Dick McCue, suddenly white, stumbled across the floor and pressed his face to the door.
"Take a look!" he yelled. "That ain't wind!"
Even in the blackness, they could see the river that had been a road outside, the comb of current around the gas pumps, the surging water that lapped at the door.
CHAPTER FIVE
An air watcher, it doesn't matter which one of the thousands he was, stepped from the hospital elevator at the third, and top floor. He went through a door marked NO ADMITTANCE and climbed iron stairs to the roof. It was black and drizzling; he hoped the rain wouldn't get worse, at least not during his tour of duty. He had heard on a news broadcast that west of his area there were cloudbursts.
He was tired from a long day at his appliance store on Broad Street and he was a little sorry he had signed up for this Ground Observer Corps thing, but everybody in Rotary was taking a shift so he felt he had to go along. He threaded his way around the invisible obstacles that studded the hospital roof and groped at the black-out curtain of the shack.
It was dry and bright inside the little cubicle, but somewhat crowded. The man he was relieving yawned, looked at the clock—so he was two minutes late!—and said: "Howdy. Ready to go?"
"Sure. Everything quiet?"
"Yeah. CMA Flight 24 was early and south of their course, so I phoned in for the hell of it. Coffee's hot."