Murder in the Marsh (16 page)

Thirty-Five

Rachel discovered the exertion the day before had taken more out of her than she realized. Her legs didn’t feel as strong as usual, and she quickly winded. She didn’t allow herself to stop, because she knew time was limited. She hoped her body would adjust to the strain as she ran further. Jogging along the levee had been an enjoyable activity for her, particularly in the evening when the sun was setting and radiating off the towering clouds. At the moment, she felt she could be lured into a false sense of security, but she had to keep reminding herself that she was in the middle of one of the most powerful hurricanes ever to strike the United States. It was unreal, she thought. Last night she fought with Adele and Michelle for their very lives. This morning she was jogging on a green, grassy levy in the beautiful warm sunshine.

She noticed that the water in the marsh seemed higher than she had ever seen. It reminded her of the trauma from the night before, as well as Daniel and Claude who continued to be missing. She ran even faster. Looking down across the drainage canal to the woods, fields, and neighborhoods she passed, she noticed extensive damage the hurricane had inflicted. Numerous trees were blown over or snapped; roofs were torn off of homes; debris lay scattered about; and the lowest areas had several inches of standing water. She wondered how the owners would recover when they finally returned.

After about a mile, she passed a pumping station with its two massive steel pipes running over the levee from the pumping house into the marsh. The station was designed to pump excess water out of the drainage canal and into the marsh to prevent flooding. To her knowledge they had never failed before. They were operating now, and Rachel saw the brown water churning where it was gushing out of the pipes into the marsh.

She had already broken a sweat and was picking up speed as her legs loosened up. Up ahead she could see the marina about a mile away. She looked back keeping tabs on the eye wall in the distance, and saw that it had moved considerably closer.

She tried the two-way radio, and in a few seconds Adele responded. The reception was not as strong as she hoped, but she could still make out what Adele was saying. Adele continued to prepare for the rest of the storm and encouraged Rachel to hurry. Rachel assured her she would.

As Rachel finally neared the marina, she could see Daniel’s truck still in the parking lot. She jogged down from the levee along the gravel drive to the truck and looked in. It was locked, and didn’t look like anyone had been in it recently. She looked around, wondering if possibly the men were holed up in one of the camps like the women had done the night before. She wondered whether one of them could be injured. She checked her watch and saw it had taken her twenty-five minutes to run the full distance. The eye wall seemed closer and approaching at a faster pace than she expected. She knew it was unwise, but she decided she would have enough time to run down the length of the camp drive to see if she could find the men. She ran quickly, shouting Daniel and Claude’s name as she went. Minutes later, she reached the end of the gravel drive. Before her was the camp they had taken refuge in last night. She noticed the door was hanging open, so she started up the wooden steps to see if Daniel and Claude were inside.  

In her haste, she didn’t notice a wooden support for the steps had taken a direct hit from a piece of flying wood, which snapped it. The other supports remained undamaged, allowing the steps to continue standing, but unsound. Though she didn’t weigh much, the structure gave way. The steps below her began to collapse. She tried to grasp hold of the steps in front of her as she fell. At first she fell forward, then straight down, landing awkwardly feet first on a collapsed portion of the stair casing. The piercing pain in her right ankle immediately told her she had strained or broken it. She lay in the gravel trying to determine if anything else was injured. Other than bruising her side, the ankle was the only thing hurting.

Upset with herself, she rolled down her sock to check the damage, and saw the ankle quickly beginning to swell. She tried to rotate it, but the intense pain forced her to stop. She didn’t know whether it was strained or broken, but knew it was one or the other. She called out Daniel’s name, in the vain hope he might actually be in the camp, but no one responded. The realization that she was injured and all alone left her feeling panicky.

She took a deep breath to calm herself. She knew that regardless of how bad her ankle was, she had to get up and get moving. If she didn’t get to the other side of the levee, she would be caught in the surge. She took a moment and asked the Lord to provide her the stamina to make it back, then pushed herself up so she was standing on one foot. She placed some pressure on the injured ankle, but found the pain unbearable. She started moving in the direction of the levee, trying to figure out the best way to ambulate. Hopping was exhausting, and she nearly fell. Finally, she learned she could put just a little pressure on the toes of her injured foot to maintain balance, and use the other foot to propel her body forward. She also found a long stick that served as a makeshift crutch.

Rachel considered calling Adele on the two-way radio, but knew she wasn’t in any position to help. If she tried, she would only put herself and Michelle in danger. Rachel finally decided against calling, and slowly began making her way back down the gravel drive toward the levee. She checked her watch again, and noted twenty-five more minutes had passed since she started back. She determined it had been about an hour and forty-five minutes since the leading edge of the eye passed over. She realized she had very little time to make it to safety. Indeed, looking between the camps to the southwest, she saw the hurricane eye wall rapidly filling the sky. She could even make out growing bands of black clouds ready to vent their fury.

Thirty-Six

The little pirogue didn’t maneuver easily in the debris-encrusted canal. Daniel and Claude proceeded slowly out of necessity, as they frequently encountered large wood pilings, remnants of demolished building structures, and other dangerous objects submerged in the murky water. If they capsized, it would be nearly impossible to recover and right the pirogue. Claude also began to re-experience the debilitating effects of his head wound. Shortly after they started paddling, he began experiencing dizziness and a throbbing pain at the site of the wound. Daniel had taken a seat in front of the pirogue, since Claude was the more experienced navigator, but now they both began to question their decision. Claude found it difficult to concentrate on the hazards in the water, as the blinding pain shot through his head. Once or twice it became so intense he felt nauseous. 

As they paddled southward down Grand Bayou Canal, Daniel calculated they were rapidly losing the race against time. Thirty minutes had expired, and they had just passed the sunken patrol craft. The dark eye wall to the southwest filled the sky and nearly encircled them on all sides, except to the northeast. A light wind picked up, blowing against them, making the going tougher. They tried to pick up their pace in the face of the oncoming storm.

Fortunately, they made better time the next thirty minutes without capsizing. As the canal widened out slightly, the debris became less compacted and easier to navigate. They were only a short distance from the turn in to Happy Jack Canal when the first light rain began to fall, increasing in severity with each passing minute. Claude kept a plastic bailing jug tied to the boat and was able to remove some of the rainwater as it began to fill the pirogue. They pulled the raincoats over their life preservers, and continued paddling as best they could. In the steadily increasing rain, it became even more difficult to identify hidden dangers in the water. After twenty more minutes, they covered half the distance they needed to go to make it to the first camp at Happy Jack.

Daniel sensed it would only be a matter of minutes before the full fury of the hurricane broke over them.  He soon realized they wouldn’t make it to the camp before the full force of the hurricane struck.

The light wind quickly gave way to a full gale as the hurricane fell upon them. They struggled to avoid capsizing in the rough water. Ten more minutes passed, and then disaster struck. A giant burst of wind slammed into them from the back right side. The little pirogue pitched over before they could react, dumping them into the troubled waters. They both struggled to the surface, instinctively clinging to the slowly sinking pirogue. In a few seconds it slipped below the surface, leaving them stranded in the water, with only their life preservers keeping them afloat.

“Claude! Are you okay?” Daniel shouted.

“Yeah. Ahm ok. How ‘bout you?”

“I’m alright. Looks like we’ve got to swim.”

Daniel looked around to get his bearings and located the first camp fifty yards ahead. He also noticed the water level had risen dramatically. It nearly covered the surrounding marsh grass and had risen up above the level of the gravel drive along the camps. The hurricane is pushing the surge ahead of it, Daniel realized. The danger to Port Sulphur and the other communities behind the levees was multiplying.

Daniel heard Claude periodically grunt in pain as the two struggled to swim through the debris. He called out, encouraging Claude, who weakly acknowledged it. The two men tried to stay as close as possible to one another, but with great difficulty as the debris and waves worked to separate them. The wind shrieked louder and louder, blowing the waves higher, eventually reducing visibility to only a few feet.

They made only minor forward progress when both men simultaneously heard a terrifyingly loud sound behind them. It was a deep basal roar that rapidly grew closer, bearing down on them like an oncoming train. They felt its power pulsate through the water before they saw anything. Soon they saw that the hurricane was driving a monstrous wall of water before it nearly twenty feet high. It voraciously consumed everything in its path, including Daniel and Claude. They were sucked into the enormous surge and thrust deep into its debris-clogged bowels. Inside, they painfully collided with innumerable heavy objects, while being tossed around like hapless rag dolls. The surge pressed forward toward the levee, dragging the two men along with it. Daniel and Claude eventually lost sight and contact with one another.

To Daniel, it seemed like an eternity passed as the water tossed him helplessly to and fro, refusing to release him from its clutches. Only when it seemed he was about to succumb, did he finally break the surface and expel the exhausted breath he had been holding. Breathing deeply, he desperately looked around before the next surge of water rolled over him. He couldn’t see Claude anywhere, nor could he see the row of camps they had been approaching. Where once there had been marshland, everything now was a frothing sea of endless water. He guessed the surge had driven him toward the levee, but away from the camps. Worse still, the surge brought with it even more debris that completely covered the surface of the water. It collided into him, threatening to crush his fragile body between the larger pieces of pilings, lumber, and timber.

The next wall of water was not as large, but once again submerged him deep below. As he neared the surface, he had to fight to make his way up through the debris. Smaller waves continued to follow, but none as powerful as the first two. The rain fell unabated and the wind howled in stronger and stronger gusts. Looking around again, Daniel spotted Claude’s bright life preserver ahead of him. Claude was not moving. Daniel began to make his way towards him, praying as he went that Claude would be okay. He couldn’t swim through the debris. The wood and ripped up marsh grass covering the surface was just too thick. He pulled himself arm over arm through the flotsam and jetsam, grabbing onto one heavy piece of wood and timber after another, either crawling over or using it as leverage to push himself by.

Nearly exhausted, he finally made it to Claude’s side. The design of Claude’s life preserver had kept his face turned upwards, but Daniel saw Claude only had shallow ragged breathing. He was unconscious, and the wound on back of his head was bleeding again. Daniel called his name several times and gently patted his face, but Claude didn’t regain consciousness. Daniel looked around, and through the wind and rain thought he could make out the dim row of camps far off to his right. Straight ahead, he looked for the levee, but all he saw was water. To his shock, he realized the surge had overtopped the levee and was rushing in, flooding the protected land behind it. He prayed that Rachel, Adele, and Michelle had found safety.

              The levee was now closer than the camps. Many of the camps were likely flooded anyway, he thought. He didn’t know what he would do when he reached the levee, but he hoped the water overflowing it wasn’t so strong and deep that he couldn’t find some patches of land free from the torrent.  He grasped the neck area of Claude’s life preserver with one arm and with the other began to pull and kick toward the levee. The thick field of debris acted to keep the worst of the wind blown waves in check, but the whole marsh seemed to heave and roll in great undulating swells and troughs, as if he was further offshore. Daniel gave up all hope he would be able to make it on his own, and trusted that if they made it to safety, it would be because the Lord willed it.