Climatic Climacteric Omnibus

by L. B. Carter

  Reed explained into the whipped-up hair nest on top of her head, his breath warming her scalp, "You must have just missed it. That truck doesn't have the horsepower that my baby does, of course, but it has the ability to reverse at the very least. Helicopters, not so much. By the time it tried to swing around, the winds got a hold of the rotors and..." He whistled down the scale. "Nose-dive and crash."

  "Anyone alive?"

  "Fuck, woman, you think I checked them before coming to you?"

  Val didn't answer. She didn't need to. That reminded her. "Lindy and Mrs. Juarez?"

  "In my baby, safe and sound."

  The reminder was for her, too. Others were waiting on them. She needed to regroup, get back in control. Those moments of submission had been some of her lowest. She was eager to get back to normal.

  If normal included being enveloped in a Reed hug when she needed it most, that might be an okay adjustment.

  Val steeled herself enough to sit upright, finally seeing Reed's face. He looked worse than when she'd found him passed out with the vandals. His green eyes were devouring as if she were water in this drought.

  Val averted her gaze, taking in the trail of crushed corn the truck had created. Looking around, she realized the crunch before she'd evacuated the truck wasn't from impact with the ground; she'd reversed right into an empty silo. It was half fallen over, and the rubble of a semi-destroyed barn was piled under the truck.

  Behind Reed sat his baby, whole although definitely manhandled, bearing the scars of a rough time, covered in chicken-pox-like dents. Its color was hidden under the dirt smothering its entire body, which prevented Val from seeing Lindy and Mrs. Juarez through the windows, regardless of their tint.

  "You dared allow them inside your baby?"

  Reed's lips quirked on one side. "It was a last resort."

  Val smiled back. "I'm sure you told them not to get used to such luxury."

  The hints of a grin faded, and Reed pushed to a stand.

  "What?" Val asked, following him up.

  "Their house is gone. We're going to have to take them with us."

  Oh. Val understood the tension as he turned away from her, his shoulders rising. His fear was interacting with and impacting civilians' lives.

  "This isn't our fault. In fact, they'd probably be buried in that house if not for you, red shoes and all." She reached out a hand. Her touch first bunched his shoulder blades tighter before they lowered.

  "Trust you to call a woman who just found out her great uncle died and lost her home a witch." His humor was hollow, tepid.

  "Well, she ain't no peach—she wanted to kick us out when we were the ones who needed help, remember?"

  Reed flipped around, a grin hitching up his face. "You're just mad that now there's competition vying for my attention." His brows waggled.

  Val pushed past him, chin held high. "There is no competition." She looped around to the passenger side. "I see your baby is magically running on her less-than-ideal water then?"

  Reed followed, pausing before opening the door. "She's a strong girl, not one to whine petty complaints. Better yet, she's still carrying all the water we snagged."

  Val nodded. "That is good news." She assumed the duffel with the few bottles she'd pulled into the ditch with them was returned to the Jeep.

  Reed's head lifted and lowered sagely. "It is. We can settle the competition." His face was deadpan. "Wet t-shirt contest."

  "That reminds me, I owe you a castration for suggesting that idea to that hick driver that drove past." Val got in the car to hide her smile over the normalcy of their banter. God, it felt great to be alive.

  Reed clambered into his side. "That seems like extreme punishment. How about just some spanking?"

  The chuckle from the backseat was definitely from Mrs. Juarez, not her stick-up-her-ass daughter. There definitely was no competition there.

  "Everyone buckled?" Reed polled. There were a few vocalizations of consent. "Then let's go see what that chopper has to offer. Hopefully some supplies before we head out."

  "What about mi camion?" Lindy demanded.

  "I don't want to split up right now."

  Reed was clearly trying to avoid giving Lindy more reasons to hate them. With the windows blocked, she couldn't see that that truck was in a very sorry state. Val felt that retaining that fact was wise, since she was the one to ding it up. She didn't want to fuel Reed's lewd dreams with a girl-on-girl fight.

  He started the car and shifted it into drive, retracing the pre-made path Val's truck left. It wasn't very straight since she had let Jesus take the wheel.

  "Hopefully, we only find dead bodies, too."

  Mrs. Juarez gave a burble of revulsion at Val's bluntness, and Lindy consoled her in Spanish. Or maybe she was softly cussing out Val. Val's foreign language skills were sorely lacking.

  "Nice," Reed said.

  "What? It's the truth."

  "Yeah, but you didn't have to say it aloud. At least one of us wouldn't have been able to see the carnage. She could've avoided thinking about it."

  "Ignoring death is the best way to never get over it. You just have to embrace it and move on."

  Reed's jaw clenched as he drove. He didn't respond, and they drove the rest of the distance in silence.

  After a short ways, their path intersected another which had the diameter of a swimming pool. It was crisped black and littered with chaotically deposited haphazard bits of debris. Fires smoldered sporadically. They'd soon spread.

  This was the tornado's path. So, it had deviated from pursuing Val at some point during her retreat. She needn't have lain beneath the truck.

  Better safe than sorry. Natural disaster preparedness drills were always a good idea.

  Reed took them along the track both Val and the chasing devil had traversed. Reed's baby, even with the fantastic suspension he boasted, bumped over flotsam in the way.

  Val lowered and raised her window, thereby wiping it clear of some crud. Her mouth parted as they drove past mechanical parts, some billowing smoke. A rotor blade. A portion of a skid. And off to the side, the remains of the big black bird was a mangled mess, tipped on a side. A section was on fire, and the corn nearby was burning. All of the chopper's blades were missing from the top, one she had already seen deposited elsewhere, and the others were likely flung somewhere else in the fields. Maybe into a certain dagger-dick dumbass. What fun alliteration.

  "Maybe there won't be bodies. Might've been tossed out. Or flambéed."

  Reed hissed out a breath. "Real classy."

  Val shrugged, and when he pulled the Jeep up with enough distance to keep his baby cool, Val hopped out and stalked toward the chopper.

  "Hey, wait. Don't get too close," Reed called from behind. He jogged up beside her.

  She didn't slow. That is, not until she saw the bodies she'd been hoping for.

  Reed's cry was louder than her scream of recognition. Both of them sprinted for the wreckage.

  "Nor!" Reed roared again, flopping beside the unconscious form in the grass beside the chopper.

  Val dashed past him to clamber through the open door into the interior. She bypassed the pilot who was clearly dead based on the amount of blood on the cracked windshield and the unnatural angle of his neck.

  But the two bodies strapped unmoving in the seats she quickly checked, pressing her fingers to their throats to feel for a pulse. It was hard to hold her fingers steady enough on their jugular veins to distinguish the faint throbbing.

  Confirming that they were alive was just the first step. They might be vegetables.

  Val almost laughed at the thought. Vegetables. In the old agriculture capital of the country. She really had said goodbye to her sanity. The tornado had swept it far away.

  "Henley! Ace." She tapped their cheeks, wanting to shake them. She didn't know if that would be wise as there was blood, and she couldn't tell where it was coming from.

  Ace groaned and stirred. Thank God. Mom wouldn't kill Val for kill
ing her brother. Dad would've killed himself.

  Her brother's hand immediately shot out, seeking Henley. "Hen," he croaked before he'd even opened his eyes and assessed his own injuries. On the other hand, if he was functioning enough to speak, he wasn't brain dead.

  Val also shifted her attention from her sibling to the woman she suspected was his unlabeled girlfriend.

  She examined her for wounds and major concerns while Ace tried to get her to respond. "Oh, God." Val bit back rising bile making her want to throw up and add to the mess of bodily fluids.

  "What?" Ace demanded, surging forward. His seatbelt prevented him from seeing what Val could. His fingers slipped over the clasp, smearing blood. "What?"

  Val swallowed. "Her hand." She caught Ace's familiar eyes, which were as wide and concerned as they had been the day they'd had to go to the hospital and see their dad's hand. "It's gone."

  "Left or right?" he demanded.

  "What?" Val forgot her urge to hurl. "Why does that matter? It's freaking gone!"

  "Left or right?"

  He was so stubborn and clipped. It wasn't really any different to how he normally spoke, but the expression—the fact that he had one at all—made Valerie answer his inane question.

  He nodded, swallowed, and nodded some more. He twisted his face away from Val to stare down at Henley's face. "That's fine. That one was already gone. She can make another."

  "What do you mean already gone?" Val sat back, pressing her intact hand to her curdling stomach.

  Henley gave a soft moan, and her brow furrowed.

  "Henley? Can you hear me?" When she didn't answer, Ace responded to Val. "She lost that hand as a child. In a forest fire. The forest fire."

  "What?" Val was stunned.

  Ace looked up, his face gentler than she was used to. "I was told to watch over her."

  That was a much more characteristic explanation for why he'd brought her with him from BSTU. Val had assumed it was romantic. "Looks like you were pretty thorough," she quipped. "So she has no hand?" Just like their dad. "I could swear she had two hands this whole trip."

  "Yes. She built herself a new one. It's probably around here somewhere." His face neared Henley, and Val wondered about the comment she'd made. Just how thorough was her brother keeping an eye on this chick? Seemed their relationship had transitioned into romantic now.

  She decided to do as he said and started sorting through all the broken metal for something... hand shaped.

  Given that Henley was from BSTU, it wasn't surprising that she could build herself a prosthetic hand.

  On second thought, this chick was perfect for her nerdy brother.

  "Did you lose your glasses too?" Val called over her shoulder as she searched.

  "Contacts," Ace said distractedly between cooing encouraging words to Henley to wake up.

  "Took you long enough," Valerie grumbled to herself.

  "What?"

  The sharpness of his tone froze Val as she was about to step out of the chopper and explore the bits strewn on the grass for Henley's hand. "Uh. I mean. You were bound to lose them like you did in the corn maze when the drones showed up if you replaced them."

  Ace didn't reply. The click of a seatbelt told her he'd freed himself, and Valerie quickly escaped and trudged over to Reed who was heading toward Val.

  "What did you find?"

  "Henley and... Buster." She almost said Ace. "They're alive. How's Nor?" she asked.

  "He's fine. But we're missing someone Nor says was in the chopper. Unless you found…?"

  "Sirena." Valerie's stomach bottomed out. She'd been thinking that maybe since the returning party had access to a chopper, they'd made it home to her Mom and Sirena was safe.

  But Reed shook his head, and Valerie let out a breath. "Not Sirena? Is she safe? Who else is there?"

  "Old friend of my family's. It's her bird." Her. So not the pilot. Reed ran a hand through his hair and scanned around. He strode off to start prowling the corn, slashing stalks aside as if his arms were machetes.

  Val tried a different area, doing the same thing. Maybe she'd find Henley's hand, too.

  When Reed gave a shout to alert them that he'd discovered something, Val had come across only shards of helicopter metal and fragments of wood that probably belonged to various houses and barns. She ran back. "Reed?"

  "Over here." His voice broke, and she swore, charging faster, giving a wide berth to a patch of flaming stalks flattened by one of the chopper's doors.

  When she broke through another few yards of cornstalks, she almost stumbled right over the body Reed was kneeling beside. It was mangled, bloody and torn. She couldn't identify features or... much else. Reed was bowed over, his face on the corpse's abdomen, and his whole body shook.

  Valerie tensed. She stepped slowly to him and knelt behind. Gently she lay an arm across his shoulders. He crumbled. Tears welled in Valerie's eyes in sympathy. She gave him several minutes of support while he mourned. Then she decided she needed to go check on those who'd survived and find that hand. "I'm sorry, Reed." She rose and stepped back.

  He didn't move. "Don't tell Nor," he whispered. "Let me."

  She nodded then added aloud since he wasn't looking, "Of course."

  Valerie composed herself as she waded back to the destruction.

  "Where's Reed?" Nor called out as soon as she stepped into view.

  "He's, uhh, looking for Henley's hand. He'll be back soon. Just... sit tight." Since he hadn't moved, she imagined he was willing to do that. She should ask him if he was injured. Instead, what leaked from her one-track-mind was, "Did you get Sirena to my—uh, to Buster's contact then since she's not here?"

  Nor shook his head, and Valerie detoured toward him, head tilting in concern. "No?"

  "She's at the port by the seaway. We ran into some... trouble. We need to go rescue her next. Before the fire reaches her." He looked around him. "That's going to be difficult now." His blue eyes pierced Val with blame.

  "I thought you were BSTU." She looked away, guilt whirling in her gut like a miniature version of the tornado she had evaded. "I saw the smoke."

  "Yeah, that's why we're trying to hurry. A forest fire got started, and it jumped the Intercontinental. This place is going to be an inferno soon."

  Val snapped back to Nor, her heavy regret momentarily forgotten. "How the hell did it jump that huge expanse of water?"

  "That you can blame on BSTU. Your mother lined the bridge with a row of cars. All filled with flammable gasoline."

  "And I started the fire."

  Valerie's head jerked up to witness Henley standing in the opening of the chopper with Ace's support, head drooped low. Val knew Henley worked at BSTU, but she hadn't considered that one of her fellow deserters could be a spy, a double-crosser.

  Ace's head shook. "Stop saying that. It was an accident. You were protecting us."

  That shouldn't be the relief it was. Henley was downcast in shame. "Protecting you from what?" Val tried to keep up on all she'd missed after they left the farm.

  "From BSTU. Your mom was accompanied by drones. Henley managed to disable them." There was pride in Ace's voice.

  “For the love of Pete,” Val vented. "You're telling me there's a national crisis. A wildfire spreading across the country. With the bonus help of the freaking fire devil transferring it around and adding to the danger on the public." Mom was going to be pissed having to deal with all that in Val's stead. There was generally a constant stream of disasters these days, but two at once, with the second exacerbating the first? The USGCS had to be a madhouse. There weren't enough funds let alone hands on deck to—

  "And that admitted student, Stewart, collapsed a segment of the bridge," Ace added.

  “For freak’s sake.” Val paced away and back. "This was all supposed to help, not make the state of things worse," she muttered to herself, fists clenching. If people could just do what they were supposed to and let her get things done... "Did mo... Did you find your contact?" she asked Ac
e, hands on her hips. "Do they know about the situation?"

  His head tilted, and he lowered Henley to sit on the edge of the chopper. He stepped out onto the lawn. His dark eyes penetrated her, and she had the impression he was looking through her external facade, her new body. He'd noticed her almost slip just then. And he was already suspicious with her comment about his glasses. She gazed right back. It was strange seeing him without glasses, no matter how many times she'd nagged him to make the switch. His hair had been cut since he left her at the farm, too. He looked older. She'd missed her brother becoming a man while he was stationed in BSTU. She imagined that place pressured you to grow up fast. "You mean mom?"

  The gasp from Nor sent a shock of cold zipping down Valerie's spine, stiffening it, her face stilling, carefully blank though her heart pounded. "What do you mean?"

  Ace shook his head. "I am ashamed at my ignorance. I'm not good at ... people, but it is embarrassing that I did not connect all the similarities. I've been informed—" He glanced behind him at Henley. "—that I tend to have a narrow focus. I'm trying to be more aware of my surroundings, multi-task." His brow furrowed. "You even called me Ace when you first got here."

  Val licked her chapped lips nervously. The rest of the crew was completely silent. She had no freaking clue what to say. She'd never planned out this part. Sure, she'd have revealed herself to her family once she got Sirena back to HQ. Not before she had control again. Not in front of the Stanleys.

  Reed might be out of earshot at the moment. The truth was unraveling, though, and soon she'd be exposed to him, too.

  "What did you do to yourself?" Ace scanned her body, searching for his sister and seeing Jennifer Tate.

  She shrugged. There was no point pretending anymore. "Genetic mutation alteration mumbo jumbo." Her palms lifted. "I don't really know. I'm not the one who spent years at nerd school."