Her eyes instantly located the one source of light on the pitch-black floor. The fallen Maglite was still on, submerged next to an info post and lodged behind a Drazel chest of drawers. Amy sloshed over to it, each step like plunging her legs into a bucket of ice. She stuck her arm into the frigid water up to her elbow and pulled it out.

Immediately she started looking for Basil. Wardrobes had toppled over, and as she watched, the current upended two more and sent them splashing down and tumbling away. Behind her in the distance something was roaring like a waterfall. If she had been nailed inside a wardrobe, it made sense that Basil would be in one, too.

Riding low in the water was a double-doored Finnimbrun wardrobe on its back, encased in a cocoon of clear packing wrap. Amy sloshed over and banged on the door.

“Basil!” she yelled.

She heard a faint cry from inside. She slogged back to the info desk and rummaged in the drawers, yanking them out and letting the contents fall into the water. Normally there were box cutters all over the store, but tonight Amy had to dump out every last drawer before finding a blade at the very bottom. She sloshed back to the wardrobe and slit the plastic with a single swipe. Basil was floating inside. She reached in and hauled him out by his arms, realizing that until that moment she’d been terrified he was dead.

“Ow!” he screamed as she crushed him to her in a sudden hug.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, letting go of him.

“They broke my wrist in the door,” he said, cradling it.

“They nailed me inside a Liripip,” Amy said. “Can you walk?”

“Yeah,” he nodded.

She played her flashlight over the Showroom walls, trying to figure out which way to go. Suddenly she froze. “Holy crap.”

Torrents gushed from every fake window and every door to nowhere, foaming out in massive sprays, sending furniture tumbling and splashing into the vast oily lake that covered the Showroom floor.

“We need to go,” Basil said.

“We have to find Matt and Trinity,” Amy said.

“The water’s rising too fast,” Basil said.

He was right. It was up to their knees now.

“We’ve got time,” Amy said. “This is the second floor. The water won’t get any higher.”

“Normally, sure,” Basil said. “But has a single thing been normal here tonight?”

“So we’re just going to leave them?”

“We’re lucky we’re still alive,” Basil stuttered through chattering teeth. “We’re minutes away from hypothermia. The water is rising. If we don’t leave right now, we might not leave at all.”

A Potemkin armchair floated past them, bobbing and bouncing in the current, heading toward the front of the store.

“We have to come back for them,” Amy insisted. “Promise me.”

“I promise,” Basil said, shaking convulsively. “Now, please.”