Condominium (60 page)

When he got up at last to make an inspection he saw, to his dismay, that not only had a lot of the boats been washed out of the bottom level and washed away, but that some had been blown out of the top tiers. Gusts rocked the
Hustler
.

He debated using the spare dock lines aboard to lash the
Hustler
to the steelwork, and decided it would be advisable. As he began, using every handhold, he looked west and suddenly saw the front slope of the storm surge approaching. There were roofs in it. There were cars in it with their lights on. He took a deep breath and hugged the steel beam in front of him, locking his arms around it. He took a very deep breath. All he could think about was how the hell the television news services could possibly show forty million living rooms what a thing like this was really like.

Too late, he realized the weight of the surge was turning the rectangle of tiers into a parallelogram, bearing him back and down and slowly crushing him from groin to hairpiece, yards under the black salt water.

•  •  •

When the surge struck Golden Sands, it was moving in just a little bit south of west, spray whipping off the top of it.

After the shattered parts of Azure Breeze had broken up, the storm waves on the elevated hurricane tides came rolling across the key unimpeded and threw the stalled cars aside. The average depth of the water on Beach Drive was over nine feet, with the waves breaking there and rolling in white tumult across the tennis courts and pool and landscaped lawns, to smash against the so-called first floor, above the submerged parking and utilities and manager’s apartment. When the front windows had started to go, the Furmonds, Linda and Gerald, had fled up the stairs.

There, on the fifth floor, Gerald Furmond, praying to God to forgive him, broke into 5-E, a furnished apartment which had not been rented for some time. They were thirsty and hungry. Gerald took fresh water from a toilet tank and Linda found a tin of potato chips in a kitchen cupboard. The kitchen seemed, in a relative sense, the quietest place. They brought in cushions from the couch and sat on the floor, side by side, leaning back against cupboard doors. The big flashlight was on the countertop above them, broad beam aimed down. Each had a Bible. They thumbed through them, looking for words about tempests and disasters, pointing out passages which seemed useful and heartening. They had been saved in one sense, and were totally confident their lives would be spared, because they had not yet had enough chance to spread the Word. They rejoiced in being so selected. Until they had been saved, three years before, their marriage had been unrewarding. Gerald had been a fornicator, sinning with women in his office and women at the country club, and even with some of her friends. She had stayed with him for the sake of the children, for the sake
of that last daughter to graduate, three years ago in June. She had sought her own comfort in the wrong places, in strong drink and in gambling at the bridge table every afternoon.

It was an out-of-doors graduation at the State University, and when the sudden rain came, the students ran for shelter under the old trees. The lightning that struck one tree stunned a half dozen of them, but Patricia Furmond was the only one it killed.

It was a sign, of course. It had to be accepted as a sign. They had to take from it the message sent by the Lord. At first they could not understand. They could not accept. The world was without sense or purpose. But they knelt and prayed together and fasted together and wept together and knelt together until after the nightmare weeks they were saved, were taken into the bosom of the Lord, and learned the ecstasy of His mighty presence. Every part of their relationship had been enriched beyond measure. To each of them, in the hungers of the flesh, the other was an instrument of the divine rites of holy marriage. They were closer than they had ever been before. Their past lives meant nothing.

When the surge smashed into the structure, they felt it and could not understand what had happened. It shook them. A high cupboard opened and dishes streamed out, smashing unheard on the vinyl floor. They looked into each other’s eyes, waiting for it to happen again, but it did not. She smiled and nodded and he touched her cheek, and they turned back to the Scriptures.

The surge emptied out most of the apartments on the second floor. It broke through the front windows, rolled through the apartments, broke through the rear walls and windows, smashed the concrete railing off the rear walkway and continued on, velocity undiminished. The surge and the wind cleaned the apartments
out, right back to that stage in the construction of the building when basic appliances were being installed. The continuing surge filled the second floor to the ceiling, with the water force pulling away the carpeting, the padding under the carpeting, the paneling, the wall sockets, eating each apartment down to the basic structure of reinforced concrete, column and beam and slab.

Long before it hit, Jack Cleveland had recovered from his weeping. By now the others were as terrified as he had been. Grace Cleveland and Marie Santelli sat in a deep couch, their arms around each other. Tammy Quillan had passed out on the floor and her husband had rolled her out of the way and seemed to be trying to join her as soon as possible. Frank Santelli had held up well until he had discovered, when the rain slackened for a few minutes, that Azure Breeze was gone. The others looked too. The Surf Club was there. You could see a few feeble lights in some of the windows. You could see other condominiums farther down the beach. But Azure Breeze was gone, as completely gone as a front tooth. And that had panicked Frank. He decided they had to get off the key right now. But he came back after ten minutes, sopping wet, bruised and trembling.

Jack Cleveland was in the rear bedroom when the storm surge hit and cleaned out the second floor of Golden Sands. His first startled impression was that there had been some kind of explosion. He found himself underwater, in strong conflicting currents, with unknown objects bumping against him. He had played water polo for several years when he was young. He had good lung capacity. He worked his way upward and burst out into black night, stinging wind, long enough to take a breath before he was rolled under again. He managed the same feat several times, noticing that the water was becoming less turbulent. Waves weren’t bashing him under. He came to the surface and in a stutter of lightning he saw
a building at his right, perhaps a hundred feet away, and he was astonished at his own velocity as he was carried by it. Something caught at his feet, and he kicked free. He was slammed into some upright flat surface with a force that drove the wind out of him. A little later his feet touched and he tried to stand and was hurled forward. He stood in shallower water and ran thrashing out of it and was wind-driven into a thick tree trunk, flattening his nose as he hit it. Hugging the tree, he moved around behind it, knowing if he let go, the wind would blow him away.

Sobbing for breath, gagging over the blood that ran into his throat from his mashed nose, he peered with slitted eyes around the side of the tree into the wind, trying to make out where he was. A chain of lightning cooperated. He was so disoriented that at first he could not comprehend. He had to interpret the afterimage as he pulled his face back into shelter and leaned his cheek against the rough wet bark. The cluster of buildings off to the right of him and ahead of him, that had to be downtown. So he was inland, on the mainland, maybe a mile inland. And way out there, straight ahead, was Fiddler Key. Or whatever was left of it. “Son of a bitch!” he said softly, and the wind blew into his mouth and puffed his cheeks out.

Frank Branhammer had given up trying to communicate with Annabelle in any way. She stayed right there on the bed, curled up in a damn ball, knees hiked up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her fool head. Goddam fool woman. Work every day of my life and try to make up to her for us losing all three of the kids, get a nice place like this, and she acts like somebody kicked her. Walks around snuffling, looking tragic. Told her and told her, if a man works his ass off all his life he’s got a
right
to live as good as
anybody, as good as these smirking little educated pricks that want to steal the place away from you after you bought it. Fucking woman isn’t happy unless she’s crying her eyes out, over a dog, or the kids, or not having some place where she can have an orange tree.

He roamed around restlessly, admitting to himself that he wished he was still working, so he could get out of this place eight or nine hours a day, stop off after work, have a few beers, come home and damn well expect supper on the table and get it.

He was listening to the sound of the wind and the roar of the surf, waiting for the storm to begin to let up. It had to. It couldn’t get any worse than this. It had been getting worse than he thought possible for hour after hour, but this had to be the absolute top.

The storm surge threw solid water up over his windows when it thudded against the story below and cleaned it out of everything movable. He knew he was actually on the fourth floor, if the idiots had counted the floors right the way they should have. There was just the one wash of solid water, seen in the flashlight beam, and then it was gone. But to reach these windows, it had to be one hell of a wave. He went close to the windows and angled the flashlight beam, but could not make out the water level in the boiling spray and wind-whipped scud. That big wave had made one heavy thudding sensation. He felt sick. All his life he had wanted to live beside the ocean. He had never counted on its being like this. It was like something that wanted to grab you. It had a personal interest. It came after you.

He knew the car was gone. Paid for and gone. Probably washed right off the lot into the bay. Have to file a claim. Comprehensive coverage. So some snot could file it away, wait three months and send you a check for half what it was worth, with no chance of
ever finding anybody who’d give you a fair shake. It’s the rules, Mr. Branhammer. That’s the law, Mr. Branhammer. It’s the regulations, Mr. Branhammer. Sign here, please.

He was filled once again with that terrible anger. He wanted to smash the whole world with his hands. He wanted to kill something. Nothing ever turned out the way you wanted it to turn out. Nothing. Never. Anywhere.

The hurricane surge shouldered into Martin Liss’s house, burst through the upstairs windows and washed them out the bedroom door and down the hall past the guest rooms and out onto the frame deck which overlooked the curved driveway and the entrance. Martin managed to lunge to one side and catch a rung of the metal ladder fastened to the side of the house, the ladder that led up to the widow’s walk above, an architect’s fancy, a bit of seaside kitsch. He had Francie by the wrist and for a moment he did not think he could hold her against the pull of the water. It felt as if his shoulders were being pulled loose. Yet he managed. He got her closer and boosted her up the ladder ahead of him. He urged her up until he could climb free of the water. He could feel a slight and ominous shifting and movement as he clung to the ladder. He was certain his house had been nudged off its foundations, and he realized that if it started to go, it could very easily roll on them.

Francie sagged down and he realized she could not stick her head up over the edge of the roof without the wind trying to blow it off. They could not get their heads close enough together to communicate by yelling or sign language, and the ladder was too narrow, the wind too fierce even in semi-shelter for him to crawl up beside her. The ladder was so straight, up and down, clinging to
it put too much strain on the hands and arms. When she sagged again, he moved his head to one side, edged his right shoulder up under her soft rump and took some of her weight.

So, he thought, I can do this much. A fat, half bald, very short man can do at least this much. What else? If the house goes, it goes. What you do about it, you do what you can.

The house shifted again. All this water running in, he thought, is going to run out sometime. It is going to leave in a bigger and bigger hurry. And the house won’t take that. Not weakened and shifting. So we got to make a move or ride it out into the bay later and drown. She put too much weight on him. He gave her a sharp pinch in the butt and slapped his hand back onto the rung. She took a lot of the weight off fast and did not put as much back. He felt a smile stretch his lips and he thought, Are you crazy, Marty Liss? Grome used you for a pigeon. He ruined you. You’re going to jail. You got a young wife taking the wrong kind of tennis lessons. Your house is breaking up. You can’t think of a thing to keep yourself from drowning, and you got a cramp in your leg, and she’s sitting too heavy on your shoulder again, and you’re smiling? What at?

After Cole Kimber had given up trying to drive the secondhand custom motor home out of the way of the oncoming storm, he gave careful thought to finding a safe place to park, where water wouldn’t rise high enough to drown it, where no buildings would fall on it, and where no flying debris would scar the glossy vanilla-white-with-red-trim surface of his new pet. He was anxious to have Loretta see it, but by the time he got nervous about her being out on the key, the phones were all out and the bridge was jammed open. It began to look as if they wouldn’t be leaving Sunday. It
might take three days before the area got straightened out and the roads were cleared.

He decided the best place was around in back of Gandey and Mason’s warehouse on School Road. It was an L-shaped structure with the point of the L facing west. Bug Mason had once had a warehouse blow down in a storm years ago, and when he had given Cole the contract on this one, he had made certain this one wasn’t ever going to blow down. The building was high enough to shelter the vehicle from anything that might come blowing on the wind. It was dangerous but not impossible driving when he tucked the vehicle into the protected corner, backed it in snugly, turned the motor off. The little Onan generator was mounted in a cargo compartment that opened from the rear, but it started from the inside and was husky enough to run the small air-conditioning unit, the inside lights, and one burner on the tabletop range, as well as the small water pump. He drew the heavy curtains and made himself comfortable. The screaming and roaring of the wind around the corners of the warehouse muffled all sound from the generator. Eddies and whirlpools of wind rocked the big camper in a gentle and almost continuous motion. He tried to listen to the CB, but had to turn the volume so high that the speaker diaphragm broke down into a meaningless clatter of sound.