The Last Train to Key West - Chanel Cleeton Page 0,67
the children up onto the train, assisting the elderly, everyone scrambling for purchase. Sam grips my waist, hauling me up to an open car. Arms reach from above and pull me up. I stand on the edge, staring down, waiting while Sam climbs up with assistance.
Sam throws his arms around me, and I sag into his embrace, my earlier misgivings momentarily forgotten.
We’re safe, and that’s all that matters.
“They said the train is heading down to Camp Three to get the rest of the veterans out, and after that, we’ll be out of here,” a man near us shouts.
Camp Three is the camp we didn’t get to visit earlier, and I hope my brother is waiting there for the train, that I’ll see him shortly, that he’ll be carried to safety, too.
Before the train can move forward, the railroad car shudders.
“Hold on,” Sam shouts to me, as the impossible happens. The sturdy train car that moments ago seemed so imposing and big becomes as flimsy as a tin can.
I don’t know how long the train wobbles and shakes, only that it’s an eternity.
People scream around me, children crying.
As quickly as it began, it stops, and for a heartbeat, everything is still.
It’s silent inside the car.
I leave Sam’s embrace and lean toward one of the small windows in the train car, gazing out the water-soaked pane.
Surprisingly, the sky is clear.
The scene in front of me changes so abruptly I almost miss it. I blink, and the unnaturally bucolic landscape is gone. Instead of the ground and the sky, blue stares back at me.
A wall of blue.
It’s the most gorgeous mix of blues—aqua, turquoise, and cerulean like the most perfect of stones.
My brain catches up with the image before me, and I see it—the water, like the hand of God, lifting itself up, up, until there is nothing else, rushing past us, curling over us in a massive wall with seemingly no end, Sam screaming—
It hits me then. As plain as day.
It is too soon. I am not ready. I do not want to die.
There is a righteous bellowing in the wind, debris floating past me as though I am in a dream, and a sharp pain hits the side of my head, a jolt, and I pitch forward, water engulfing me, and darkness envelops me.
Twenty-One
Mirta
The waves crash against the beach, water pounding the tin roof. The sound of the wind is deafening, a shriek like a never-ending whistle.
I stare out the window, trying to get my bearings.
I pull back the curtains—
Where I expected to see sand, I am greeted by the sea pushing against the white porch.
My heart pounds. “The water’s rising. We need to get to higher ground. We should go upstairs.”
I take Anthony’s outstretched hand and follow him up the stairs.
My foot catches on one of the steps, and Anthony hoists me up, carrying me along. He doesn’t let go of me until we reach the bedroom.
“How high has the water risen?” he asks me.
“Ten feet, maybe. We weren’t that high above the ocean to begin with.”
“Maybe it was a mistake to come upstairs,” he says. “If the water continues to rise, where will we go?”
“We wouldn’t have had a better chance out there. The water’s too strong. It’ll carry us away.”
The sound of glass breaking somewhere in the house makes me jump.
“It’s probably a window.” Anthony strokes my back, unease threading through his voice.
Our surroundings have suddenly become hazardous, Mother Nature turning against us. It’s not only the peril from the storm system you have to fear, it’s anything the storm can sweep up in its path and use against you.
“The bathroom is probably the safest place for us to go,” I say.
At least downstairs, most of the windows were boarded up. Now all that stands between us and death is the roof, and given the sounds of metal shearing, I don’t have a lot of faith in the roof’s sturdiness. But with the water rising—
There are no good options available to us.
We run to the bathroom and close the door, huddling together in the bathtub, Anthony’s arms wrapped tightly around me, his breath hot on my neck.
“I hate this,” he murmurs, his lips grazing my ear. “Hate being so helpless. We should have tried to leave. I should have taken you to safety.”
“You had no way of knowing it would be this bad. I’ve never experienced a storm like this.”
Anthony’s grip on me tightens. “If we don’t make it—”