Ike victims recall 8-mile slog to higher ground

They walked in silence, concentrating on keeping their footing. Stewart saw snakes slither by, cars submerged, debris — unrecognizable — floating along in the rising waters. At one point, she lost her footing, carried by the current into the side of a car. She grabbed on and found her footing once more. The others helped her get back to the group.

"Whenever someone went down, we grabbed them. Whenever I went down, they grabbed me," she recalled.

At times the water receded, falling to Greenleaf's waist, only to rise again to his chest. The worst was when the battering waves would tower over them. Greenleaf would hoist the little boy high over his head. "Don't be scared," he told him.

For hours they walked on. Finally, just after the sunrise, they arrived at a turn in the highway and saw a police car's flashing lights. At last, dry ground. While the others piled into a waiting helicopter, Greenleaf and Stewart felt confident that they could now borrow a car and drive out. Little did they know that that, too, would prove impossible.

Soon, the water was 5 feet deep on the "dry" side of the peninsula. The two made it to a friend's house, and rode out the storm with nine others, at one point scribbling their personal information on their arms. Stewart managed to cry herself to sleep as the eye of Ike blew over them. Greenleaf stayed up, ensuring no water was seeping into the house.

Saturday morning, once the storm had passed, they heard the whirring of helicopters once again. The Blackhawks landed on the high school football field. This time, Greenleaf and Stewart got a ride.

As they looked out the window at Gilchrist below, they held each other and cried.

"It was all under water," Stewart said, "what used to be Gilchrist — and our lives."

'Nothing there' to go back to
When they arrived at the shelter late Saturday night, they literally had only the clothes on their backs: Greenleaf and his "Got Fish?" baseball cap, and Stewart in her black Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, still soaked. They checked in, ate some food, got some dry clothes and tried to think about what to do next.

"They said it was going to be over a month before anybody had any electricity," Stewart said.

"I guess we'll stay here," Greenleaf said. "We certainly can't go back to where we came from, because there's nothing there."

When others at the shelter started asking about the name and numbers on his arm, Greenleaf simply said he didn't want to talk about it. Then he scrubbed himself clean, hoping to halt the questions.

Stewart washed her arm, but she can't erase the bruises left by her fellow evacuees as they clung to her, saving her from the raging waters.

They recounted their harrowing tale Sunday evening, sitting on folding chairs under a tarp outside the warehouse at Port San Antonio. Now and then other friends approached, telling of news or rumors: A business destroyed and, worse, a man they all called Pee Wee whom they fear didn't make it out alive.

At that news, Stewart fought back tears. Greenleaf simply shook his head in silence. His eyes were streaked red, out of sheer exhaustion. He hadn't slept, he said, since Thursday night. And he wasn't sure when he would again.

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