot of bullsh—
His wife. It was the sexy broad from the pictures on the wall, the one with the pretty cans and the white teeth. He’d met her last night. He’d met his wife and now he wasn’t quite sure where she was. Shouldn’t she have been sleeping next to him?
“Christ on a bike,” he said to himself.
There was never a second chance to make a first impression. What had he said to her? What had he done? That was his new wife. The mother of his child. The matron of his heart. The reason for the season. She was a pretty one and he was expected by the Lord Almighty to treat her that way.
He was a motherfuckin’ family man now.
The pride was almost unbearable.
Edgar stood up from the bed, walking towards the window, curious about the strange sounds outside, which had leaked into his dream. Pulling back the shades, he peered out into the shiny abyss of the day. Across the street, one of the surviving neighbors was hanging their head out the window, waving a white tee-shirt, cheerfully shouting something that Edgar couldn’t hear through the window pane.
The quiet slug of rushing water filled his head, almost to the point that he thought his ears might start bleeding. The sound was coming from all over, from the top of the street to the bottom, driving him instantly mad.
“It’s meltin’. Jesus H, it’s melting like a motherfucker!” he said, unable to hold back the shout that was welling up in his belly. He’d survived. He’d survived the storm and everything was going to be as right as rain now.
He could hear the sewers gushing, filling and spilling and spewing, unable to keep up with the rapid melt. Edgar pulled up on the window, undoing the safety notches that Yuppie One and Yuppie Two had put in place for the kid (Edgar suddenly couldn’t remember his son’s name—Johnny? Louie?). The bubbling din of melting and water rushing grew louder as the window was opened, although Edgar couldn’t have imagined it being any louder than it already was. From across the road, he could hear the gleeful neighbor shouting out in rejoice, apparently relieved by the temperatures that this morning had delivered unto them.
Better get to freezin’ up again, thought Edgar. Or we all gon’ get drowned like sick fuckin’ rats.
Edgar instinctively quoted an excerpt from The Good Book. Jesus was a magical man, and he executed his plans in ways that man didn’t quite see fit. Everything happened once, and it would always happen again and again, such was the universe. Fuckin’ aye right, that’s how Edgar lived and breathed. Jesus was a bad dude—hell, he IS a bad dude—and he’s comin’ to collect us, thought Edgar, trying to resist the urge to jump up and down like a silly child with too much sugar in his gut.