Water, Stone, Heart - By Will North Page 0,85
dashed across the footbridge and saw the river, so thick with sediment it was viscous, slip over its banks just upstream and spread, slowly but without interruption or hesitation, like an ugly tide.
Lee knew it was time to do something. The thing was, she wasn't sure what. She had been huddling beneath the ledge for nearly half an hour and there had been no letup in the rain. For most of that time, she'd been excited by the scene before her. She loved lightning and thunder; it thrilled her to feel the air shudder, the vibrations penetrating into her bones. But that part of the storm seemed to have passed now and there was only the relentless rain. She'd been staring at it for a while now, enjoying the way it made all the familiar features of the landscape soften into a blur, as if they were melting.
She didn't notice until it was too late that while she was safe in her niche in the cliff, the footpath had been flooding both above and below her. Where earlier had been a well-beaten path, there was now only swirling, frothy water, dark as licorice. And the slightly elevated platform beneath the slate overhang where she'd been sheltering was getting smaller by the moment as the water rose.
A high-pitched screech, like hard chalk scraped across the blackboard at school, but much, much louder, pulled Lee's attention to the river upstream. This was followed by a strange whooshing sound, and then a thud. And suddenly, she knew it was a tree that had crashed into the river. Almost as suddenly, she realized the footpath was reemerging; the river was dropping. She picked up her backpack, slung it over one shoulder and ran pell-mell downstream toward home.
It took a while, given the amorous distractions, but eventually Jamie realized Andrew hadn't yet returned to finish his pint. Now, a pint of real ale was, in Jamie's expert opinion, a delicate thing, and something one did not want to let sit for very long. That slight effervescence, so much more subtle than the assertive fizz of an imported lager—he could not for the life of him understand the attraction among young Britons to gassy American swill like Budweiser—that gentle tang, did not survive long out of the cask. So, naturally, he drained Andrew's pint and set off through the bar, thick with dampish humans, toward the front door to see what had become of his friend.
He knew almost the moment he stepped into the street that something was wrong. Unlike Andrew, he understood instantly what the deep, thundering noise was, and he took off at a dead run to the car park. It was almost completely filled with cars, and dozens of people stood beside the stone hedge his crews had been building, watching the roiling river, which even here upstream was close to bursting its banks.
“People,” he said calmly as he reached them, “I think it might be wise for you to stand back from the river and, if you have autos in the car park, to remove them to higher ground. You are in some danger here.”
One or two men nodded and moved away toward their cars, pulling their gawking spouses after them, but the rest seemed hypnotized by the scene before them: the churning black water, the chunks of debris flowing downstream, the steady rise in the river level. It had now topped the channel edge and was inching toward the base of the new hedge.
He turned from them and climbed into his van, reversed out of the lot, and drove up the steep road to the north, pulling onto the verge just above the newsagent's shop. He locked the doors and jogged back downhill to the pub.
Inside, no one seemed to have the slightest idea what was happening outside, or to much care. He wrestled his way to the bar, catching nasty looks from more than one bloke waiting to order, and got Flora's attention.
“Listen, luv, this is important: The river's topped its banks, and I reckon there's more to come. So we need to get these folks out to their cars and heading up the hill. I want you to promise me you'll stay upstairs, in the dining room, out of harm's way. You'll be safe here. Tell Alan he needs to assume there'll be water in the bar. I don't know whether it will get this high, but he needs to deal with it. He needs to deal with it