Not Flesh Nor Feathers

So I sat down there with them in their little corner. We exchanged gossip that didn’t amount to much more than, “Holy shit, look at all this water.”

My phone rang again while we were playing catch-up, and it was Lu. It was loud and crowded there in the corner of the bar, but I finally felt calm enough to answer her, so I did . . . and immediately wished I hadn’t. I’d expected to find myself on the receiving end of a nasty verbal beating and she didn’t disappoint. At some point, Dave picked up the other receiver and they tag-teamed me until my ears rang.

When they were finished, I told them that I was all right and I didn’t know what else to say. It had all happened so quickly, after all. When I’d left the mountain the threat of the closed bridges was still just that—a threat. Within two hours, the city was shut off and I was downtown. I’d only meant to go meet some friends; I hadn’t anticipated this. I swore all this was true, and I was only lying a little bit. I’d been expecting a mess, but the sheer extent of the mess—how could I have known? How could anyone have known?

They conceded that point. Because really, I was right: how could anyone have known?

Lu and Dave were watching TV at home, safe and dry up on the mountain. I was glad for that much. Two fewer people for me to worry about, that’s what it meant. “And you guys are staying up there, right? You’re not going to do something crazy like come down off the mountain and try and get me, are you?”

“No, of course not,” Lu answered for the pair of them. “I don’t think we could get down the mountain if we tried right now. And even if we did, we’d never make it out to the Choo-Choo. They’re declaring martial law down there, did you know that?”

“I didn’t know we had enough police in this city to enforce martial law.”

“We don’t. They’re calling them in from all over the place. Eden, this is—this is historic. This is fucking epic. This is like New Orleans,” she said, and I could hear an edge of excitement in her voice. It wasn’t happy excitement, exactly—it was more like a keen interest tempered with fear. “Hey,” she went on to add. “I saw that reporter friend of yours on the news. If he ever wanted a stab at a Pulitzer, this is his chance.”

“I’ll be sure to pass that along to him.”

“Will you be seeing him at any point soon? I ask because, I mean—look. I’m glad you’ve found . . . well, I’m not exactly glad you’ve found Harry and you-know-who, but I’m glad you’re not alone. But really—one old guy and your crazy-assed brother? I wish there was someone else with you, too.”

I glanced over at Harry, who looked ready to beat the ass of the entire world at a moment’s notice; and I thought of Nick, who is only a little taller than me and probably drinks fussy coffee drinks when he feels like butching up. “What exactly are you trying to say, Lu?”

“I’m trying to say that I’d feel better if you were someplace with—with more people. Or better access to technology. Or more civilization, or—”

“Or someplace you could keep better tabs on me?”

“Something like that,” Dave finished for her. “You’re over at the train station?”

“Yes, I’m here now. But if it makes you feel better, Nick and I are supposed to catch up with each other in a little while. If he happens to have a satellite hidden under his shirt, I’ll be sure to use it to phone home.”

“You’d damn well better,” Lu all but growled. “Next time you fail to answer that phone, I’m going to assume you’re dead; or if you’re not, I’m going to have to hunt you down and kill you.”

“Got it, sure. Love you too.”

Dave backed her up, but more gently. “Really. Please leave the thing on, and answer it. Make a couple of old fogies happy?”

“I’ll do what I can, but these batteries don’t magically last forever. Please keep that in mind.”

In the end, they agreed not to call every hour on the hour and I agreed to answer when they did call; but in real life, I knew better. Their idea of nervous moderation was to phone every other hour, and my idea of answering judiciously was to pick up every other time.

Harry and Malachi were happy to have my undivided attention again, though none of us seemed to know what to do now. We exchanged harrowing stories of sloshing our way through the city, and they shared their bottled water with me. The Red Cross was handing it out along with granola bars and Little Debbies; it wasn’t high cuisine, but it would suffice.

Above us, fits and starts of rain echoed loud against the ceiling and the world began to go dark outside. Inside, things weren’t much better. We accepted thin but sturdy blankets from one of the volunteers, and we huddled down, waiting for word or morning.

15

Meet Me

Around eleven o’clock that night, Nick called. My phone was stuffed into my purse, which was acting double-duty as a pillow, so the vibrating ring startled me into stupidity. I fumbled the thing open and was amazed to note that I hadn’t awakened either Malachi or Harry, both of whom slept awkwardly beneath the piano and behind it.

“Hello?” I said, keeping my voice down but not to a whisper. Even after hours there was a dull roar in the room, the tired complaints of refugees who wanted to go home. Most of them probably still had homes to go to. As far as I knew, the flooding centered on the old business and tourist districts. The residential areas tend to be on higher ground, or on cheaper ground farther inland.

“Where are you?” Nick asked, as usual without a greeting.

“I’m still at the Choo-Choo.” I rubbed at my eyes and twisted my shoulders, trying to crack my back.

“I just got to the Read House. Can you get down here?”

“I guess,” I said, almost wishing I hadn’t. I ached all over from the swimming and the climbing and the running. I was bone tired, but now that I was awake I didn’t think I could get back to sleep if I tried.

“You’ll have to sneak in, but I really want you here. There’s something fucked up going on.”

“Haven’t we already had this conversation?”

“Yeah. But now I’ve got a better idea of what it is. Sort of. Kind of. It’s all got something to do with the First Congrega-tionalist Church of Chattanooga.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It burned down in 1919. City officials swore that the church was deliberately closed and burned because of the Spanish Flu epidemic. Communities closed a lot of public buildings then, theaters and churches and the like. They didn’t really understand how the flu was spread, so they tried all sorts of things to slow it down. But I’ve never heard of burning buildings to prevent the spread of disease. That sounds excessive, doesn’t it?”

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the side of the glossy black piano. “If you’re grasping at straws, I guess controlled arson doesn’t sound so wacky. But why do we care why the church burned down?”

“Well, contemporary newspapers called the fire ‘suspicious’ too; wrote about it like they didn’t believe the city’s official line. Also: it was Caroline’s church. And that’s when Caroline first went crazy—when her family started sending her to doctors and sanitoriums. Her first stint in the crazy house was in November of 1919. And we don’t believe in coincidence, right? So it had to be related. Somebody burned that place down to hide something, Caroline knew about it, and the rest of the city helped bury it.”

My head was hurting again, throbbing in time with his words. Again I heard that phrase in my head, clear as day and surprisingly loud: the burned up man. “What do you mean by that? Helped bury what?”

“I don’t know. But—Jesus. I don’t even know how to say it. I don’t have the vocabulary I need. I can’t . . . look. Listen. There’s something going on down by the river.”

The pit of my stomach dropped, because I thought of Christ. “You said that last time we talked, too. What are you talking about?”

“I’m not even sure. I’m seeing dead people, everywhere. But not all of them stay down. Some of them—they’re coming up out of the water, out of the river. I don’t know. Nobody knows. The police are trying to force a lockdown and get everyone as far away as they can. But I’ve had people grabbing me when they recognize me, trying to tell me stories about—shit. About dead people wrapped in chains, walking around.”

“What, like . . . like zombies?”

“No, of course I don’t mean zombies. I mean dead people up walking around and wreaking havoc. That’s totally different, isn’t it?” Around the edge of his voice I heard something close to hysterics, barely controlled.

“Did you, personally, see anything?”

“I don’t know what I saw, okay? It could’ve been anything. It could’ve been anyone. But I tell you this—they’re looking for something. I don’t know what or who or why. But there’s something coming out of the water, and I think it’s going to be something nastier than this city has ever seen. I think it’s going to be bad. Can you please, please, please get over here to the Read House?”

“It’ll take some time,” I said, but it wasn’t prohibitively far. “I heard they’ve declared martial law. Is that why you said I was going to have to sneak?”

“Yeah. But the more I think about it, the less I think the cops are going to be a problem. The authorities are calling everyone down to the river’s edge—which, might I add, is now somewhere around Third Street. And the higher the water gets, the more—the more range these things get. They’re being reported deeper and deeper inside the city. Shit, Eden. Shit.”

“Third Street,” I echoed. “Okay. Third Street. That’s still a long way from us, and a long way from the Read House.”

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