The Lock That Drank the River

It is twenty-six degrees at Lock Nineteen, the rain has turned to sleet, and the river is up eleven inches since Cal Rourke's shift began. Cold water should crawl. This water is climbing, fast enough to roll a whole sycamore past the gates roots-up, and after twelve years on this lock Cal knows every sound it makes. The groan coming from the sluice chamber forty feet below is trouble.

Down there, the walls are furred with frost that branches in spirals around the bolts, as if something crawled out of the metal and crystallized, and it seems to breathe. The heads-up display he has worn since his first day on the job starts showing icons he has never seen: a gate, a wave, a lock. His radio gives him nothing but static and a foghorn on a river with no fog. The gate rolls open on its own, and black water pours in and climbs the walls as if it is looking for something. Cal grabs the emergency chain he was told never to touch. It snaps, and the river takes him through.

He wakes in the dark to the drip of a hundred leaks, in what his hands tell him is a pump station, except that the pipes are far too big and the valve wheels are the size of dinner plates. The breath meter in the corner of his display is draining. He has minutes, not hours, and a new icon has appeared beside the others: an open hand, palm up.

Cal pulls the heavy brass lock-wrench from his belt, the one familiar thing he has left, and says it out loud to the dark: "Alright. Let's figure this out."