Dead Serious -Finn #2
The grass had turned to mud, deep and sucking, pulling at my boots with every stride like the ground itself had decided we weren’t leaving.
Somewhere behind us, a chorus of shrieks rose and fell with the thunder, overlapping and answering each other, almost like hunting calls.
I looked around, swearing under my breath as I realized they had spotted us.
“Libby, we have to hurry,” I said, propelling her forward.
“Here—” Libby gasped, dropping to her knees beside the statue.
I stepped over it and reached for the access panel.
My hands slipped on the wet metal immediately, rain pouring down my arm and numbing my fingers. I dug in harder, nails scraping against rust.
“Come on—”
It gave with a sharp, grinding jerk that sent a spike of pain through my wrists.
“Go!”
Libby swung her legs over without a second’s pause and dropped into the darkness below. Her boots found the ladder rungs—fast, controlled—and then she disappeared entirely.
I swept the park one last time. Near the treeline, something moved—slow, hunched—too far out to matter. I dropped in after her, grabbed the hatch, and hauled it shut. The clang swallowed itself in the storm.
Darkness. Total.
I fumbled for my phone and thumbed the flashlight on.
The beam cut through the tunnel—
And the air left my lungs.
Water. Of course. The storm—I hadn’t—fuck. I should have thought of that.
The water was brown and already moving, ankle-deep, shoving hard against the walls. It carried things with it: a plastic bag, a single shoe, something dark and sodden I didn’t look at long enough to name.
“Shit,” I said.
Libby turned. The flashlight caught her face—eyes wide, chest heaving, hair plastered flat against her skull. Water already lapped at the tops of her boots.
“I didn’t think about the flooding.” She was already moving. “We need to go.”
“Go.”
She didn’t wait.
She took off down the tunnel, and I stayed right behind her, boots sending up rooster-tail sprays of filthy water with every stride. The flashlight beam bounced wildly off the curved walls.
The sound built as we ran.
It was there beneath everything else—beneath our boots, beneath our breathing, beneath the rain drumming down through the grates. A low hum. Then a rumble.
“Libby—”
“I know!” she called back, breathless, not slowing. “Hurry!”
The water rose past our ankles. Cold—shockingly cold. And fast. The current found our legs and shoved, insistent, trying to steer us somewhere we didn’t want to go.
Something bumped against my shin, heavy, soft. I kept my eyes forward.
We rounded a corner. Libby slammed against the wall to catch herself as her boots lost traction on the slick stone, her body pitching hard to the side. She caught it, pushed off, and kept moving without breaking stride.
The roar grew louder, closer, vibrating through the walls now, through the ground, through the water pressing against our legs.
“Almost there!” she shouted.
I saw it.
The ladder.
Relief sparked—
Then died.
The sound hit before the water did. A pressure change, first—something vast displacing air ahead of it—and then a roar that climbed fast from the base of the skull to the top of it, filling the tunnel completely, leaving no room for anything else.
I turned.
The flashlight beam caught it.
A wall of water.
A solid, roaring mass of black water tearing through the tunnel toward us, filling the space from floor to ceiling, churning with everything it had collected on its way—wooden planks, chunks of broken concrete, a trash can spinning end over end.
And tangled in the center of it, tumbling with the debris, a body spun past.
Three seconds. Maybe less.
“Climb!” Libby screamed.
She launched herself at the ladder, hands locking onto the rungs, hauling herself upward with a strength pulled entirely from terror.
I lunged after her.
My hands found a rung—
The water hit.
It slammed into my legs, instantly ripping both feet from the ground.
My body swung hard to the side as the full weight of the current tried to peel me off the ladder and drag me into the dark.
My fingers clawed against the metal, and my shoulders wrenched in their sockets.
Something massive struck my hip, sending pain radiating through my side and up into my ribs.
I held on.
I locked my grip until the metal bit into my palms and broke the skin, blood welling up and washing away before it could even form. I held on.
“Go! Go!” I shouted, my words barely clearing the roar.
Above me, Libby climbed, fast and desperate. Her boots slipped on every other rung, the water surging up after her with patience and indifference. Her hands shook—I could see it even from below: her white-knuckled grip, her fingers not fully closing around the metal.
“I’m trying!” The crack in her voice cut through everything.
The water climbed.
Waist. Chest. The pressure against my body multiplied with every inch, the current finding every gap between my body and the ladder, forcing itself through, methodical and relentless. Debris struck my back, my legs, tumbling past without slowing.
I planted my boots against the wall on either side of the ladder, locked my arms, and made myself immovable.
“Don’t stop, Libby, keep going!”
Another surge—harder, angrier, with more behind it—and above me, Libby slipped.
Her boot shot off the rung. She dropped several inches before one hand caught and held, while the other scraped uselessly at the metal beside it.
“Finn—!”
The sound of my name—the raw terror—
I let go with one arm, reached up, and found her waist. I hauled her down against the rungs, pinning her there with my own body, my forearm locked hard across her stomach. The water slammed into us, and I took the force of it, planting myself between her and the current.
“I’ve got you,” the words came out low and guttural. “I’ve got you.”
The current tore at us, and something struck my shoulder blade—solid, heavy—and my vision blacked out for a half-second before I dragged it back. I didn’t let go.
“Climb.” I put my mouth close to her ear, dropping the volume, stripping out the panic, making my voice an anchor against the rusted metal and the sound of rushing water. “Climb, Libby.”
“I can’t—” She choked on a mouthful of water, coughed it back out, her whole body convulsing against mine.
“Yes, you can. Now move.”
For one terrible second, she locked against me—not trembling, not fighting, just gone still. Her hand had stopped moving on the rung. The water poured over us, and she didn’t react to it.
Then she moved.
Her hand closed around the first rung, held.
Then another.
I climbed behind her, one arm braced against her back, the other hauling us both upward through neck-deep water that poured over my face with every surge.
Rust, sewage, and rot filled my mouth. Every rung demanded something I wasn’t sure I had left—a hold that threatened to slip, arms burning past the point where burning meant anything useful.
“Almost—” she gasped above me.
I looked up. The hatch. Four rungs. Three.
“Go!”
She reached it, pressed both palms flat against the metal, and shoved.
It didn’t move.
“Finn—it’s stuck!”
The water surged again, pulling my head under. Black. Roaring. I held my breath, locked my grip, and fought my way back up. Spat. Blinked.
“Move,” I said over the roar of water. “Down one rung.”
She dropped below me, and I climbed past her, our bodies pressed together in the narrow space, her breath hot against my jaw.
I reached up, planted my shoulder under the hatch, and drove upward with everything left in my legs, back, and shoulders, summoning a strength I wasn’t sure I still possessed.
For one long, agonizing second—nothing. Only resistance. Rusted hinges indifferent to our survival.
Then a groan of metal as it burst open.
Gray light and cold rain poured through the gap. I pulled it into my lungs as if I’d been starved, never so glad to see a storm in my life.
“Go!” I reached down, locked my hand around Libby’s arm, and hauled her up and past me in one motion. She scrambled through the opening, fingers clawing at the wet concrete lip, and pulled herself out onto solid ground above.
I followed, driving myself up the last two rungs as the water hit the underside of the hatch beneath my boots—one final surge, furious at being denied.
I kicked free, cleared the opening, and slammed the hatch shut behind me with both hands.
Then I went down.
The concrete came up hard against my back, and I let it. Cold. Rain drove into my face. My chest heaved, my arms had nothing left, and the sky pressed down on the city as if it meant to flatten what remained of it. Every breath burned.
Beside me, Libby lay on her back, chest heaving, an uncontrollable tremor running through her. Her hair splayed dark against the concrete. Her eyes stared straight up at the sky—wide, glassy, and present.
Alive.
I rolled toward her and pulled her in. Her hand found my chest the way it had on the rooftop, pressing flat against the frantic hammering of my heart.
“You good?” It came out rough, less a question than a demand for confirmation.
She nodded against me—once, then again, as if she needed to convince herself as much as to answer me.
“Yeah,” she got out, her breath shuddering. She pressed her face against my chest. “Yeah.”
I dragged a hand down my face, clearing water, blood, and grit from my eyes.
“Next time,” I said, my voice rough, “no tunnels. Not in a storm.”
Libby made a sound against my shoulder—half a laugh. She turned her face into me, her forehead pressing hard against my shoulder, still shaking.
Her voice was muffled against my shoulder. “Deal.”
My arm tightened around her. I pressed my mouth to the top of her head and stayed there, breathing her in through the rain, rot, and rust, finding something underneath it all that was just her. The city drowned around us, and the margin by which we’d survived narrowed in my mind.