The water was a couple inches higher than last time we left the car. It was deep enough and strong enough to make the doors harder to open, but with a bit of work, we managed.
I got my impromptu key for the file drawers, a straight tire tool with a beveled edge, out of the trunk of the car.
I left my trusty ax handles. Buck had the shotgun. I gave him the shotgun shells I had. We both had our pistols under our shirts.
“What was wrong with her?” Buck said.
“Cancer.”
“Seems like a tough ol’ bird,” he said.
“Yeah. Come on. Get down the road a piece, I know a shortcut.”
I looked through the glass at Mrs. Chandler. Her mouth was open, her hands folded across her chest. Like Elvis, she had left the building.
Me and Buck climbed up onto the road.
* * *
It was hard to know exactly where we were, but I knew we were close to the lake. When we got to the turn off the main highway, I could identify it more out of luck than design.
We practically swam along, and I didn’t know we had reached the edge of the lake until there was a hot bolt of lightning that made the sky so bright it was briefly yellow. A strand of it struck the old bridge and made a hissing blue net that trickled across the metal cables from the far end to our end.
In that brief blue fulmination, I could see that much of the lake had already filled with water and was still filling. I could hear the loud gurgling rush of it and see the shadowy shapes of the buildings of Long Lincoln sticking out of it.
When the trace of lightning was gone from the bridge, I rested the flashlight beam on the lake and let it stay there for a moment. To put it mildly, the lake looked troubled. It was still not fully filled, but it was working on it.
I shone the light toward the dam and spillway, but I couldn’t really see it clearly. I could hear its roar and make out white explosions of dark water flying out of the spillway gaps and into the lake.
“Damn,” Buck said. “Never seen it like this.”
“Come on,” I said.
I led us along the edge of the lake. The shoreline was growing thinner as the water rose rapidly. The trail that led up the hill and into the trees to the concrete bunker door was mostly concealed by night and rain. I guided us up.
It was a struggle to climb because of the nature of the slope. Gravel came loose under our wet shoes and there were scrubs and small trees we had to work our way around to get up there.
Eventually, we came to the trees and the hill where the door was built into the side.
“Been to this lake a lot,” Buck said. “Never knew this was here.”
“To find it, you would have to be looking for it,” I said. “I think this was just a way for workers to walk in. Other tunnels were designed for trucks and storage. It was like a maze under the old town.”
I gave Buck the flashlight and tried to grab the edge of the door with my fingers, but there wasn’t much edge to grab. Besides, it was most likely locked. Holding the tire tool with both hands, I stuck the beveled edge into the crack of the door and put all my weight into prying it open.
About the time I felt as if my arms would come off at the shoulders and my balls would blow like strained gaskets, I heard the lock snap and the door moved slightly with a scraping sound. But the door was still too heavy to open.
Buck stuck the flashlight in his back pocket, set the shotgun against one of the trees, grabbed the tire tool with me, and we cranked back on it.
There was a grating noise that put my teeth on edge, then the door opened somewhat and the stink down there came out at us in a wave. When we had it open enough for us to slip inside, Buck used the flash to poke light into the darkness.
Buck said, “Jesus. What a stink.”
“Try not to shoot Flashlight Boy. You’ll smell him before you see him, even over all this stench.”
I shoved the tire tool in my belt, took the flashlight from Buck. He grabbed the shotgun, and we dipped inside, leaving the door open.
The light revealed that the water was higher than before at the bottom of the steps. I thought about how old the tunnels were and how fragile they might have become. I thought too about the great rain that had widened and deepened the river that supplied the lake and how when it hit the spillway, it was hammering it with tremendous force, shooting water through the designed gaps in foaming bursts. That was a lot of water.
The lake and its surroundings were flooding fast due to the ground drying hard and losing its ability to absorb. Being beneath that swelling water in a crumbling tunnel almost unnerved me. It brought back moonlit memories of the dark depths, the taillights of the Buick going down, down, down.
I thought about Mrs. Chandler. Soon the water would be up and in the car. I hated the thought of it, her body floating inside the car the way my father’s had. There was nothing I could do. The wet night would claim her and that’s all there was to it.
“I think I know the way,” I said.
“I’m reminded of Nam,” Buck said.
We stepped down the stairs and into the cold water. The air was thick as mud but less tasty. We passed the bricked-in tunnels. Water slipped from cracks in the bricks and trickled down the walls or spilled onto the tunnel floor in spurts that fled into drains at the edges of the walls. We sloshed it about as we went.
Rats moved in the light, running over and under and around one another. Their high-pitched squeaks echoing off the tunnel walls were painful to the ears. They didn’t like the water. They didn’t like the leaks. Me and the rats had that in common.