“Stop that. ”
“Stop what?”
“Talking to me like I’m four years old. ”
“Sorry. ”
I shouldn’t have snapped at him. He was only trying to help. But I couldn’t muster an apology for it, and he didn’t act like he needed one, so I just walked beside him and tried not to notice that we were moving through water. It was higher even than earlier that morning—it was at the very doorstep of the shelter when we arrived.
Nick was right, they were moving people out.
Emergency personnel directed human traffic, and the bulldozers and tow trucks had cleared another lane of traffic to the interstate leaving town. It moved in a steady flow if not a heavy one—ambulances, fire trucks, police cars, and the occasional bus somebody scared up from a schoolyard or Greyhound.
They made up a caravan that moved in lurches. Park, load. Creep forward to the onramp. Follow the arms of the policemen and -women in their wet blue uniforms. Slow but steady. Running the race, if not winning it.
“Harry?” I called over the low-buzzing din. “Harry? Are you here?”
I thought of my cell phone and remembered it was dead and wouldn’t be of any help to me. I turned to Nick and said, “He’s a tall guy with white hair, wearing—I don’t remember. I can’t remember what he’s wearing—but he’s in his sixties, maybe. Real good shape though—thin, but on the tough-looking side. I think he used to be a boxer or something. He told me once but I don’t remember. ”
“All right, I’ll keep my eyes open. ”
Before I could holler too much more, Harry found me first. He got a good handful of my arm through the crowd and tugged, commanding my attention and Nick’s too—since Nick was still moving in “protective alpha male” mode.
“There you are!” he said, and Nick figured out that this was the guy we were looking for.
“You’re Harry?”
“I’m Harry. You two looking for me?”
“Yes,” I said. “Trying to find you. ”
“Well I’m trying to find your brother. Have you seen him? Crazy little bastard took off looking for you here. I tried to keep tabs on him, but you know what he’s like once he’s got some stupid idea in his head. ”
I don’t know what my face told him, but it gave him an inkling that all wasn’t well with the world. This would probably have been a good time to burst into tears again, but it didn’t happen.
“What’s going on? You’ve seen him. ”
I nodded and tried to answer, but nothing came out. Nick took over. “We’ve seen him. He helped us out of trouble, and it cost him. ”
Harry went still as a statue, then changed his mind and opened up that impressive, long-armed wingspan of his—herding us both off to a corner where we were out of traffic’s flow and could construct the illusion of privacy. “Where is he now?”
Nick answered again, and it was just as well. “Somewhere underneath Broad Street. He’s gone, man. ”
Harry exhaled through lips pursed in the shape of an O. “Oh. Okay. Oh. Are—are you sure?”
My turn to talk and nod. “Pretty damn sure. We were stuck down there, under the city—there was a tunnel, the old underground, you know?” I was babbling again, but it wouldn’t slow down so I let it flow. “We were down there because there were things down there—we saw them, and we were going to stop them from coming up underneath the city, out of that old building down there on the corner, which you can’t see from here but that’s okay because it’s not there anymore anyway. And Malachi helped us get out after the floor collapsed, but then he went back in because, I don’t know why because, but he was trying to help, or trying to make up for it all, that’s what he said. And he lit the fuse on the shells and—”
“Wait, artillery shells? Where did you get your hands on—”
“No, fireworks shells. Big ones, though. We stole them from the ball park, and we were going to set them off down there and close the tunnel because you have to bury them—you have to bury them again, it’s the only thing that’s ever kept them down and quiet. You have to bury them,” I said again, because hearing myself pronounce the refrain made the story something I cou
ld process.
“It was my fault,” I tacked on at the end. “Harry, don’t be mad at him, it was all my fault. ”
“Not mad at him, not mad at you,” he told me, trying to smooth it over or soothe it down. “Not mad at anybody. Calm down, okay? Calm down. ”
“Okay, I’m calm. I’m perfectly calm; there isn’t anything left for me to be. But it’s time for you to get out of here. You were here for him, and for me. But you should go now. They’re still coming and we’ve all got to leave—we’ve all got to move. ”