Dead. Nothing could live in that water for long.

“What’s going on down there?” Flannigan called. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Stay up there,” Archie hollered. “I’ve got dead octopuses down here.” He looked down at the water. He hoped they were all dead.

Archie had backed out of the room and was closing the door when he saw the shadow. It was nothing he could really discern, just a sense of something, a shape, under the water.

Still, he felt a sickening tug at his gut.

There was a person under there.

He holstered his gun and stumbled forward into the room, feeling under the water until his hands found clothing, solid cold flesh, hair. Archie lifted the person’s head and shoulders out of the water.

It was Heil.

The dead blue-rings floated all around them.

“Call for EMTs,” Archie called up the stairs. “It’s Heil.”

Heil’s skin was chilled meat. Archie felt for a pulse and got nothing.

Bodies didn’t sink until the lungs had filled with water.

He needed to get him to a flat surface so he could start CPR.

Archie pulled Heil through the water, out the door, and into the main room of the basement.

Flannigan was at the bottom of the stairs. “Jesus Christ,” he said.

“Help me get him to the kitchen,” Archie said.

Flannigan took Heil under the arms, Archie grabbed under his knees and they half carried, half dragged him up the stairs. When they got to the kitchen they laid him flat on his back on the linoleum, a puddle of brown water already seeping from his clothes.

Flannigan knelt next to Heil’s head, so he could turn it to the side if Heil started coughing up water, and Archie started chest compressions. It was like pushing on rubber.

“He’s dead,” Flannigan said.

Archie kept working. “They can save him.”

“He’s dead, Archie. He’s been dead for a while.”

But Archie didn’t stop. CPR had worked on Henry.

Sirens wailed in the distance.

Archie kept up the compressions. He focused on the count. One. Two. Three. Four. Push.

Flannigan reached out with a shaky hand and closed Heil’s eyes.

The sirens got louder.

Archie heard the emergency vehicles pulling up, then the front door opening.

“In here,” he yelled.

The EMTs trotted in and slid into squats next to him. One took over compressions, while the other checked Heil’s vitals, then peeled back his eyelids and checked his pupillary response with an ophthalmoscope. “He’s dead.”

The first EMT lifted her latex-gloved hands from Heil’s chest. They both looked at Archie and Flannigan.

Archie pulled himself to his feet.

He could hear more sirens now.

A Star Wars figure was sitting on the kitchen counter. Archie took a step toward it. He didn’t know which character it was, but could tell that it was supposed to be female.