Carey’s scalp was clean. Archie could see the full extent of his injuries now—a two-inch section of his brain exposed. The wound had stopped bleeding. He was dead. Archie looked around. He was alone. He released Carey’s body and watched it sink and vanish in the river.

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Susan surfaced and took in a great gasp of air. She was alive. She’d been tossed and tumbled and rolled underwater until she thought her lungs were going to burst, and she was still alive. Air—humid, fetid, flooded-city air—had never tasted so good. She was still in the water, but she was swimming, above the surface. She could breathe.

Then the absence struck her.

Where was Patrick?

She’d lost him when the water hit.

“Patrick?” she yelled. She paddled in frantic circles in the water, searching for him in the darkness, calling his name again and again.

But he didn’t answer.

“Archie?” she called.

He wasn’t there.

They were both gone.

Or maybe she was the one who was gone.

She looked around for landmarks, but couldn’t orient herself. She didn’t see any buildings. Rain pattered against the surface of the water. Compared to the water she was in, it felt warm.

The floodsurge was still moving, and taking her along with it. She could feel it all around her—a billion pounds of pressure all rushing in the same direction. She realized then that she wasn’t swimming. She was treading water, paddling against the current.

The muscles in her arms already burned. She was getting more exhausted by the second.

She strained again to get a bead on where she was. And then she saw the shadow of something overhead. A bridge.

She was in the middle of the river.

Frantic now, she swam for the shore, wide strokes, straight kicks, employing every ounce of energy in her possession. She swam like an Olympian. Like Esther Williams. But every force she exerted was met with twice the resistance. The current was too strong. She couldn’t fight it.

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Archie stumbled through the waist-deep water, calling out for Susan, for the boy, for Flannigan. He coughed after each name, as if even the effort of producing sound were too much for his lungs. He didn’t know if it was from his cold or all the water he’d inhaled.

The flashlight was gone, along with his shoes, torn away in the flood. His phone was dead. Some of the buildings had exterior emergency lights, and the flashing white and yellow beacons illuminated the scene in splinters of light.

He kept walking. Kept calling for them.