They Came With the Rain

by Christopher Coleman

  But Zander’s plan wasn’t perfect. The catastrophe unleased by these amateur chemists seeking their fortunes through the ruination of the lives of others wouldn’t disguise everything. The lack of corpses would be a mystery. Where were the bodies of those who hadn’t perished in the fires? It was a question that any agent worth his salt would be forced to pursue.

  But that question would be one for the criminals to answer, the meth cookers and amateur gangsters. And Deputy Gloria Reynolds was the perfect mark.

  Zander, Tehya and Ouray had staged her house earlier that morning, the moment she left for the station, preparing the various kettles and pots of ingredients that made up the insidious recipe. Hers was the last of six houses they had arranged over the last several days—the first five of which were empty—and though it had taken great effort to clear out the squalid room in the deputy’s home, the three had worked quickly, diligently, and within ninety minutes, the lab was set and ready for detonation.

  Zander had also made the decision to keep Deputy Reynolds alive, imprisoning her during the slaughter in the one place he thought the Arali were unlikely to search. His reasoning for not killing her was that if at least one person from the fictitious meth ring was alive when the police arrived, it would benefit him and his associates in the end. He needed a culprit, someone with authority and connections, and, if possible, a personal life that was shaky and tattered, qualities that would make the story of their drug dealing at least plausible.

  Zander had monitored all five of the Garmella officers over the last six months, and in the end, the choice had come down to the two female deputies, both of whom were single, which, Zander knew, would be essential to staging the home. But the hoarding qualities of Deputy Reynolds separated her from Deputy Nyler, since it suggested not only some level of despair, but mental illness as well, the latter of which would be a valuable characteristic once the officers began their questioning.

  And when the evidence finally led them to the deputy’s house—and her lab—whatever story she told to them would be dismissed as the rantings of a crazy person. They would interrogate her for days about the disappearances of the people in the town, insisting on the name of the drug lord to whom she answered, or perhaps the middleman that connected her with the head of the cartel. And, of course, the deputy would have no answers, since the entire scenario was an invention, a Potemkin village of methamphetamines. In the end, she would be arrested and tried, and then either acquitted, institutionalized, or sentenced to prison, any of which suited Zander just fine.

  But even with all the planning, with all the cover and contingencies for which Zander had prepared, the pieces wouldn’t fit entirely. The investigations into the labs and fires would continue for months, years maybe, and since the site of the impending disaster occurred in the home of the Grieg telescope, even more attention would be paid than usual.

  In the end, however, he doubted any of it would matter. The Arali would stay this time; Zander could almost taste that truth on his tongue. Garmella’s population was too small; the creatures needed more than what the town could provide. Each visit over the last fifty years had seen the Arali increase their consumption, and Zander knew one day—almost certainly this one—the souls of the town wouldn’t quench them, and the Arali would continue their destruction, fighting the draw of solar noon until they were satiated.

  The Arali.

  It had been twelve years since he had given his sin to the beings, and as he recalled the moment now, sitting quietly in the back of the audit truck, he could feel the sense of fear again, the desire. Back then he was young, scared and naïve, and the doubt he’d felt as he stood in front of them—doubt that his offer to them was indeed the prize the god-like beings craved—had been like a large stone lodged in his chest.

  But Zander had always been clever, and just as his plan for the events of this day were meticulous, so too had he planned for that encounter as well. He had insured against the possibility that his spoken sin would be faulty, unsuitable; the bones of his parents were buried still, deep in the earth at the edge of his tribal homeland.

  Zander grieved his mother and father deeply—at the time of the murder and even still—but he never regretted the crimes, not for a single day since their commission. And it wasn’t just because of the reward of this extended life, it was because of the time spent in the presence of the Arali themselves, and his longing to experience them once more.

  And, ultimately, forever.

  He had spent only minutes with the creatures during that first encounter at the far edges of a Siberian town, but every second since still teemed in Zander’ cells like warm bourbon, and even now, with so many years having passed, whenever the thought of confronting them again entered his mind—which occurred several times each day—his mouth filled with his saliva, his brain with dopamine and endorphins.

  “Zander, we’re here.”

  Zander blinked twice and looked to Ouray, and from the middle of the back seat he stared coldly through the windshield at the palatial home of Winston Bell, which sat high on a hill just beyond a cluster of trees in the foreground.

  Zander considered the qualities of the man inside now, and though Zander had every intention of honoring his end of the deal, he doubted Winston Bell would survive the experience. There was a quiet arrogance in the old man, a subtle over-confidence that eclipsed whatever intelligence and desire for life he possessed. And this would be his undoing. Even when a man’s intentions were genuine, Zander knew, there were few in this world who could reach the oily bottom of their souls. For most, such a place was simply to cavernous to find.

  But Zander would escort Winston Bell to the Arali nevertheless, and while the dying man stood before the towering creatures, he would have the opportunity to sell his sins, to purge his evil to the nether creatures in exchange for a life of wellbeing and longevity.

  “Look, Zander,” Tehya barked.

  Zander saw the police cruiser a second after the words left his associate’s mouth, and he instructed Tehya to stop the truck just before it cleared the trees of the property and exposed them on the road.

  “Is it her? The one who stopped us earlier? I knew we should have...” Ouray stopped short of expressing his gruesome wish, not wanting to anger his leader. “She suspected something the moment she saw us on the road. She—”

  “It’s not her,” Zander interrupted. “It’s the sheriff.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I suppose I don’t. Not for certain. But Deputy Nyler seemed to be in quite a hurry. She was almost frantic. And it wasn’t in a rush to get to Winston Bell’s house.” Zander paused, recalling the encounter from earlier, and then he added, “And even if I’m wrong, we were correct not to pursue her.”

  “What?”

  Zander stared out the window now, measuring his next steps as he absently explained himself to his subordinates. “If she called in our stop, which she almost certainly did, and then disappeared moments later, who do you think they would have come looking for?”

  “But then they know we’re here now. In Garmella.”

  Zander shrugged. “The deputy questioned us, and we gave appropriate answers. Answers consistent with our audits. There’s no reason to suspect we had anything to do with what’s happened here today. Even if the officers do make it out alive.”

  Ouray digested Zander’s answers, a shade of doubt in his eyes, and then he said wearily, “The police. They’re all still alive. Why? How?”

  Zander shrugged slightly. “It is the nature of the job in this town. The hours, that is. They left for work before the Arali arrived. This was not unexpected, though I supposed there is a lesson here.” Zander let his mind drift again to future collections, determined not to let whatever morals there were to be gleaned from this day evaporate from his memory. “And we don’t know about the brothers. I suspect we have nothing to worry about where they’re concerned.”

  Ouray stared at Zander, the reverence for his boss’ wisdo
m now glimmering in his eyes. He swallowed. “What do we do, Zander? What do we do now?”

  Zander smiled. “We will see things through as they’ve been planned. This is not a crisis. The police have come to question Mr. Bell, just as they have for most of the last six months. But they won’t find him. Not there. Not if he’s taken the proper precautions.” Zander looked at his watch. “Solar noon is still eighty minutes away. We have time.”

  “But...what if they’ve already finished their collections? What if the Arali have already gone?”

  Zander knew the anxiety Ouray was feeling, as he, himself, had felt it too the day of his only experience with the Arali. The fear that all their work would be wasted. That not only would they fail to discover the full faculties of the creatures, but that they would fail even to witness them at all.

  “They will take the time they have,” Zander answered calmly. “And when they fail to satisfy the full breadth of their cravings, they will advance to the sinkhole before proceeding to the town beyond.” Zander said this last part with no uncertainty, as if he had concrete evidence about how the Arali would behave once the collections were done. “But we made a deal with Winston Bell, and we will honor it as such. He will be given the chance of an offering, granted he arrives by the scheduled time.”

  There were several beats of silence in the truck before Tehya finally spoke. “Do you truly believe it?” she asked, referencing Zander’s claims of the Arali. “How can you know, Zander?”

  Zander gave a crisp stare to Tehya, his eyelids narrow and heavy. “I just know.”

  And he did, if not intellectually, he knew it in his heart. The Arali had become his life’s work. Whereas Tehya and Ouray continued to bask in the history of the creatures, Zander pushed beyond the stories and myths to the science. It was he who had tracked them, had deciphered their patterns and their draw to the telescope (though why they were drawn to the devices he had yet to learn). Tehya and Ouray had recruited him, that was true, but Zander was the tip of the spear now, the one who had embedded them into the Grieg system and devised the plans that had seen this day come to fruition. His associates were the past of the Arali; Zander was the present and the future.

  “What do we do now?” Ouray asked. “Where do we go?”

  Zander gave the question several seconds of consideration and then looked up and said, “Deputy Nyler is expecting us to be at our house by the lake. So let us not disappoint her.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Allie sat in the cruiser, fixated on the front of KD’s Convenience as she focused on her conversation with the sheriff. Maria was feeding Antonio a bottle in the seat beside her, while Josh continued to monitor his mother in the back seat. Deedee was still drifting in and out of sleep, shivering at times, fighting to get her body temperature fully stable.

  Allie wanted to reject Tony Radowski’s theory out of hand, but the notion of the telescope’s role in the calamity rang, if not true exactly, at least interesting. Possible. Winston Bell’s activities over the last several months were odd to be sure, uncharacteristic of someone who had been so reclusive and ordinary for decades. That combined with the fact that the black monsters had arrived in their quiet town, home of one of the biggest telescopes in the world, certainly made for quite the coincidence.

  But Allie had her instructions now—her orders—to drive out to the sinkhole and guide her party down the road to Simonson, which was a little more than nine miles away. The bad news was with the sinkhole spanning the width of the roadway, they had to walk to the next town; the good news was the trek was almost entirely downhill.

  “What was that about the sinkhole?” Josh asked from the back, his voice little more than a whisper.

  “Sheriff ordered us to go there and then walk out of town,” Allie replied without hesitation, matter-of-factly, as if the instruction were a normal part of her daily routine. “He wants us to head down to Simonson on foot. And then send back help.”

  Josh was quiet, and Allie knew he was weighing his mom’s condition and her ability to pull off such a trek.

  “How’s your mom?”

  “I’m okay,” Deedee said, a tone of relief in her voice, as if she’d been through the middle of hell and was now coming out the other side. “Could use a cigarette though.”

  Allie smiled and glanced in the rearview. “Yeah, me too. And a drink.”

  Deedee caught Allie’s eyes and grinned back. “Gotta walk ten miles first though, huh?”

  “Looks that way. Can you do it?”

  “Guess we’re gonna find out.”

  Allie noted a strength in the woman’s voice that she hadn’t heard before, and by the time the group reached the sinkhole several minutes later, Deedee was sitting up straight with her arm around Josh, pulling him tightly to her body.

  Allie nudged aside two of the cones in the blockade with the grill of her car, and then she pulled the cruiser to within five yards or so of the crater. She stared silently past the hole to the slope of the open road beyond, the empty street taunting her with its offering of freedom and escape. “Hang here for a minute,” she said.

  Allie exited the cruiser and walked slowly toward the hole, the stench from earlier hitting her again almost instantly. She studied the scope of the gaping black chasm again, noting that it extended utterly to the cliffside on the right, leaving not an inch of pavement to get by in that direction. To the left of the cavity, where the road dropped off precipitously into the valley, near the spot where Allie originally thought Derek Zamora and Amber Godwin had gone over but now suspected otherwise, the hole had eaten up the entire roadway as well. However, along that same edge, on the opposite side of the guardrail, just before the earth disappeared into a freefall hundreds of feet down, there was a narrow pathway of stone, about the width of a single brick, which looked sturdy and durable, bolstered by the earth, certainly capable of handling the weight of a person. And they would have the guardrail to hold for balance as they made their way the thirty feet or so to the other side. They could do it; Allie had little doubt about it.

  She studied the pathway for several more seconds, calculating and re-calculating, ensuring she hadn’t missed anything in her estimations, and then she walked back to the car and leaned in through the open window of the driver’s door, resting casually on her forearms. She looked to the back seat at Josh and his mom. “You guys ready?”

  Josh and Deedee looked at each other and paused, their eyebrows raised, questioning each other’s readiness. After a few beats, they both nodded in unison.

  “Good. But know this: it’s not going to be the easiest walk you’ve ever taken. There’s space for footing, but you won’t want to let go of the guardrail. And—as always—don’t look down.”

  “Sounds great,” Deedee answered sarcastically.

  Allie looked at Maria. “How ‘bout you, corkscrew?”

  “How?”

  “How what?’”

  “How can I walk that with Antonio? I can’t hold him and the guardrail. What if I fall?”

  “You won’t fall. It’s plenty wide for your tiny feet. And if you want, I’ll walk Antonio over and then come back.”

  Maria paused and stared into Allie’s eyes. “Come back? What do you mean?”

  Allie’s shoulders slumped as she sighed. She hadn’t planned on revealing her intentions just yet, though obviously it wouldn’t have been a secret for much longer. “I’m not going with you. The sheriff was right to send you guys down and get you to safety, but I’m going back. This is my job, and this is my town. There may be others who need help. Those auditors I stopped, for example; I promised I would check on them.”

  “Then I’m going with you!”

  “Maria, you can’t.”

  Maria looked down at her brother and then back to Allie, a tear now hovering on her cheek. She wiped it away. “Antonio isn’t going to live much longer. I can hear it. In his breathing. He’ll die on the way. It’s too far. Too hot.”

  Allie had tried to igno
re it, but she had heard the decline too. Since they’d left the diner, there was a different sound to the baby’s breathing, an arduous wheezing noise coming from his lungs. It was as if his encounter with the creature had debilitated him, drained him of whatever energy he’d been accessing to stay alive this long.

  “And his eyes are starting to roll and get dim. He won’t make it to Simonson.”

  Allie felt defeated. “What do you want me to do, Maria?”

  “Send Josh and his mom, just like you said. But let me help you. I don’t know how, but I can help. I have to.”

  Allie closed her eyes and stood tall, and then she tilted her face to the sky, searching for an answer there, knowing there was none to be found. She looked out again to the sinkhole and beyond, and then back toward the town before focusing once more on the inside of the car and Maria. “Okay, you can come back with me, but you will stay in the car. The whole time. Unless I say otherwise. Got it?”

  Maria nodded and focused again on Antonio, who was coughing now, struggling to breathe.

  Allie waited for a protest from Josh in the back, but none came from the boy, and she silently opened the back door and ushered him and Deedee out, leading them to the place where they would cross from the city limits of Garmella to the freedom of Interstate 91.

  Josh went first as Allie stood at the foot of the walkway and watched the boy make the tightrope walk across the footpath with relative ease, just as she suspected he would.

  Deedee was next, and she, too, despite her recent bout with hypothermia, demonstrated agility across the treacherous route, though Allie could see the white exploding on her knuckles as she gripped the top of the gunmetal guardrail. When she was safely across, she raised her arms high like a victorious prize fighter and then hugged Josh with a visible showing of relief.