Chapter Three
Jan looked wildly about her as the first pre-wave licked its way through the broken window in the front door. Louder. Closer. A freight train made of water barreling in to destroy her town. The flashlight clattered to the floor, landing at an odd angle against her foot. She looked up to find it spotlighting a trapdoor in the ceiling at the far end of the pharmacist's shelves.
Louder.
Closer.
She scrambled along the inside of the counter. Containers clanking, bottles rattling, pills shaking in their cylinders. Something fell from a shelf; the sound of shattering glass rang through the air like a klaxon. Danger. The smell of rubbing alcohol. Another bottle breaking. Danger! The gagging stench of ammonia.
The center of three tall metal shelving units swayed slightly as she ran past. Her flashlight shook under the vibration of approaching doom, making shadows creep along the wall as she rounded the last case and in her fight for purchase, slammed against it. Small boxes launched from their perches, whispering through the air, her hand swiping everything away, running, making it to the back corner. Pungent aromas told of broken receptacles, their lifesaving medicines soon to be swallowed by the water that would consume them all.
Mother.
There was nothing Jan could do for her now. It wouldn't be the cancer that took her, after all.
It would be the water.
Louder.
Plain old ordinary water.
Closer.
She hoisted herself up onto the counter. A desk calendar slid beneath her foot. Grabbing the shelf to keep her balance, a mug of pens sent skittering across worn wood, flying to pieces when it plummeted to the floor.
Have to make it.
She reached up blindly, her flashlight's beam unable to turn corners to light the way. There. She felt it bump her skin. There! A string against the side of her hand, the metal washer tied to the end of it smacking into her knuckle. She twisted her fingers round it, yanked, yanked again, pulled harder and harder yet. A loud creak, a painful groan as though the door knew it would die with this building in mere seconds.
Seconds.
Slithering, croaking hiss and protestation of seldom-used metal joints as the wooden ladder piled atop the trapdoor gave in to gravity's inexorable pull. Slamming to the floor, reverberating through the cabinet just before Jan leapt to the ladder's rungs. She slipped. The wall of water slammed into the side of the building. She screamed, scrabbling, feet and arms refusing to move in synch to propel her upward. She had to go!
Now!
A giant whoosh as the front windows of the Rx imploded. What was left of the store fixtures ripped from their holds on the floor. Plaster cracking. Bricks popping out of walls like overheated popcorn kernels. Her feet disappeared above just as the wave tore the rolling doors away from the pharmacy counter's windows.
Jan flailed around the roof in a panic, heavy rains pelting her face with the force of a tornadic wind. Lightning flashed in the skies above, the thunder drowned out by…her jaw dropped in disbelief as she turned to her left when a zig-zagging bolt of lightning lit western sky. The wave that now threatened to remove the entire store from its foundations…was only the beginning.
She stared open-mouthed, unable to scream or cry or curse or even move as yet another burst of light showed the true terror still headed her way. Forced into shape by miles of manmade obstacles…houses and roads, outbuildings and sidewalks…a wave unlike any she'd ever before seen moved closer and closer in stop-motion animation with each angry slice of lightning through the night. Followed by a second wave. A third.
Revelations.
The Bible had been right.
The Rx trembled beneath her feet, to match the trembling of her body.
She sank to her knees, hand clutching the cross tightly, eyes glued to the approaching wall of death. Her chin shook as grief unlike any she had ever known welled up within her. She was supposed to have become a successful lawyer. She was supposed to have met a man, gotten married, had children. She was supposed to have lived a long, busy, happy life and retired somewhere warm, tropical, wonderful.
An open-mouthed yet silent scream as her soul begged for mercy. Begged for God to help her, to send some kind of miracle to save her from meeting St. Peter just yet.
The wave loomed, swallowing the volunteer fire station half a block distant in its detritus-filled, endless maw. A loud, deafening clap of thunder, pins and needles as electricity surrounded her and in that instant, Jan looked up. White-hot and straight as an arrow, the bolt of lightning ran side-to-side and for a handful of seconds she felt weightless. Her stomach flipped end over end, heart in her throat, gulping to not throw up, arms waving, fingers trying to find something to grab hold of.
Feeling the pain of landing on her back hard, as though dropped from a great height. Unable to get her body to obey. Eyes wide open. Widening even as she tried to remember how to breathe. And there above her, as lightning flashed and flashed, lighting up the sky like the day, was something she'd never laid eyes on before.
A loud gasp as oxygen traveled back into her lungs.
Huge. Green. Yellow stripe. A man swinging wildly beneath the nose, dropping suddenly until his feet were planted firmly on the roof in front of her.
A spotlight from the monster flying above shone down, framing his blond hair in a halo like those drawn round the heads of saints in her church's stained glass windows.
An angel come to take her to the Pearly Gates? Or the answer to her prayers?
His face registered surprise when the spotlight shone in hers. She struggled to push herself up to a sitting position, squinting, using one arm to shield her from its glare. She caught sight of his white-gloved hand reaching out to her. Blindly groped. The light shifted away. His head whipped to the right.
"Look out!" he yelled.
She felt something hit the entire right side of her body and then…darkness.
