Page 6 of Leveling

Chapter 4

Water dripped, lapped, and splashed up and around. Beckett led Luna down through the stairwell, descending two steps at a time. Luna had a shorter stride, but she easily kept up. She was compact and her legs were used to a workout. She said, “I see what you mean, it’s awfully loud and echoey in here, but also, there’s no noise from the outside. It’s silentandnoisy.”

“I hate it. I would never go in here if I didn’t have to.” He shoved through a door marked floor 118, and entered the cavernous room from before, winding through the office furniture maze, across the expanse of mottled-blue swirl-patterned carpeting, to the bright sunlit opening in the glass.

“Whoa,” Luna shielded her eyes from the sun.

Beckett didn’t look out at the horizon; he knelt and checked the water level first.

Luna watched his investigation. “Want to go for a paddle around the perimeter? See a different perspective?”

“Hmmm? Me? No, I have to get these numbers recorded, with the time. This is...” He shook his head at the tiny scores.

Luna stepped onto her board, unlatched the paddle, and held an end toward him, expectantly.

“I said, I’m not going—”

“Just pull me closer.”

“Oh,” he pulled, bringing Luna, her paddleboard, and the raft to the landing.

Luna tossed him some rope. “Hold this.”

Then she stepped onto the floor and began lifting and pulling the front edge of the paddleboard up and into the space.

“Can I help?” Beckett tried to find a place to grab.

“It’s okay, just hold Boosy’s rope.” She gestured toward the raft with the potted Palm tree. “I got this.”

“Boosy?”

Luna hefted the paddleboard all the way in through the window port and grinned, “Caboose, get it?”

Beckett chuckled, “It’s pretty obvious.”

“I made you laugh, I’m pretty proud of that, actually.”

Luna pulled the paddleboard to a safe place in the middle of the floor, and with hands on her hips said, “Its name is Steve.”

Beckett had no idea if she was joking or not, but either way, Steve, the paddleboard, looked out of place on carpet in the middle of a wrecked office space.

Next she pulled Boosy to the building, removed two boxes, argued with Beckett for a minute about whether he should help or not, decided that he could, as long as he admitted that she could do it on her own, and then they both hauled the raft with the tree, up and onto the floor. She really did need his help, the potted Palm tree was heavy and tilted dangerously requiring at least three hands.

They tugged the raft to the middle of the cavern, the top of the tree brushing the ceiling, and placed it right beside Steve. Luna cocked her head to the side inspecting the tree. The leaves were chopped short.

“Tree doesn’t like land, but I can’t risk him being in the water during another storm; his leaves shredded in the last one.”

“Storm?” Beckett squinted through the port opening toward the horizon.

“Of course, you can’t see it from this direction, but something is brewing on the horizon behind us.”

Beckett asked, “Do you think the water has come up at all?”

“You mean since I’ve been here, two hours?” She checked his face for a sign that he was joking, but no, he was serious.

She said, “Definitely not.”

“What about your family? Do they know—they should come in, right?”

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