The gale shattered the rain into a brackish, driving mist. Two blocks down, behind the grimy dusk, my goal was visible only in my mind’s eye. The water rose steadily, from shin to knee to hip. Too fast, too fast! Unseen debris slammed against my thighs. I fought for balance and breath, gritted my jaw against the filthy, invading water.

At 24th Street, my flailing arm smacked against something tall and hard. I recoiled with a squeal so the current nearly snatched me, then got some sense and grabbed hold. The faintly swaying lamppost held me up till my sides stopped heaving.

A shift in the current. The furious uptown thrust eased, like taking its own little breather. Even the wind backed off. Slack water! That would give me a minute or two. I lunged forward, pushing easily through the stilled tide, crossing the street, gaining the next sidewalk, only a block, now half a block further. So close to something like safety.

Then the tide turned. But not just a gentle pressing against the backs of my thighs. It grew stronger and stronger, like all the island’s water had been ordered back to the sea, and meant to take me with it.

A moment of confusion, the torrent sucking at my knees, then my ankles. My body rebelling. Muscle, nerve, and bone calling up the past, massive memory quake, and then I knew what else was coming. Knew I had to beat it, scrambling, leaping, willing myself through the long half-block of water to the gangway.

Been here. Done this.

Reality shift. Like a kick in the stomach. The plate tectonics of past and present slipping, sliding into double vision: the wave then, the wave now, coexisting. Its grinding growl through the downtown streets, nearing, nearing. My sodden grab bag weighed me down, but it also was, no, wait . . . a woman? Older. Our arms were linked . . . her grasp weak. She kept stumbling in the current, dragging us backward until I caught my footing and hauled her upright. Who? Face behind a tangle of hair, a glint of old-style glasses. A striped, long-sleeved shirt, torn and muddied. Whoever she was, I had to hold on, find that upward stair.

In a building? No. Ahead, the faint tracery of the gangway, slightly off to the left.

I veered to meet it, saw overlapped a battered spiral stair, a shining curve of rail. The remembered flood had gained a soundtrack, the shatter of plate glass, the groan and scream of metal torn by the incoming wave.

Almost there.