He looked the other way and spotted the leader running diagonally from his post behind the tree, heading for the road. He appeared to be in headlong flight, his feet gliding over the muddy earth and his arms pumping with the smooth stroke of an Olympian. Mercer turned back the other way again and saw the shooter, too, was running for their stolen pickup like the hounds of hell were at his heels.
He got it. He understood what they’d seen that had frightened them so.
Mercer slammed the door a second time and looked at Roni. When he spoke he couldn’t keep the fearful edge from his voice. “Is there an attic or crawl space?”
“Yes. What’s happening?”
“The water from that reservoir is coming a lot sooner than we figured. Where’s the access?”
“Pantry behind the kitchen.”
This time she led the way. Mercer looked out the back window and saw the creek had consumed the last of the back lawn and was washing along the building’s exterior. He moved closer still and saw it was actually up almost halfway to the window itself. Once it reached that height, the old single pane would implode from the pressure against it — or if by some miracle it held, it would shatter when struck by any of the debris borne along the runaway torrent.
He strained his eyes to look upstream and saw a wall of water stretching the full width of the valley, its head a foaming crest that curled but never collapsed. For as much danger as Mercer had faced in his life, he had never felt more certain that he was going to die.
“Roni!” he shouted as she was reaching for a pull string attached to a hatch in her pantry ceiling. “Brace yourself!”
The surge struck the house, rising up so that it covered the windows and plunged the kitchen into near-total darkness. Mercer expected the glass to explode and took a deep breath on the off chance he survived the initial blast of water. Instead, the entire house lurched drunkenly, knocking him off his feet. Something tore under the building, where the floor joists met the stone-and-mortar foundation. It had been built to withstand the screaming fury of a tornado, but it couldn’t hope to fight the remorseless onslaught of water.
Mercer clutched at the heavy stove as Roni Butler’s house was torn off its foundation. He smelled a brief blast of propane from the ruptured line feeding the stove, and heard over the roar of water the metallic sheering of pipes and ducts that rose up through the floor from the basement. It grew suddenly lighter in the kitchen as the wooden house reacted to its positive buoyancy and bobbed up from the depths to begin floating downstream in the somewhat calmer waters behind the initial swell. It spun and weaved and rocked like a piece of cork, but the building had found a way to survive.
But it wouldn’t last. Already water was sloshing in from the living room, where it came gushing in from under the front door and bubbled up through the air vents recessed in the floor.
Mercer scrambled to his feet, still reeling from being alive. He had to hold on to the walls to keep his balance as the house lazily pirouetted amid all the other trash picked up in the flood.
“Roni?” he called. “Roni.”
“I’m in here.” Her muffled answer came from the adjoining pantry. As if he were aboard a ship in the middle of a typhoon, Mercer staggered to her. Roni was on the floor, covered in flour from a sack that had fallen from a shelf and burst when it struck her. Around her prone form were cans and boxes and other detritus that had been dislodged when the house tore free. He helped her to her feet. She was unsteady but appeared unhurt.
He shook some flour from her hair. “You know, it looks pretty good white, should you ever want to go that route.”
She was so far beyond the scope of her experience that she glommed on to Mercer’s weak joke as an anchor point and gave a hearty belly laugh. “But I bet your friend Harry prefers redheads,” she quickly replied.
Mercer looked back through the large kitchen window. The world spun by in a kaleidoscope of water and land and rain as the house weaved its way toward the Mississippi.
The water inside had climbed to their ankles.
“We need to get out of here,” he said, bracing her in the pantry and sloshing over to the front of the house. The window suddenly disintegrated as a pair of pistols were unleashed in a fusillade that came with unimaginable savagery.
Mercer had forgotten all about the gunmen. They had avoided the onrush of water by retreating to the Zodiac, and now they were pacing the floating house in the rubber inflatable just waiting for their opportunity. He cursed his stupidity. The shotgun was in the kitchen.
The boat was just a few yards off the front porch, and the only thing stopping one of them from jumping over was that the house still rotated on its axis. On this pass the stoop remained out of reach, but on the next rotation the driver would have a better fix on his angle of attack. Mercer ran back for the gun, sliding across the linoleum floor like a base runner going for home. He snatched up the weapon and rolled in the water to regain his feet. Around him the house spun dizzily, but he was just quick enough so that when the Zodiac was positioned outside the rear-facing kitchen window he was on his feet and ready. The Mossberg roared, and the front of the twelve-foot inflatable erupted in a fluttering burst of shredded rubber when several air cells exploded.
Mercer couldn’t tell if he’d hit either of the gunmen but doubted he’d been that lucky. The boat wasn’t in any danger of sinking because its hull was compartmentalized, but the driver was going to have a hell of a time controlling it.
He tore back across the house. This time the icy water had risen up to his knees, and he had to bull his way to get to the front parlor. Some furniture had begun to float. Rain blew in through the glassless window frame. He took up a position next to it and peered out. The Zodiac should have reappeared as the house rotated yet again, but he couldn’t see it. He saw whole trees blown into the river by the storm, and the pink bodies of several drowned pigs, but no white inflatable boat.
Water climbed up to midthigh while he waited. Roni’s house was sinking fast, and he still had no plan to get them out of there. He didn’t think he’d be able to lure the Zodiac close enough to steal, so his next option was finding something in the house he and Roni could use as a raft. Mattresses seemed the best idea, and he had seen a queen-size bed in the master that he might be able to wrestle out the front door. Mercer slung the shotgun onto his shoulder and waded down the hallway heading for the bedroom. The gunmen must have peeled off, because he didn’t see them out the bedroom window either. He quickly stripped off the hand-sewn quilt and the blankets so they wouldn’t become tangled, and wrestled the mattress onto its side. It was bulky and unwieldy, and grew heavy as it absorbed water while he was trying to guide it back down the hall.
Suddenly, Roni Butler screamed. Mercer tried to abandon his makeshift raft but was momentarily pinned against the wall by the sagging Posturepedic. He swore and pushed at the thing before getting free. The river was gushing in through the front window, and the house had begun to fill unevenly and tilt even more wildly.
Mercer fought his way to the kitchen just in time to see Roni being hoisted through the back window by one of the shooters. He must have leapt through the shattered kitchen window and grabbed her from where Mercer had left her cowering in the pantry.