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I slumped against him, as his narrative seemed to require. But I tried not to be too obvious about it.
It worked. At least it worked insomuch as the cop with the very large gun quit aiming it at us and pointed the muzzle down at the water. “Bring her on in. You can’t be walking around out here, though. Jesus, what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that the son of a bitch who runs the newsroom reamed me out because I was supposed to get a signature from somebody about that fucking SUV. So when I finished screaming his eardrums out, I was too pissed off to stay put. ”
“Where’d you find her?” He was a blond guy—a Bubba, I suspected, one of those younger, corn-fed local boys who gets way too excited about a little authority. It’s a type—thrilled to be in charge, but without enough experience to nail down the proper cop voice for more than a sentence at a time. But he was walking us back through knee-deep sludge to safety, so I couldn’t muster too much ill to say about him.
Half a block back we met more water and more cops, who were canvassing the area like crazy and looking jumpy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. They chattered back and forth through radio receivers strapped onto their chests like bulky black Star Trek communicators.
Hard to blame them. I knew what they were patrolling for.
“Get them inside,” somebody said, but I couldn’t tell who. I was glad for the permission though. Nick was right, it was a whole lot easier than breaking in.
I didn’t say anything, just kept my head down. I let Nick lurch me along without either giving him too much help or causing him undue effort, or so I liked to think. He was grunting and sweating by the time we made it to the edge of the stadium, though.
When I did look up there were more police and a bunch of men in wading boots, plus a scattered woman or two. Everyone had a radio or a cell phone stapled against an ear. Everyone was giving orders, pointing, and arguing or demanding more information.
Nick and I were probably the only people there who could’ve actually told them anything more than they already knew, but nobody asked us and we didn’t offer our expertise. Nothing we kn
ew would have made them hold their guns any steadier.
“Shoot them in the head—what kind of advice is that? That’s video game advice, numbnuts,” one guy was asking, somewhere by the main gate.
“Well it can’t hurt. Slows them down, I think. Haven’t you ever seen a movie? Always start with a head shot, if you can get one. ”
“Head shots aren’t bringing them down, sir. ”
“Head shots aren’t speeding them up, either. ”
Above us all the back wall of the bleachers rose up high and sharp against the sky, against clouds that were still loaded with enough rain to keep us all mighty uncomfortable. I’d never been to a game there. Never cared much about baseball. Never thought we needed another stupid stadium. But it was definitely big and solid looking.
There were worse forts you could pick to hide in.
The ticket offices were lined up and empty, closed up and unattended. Vendors’ carts had been kicked out of the interior, I guess, and were stacked or pushed out of the way into the parking lot, piled up like barricades.
I saw a few other refugees too—other people who were closer to this shelter than to any of the others farther down, away from the water. We were all being herded back to the interior, so we went. Up into the skyboxes they wanted us to go, but my legs weren’t working very well and I had a hard time with the stairs.
“Elevators?” I asked. Someone said they weren’t working, or they weren’t being used except for emergency personnel or disabled people, so I closed my eyes and locked my knees.
I don’t know how many flights I climbed to get up into the skybox, but once I was there it wasn’t too bad. Inside, there was climate control—and there were towels, and fans, and even some hot food and fountain sodas. I dropped myself into one of the plush, oversized chairs in a corner and tried not to fall asleep where I flopped.
Nick brought me a Coke and a hot dog, just like it was an ordinary day at the ball park.
I wolfed both down, and wiggled my fingers towards the table for more. He dutifully provided some. I took down the next hot dog in under a minute, but spent more time with the soda. Hard to believe, surrounded by water, but I was getting dehydrated. We all were. That’s why the nice Red Cross people were urging us away from the sugary sodas and towards Gator-ade and water. Most of us ignored them. We’d had a shitty couple of days and we wanted our junk food, thank you very much.
When I felt a tiny bit more human, I hauled myself out of the chair and went to look out the window. It was a big window, stretching from corner to corner of the skybox; and from it, I had a good view of everything below. An ambulance was parked in right field, or in the puddle that now comprised right field. Above, and very nearby, the air-chopping thunder of a helicopter droned low, then landed beside the pitcher’s mound.
White-uniformed people spilled out of it. They were followed by some people in black uniforms and chunky vests, with guns.
When the helicopter was empty, I lost interest.
It was quieter there, in the skybox, than it had been at the Read House. Not so many people, I guessed. Everyone else had been passed up farther along the shelter chain. We were the stragglers. No kids, thank God. No one who was visibly incapacitated or disabled. Just a handful of people who were tired beyond endurance.
I gathered very quickly that the trick was to lie low and stay out of the way. The trick was to hide there in the rich folks’ skybox and eat the trashy park food while the authorities sorted out the hard parts. No one wanted to be sent to the Read House or to the Choo-Choo—even though no one but me and Nick knew what those shelters were like. Everyone could guess. Nobody said anything, but we all were thinking about what happened in New Orleans when the hurricane hit. We were thinking about the stadium there, and what it looked like packed with people.
So everyone played it low key.
I did too. I didn’t have the strength to do anything else, so I went back to my overstuffed chair and closed my eyes.
