Galveston: Between Wind And Water (A Historical Literary Fiction Novel Filled with Romance and Drama) (31 page)

Edward must do it now before she awakes.
When Rebecca awoke, Caden could not risk that she would continue to disobey his authority. He had worked too hard and risked too much to allow a young woman’s caprice to jeopardize humanity’s only hope for survival.

Caden placed an encouraging hand on Edward’s shoulder. “You have waited long enough, my friend. Our great work begins tonight.”

His loyal disciple stared at him as though not understanding what he had just heard. “But Doctor, how—”

“Your time is
now
, Edward. Do you understand? Time waits for no man . . . I will be outside.”

As though invigorated by the fury of nature’s unleashed passion raging all around them, Edward obeyed Caden’s command with eagerness. He unbuttoned his shirt and removed his trousers. 

Moving to the bed, he pulled aside the front of Rebecca’s gown. Edward ran his hand around and over her breasts. He leaned down and kissed her red, parted lips.

The brick walls creaked and the locked storm shutters buckled slightly, but continued to hold their own.

“Untie her first,” Caden instructed. “And remember she is my niece whom I adore.”

A series of rolling thumps reverberated off the outside wall, clamoring like large pieces of timber or trees dashing against the brick. The light, lavender tinted plaster on Rebecca’s bedroom wall chipped near the roof, sending a fine crack snaking a few feet down its surface.

The room shook as more whacks and thumps pounded against the building walls, then another sound—like distant voices—numbed by the killer winds but not yet swallowed up by them.

“Doctor?” Edward stood. “Did you hear that? There might be people outside. We should—”

“Why?” Caden strode to the locked shutter. “Open these and let the storm in to consume us all? Nature favors those who favor themselves. The many must be sacrificed to save the few that matter most.”

Edward stepped away from the bed. “Of course, sir.” He picked up his shirt from the comforter. “But we’ve made many friends here and that’s why we should at least try to see who it is.”

Caden hung his head and rubbed his forehead. The pain behind his eyes returned. “I hear nothing but the unrelenting howl of an unforgiving storm.” He closed his heavy eyelids. “What other answer could there be to the pleading of the defeated?”

“But Doctor—”

“Control yourself.” Caden held up his hand. “Are you going to fail the test? Or are you only capable of doing so with one of Weems’s whores and the ones you take in the back alleys at night?”

Ashamed, Edward looked away to the wall.

Caden glared at him. “I don’t care what you did to the weak and undeserving but if we are to survive we must let nature do what must be done so that a new millennium can begin for those worthy—” 

A jagged corner of building debris thrust through the hardwood shutters. The force of impact jolted Caden and Edward off their feet, hurling them to the floor. 

The edge of the wreckage crashed through the double window like the bow of a rudderless ship, slicing a gash in the wall and letting the rushing water and storm spray into the room.

Over the blustering tumult of the storm, Caden heard the hoarse, choked yelling of a man outside. “Help us! Please! Is there anyone there? For God’s sake! We can’t hold on!”

Caden and Edward stepped to opposite sides of the damaged window. They peered over the edge and down the side of the wreckage. 

It appeared to be a large section of an interior house wall, upended by the waves against the third floor of the Society hall like a beached raft.

Caden could barely distinguish two people at the bottom of the debris trying to clamber their way up the gutted side. 

He gasped on recognizing the man and turned his attention to the other, a woman.
Oh Gabrielle. Why did you help him? Must I save you again from your blind love for this arrogant, unrepentant failure of a man?
He was certain now. It was nature’s choosing that he should stand here in judgment and decide their fate.

The water level had climbed past the second floor but did not appear to be rising as steadily as before. 

Gabrielle stood drenched and barefooted while Bret raised her up so that she could get a secure foothold on the window ledge. 

Her eyes flashed up through her soaked and matted hair. “Caden!” Gabrielle stretched her hand up toward him. “Please help us!”

Edward looked at Caden as though waiting for instruction on what to do next. Caden glanced back at the bed. 

Rebecca was stirring from her ether sleep, moaning and blinking her eyes as consciousness returned.
The opportunity is lost forever. Rebecca will never understand now . . . but Gabrielle . . .
 

Caden rushed back to the broken window. “Gabrielle, reach for my hand. I’ll save you!”
Yes
. Her gratitude alone for saving her life and consoling her for the great loss of family and friends would surely open her heart and affections to him.
After tonight, you could be all she has left in this world.

The waves lapped at Bret McGowan’s shoulders. It seemed that one big push would capsize the wall and wash away the last of Caden’s torments for eternity.

“Don’t stand there like a frightened school boy.” He grabbed Edward’s arm. “Hold me steady while I pull her up!”

Caden straddled his legs against the brink of the wall. Bending over the edge, he lowered his upper body down as Edward held onto his thighs. “A little lower. I almost have her!”

The wall raft swayed to one side and a great howl of wind blasted in through the broken window. Pieces of rubble shot over Edward’s head. He lurched back, almost losing the support of the window ledge.

Rebecca moaned—not like before—but louder, as though feeling the pain of suffering for the first time. Edward craned his neck to the side until he could see her.

His beloved was sitting up in bed, her robe, body and face lacerated by fine, piercing debris. Blood trickled down against her powder-white skin. 

She gaped down at her bleeding breasts then up at Edward. “Please.” She held her hands out toward him. “It hurts . . . it hurts so much. Uncle, help me!”

“Doctor! Rebecca—”

“I have her!” Caden yelled. “Pull me back! Pull!”

Clenching every muscle in his body, Edward pulled back on his master with a final burst of frantic strength. Doctor Hellreich cried out from the strain until two wet hands rose over the edge of the widow and grabbed the inside ledge. 

Relieved, Edward relaxed his grip. The doctor would attend to Rebecca’s wounds now that they were safe then everything would be as he promised. 

A few moments later a powerful hurricane blast punched the outside wall. Water sprayed in through the broken window, dousing the lantern and drowning everything in darkness. 

The entire building seemed to stagger back from the blow, rocking on its foundations, unable to find secure ground again.

Rebecca screamed as Caden and Edward were thrown off their feet, letting Gabrielle fall back out through the window. 

The room pitched up, then down, sending everything crashing forward toward the broken window. 

Caden slammed the back of his head into the wall below the windowsill. He lay there under the ledge, trying to focus on something in the room again.

Roaring blasts of wind howled through the opening and in the moonlit haze overhead, he imagined he saw everything in the room gliding out through the window, rushing to meet the hurricane’s embrace.

Caden reached up and felt cool, wet skin passing above.

Then . . . nothing but dampness on his shaking fingertips and the eternal darkness of insensate night on his heavy eyes.

CHAPTER 27

Sunday, September 9, Dawn

The blood had dried on Philip’s forehead and no longer streamed into eyes as he groped his way among the staggered heaps of shattered homes and debris on the street.

Broken brick and timber lay strewn in piles from which twisted limbs and corpses stuck out at all angles. The groans of the dying were broken by the unearthly screams of despair from the living as they pulled out the bodies of those they had once held and loved.

As loud as these anguished cries were, none could drown his own voice echoing through his skull. 
Did they survive? Where are they? You have to find them.
 

Philip stumbled over the headless torso of a man. He covered his mouth and turned away. 
Dear God, no. They’re alive. They have to be.

He leaned against the shattered remnants of a farmer’s wagon and rested. Under the sun’s scorching heat, everything glowed in the fiery colors of a biblical nightmare, as though hell itself had risen from molten depths to claim its final dominion over Earth.

“Gabrielle Caldwell!” he yelled, his hoarse throat beyond the ache of feeling its strain. “Bret McGowan! Where are you?” He paused and listened for one of them to yell back. 

The sudden crash of falling wreckage made him cower and cover his head, fearing the torrent of wind and water had returned to exact further payment from the blessed survivors who might not have deserved their good fortune. “Bret!” He lurched forward again. “Gabrielle!”

Exhausted and numb in the aftermath of the storm and his futile search, Philip’s neck and shoulders ached so much with excruciating painful it was difficult to turn his head even slightly in either direction. 

His raw fingers, cracked after hours of hunting through the mounds of rubble and turning over broken, swollen bodies, made it difficult to steady his trembling hands. He only thanked God none of them had been Bret or Gabrielle.

Philip searched for a piece of dry wood. He picked up a broken baluster from someone’s staircase. He lay it on a small cooking fire as the huddled survivors around him pressed closer. 

The flames rose and crackled but he didn’t feel any of the fire’s warmth or comfort amidst the heaps of destroyed buildings and lives strewn in the mud on Avenue P. 

He had found the mangled bodies of many friends, neighbors, and others—like Ichabod Weems. Lorena would rest easier now knowing that filthy bastard had finally met his just reward.

“We got to be blessed, mister.” The young white boy held his shaking, muddy hands out to the fire. “Ain’t no two ways about it. I seen more rich dead than poor.”

“That’s got nothing to do with it, boy.” Philip pulled a woman’s ragged shawl around his shoulders. “We got lucky, that’s all,” he coughed, “God doesn’t play favorites when nature rolls the dice.”

The boy wrapped his hands around his shoulders and rubbed. “Maybe, but how you explain us ending up way over at 28th and Avenue P after all our homes got washed away?” He wiped the blood from the scratches on his forehead with the back of his hand. “And so close to the only house standing for blocks ’round here?”

Philip coughed and spat on the muddy street. “I don’t. All I know is, you, me, the others . . . we were lucky this time. You have family?”

The boy nodded and stared back at the mounds of devastation. “I’m still looking.”

Philip put his hand on the boy’s wet shoulder.

More drenched, half-naked survivors staggered or drifted like ghosts to the fire, staring into the flames with eyes wide, glassy, and still.

Philip stepped away from the fire to allow the others to warm themselves. He turned back to look at the only two-story house still standing on Avenue P.

For more than six hours, fifty of them had braced and barred the windows and doors with anything they could nail or hold in place. 

The house had creaked, swayed, and might have collapsed at any moment, but held its ground to the end and they survived.

Maybe the boy was right.

A nearby telephone pole had snapped off its base. It looked like the storm had whipped its wires around the house, wrapping it up tight like a shipping crate, keeping it firm on its foundations. 

Was that your doing, Lord? Reaching down to stop us from being swept away? Were old men and women really so much more deserving than children or Gabrielle and Bret?”

“Mister? Mister Harper?” a girl’s voice called Philip’s name from behind.

Feeling his joints stiffen with each movement, he turned around slowly to see who it was.

Verna Desmond—Miss Caldwell’s girl—stood shivering with her arms folded across her naked breasts. Her calico skirt was soaked and ripped around her bare knees and her feet were covered in the muck of the street.

“Mister Harper? Sir, I tried to walk home but . . . I think I got confused.” She glanced back over her shoulder then turned to Philip again. “I must have turned down the wrong street ’cause the house.” 

She started crying. “And Mr. Caldwell . . . everybody and everything . . . oh Lord, Miss Caldwell . . .” Verna swayed on her feet, then dropped to her knees in the mud and cried.

Philip plodded through the muck and crouched down beside her. He lifted back her wet, matted hair. He took the tattered shawl off his shoulders and wrapped it around her.

“Come now, Verna, you have to stand up.” He gripped under her arms and lifted. “How are we going to help other folks if we can’t help ourselves?”

She rested the side of her face on his shoulder. “I ain’t seen no one else alive I know ’cept you,” she wailed. “Sometimes I wished it would have up and took me—”

“Hush now, child, none of that nonsense. Your spirit is too strong for that.” He held the trembling young woman in his arms. “We’re both still breathing. That’s all that matters.”

Verna pressed her fingertips into his arms. “It was the most terrible thing I ever been through. Nothing felt safe or solid anymore. Only thing I remember is reaching out for this tree floatin’ by.”

She dried her eyes with the end of the shawl. “We’re honest, God-fearing, hardworking people, Mister Harper, why would the Lord send down such a vengeance on us?”

Philip couldn’t answer. He was looking to the side, past Verna’s distraught face to a stack of broken housing timber about thirty feet behind them. 

There, near the bottom of the pile he saw the naked, battered torso of Arley Caldwell, protruding through the ruination, bent and broken, face up into the blaring sun.