Dark Water Rising by Marian Hale Page B

ashore from the bottom of the gulf had its own unbearable stench, but with such intense heat, I feared something even less tolerable would soon drift in through the broken windows.
    I buried my face in my hands, unable to get the picture of the girl in blue gingham out of my head. Every time I thought of her, I saw only Ella Rose.

Chapter
14
    By midmorning, sweat crawled all over me, trickling down my scalp and back. The children whined for water, and fear pulled at every face. We couldn’t stay in this battered house any longer. Like everyone else, I was thirsty, too, but it was the worry that pushed me back outside. I needed to know if my family was safe.
    The sun had risen in a bright sky like nothing had happened, but stifling odors from mud and death said otherwise. I tried to remember the scent of fresh-cut lumber, or clover, or jasmine, or Mama’s bread browning in the oven—anything that might cut through the sick air that coated my throat and the back of my tongue.
    Nothing helped.
    I avoided looking at the lifeless limbs and faces, the animals that would soon be swelling in the heat, and concentrated on getting my bearings. Not a singlestreet or landmark was visible above the ruin that lay around us.
    From the Vedders’ second-floor window, I’d seen a wide ridge of debris off to the east. It looked to be several stories high, as if a great broom had swept up everything in its path and left it there in a twisted heap. I’d wondered then how many people had huddled in those shattered houses last night, and now I wondered how many might still be there, twined inside the wreckage.
    Though the water had receded somewhat, we finally decided that making our way to the beach might be best, where the rubble wasn’t quite so high and the salt air sweeter. Farther down, we might see an easier path through the ridge of debris that lay between us and town.
    We must’ve been a strange-looking bunch, slowly moving over the muddy gray remains of what was left of so many lives. Captain Munn had gathered up his pants with a piece of cording, like a kid in his big brother’s hand-me-downs, and Mrs. Longineau, holding little Tom, walked beside her husband with the back of her dress pulled up over her bare shoulders, shredded underskirts rustling behind her in the breeze. All the Vedders still wore their woolen bathing suits, except for Jacob. He didn’t complain, but he’d developeda permanent scowl at having to face the world in his sister’s petticoat. The rest of us—the Masons and Collums, Private Billings, Josiah and I—took turns carrying Francesca, Katherine, and her kitten, following along in our tattered and grimy clothing.
    The beach appeared torn and uneven, and we quickly realized that the wet sand we were walking on had once held homes. Pounding waves had eaten away at the island, pulling several hundred feet of shoreline into the gulf. I remembered Saint Mary’s Orphanage and the ten sisters who took care of more than ninety children there. I glanced behind me, hoping to see the two large dormitories that housed them all still standing beyond the dunes, but they were gone.
    When we passed what was left of Fort Crockett, we found several dead soldiers from Battery O who must’ve been caught in the barracks when they fell. Private Billings laid them out, side by side, to wait for the burial parties that were sure to come. “If not for some all-wise providence that directed me to your house last night,” he told Mr. Vedder, “this would’ve been me.”
    We carried the smaller kids on our shoulders while we picked our way over piles of splintered wood. Sometimes we sidestepped the deep, water-filled holes washed out by the storm, and sometimes we had nochoice but to wade through them, pushing aside dead chickens and dogs, broken toys and furniture.
    I tried like everything to not look into the eyes of the dead, though I could feel them tugging at me. I didn’t want to think about what they’d suffered.