Flood Rising (Jenna Flood #1)

On the far side of the highway, treetops rose above the concrete wall, hinting at the ordinary world beyond, and inspiration dawned. She glanced up and saw, directly above her, the green frill of a palm, gently waving above the top of the wall.

The wall appeared insurmountable, a sheer vertical barrier at least twenty feet high, with no handholds. Too bad the mad scientist didn’t give me sticky Spider-Man hands, she thought, but the bitter reminder of her bizarre origin triggered another memory.

You’re smarter, stronger. Hell, there are things you probably don’t even know you’re capable of doing.

She wasn’t a mutant superhero, but she could jump. Really jump. She was the only person in her school who could slam dunk a basketball, an ability that both impressed and repelled boys.

Well, it’s worth a shot.

She scrambled onto the hood of the stalled Mini and then up onto its roof. The surface dimpled under her weight with a faint pop. From this new vantage, the wall didn’t look quite as daunting, but it was still higher than she had ever jumped before.

Never know if I don’t try.

Unbidden, the calculations played out in her head—where to step, the amount of vertical thrust required to get her high enough. She hopped back down onto the hood, pivoted, compressed herself like a spring, and then uncoiled.

In two short seconds, she landed back on the roof, having missed the top of the wall by a foot. Anger welled inside her. So close, she thought, wanting something to punch. Freedom was just a foot beyond her reach.

With an explosion of breath—a kiai shout that was caught away in the wind of passing cars—she leapt skyward again. The semi-rigid fiberglass roof absorbed some of her energy, but there was still more power in her legs than she would have believed possible. She swung her arms up, adding their momentum to the overall effort. This time, her fingertips rose above the top of the wall.

Her hands came down on smooth concrete, but before her weight could fully settle onto them, she brought the soles of her borrowed deck shoes against the vertical surface of the wall and pushed off.

It shouldn’t have worked, but somehow it did. Her fingers hooked over the back edge of the wall and locked in place. Her scrabbling feet fought against the inexorable pull of gravity, and she managed to climb higher still. She got her forearms onto the wall, elbows locking over the top to hold her in place.

There was another surge of pain in her wounded biceps. If she had been hanging from her fingertips, she would have fallen back down, probably breaking a leg or worse in the process, but she did not fall. Instead, she fought through the pain and heaved her upper torso onto the top of the wall.

She pushed herself up, straddling the concrete barrier, hugging it close. To her left, the top of the Mini and the freeway seemed distant, but to her right, the open ground below the highway looked more like the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

Why did I think this was good idea?

The faint chopping sound of the approaching helicopter answered her question.

A long row of tall palm trees rose up alongside the freeway like sentinels, but now they did not look quite as close as before. She chose to trust her instincts and the unrealized potential in her body that had gotten her this far. She had to keep going.

She scooted back until she was under the broad leaves of the nearest palm. She judged the distance to the spindle-straight trunk. Eight feet. It was shorter than her best standing long jump. Of course, she had never attempted a jump from an eight-inch wide strip of concrete, and a sand pit was a lot more forgiving than a tree trunk, but that wouldn’t stop her. Compared to scaling the wall, leaping onto a tree seemed a more doable task.

The hardest part was letting go. She got her feet under her, maintaining contact with the wall, rose to a crouch, and then launched herself across the gap. A low hanging frond slapped her cheek at the top of her arc, and then she fell. Her arms and legs spread wide, and in the instant before contact, she wrapped them around the trunk, hugging it to her. She gripped the cheese-grater rough surface fiercely. When she was sure the fall had ceased, she relaxed her legs and stretched her body toward the ground. Then she squeezed the trunk between her thighs and relaxed her arms, crunching her body into a fetal curl.