Flood Plains by Mark Wheaton (best ereader under 100 .TXT) 📕

Hoping they weren’t making a grievous error, Big Time wheeled the truck around.

•  •  •

Mia’s headaches were worsening to the point that she could barely see. The pounding behind her eyes carried with it a white-hot intensity that throbbed in time with her heartbeat. She didn’t want it to show, but it was hard.

When one pulse sent her to one knee, Sineada hurried over to her.

I can handle it, Mia thought.

“I know you think you can,” Sineada said. “But we don’t know what this is going to be like.”

Alan watched this back-and-forth for a moment but then got an idea.

“Mia? Come here a sec.”

Sineada shot a glance over at Alan, hoping he wasn’t trying to use his daughter’s pain to his advantage. He didn’t return the look. Mia sat down beside her father.

“If you’re going to try to talk me into running away, it’s not going to work,” Mia said. “I’ve made my mind up. This is important.”

Good for you, Mia, Sineada thought.

“No, no, it’s not that,” Alan said, speaking carefully. “I just wanted to thank you.”

“For what?”

“Saving my life. I don’t think I did that yet.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Mia shrugged, embarrassed. “It just happened.”

“Oh, you think I meant earlier today?” Alan smiled. “Yeah, I guess that qualifies, but I’m talking a long time ago. I’m talking when you were born.”

“What do you mean?” Mia asked, regarding him in surprise.

“You’re good with math. You know how old I was when you were born, right? Three years older than how old you are right now. Think about that. That’s crazy, right?”

Mia nodded.

“Kids that age shouldn’t be having babies, but then me and your mom had you,” Alan continued. “I’m glad you’ll never know the me from back then. I didn’t care about anything. I was drinking, I was stealing, I was hanging out with the worst people. But then you came along and I had a choice. Leave you and your mom or hang tight. You know what I did. But the truth is, you didn’t let me leave. From the minute you were born, you were in my heart.”

But you did leave, thought Sineada, getting angry.

“I’m not saying my priorities weren’t screwed up, but I started changing,” Alan continued, as if having heard Sineada. “Those guys I used to hang out with? A couple of them aren’t around anymore, and without you, maybe I wouldn’t be, either. When you came along, I got serious about school, I got a job, got serious about track. That’s how I got my scholarships. Track led to good things, but then the storm happened and I lost my priorities all over again. I felt sorry for myself and took it out on everybody. I let myself forget what you’d taught me. That wasn’t right. I’m sorry. This is the truth now and maybe, yesterday, two days ago, you were too young to hear it. But today, I think you’re older than me.”

Mia stared at her father, tears welling in her eyes. She put her arms around him and hugged him tightly.

“We’ll find Mommy,” Alan said. “And then we’ll be a family again.”

Sineada had been listening to this, trying to figure out Alan’s change of heart. When she realized what it was, she couldn’t believe Alan had sunk so low. Mia had never been more vulnerable or impressionable. This was Alan being her “rock” and making it that much harder for her to sacrifice him over strangers. It was so simple, a twelve-year-old could see through it. Unfortunately, Mia was eleven.

She caught Alan’s eye, and he stared back at her with a look that chilled her to the bone. This was a wounded lion that wasn’t going to go down easy, even if it meant manipulating his own daughter. The one thing that had been drummed into her the most over her many years of listening to people was that they would always surprise you.

Mia, arms still around her daddy, focused on the ascending columns of sludge with renewed determination. She thought they looked like some kind of witch king’s crown from a book, gnarled and black as if cracked from the twisted branches of a dead tree.

“Don’t worry, Daddy,” Mia said. “I’m ready for this.”

She turned to the building, but the mass seemed to know she was there. She began searching for a spirit to latch onto in hopes of turning the beast away from the ones escaping.

Hello? Where should we go? What should we be doing? This isn’t where we should go. This isn’t right. We should turn. We should turn around…

In the split second before the psychic roar flung itself at Mia with the force of a comet, Sineada sensed that the collective was inculcated against the very thing they were attempting. She had just turned to her great-granddaughter—Mia!—when she saw the little girl lifted off the raft and thrown back half a dozen feet. She landed on the edge of the raft, her arm dangling into the floodwaters.

Sineada rushed over, but Mia was unconscious. Alan, whose nerve endings were exposed to tremendous pain all over again, screamed in agony.

•  •  •

The second parking level down—P2—was blocked off the same as the first. When they encountered the same thing on P3 and P4, Zakiyah began to feel a small sense of hope.

Though she voiced the support for Scott’s plan, there was a bigger part of her that wanted nothing to do with this detour. Once they’d seen the sludge mass gathered in one place, she had imagined them driving as fast and as far west as they could go on their current tank of gas. No more questions about highways—they could just take the 45 around to the 290 or Interstate 10 and go and go and go. She understood wanting to believe that Muhammad’s wife might be up in the tower, but she didn’t think a single note with “Brammeier Tower” scrawled on it was worth risking their lives.

Still, she said nothing.

When they reached P5 and the