Read Strum Again? Book Three of the Songkiller Saga for Free Online

personal,
very close, and the air grew suddenly wet.
    Like an attacking army, an enormous wall of
gleaming water swept down the riverbed from the west, driving a
mist of dust before it while lightning lit the way.
    "Flash flood!" Willie cried, as if she
hadn't noticed.
    Juli turned and ran, as did the rest,
scrambling across the sand and up the nearest high spot while the
water rolled like a locomotive past their backs and instantly
dispatched waves to nip at their heels.
    When at last she stopped, panting, at the
top of a bluff that was now pretty much an island, she saw that
everyone else had made it to safety as well. In fact, they were all
but standing on top of each other as they watched the water eat up
the dry land. The former bank was obliterated, water surging for
what seemed like miles of flat land.
    The ghost, the snakes, and every vestige of
the landscape they'd just been looking at had utterly vanished.
     
    * * *
     
    By morning the sky to the west was so clear
it looked as if rain had never even crossed its mind. While the
musicians slept, the flood waters raced out to the Gulf of Mexico.
Just before dawn the river—while still full of water—was no deeper
or wider than it had been before the flood. The sun even baked the
ground dry again before everybody was fully awake.
    "That's amazing," Terry said. "It's like it
never happened—one moment the river's a torrent—"
    "And the next minute it's going like, 'What,
me? Flood?' " Dan said. "Weird."
    "That's why they call 'em flash floods,"
Willie said. "At least it washed the snakes away."
    "If it hadn't been for the ghost, we'd have
been snakebit and drowned," Brose said, shuddering. "I guess if
folk music is dead, ghosts must figure dead stuff gotta stick
together. Spooks sure have saved our bacon more than once."
    "Maybe the other side is overcrowded," Juli
said, smiling wanly.
    "It'd be crowded with our asses if that redheaded devil's
buddies had anything to say about it," Brose growled.
    "Well, it looks calm enough now, and
there'll be federales sniffin' around to see what washed up pretty
soon. Anybody want to go wadin'?" And before anyone could answer,
he waded into the river, jeans, boots, and all—just in case there
were some snakes left—carrying the banjo high over his head the way
a soldier carries his gun when similarly fording. The banjo
accommodatingly played "Wade in the Water," and Willie, who was
trying awfully hard not to
think about the snakes from the night before, sang in breathy
snatches, "Wade in the water, children, / Wade in the water. /
God's gonna trouble the water."
    Julianne plowed into the water behind him,
her long batik skirt kilted to the waist, her running shoes tied
together by their laces around her neck, and a knapsack slung
across her shoulders.
    She took up the verse, "Look at those
children / Dressed in red—" and Willie and the others sang, "Wade
in the water."
    "They must have been the children Lazarus
led," she continued, improvising on the biblical figure,
substituting the name of the banjo for Moses.
    As Brose followed, he sang, "Look at those
children dressed in black," and the others sang, "Wade in the
water."
    "They flew away, now they wadin' back."
    Willie felt like a kid sneakin' back
home after a night out that he didn't particularly want his folks
to know about. On the other side of the river was home—the ranch he
had visited throughout his childhood and youth, where his father
had once worked as foreman, where he himself had worked after he
tried to quit music. Seven years ago he would never have
imagined he'd be a wetback
making a clandestine crossing. Hell's bells, he was an American
citizen—they all were except Terry Pruitt. They were all beginning
to realize what fragile protection their citizenship was when the
right people had been bought and paid for.
    Now here he was, here they all were, singing
any old song that came into their heads while trying to evade the
authorities at a remote spot along