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Without morphine, Marta had nowhere to hide from the pain; already it was becoming too much for her. One moment she’d be lying there peacefully, and the next she’d be mewling and balling her fists and crushing her eyes closed with such force that he’d feel her agony like it was his own.
Mewling… that was the only sound she could make now.
Remy looked into the living room at his trumpet, which hung on the wall in a glass case above the fireplace. He’d put it away over a year ago when Marta got so sick she couldn’t sing along with him any more.
At times he’d fooled himself into believing that folks had come to the Bourbon Street clubs they booked to hear his sharp-noted riffs, but deep down, he’d always known they’d come for her. Achingly hourglass in form-fitting blue, Marta would take the stage as quietly as an afterthought, press her full lips to the mic, and then float her voice sweetly, robustly, through a room’s smoky air in time with his trumpet’s plaintive moan. Jazz, blues, gospel, rock-she could sing them all. Transform them all. Her soulful, smooth-rasping lullabies never failed to transfix, to shake free what was hidden, to soothe like promises of hope the damaged spirits of those who listened. None more than his. None more.
No more.
Marta’s voice had been siphoned by the cancer. What he would do to give Marta her voice back. To stop her constant suffering.
The radio crackled. Remy placed it on the kitchen counter and fussed with the dial.
“…broken…” he heard the broadcaster say. “…17th Street Canal levee…mercy on our souls…”
Remy went cold with fear. So it had happened. He had to get Marta outside and up onto the roof, but how could he when he lacked the strength to move her fast enough to beat the coming floodwater?
Suddenly, an idea occurred to him. He dashed to the utility closet, whipped out his raingear: an opaque-plastic poncho to cover his tweed jacket, shabby white shirt, and gray slacks, and galoshes to cover his cracked Oxfords. And then, as he grabbed a shovel, he heard it.
A deep and distant roar that swelled like the charging thrum of a thousand battle tanks-a sound he’d last heard as a young man in the killing fields of Korea-until it shook the floor, the walls, the house. The glass case surrounding his trumpet shuddered then cracked down the middle as plaster dust fell in streaks from the ceiling. The roar-nature’s own terrible riff-grew so thick that he thought he might feel it slide against his fingers, and then came a cracking, trembling boom followed by a mad-static hiss.
The house groaned and held. But for how long?
Lightning flashed, giving him a glimpse of the flood through the living room window. A dark wave tumbled past, followed by another and another. Grimy water flowed underneath the front door, soaking fast across the carpet, as the flood level surged against the sill.
And then he saw something else.
At first he thought it was debris held in place by opposing currents, but then he realized it was the naked corpse of a man-one washed from a cemetery and long dead, judging by the decay. The flesh was shriveled and fish-belly white, the eyes were worm-eaten, and the jaw, a skinless mandible, opened and closed like the corpse was trying to describe the destruction it had witnessed. Open and closed. Open and closed. The jaw opened and closed so much it made him think for a moment that stories of the dead coming back to life might be true.
Remy chided himself for entertaining the silly idea when the corpse lashed out and grabbed the window frame. He could only stare in disbelief as the thing pulled itself toward him through the roaring deluge, and then slammed its rotted face into the glass. The window shattered and let in a thick rush of black, foul-smelling floodwater.
Remy threw up his arms to protect his face from the glass as the thing clutched both sides of the window frame and stepped a twisted, rotted foot onto the flooding carpet.
He continued to stare in shock, not wanting to believe what he saw but unable to deny the truth before him. Alive! Alive! The radio was right!
When the thing brought its other leg through the window and then reached for him, Remy snapped out of his fugue and swung the shovel. The flat of the blade struck the thing’s chest with a wet-sack slap, pushing it back. But then it kept coming, growl bubbling in its throat, like it hadn’t felt any pain at all.
He swung again, striking the thing’s face this time, and the rotted skull imploded in a gush of pink. The headless body took a final step before it collapsed splashing into the water, which was high enough now to soak Remy’s pants above the galoshes.
Still clutching the shovel, Remy bolted from the flooding living room. It wouldn’t be long before the water flowed down the hall and reached the bedroom.
That thing was alive!
Mind still reeling, he slammed the bedroom door closed and then wedged clothes underneath it. That would hold back the floodwater for only a minute or two, but it was something, at least.
Holding the shovel under one arm, he dragged the dresser to the middle of the floor then clambered on top of it and stood as straight as he could without hitting the low ceiling.
“I’ll be right back, hon,” Remy said, trying to keep the panic from his voice. “Just wait there as best you can.” Marta mewled, gripped the blankets. The morphine was wearing off, and he felt her growing agony in his chest, in his heart.
Age had taken a toll on him, but he knew it had taken more of a toll on the cracked, off-grade ceiling. He jabbed the shovel up again and again, shattering thin plaster, rending pink insulation, splintering worm-eaten beams. Finally, he broke through brittle shingles and saw the night sky. Raindrops pelted his face as he wormed up through the ragged hole and then stood on the roof near a small brick chimney, wind whipping his poncho.
By light of the moon, he saw that the water had taken the entire neighborhood, uprooting trees, rolling cars, flooding houses, creating a trash-strewn sea in every direction. He and Marta could expect to be stranded for a long time. Too long. And then he noticed flailing silhouettes flowing among the houses when lightning revealed what the moon hadn’t-dozens of animated dead, like the one that had broken through his window, caught in the rushing floodwater. Rotted bodies, broken bodies, bodies with limbs missing, bodies stripped of flesh. Some floated and thrashed while others strode through the chest-deep water, straining to escape the vicious current. Over the din of rushing water came a flat, plaintive sound. Moaning, he realized. A wailing chorus from the dead that rose up with a life of its own.
Remy closed his eyes and considered his only choice.
God willing, he’d have the strength to hoist Marta through the hole and onto the roof, and then he’d do his best to cover her with his poncho to keep her dry and hide her from the dead things that surrounded them. But they’d still be stranded. And Marta would still be without her morphine.
Below, Marta cried out in agony. Desperation shot through him. What else could he do?
He scrambled around the roof, looking for a safe way off, but the water was everywhere, rushing past in black, white-capped fury. He sca
Marta cried out again, voice tinged with such pain, such agony, that Remy moaned in frustration and blind emptiness as rage blossomed along with his fear. He beat the chimney until his knuckles were bloody, crying out himself, his own anguish mingling with Marta’s cries and the moans rising up from the dark water around him.
And then he felt a sudden calm come over him. There was another way out of this. Another way. For a moment he felt a flicker of doubt, but another cry from Marta decided the issue.