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

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It may be the most brainless job in the world, but that doesn’t means it’s easy.”

“Mom tried it at her job. Man, she hated that job.”

Sensing sensitive territory, Zakiyah tread carefully.

“What’d she do?”

“I don’t even really know,” Tony shrugged. “Something with credit cards. She worked at Deltech doing customer service calls when we first moved here. Hated that, too. Did you ever meet her?”

“No, unfortunately. I kind of know your dad from work, but he was more my boyfriend’s friend.”

Boyfriend? Really? Zakiyah thought, catching herself. A mental shrug later and she continued.

“You guys were from New Orleans, too, right?”

“Pines Village near the lake. How about you?”

“Lower Ninth, right in the soup.”

“Ah, I’m sorry. Sucks.”

“Yeah, well, we made it out. Can’t say that for everybody down there.”

“Yeah.”

“What’d your dad do there?” Zakiyah asked, finding herself suddenly curious.

She’d found the answer to this question was always so surprising, no matter how many survivors she’d meet in Houston. Some guy bagging her groceries had been an assistant manager at a bank. A woman who was doing the paperwork to get Mia into classes had been a real estate agent. A guy stocking shelves at the beauty supply store had been a nurse.

Mia.

Zakiyah tried to force the name from her mind. There’d be days ahead for that. She wasn’t ready to go there.

“City planner,” Tony said.

“What?”

“You asked what my dad did. He was a city planner. Worked for Orleans Parish.”

“Really?” Zakiyah exclaimed, surprised. “Big Time was some kind of architect?”

“So you guys really call him that?” Tony laughed.

“Nobody knows what his real name is,” Zakiyah said. “Elmer used to call him Big Money, think Scott called him something else once or twice, but everybody else on the floor calls him Big Time. Guess I never really thought about it.”

“No offense, as I know he’s everybody’s friend and people like him, but it kills him to go there every day,” Tony said. “I kind of think he doesn’t want anybody to know his real name so he can keep up this façade that one day his old life will be back. Then he can go back to being the man he was.”

Zakiyah was amazed at how much Tony could read off his own father. She completely understood where Big Time was coming from, though.

But a city planner? For a city that done drowned itself? Oh, boy, she was going to get some play out of that at some point.

Chapter 29

The cacophony outside the stairwell began to dissipate around the twentieth floor and was down to a dull, machine-like roar by the twenty-third.

“Feel like taking a peek?” Scott asked.

“Not really,” replied Big Time.

Scott ignored him and cautiously pushed open the stairwell door. The noise got louder but was still far away, drowned out by the driving rain. The level was still under construction and there were no windows, only more of the plastic sheeting they’d found in the garage below. The ceilings and floor were concrete, with heavy columns running in between every few feet. Some construction lamps were set up around the floor, but it was mostly empty.

“What’re we looking for?” Muhammad asked.

“I’ll know it when I see it,” said Scott.

Three floors later, and Scott had his eureka moment.

“There!” he said, pointing to a stack of five-gallon metal drums.

“What’re we looking at?” Big Time asked.

“Hopefully, some kind of silver bullet,” Scott said. “Grab as many of ’em as you can carry and let’s get up there.”

“Up there” turned out to only be two floors later. The sounds of footfalls on metal steps echoed above the noise of the sludge worms and the hurricane though they were going up, not down.

“Hey!” Big Time called out. “Three people coming up!’

A few of the footfalls, slowed and inaudible words were yelled back out to the thirtieth floor. A moment later, two uniformed Houston police officers, hands on holstered weapons, came down and met Big Time and the others with the suspicion natural to their profession.

“Where are you guys coming in from?” the lead officer, a young Latino, “Gonzales” on his nameplate, asked.

“North side. Up past Tomball.”

The second officer, a tall black man—”Franklin”—regarded Big Time with surprise.

“You came in to the city?”

“We were looking for our families,” Big Time replied. “My friend here thinks his wife might be up with you guys.”

Franklin gave Muhammad an appraising look, then nodded.

“If she’s here, you’re more than welcome to look for her. We’re heading up to the highest two floors. I’m afraid you guys should’ve chosen a different building, though.”

“We’re not here to stay,” said Scott. “There’s a way out for all of you. Unfortunately, that means trusting us.”

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” Gonzales said. “We’ve sent people down. Next thing we know, they’re flying out the windows from that ghost wind. Saw that happen at the precinct earlier. You guys came in through One Shell Plaza, right?”

“Yep.”

“It’s suicide.”

Scott stared at the man, incredulous.

“You think help’s on the way or something? Helicopters? You’re running out of floors, and that thing ain’t running out of pitch. You stay here, all of you people are going to die!”

Above them, the footsteps slowed. People were listening now.

“Are you trying to cause a panic?” Gonzales asked, leaning in. “Don’t you think we know all that? Don’t you think everybody in this fucking building knows that?”

“Well, what you don’t know is that we fought the thing and beat it back,” said Big Time, moving in front of Scott. “Better yet, we think we can replicate our results on a grand scale up here. Now, are you interested in hearing what we have to say? I mean, we made it all this way, so we must be doing something right.”

Gonzales turned to Franklin, who regarded Big Time coolly.

“All right, man. We’ll take you to the mayor. She’d be interested in hearing what’s going on in the rest of the city anyway.”

For a second, Big Time thought Franklin was being metaphorical. The survivors had