Fat raindrops splattered against the panes of glass. Overhead, the sky was grey and boiling. With incredible speed the storm moved in from over the ocean and thickened into pounding sheets. Rain ran like a river down the side of the office windows as Donnie Rothchild watched, phone pressed to his ear.
“Beautiful, I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m going to make it home for a while,” Donnie said. “You’ve seen the way it’s coming down outside? The roads are going to be crazy, I’m going to wait until it blows over.”
“Dinner is ready though,” Alessa said. “I wanted to talk about the baby’s room.”
“You want me to be safe, don’t you?” Donnie said. “Eat, I’ll have some when I get home. Give it half an hour or something and I’m sure the roads will be better. It’s coming down way too hard at the moment.”
“Of course I want you to be safe, just, I’m home all day, I want to see you.”
“I know, I want to see you too. I’m sorry, I should have left earlier. I love you.”
“I love you too. Get home as soon as you can, safely.”
“I will, promise.”
Hanging up the phone, Donnie slipped it back into his pocket and kept staring at the rain. Even though it was well after 5pm the sky should have been light out. It was buried instead under thick clouds. Office lights glared off the window and reflected the empty cubicles behind him. Friday afternoon, most people had gone home early. In the reflection, Donnie saw his colleague Jason walking up behind him. Jason slapped Donnie on the shoulder with one meaty hand.
“Wow, where did all this come from?” Jason said.
A distant flashbulb of lightning went off across the city, silhouetting the skyline for a moment. Thunder rolled across the buildings a few seconds later like a bomb. The rain fell even harder.
“I know, right? An hour ago it was fine and now-,” Donnie trailed off. “I don’t remember a storm ever coming down so hard and fast before.”
“Well, the rest of the campaign can wait until Monday. You’re still staying back?”
“Just until the rain dies down. You want to drive in this?”
“I want to get home, man, I’ve got a cold meal and a hot wife waiting for me. Roads are going to be at a crawl no matter what, might as well get started.”
“Sure, I guess you’re right.”
“Everything alright at home, Don? I mean, we didn’t really have to work on this stuff tonight. Alessa, she must be just about ready to pop, man, right? Eight months now?”
“Everything’s fine, of course. I’m just tired, you know? It’s all the baby stuff, I don’t get a break between here and home.”
“I get it, man, but I’m guessing it’s not going to get better when the baby gets here.”
“No, which is why, right now, I just need half an hour to clear my head before I go home.”
“I hear you,” Jason said. “Have a good weekend though, I’ll see you Monday.”
Jason took off across the floor again, headed for the elevators. Donnie kept peering over the stormswept city. Summer thunderstorm or not, he couldn’t remember ever seeing it rain this hard and this suddenly. Another lightning strike hit a building across the city, absorbed by the building’s lightning rod. He stepped back in shock. Thunder hit the window, louder and closer, with an almost animal roar. The rain somehow got even heavier. It was as if someone was throwing buckets and buckets of water against the window, smearing Donnie’s usually excellent view. Most of the office towers around their building were already going dark, only isolated offices and floors lit. Looking down at the street, Donnie could see traffic clogging the roads, streetlights and neon all slick with rain. In the distance, one of the roads leading out of the city was a river of red brake lights.
Donnie’s cubicle was one of those that backed onto the windows. Once he got sick of the freakishly heavy rain, Donnie turned away and slipped into his desk chair. Sticky notes surrounded his Mac’s screen. His desk was covered in folders and papers. Across the rest of the floor were two dozen other low-walled cubicles but at this time of the evening Donnie was alone. Apart from a few framed advertising posters hanging on the walls, the large room was fairly plain. Each individual cubicle was different, some filled with work or plastic toys like Donnie’s space, others clean, or decorated with plants. Out by the bank of elevators was a reception desk with several green couches and chairs. Bookshelves covered in awards and magazines.
Despite the workload on Donnie’s desk, Jason was right. There was nothing that wouldn’t be better off left until Monday. Donnie leaned back in his chair and fished the phone out of his pocket again. Thunder rumbled from somewhere nearby. Ignoring the rain bucketing down behind him, Donnie opened up a game app and started slingshotting grenades at zombies.
~~~
Jason was riding the elevator down to the building’s lobby when, between floors, the lights suddenly flickered and the elevator shuddered. Heart leaping into his throat, Jason groped at the handrail on one side of the elevator. It was only for a moment and then the journey continued smoothly onward. The big man watched the glowing floor numbers above the door warily as if for some warning the power was going to cut out again. He was still considering getting off the elevator and taking the stairs when it arrived in the lobby and the doors opened.
Rain hammered against the building, the front wall of the lobby made of glass. Light smeared across the wet windows. As Jason circled around he saw a woman holding a cheap umbrella that didn’t look like it would stand up to the conditions outside. Jessica Smyth, she worked in the same office as Jason and Donnie but in a different department. Jason could sense her despair as she looked out at the weather.
“Jessica, I thought you’d already left?” Jason said.
“Oh, Jason, I was about to walk out when this rain started.” Jessica pulled the strap of her handbag higher on her shoulder, gripping her umbrella with her other hand.
“Heck of a storm, huh?”
“I was supposed to meet some friends for drinks but I’ve already cancelled. I’m just going to go home, if I can even make it home in this! You know what the trains are like.”
“Can I give you a ride to the station?”
Jessica looked relieved. “You sure you wouldn’t mind? It’s only a block away but that would be great. Look, the street is already flooded, it’s coming down heavier than I’ve ever seen it.”
“Donnie was saying the same thing upstairs,” Jason said. “Come on, I’m in the garage.”
Jason had to scan his employee card to get into the parking garage stairwell. The two of them descended into the parking garage, the smell of rain wafting up to meet them. A cavernous concrete space, the sound of the rain echoed off the walls and rolls of thunder sounded like bombs going off. A couple of inches of water covered the concrete floor. Jessica cursed as it slopped over the toes of her shoes and wet her stockings. She already looked tired and unsteady on her heels.
“Look at that,” Jason said.
Jason pointed at one of the drains, set into the floor. It was running so fast that a whirlpool had formed. Bits of leaves and trash were sucked down and disappeared between the bars into blackness.
“I’ll be glad to get home,” Jessica said.
“Me too,” Jason said. “Maybe this is one of those once-in-a-lifetime storms, or climate change, or something.”
Jason and Jessica gingerly avoided some of the deeper puddles as they walked over to his car. Switching on the headlamps, he pulled across the garage. As they passed one of the drains he noticed it didn’t seem to be sucking water down in a whirlpool anymore. Instead, it was bubbling as rainwater was pushed back up the pipe. His wheels threw streamers of water.
As soon as he pulled up the ramp and out of the garage, Jason flicked his windshield wipers to their highest setting. He could still barely see through the glass. It was like driving in a carwash. Rain bucketed down and covered the windshield, running in rivers down the other windows.
“This is ridiculous! I hope it lightens up before I get to the freeway.”
“Hope so,” Jessica said. “Thanks for driving me.”
Jason drove carefully up the block to the subway station entrance. Jessica thanked him once again and jumped out before traffic could back up, hopping over a gutter swollen with rainwater and shielding her head as she ran for the subway. Watching his mirrors carefully, Jason pulled out again and started toward the freeway.
~~~
Trying to put it out of his mind, Donnie couldn’t help thinking about Jason asking him if everything was okay at home. It was, and Donnie had meant it when he said he was simply tired. Alessa, eight months pregnant and on maternity leave, was hormonal, anxious, and bored with staying home every day. Donnie loved her and cared about her with all his heart but he was also exhausted. It was their first child and all Alessa could talk about was the baby. He had to comfort her, support her, agree with her, and he was good at it, but the amount of empathy it took was exhausting. Their apartment was no longer a refuge from the world. Between work and home, Donnie had little time to rest given the constant questions about whether they were ready, whether they were making a mistake sticking with the apartment as if they had another choice, about the baby’s room, and a hundred other things. He just needed this time to himself, he told himself. Then he could be a better husband when he did make it home, and over this weekend as they dealt with the rest of the baby’s things.
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Guilt seeped in after he’d been playing the game for a while. Turning back to his computer, he skimmed social media and several industry sites meaninglessly. The guilt had already been there, really. But it was a small and manageable guilt as suited a small and manageable offence. Neglecting Alessa to do nothing of any value, just killing time, started to look like a shittier and shittier thing to do. Especially when he knew how bored she got at home, killing time by herself, trying to work around her aching back and swollen feet. Not a housewife by any stretch of the imagination, Donnie knew she only leaned on him so heavily because the isolation at home was eating at her brain. Sore back and huge belly or not, in a funny way Donnie thought his wife resented that her company’s very generous maternity leave package had sent her home so long before the baby came. He wondered if it would be better or worse once the baby came, those first few utterly dependent months. Unfortunately, he suspected worse but they would cross that bridge when they came to it. Donnie swore he’d be one hundred percent present when the baby came, for whatever and however much Alessa and the baby needed from him.
The rain, his excuse for not leaving, hadn’t lightened up at all. It was bucketing down outside the windows. If normal rain was the sky crying then this storm was the sky throwing up, choking up huge gusts of hammering rain, coating buildings and streets, soaking the whole city. Lights on the ceiling flickered. Another roll of thunder battered the building.
“Okay, fuck this, I’m going,” Donnie said.
The sky was totally dark, not even an eerie half-light. Cracks of lightning lit the surrounding buildings. The street below was soaked but traffic had started to clear. In the distance, the roads were choked with cars though. Donnie figured he’d avoided some traffic but it was still going to be a long drive home.
‘On my way’ he texted Alessa, ending the message with a love heart. A love heart emoji was the least he could do, he thought. He wasn’t going to beat himself up for staying back but he thought of how he might make up for the guilt in some small way.
Donnie shut off his computer and headed for the exit. The lights were on a timer and once there was no movement in the office they would eventually shut themselves off. As Donnie reached the reception, they flickered again. Lightning filled the rain streaked windows and thunder hammered through the building. Donnie looked at the elevators.
“Getting stuck in the elevators all weekend, last one in the building, that’d be just perfect,” Donnie said to himself.
Donnie had his phone of course, and he wasn’t sure if he really was the last person in the building at all, but he didn’t want to chance it. He slipped into the stairwell instead. Now that he’d decided to head home he hurried, jogging down the steps. The lights flickered a couple more times. Thunder sounded distantly through the concrete walls. It took a couple of minutes to reach the abandoned lobby. The front of the building was glass. Through a thick curtain of rain, Donnie could see a few cars now passing by and throwing up heavy sprays of water. A puddle leaked under the front doors. The road and sidewalks looked like a rushing river.
Donnie tapped his card on the scanner and descended another set of stairs to the parking garage. Halfway down, he realised he could hear a sound like rushing water. He turned a corner before stopping and staring.
“What the hell?” Donnie said.
The last couple of steps were underwater. The stairwell led straight down into the garage and a pool of water as deep as his shins. The lowest level of the building, the underground parking area, was flooded. Donnie had never seen anything like it.
Donnie had his phone out of his pocket before he realised he didn’t know who to call. Did the fire department deal with something like this? Maybe if it was a broken water main or something, and not just rain. Donnie wished he could just ignore it and go home but he didn’t think the building’s management and his bosses would like that much. Building management, he could call them but he had no idea what their number was. He could call Alessa, but to tell her what?
“The car-, I’ll get to the car and see how bad it is,” Donnie said. “If it’s not too bad I can make it home and then call someone to deal with this, maybe. I just need to make sure I can get home.”
Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it looked, Donnie tried to fool himself. He took off his shoes and socks, and rolled up his pants to the knees. Cursing himself for not leaving sooner, Donnie wondered if he was being stupid. He carried his shoes in one hand as he walked down the remaining steps and waded into the water.
It was so cold Donnie’s toes instantly felt numb. He walked into the garage proper with feet spread wide to make sure he kept his balance and the water almost reached the rolled cuffs of his pants. In the cavernous garage, the sound of rushing water sounded powerful. Lights stayed on overhead, they hadn’t been knocked out yet, but the garage seemed a lot darker than normal.
Stumbling toward where he’d parked the car that morning, Donnie realised the ground was sloping away underneath him. There was a grade to the floor that he hadn’t even consciously realised was there but the water was obviously getting deeper. He pulled at the legs of his pants but it was up to his knees and the cuffs were still getting wet. Bits of detritus washed in from the street drifted past him, cigarette butts and candy wrappers, and Donnie wrinkled his nose in disgust.
“Great, just great,” Donnie said.
The sound of running water got louder. Turning the corner, Donnie could see the entrance to the parking garage. Water rushed down the ramp like a raging river. It poured through the barred gate that blocked the entrance, the bottom of the gate already underwater.
Storm drains should be keeping the garage from flooding, Donnie thought. Glancing over in the direction of one drain, however, he could see it was not doing its job. There was no whirlpool but instead something bubbled under the surface. The storm drains were blocked. Worse, they seemed to be so backed up they were actually adding to the flood in the garage with water flowing up from underground.
“This is insane.” Donnie had lived in the city almost his entire life and knew summer thunderstorms were common but he’d never seen or heard of anything like this.
Meanwhile, under the water where Donnie couldn’t see, the drains were indeed backfilling into the garage. The drainpipes led to massive stormwater sewers that ran the length and breadth of the city, and those sewers, for rainwater and not actual sewage, led to the open ocean. Salty seawater poured back up the pipes, mixing with the rain, forcing its way through the bars inset in the garage floor and bubbling up to the surface. With great force, something shot up the pipe and smacked into the bars as well. Alive, it wriggled and squirmed to turn itself over in the current, feeling out the bars with sharp and segmented legs. Folding up like a cockroach, it squeezed through a gap in the bars and went wheeling end over end into the flooded garage.
The creature resembled a horseshoe crab. A half-moon of a head and a segmented body like a roly poly bug, about the size of a lobster, all covered in a sandy tan carapace of thick armour. Finding its footing, it half-scuttled, half-swam through the flood water. Unlike a horseshoe crab, the creature had a thick, flat tail that curved up behind its back like a scorpion. The tail ended in two needle-shaped stingers that curved inwards to meet in the middle. Through the water, the crab’s feelers sensed movement, Donnie walking barefoot through the flood. It started toward him, tail pincer opening and closing reflexively.
Determined to see things through, Donnie kept heading for his car. Awkwardly, he juggled his satchel in one hand and his shoes in the other as he attempted to pull up his pants. The cuffs started to fall into the water. His toes were numb, the concrete radiating cold into the soles of his feet.
The crab could sense the warmblooded human. His feet and lower legs were totally unprotected. Rear limbs paddled under the creature’s carapace, shooting it through the water. A single sting from one of its needle prongs would inject enough venom to kill Donnie as the toxin worked its way through his system. A slow, painful death as his lungs seized and forgot how to breathe.
“Okay, great! Great! I guess I’m not going anywhere in this shit!” Donnie said.
Donnie continued walking until he could see his silver Mazda parked against the far wall. Unfortunately, the ground was definitely sloped and the water level seemed to be rising by the minute. Water was halfway up the car’s doors, almost to their handles. More debris swirled around the vehicle and waves were lapping at the wall behind the car. Donnie wouldn’t have been able to get in without filling the car with water unless he climbed through one of the windows. When the water was shin-deep, even though the car was no 4x4 Donnie had assumed he’d be able to push through it to the exit. Now he worried he’d just make things worse. The engine was probably full of water as well.
“I hope our fucking insurance pays for this, it’s just unbelievable,” Donnie said.
The crablike creature paddled hard through the water, stingers raised. Its progress created a slight V on the surface but Donnie didn’t catch it. Muttering and shaking his head, he turned and started sloshing back the way he had come. The crab lunged but its barbed legs and pincer-shaped stingers fell on empty space. The current carried it past him, tumbling end over end. Once it righted itself, the crab could sense the human but it had to fight against the current to get to him now. Unseen, it followed Donnie across the garage but he pulled ahead.
Donnie’s feet were cold and now that he’d seen he couldn’t get to the car he wanted to get back to the dry portion of the building as quickly as possible. He stumbled on a crack that was hidden beneath the water but didn’t fall, and reached the stairs before the crab could catch up. The flood had swallowed another step and was halfway up the next. Donnie stumbled back up the stairs, shoeless. Unable to sense the warmblooded creature any longer, the crab gave up pursuit and let itself tumble away, deeper into the garage, on the current.
Water was still running off of Donnie’s legs as he reached the lobby, circling around to the front of the building. The puddle at the front door was growing. Rain filled the street with almost as much water as the parking garage. Donnie paced the cold linoleum of the lobby, fuming. He dropped his bag and shoes at the empty security desk. Fishing out his phone again, he still didn’t know who to call.
Barefoot, Donnie paced around the lobby and left wet footprints in his wake. Eventually he noticed a red sign near the elevators. He must have passed it literally hundreds of times without consciously noticing it or taking in what it had to say. It listed several numbers to call in case of a breakdown or an emergency with the elevators, including one marked ‘Building Management’. Donnie punched in the number and was redirected immediately to an answering machine.
“Hey, uh, my name’s Donnie Rothchild, I work in your building-, the Phipps Building,” Donnie said. “Look, I thought you’d better know, the lower level of your building, the parking garage is totally fuck-, it’s totally flooded. I guess it’s this crazy rain but it’s knee deep across the whole garage, the drains are backed up and I can’t get to my car. I don’t expect someone to come sort it right away, of course, I just thought you’d better know.”
Donnie gave them his phone number in case they wanted to call him back. The rain continued with no signs of slowing. He had to look at getting home some other way. A taxi or rideshare would cost a fortune though, unless he caught the subway and had Alessa pick him up. It would be late and inconvenient though, especially with this weather.
Lightning flashed and thunder drummed against the building. As if to taunt him, the rain seemed to start coming down even harder. The street was underwater now. Storm drains were bubbling and a wide river covered the asphalt from sidewalk to sidewalk. The few cars passing by actually looked like they were struggling. In spite of the cost, Donnie checked a rideshare app on his phone, Choofer. Unbelievably, there were no cars available nearby. Friday night and with this crazy rain, whatever drivers who were willing to brave it must have already been booked. He checked taxis on an app as well and it told him the closest booking he could make was over an hour away. Donnie wasn’t about to go out on the street and try to hail one.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Donnie said.
Finally, he checked the trains, via their website, on his phone. They were having problems as well, warnings were plastered across the top of the page. Due to lightning strikes, delays were apparently occurring on every line in and out of the city. Flooding was also playing havoc with several stations and lines.
Wind picked up and lashed the glass wall of the lobby. Moments later, another lightning strike came down nearby and all the lobby lights flickered. Thunder caused the windows to rattle. Under the front doors, the puddle of rainwater grew. It leaked across the floor, advancing on Donnie like a living thing. Like the crablike creature from the drain that had nearly stung him down in the parking garage but he hadn’t even seen. Donnie retreated back across the lobby to the reception desk where his bag and shoes were lying. Dejected, angry with himself, he picked them up and headed for the stairs.
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Thanks for reading! I’ll be posting two chapters a week of Out of the Storm on Tuesdays and Fridays until finished. There are twelve chapters of Donnie’s journey so my intention is to wrap things up on August 30th, but I hope you’ll keep reading as it goes! In the meantime, if you love short stories you should check out my profile or make your way to my website, seanebritten.com