In The Falling Light by John L. Campbell Read Free Book Online Page B

vehicle bob under his feet. Ray Hammond’s boat was close
enough to touch, hung up on another tire. Branches cracked
overhead, and he stood in a balanced, half-crouch in water up to
his knees, seeing that the Chevy had lodged in the oak’s main
fork.
    He didn’t look for the boxcar, didn’t want
to. If it hit him, he’d never know it, and would prefer that to a
miss, to seeing it tear his house and his family apart upon impact.
He moved as quickly as the water allowed, examining the aluminum
boat, seeing that the current had already put it on a helpful
angle. He wouldn’t have to flip it completely over, only about
three-quarters.
    And then what? Have the water rip it from
his hands?
    He moved along the truck’s undercarriage to
where the boat was actually sticking into the air a little,
creating a dark, watery gap. Dell held his breath and ducked under,
pulling himself up into the boat like a turtle in a shell.
Darkness. No, not completely, a bit of gray light coming in through
the gap. Flat seats now overhead, nothing else, all washed away. He
felt the boat shift above him, the pickup shudder beneath him, and
tensed.
    It all held.
    He pulled himself into the darkness towards
the back, the space between the water and air narrowing. Dell had
never been in Ray Hammond’s boat before, but he had been in plenty
similar. There, the center seat, more than just an aluminum plank
across the hull, this one a storage box. Kneeling in the darkness,
he felt for the latches, found the one on the left, flipped it,
cold hands slapping in the other direction. Found the second
latch.
    The lid spilled open, gear falling out as if
from a ruptured piñata, dumping into the water. Dell’s hands
scrambled through it until they felt rope, a tightly rolled coil.
He quickly wound one end around his waist several times, knotting
it tightly. Then he crawled on his knees back towards the light and
tied the other end to the front bench seat. Had there been a
flashlight in the box? Probably, the kind that floated. He would
need it to examine the outboard motor. He started back to look.
    Tucked inside the turtled boat, Dell didn’t
see it coming.
    A forest green dumpster, half filled with
water, heavy and floating like a boat itself, washed into the rear
of the Chevy, striking hard and dislodging it from the tree. The
pickup slid away from the oak as the dumpster turned over, hitting
the rear of the rescue boat before it sank, knocking it loose from
the tire which had held it in place. The current caught the
aluminum hull and sent it spinning away. Dell, trapped inside the
capsized hull, was pulled with it, his head and shoulder slamming
into a metal wall, casting him into deep water as the boat moved
off, the rope dragging him along the bottom behind it.
    Arlene and the kids screamed as they saw the
dumpster break both the boat and the pickup free, and she shouted
her husband’s name into the storm as the current carried the
aluminum shape away from the house and out of sight. Dell’s head
didn’t appear.
    Two feet below the family, the surface
washed against the shingles as the hurricane sent waves of spray
over their huddled figures. Arlene heard a metallic groan and
looked over her shoulder to see the boxcar moving in the current, a
rusting behemoth turning slowly on the surface, creaking as it
moved past the house with only feet to spare. It rotated and then
drove into the barn like a great torpedo, and in a splintering
crash the structure was torn apart, the roof collapsing, a whole
piece floating for a moment, then breaking up and slipping under.
Hay and shattered planks vanished quickly downstream.
    Arlene stared into the storm, the shock of
seeing the barn torn away quickly replaced with grief for her
husband, for the children she would not be able to save, for the
life they would never know. Her tears were lost in the rain.
    An hour passed, and the water was now
touching their feet, the spray a relentless whipping, and all three
kids