Flood Stage

Frank Johnson's fingers tapped against the steering wheel of his police cruiser in time with his father's old Johnny Cash tape, the one he couldn't bring himself to eject, though the sound wavered with age. The unseasonably warm October night pressed his shirt against his back, and the bottle of whiskey beside him felt heavier than it should. Beth at the liquor store hadn’t even asked anymore. She just handed it over with that knowing look she’d had since Isabelle’s funeral. He hadn't opened it. Not yet. But having it there felt like holding onto a lifeline, even if he wasn't sure whether it would save him or pull him under.

The radio crackled, and Martha's voice came through—the same Martha who used to babysit him when he was knee-high, who still brought banana bread to the station every Thursday. "Frank? It's the Green Frog Club. It's Joe." She paused, and Frank could picture her twisting the gold cross necklace she always wore when she was worried. "Billy's bringing the ambulance. You know how he drives that thing—like his grandmother's Buick." Her attempt at lightness fell flat. "Frank... no one else is coming. They're all scared of Joe."

The Green Frog had never been a gentleman’s club, no matter what its sign claimed. Frank had seen its dancers: tired, underpaid, barely more than background noise to the real business inside. The pool tables had long since lost their felt, and the cues were held together with electrical tape. He had broken up more fights here than he could count, but nothing ever changed.

It was the kind of place where health department citations were plastered on the walls like wallpaper. It was where the worst of humanity gathered to poison themselves with watered-down whiskey and lost dreams. Where bikers shared space with laid-off factory workers and small-time dealers, all of them drawn to the promise of cheap beer and cheaper thrills. The dancers were just window dressing, really, an excuse to keep the doors open after the pool tables emptied.

Frank had stopped counting how many times the system had failed to hold Joe. Three months ago, when Isabelle's blood still stained the Sweet Shop Diner’s floor, the result of Joe’s targeted bullet, the DA had built what looked like an airtight case. But like always, paperwork disappeared, witnesses changed their stories, and judges recused themselves. Joe had connections—the kind that thrived in back rooms where handshakes meant more than law books. He took their deals, played their game, and ran their errands, but everyone knew his real purpose was inflicting pain on the family that had given him away.

But Frank knew the truth. The city's power brokers thought they could control Joe. They didn't understand that Joe would burn everything down, including himself, just to torture his brother. That was what made tonight different. The fallout of all those failed arrests, all those dismissed charges, and all those corrupt deals had finally forced Frank's hand.

Frank didn’t answer Martha's call. He just reached for the volume knob, worn smooth from years of calls like this. But unlike those other calls, his hand drifted to the box under his seat where he kept the last family photo, taken before the truth spilled out at Sunday dinner, before they learned what separate homes could do to shared blood. He hadn't opened that box in years, but he felt its weight every time he patrolled past Joe's side of town. Tonight, that weight felt like permission.

In the rearview mirror, his six-month-old son slept soundly, one tiny hand clutching the teddy bear Isabelle had picked out the day they learned they were pregnant. When the baby smiled in his sleep, Frank saw her in every detail—the way his nose crinkled, how his eyelashes fluttered against his cheeks. Sometimes it felt like a gift, other times like a twisting knife.

His headlights caught the eternal pothole at the county line—the one the city council had been promising to fix since his dad wore the badge. The Green Frog's neon sign flickered ahead, lopsided and missing the “G.” The place sat in that no-man's land between jurisdictions where Frank caught teenagers parking before he was old enough to drive himself.

The gravel crunched under his tires as he pulled up. Merle Haggard drifted from the jukebox out into the foggy, unlit parking lot. But tonight, the classic tune mingled with something else: the metallic scent of gunpowder and the sharp crack of breaking glass.

The Green Frog's windows were fogged with cigarette smoke and humidity, the glass sweating like it did before a storm. Frank had always felt that places like this collected pressure just like the weather did, building up until something had to break.

Through the window, he saw Joe pacing, kicking aside the newly refinished barstools. The wild look in his eyes was one Frank remembered from childhood, the look he'd get before setting fire to the neighbor's shed or drowning stray cats in Miller's Creek.

Sara Jenkins' voice cut through the smoke. She was still wearing her work makeup, but her mascara ran black down her cheeks as she cradled her baby. The infant's yellow onesie bloomed red where the bullet had found its mark.

"Please," she whispered, and Frank heard the echo of her voice from high school drama club. Back when everyone thought she'd make it big someday. "My baby..."

Joe turned, and for a moment, Frank saw the boy who used to sit alone at lunch, drawing violent scenes in the margins of his notebook. Their mother—their shared mother—had tried reaching out last Christmas, as she did every year, sending a card with a photo of her garden. Joe had mailed it back, shredded.

The second gunshot was different from the first. Deliberate. Sara slumped forward, still cradling her child, her waitress name tag catching the jukebox light. “Ask Me About Our Thursday Special,” it read in cheerful script. With a single pull of the trigger, Joe silenced the frantic pleas of the single mother as she shielded her child that never should have been there.

Frank felt the cool steel of his shotgun in his hands. His wedding ring scraped against the metal as he raised it, and he remembered Isabelle at The Sweet Shop Diner, laughing at his attempt to eat spaghetti without staining his uniform. The way her eyes had sparkled in the candlelight, just before the window exploded and Joe's bullets found her.

The brothers locked eyes across the room. The physical resemblance was striking—the same chin and dark hair that their mother always said came from their grandfather. But where Frank's eyes reflected years of protection—of school crossings and midnight safety checks and talking Mr. Peterson down from the water tower—Joe's burned with the fury of every birthday card returned unopened, every Christmas dinner eaten alone, every slight, real or imagined, that festered in the dark spaces of his mind.

The shotgun's blast echoed off the walls like summer thunder. As the smoke cleared, Frank watched his brother's blood seep into the concrete, ending one nightmare and beginning another.

The ride to the station passed in a blur of blue lights and protocol.

In the jail cell, Frank sat on the thin mattress where homeless Jim Brady slept it off on cold nights. Willie Arnold appeared at the bars, the unlit cigar tucked in the corner of his mouth that Frank had seen at every city council meeting for the past decade.

"Your boy's with Ann," Willie said, rolling the cigar between his fingers. "She's got him in that old bassinet her kids used, the one with the yellow ducks." He paused and shifted his weight. "Town's talking, Frank. Half want to build you a statue, half want to bury you under it."

Frank nodded, his neck muscles stiff from tension. But before Willie could continue, Deputy Martinez rushed in, her keys jangling with urgency.

"The May River Dam has failed—this rain brought it down, and now a wall of water is headed our way!" Martinez's fingers twisted her keyring, metal clicking against metal like chattering teeth. “Mayor Hobbs is asking for you. The Faraday plant..."

The cell door opened with its usual screech. But this time, it was Frank walking out, heading toward a different kind of storm.

Before becoming sheriff, Frank had served as a consultant for the Faraday Nuclear Plant’s emergency response team, and his expertise in crisis management had been instrumental in formulating their emergency procedures. The May River, once controlled by the dam, powered Faraday's cooling systems and flowed through the heart of the city. Now, with the dam collapsed, it surged unchecked toward both the plant and the city. Mayor Hobbs had no choice but to release Frank to help with the crisis.

The rain had picked up, pounding against the roof like artillery fire, each drop another soldier in an unrelenting assault on the plant. The control room smelled like always: coffee from the ancient Bunn maker that nobody was allowed to replace because Jenkins swore it was the only one that made it strong enough for the night shift. But tonight there was something else in the air—dread settling into the corners like steam from the cooling towers—familiar yet foreign.

"Core temperature's climbing, Frank." Richard Daley's voice carried the same calm he'd used when his daughter had her seizure at the company picnic. "Got about sixty minutes before we hit critical."

The building shuddered, something deep in the foundation giving way with a sound like breaking bones. Water seeped through hairline cracks in the concrete floor, dark fingers reaching for their boots. A series of sharp pops echoed through the facility as circuit breakers tripped in sequence.

"We're losing the auxiliary pump room," Patel called out, her voice steady even as her hands shook. "Water's at the electrical cabinets."

Through the emergency band, evacuation orders spread outward like ripples on the blast radius map Frank knew by heart—the one he'd helped draw.

Each transmission carried another thousand lives, each mile another memory he couldn't bear to lose. He knew exactly how far the poison would spread if they failed, knew which farms would die, which schools would empty, and which streets would never echo with children's voices again.

"We're losing core cooling," Jenkins said, his voice tight. "Primary pump's cavitating. We're getting steam where we need water." The radiation monitors ticked upward, a quiet warning of what was coming.

Patel's curry-stained coffee mug vibrated off her console, shattering against the floor. The sound was swallowed by the groan of steel and concrete fighting to hold back the flood.

Another tremor shook the building, stronger this time.

"Secondary containment's compromised," Daley reported, his fingers dancing across controls. "We're getting water in places we shouldn't."

Jenkins' daughter's photo fluttered to the floor as another shock wave hit the building. He snatched it up, tucking it back under his keyboard where it had stayed through every crisis. "Primary cooling system's failing. We're running out of options, Frank."

Through the window, Frank watched the Army Corps' last-ditch effort fail. Their massive pumps, brought in by helicopter, fought against the floodwaters like toy boats in a hurricane. The newest pump, a behemoth that could drain an Olympic pool in minutes, sparked and died as debris tore through its intake. Its death throes sent a cascade of light across the dark parking lot.

The futile struggle reminded him of the Green Frog, of people scrambling for cover, of law enforcement's usual tactics failing against Joe. They'd tried everything by the book: negotiation, containment, and show of force. But Joe had been beyond that kind of control, like this river that refused to be tamed.

The emergency lighting cast everything in a blood-red shadow, and suddenly the parallel hit him like a physical blow. At the Green Frog, he'd crossed a line, become the very thing he was fighting against. He'd had to think like Joe to stop Joe.

"The water's not our enemy," Frank said quietly, his words nearly lost in the groan of straining metal. "It's our answer."

Daley looked up sharply. "What?"

"We've been fighting the flood, trying to keep it out. Just like I spent years trying to save Joe by fighting against what he'd become." Frank's fingers traced the cross he wore underneath his rain-soaked shirt. "But in the end, I had to become what he was to stop him. I had to let the darkness in to end it."

Recognition flickered in Patel's eyes. "The emergency cooling system..."

"Was designed to be a closed loop," Frank finished. "But what if we stopped fighting the river? Let it become part of the system instead of the enemy? Sometimes the only way to stop a killer is to become one. Sometimes the only way to stop a flood is to become one."

"You're talking about intentionally flooding the cooling chambers," Jenkins said, his voice hollow with disbelief. "Using the floodwater itself as an emergency coolant."

"It's suicide," Daley protested. "The contamination, the structural damage..."

"The plant's already contaminated," Frank countered. "The structure's already compromised. But if we can direct how it happens..."

It went against every protocol, every safety measure, every rule in the book. But as Frank looked at the faces around him, they showed the same grim acceptance.

The next minutes passed in a blur of calculated chaos. They weren’t just engineers anymore; they were surgeons performing a desperate operation—stripping away safety systems, rerouting emergency protocols, weaponizing the plant’s own defenses. With each barrier they breached, the river rushed in, but now they were directing it, using its fury instead of fighting it.

Millions of gallons of water crashed through newly opened channels. In the distance, they could hear the cooling towers groaning as river water mixed with reactor coolant in ways the designers had never intended.

"Core temperature dropping!" Jenkins' voice cracked with equal parts fear and hope. "It's actually working!"

But they weren't done yet. The river, like Joe, had one more surprise waiting. As the floodwater filled the emergency cooling chambers, the pressure differential created a vortex effect they hadn't anticipated. The entire building swayed as water rushed through the system faster than their calculations had predicted.

"We're losing structural integrity in the east wing," Patel reported, her fingers flying over keyboards. "The vortex is pulling the foundation apart!"

Frank felt the vibrations through his boots, recognizing the same pattern of destruction he'd seen in Joe's eyes at the Green Frog. Sometimes the second blow really was the killing stroke. Unless...

"The waste heat exchanger," he said suddenly. "Blow it now."

"That'll contaminate the whole..."

"Do it!"

The explosion rocked the building, but it worked. The pressure equalized as the vortex found a new path, one they could harness. The river still raged, but now it raged for them instead of against them.

Patel's radiation detector chirped steadily as she took readings from the water now cycling through their makeshift cooling system. Her face grew graver with each measurement. "The contamination's spreading downstream. We've got cesium-137 levels that'll make the river unsafe for decades. Miller's Creek, the old swimming hole, Charlie's fishing spot—it'll all be dead water."

"The floodplain too," Jenkins added quietly. "Three generations of farmers have worked that soil. The contamination will make it impossible to grow anything safe to eat. Thompson's corn, Ricardo's soybeans, old man Miller's pumpkin patch where every kid in town picks their Halloween pumpkin..."

"Better poisoned earth than no earth at all," Daley said, but his voice caught on the words. His family had farmed that land since before the Civil War. Their name was on half the deeds in the valley.

Frank moved to the window, watching the contaminated water swirl past. They'd saved the core, saved the city, saved lives. But they'd wounded the land to do it.

"We'll adapt," Frank said, remembering how the city had rallied after the tornado of '85, after the drought of '95, after every punch nature had thrown their way. But Frank knew his son would never wade in Miller’s Creek and never learn to fish at Charlie’s spot.

The core hadn't melted down, which meant the contamination, while serious, was contained to the flood zone. The city itself would survive—dirty but not dead, wounded but not mortally. The radiation levels would drop over the years, and while the river and floodplain would take decades to heal, the rest of the city could rebuild now, today.

The radio crackled with reports from across the city. Streets underwater, homes lost, lives changed. But as the sun rose over the floodwaters, he saw his people already at work: neighbors helping neighbors, strangers becoming family, the city's heart beating strong despite the water's best efforts to drown it.

There was more work to be done. There was always more work to be done. Through the clearing storm, Frank watched the city emerge from the floodwaters like a mutation learning to survive.

The river had changed. So had the city. So had Frank. They'd learned to let destruction in, to become the thing they feared, and that knowledge would mark them forever.

He picked up the radio, ready to coordinate the recovery efforts—ready to rebuild.

Because that's what the city needed. That's what Isabelle would have understood. That's what his son would inherit—not just a place, but a truth about what it had meant to protect the things he loved, even when it meant becoming something he never wanted to be.