Eye of the Sh*t Storm

by Jackson Ford

  My stomach gives a sickening wrench – technically the bridge collapsing wasn’t my fault, but…

  But it wouldn’t have happened at all if we didn’t steal that meth. And whose idea was that?

  “What’s a flushflood?” Leo asks Nic. Nic ignores him, straightening up, craning his neck to spot an exit from the river. There isn’t one. It’s wall-to-wall flood barriers, because of course it is. Before the quake, the 710-105 interchange was major. It makes sense that the LA City Council would want to protect the areas around it first.

  When you’re raised in Wyoming, you get pretty good at reading the weather, staying out of the creeks and the ravines. Apparently I forgot it after I left the state, mostly because it’s not something you have to worry about while cruising for tacos down Sunset Boulevard.

  We have one thing going for us. Flash floods are scary, but they don’t move all that fast. Ten feet per second is pretty normal, which sounds awful, but isn’t actually that bad.

  “How long?” I ask Annie. “Did they—?”

  She’s gone pale. “Forty-five minutes. Maybe.”

  Well, shit.

  “What happens when the flash gets here?” Leo says, his eyes huge.

  Nic puffs out his cheeks. “Then this whole place is underwater, bud.”

  “But… but what about the people? At the place where everyone was? The camp place?”

  “They know it’s coming,” Nic tells him, “so they’re already getting out of the way.” He points to the groups of people streaming past us. “See?”

  “But where are they gonna go?”

  I’m thinking the same thing. Staring at the group of kids Annie spoke to, at the other people around us. Maybe I can help them. Maybe I can use my PK, bust down one of the flood barriers, clear a path or—

  “Hey.” Annie grabs me by the shoulder, makes me look her in the eyes. “They are not our problem right now. Reggie is our problem. There’s not a thing you can do about no damn flash flood, and it looks like everybody got the message anyway.”

  “But the bridge. Annie, it was us who—”

  “Nope. You didn’t crash us, and you didn’t make the bridge collapse. That’s not on you.”

  I’m about to argue with her, but she’s got a point. The flood will be bad… but it doesn’t look like it’s going to hurt anybody. It’ll wreck the camp under the freeway interchange, cause some damage, but that’s all.

  Reggie’s in danger. As long as the people in the camp hustle, they’re not. Stopping to help… it won’t make any real difference.

  “All right,” I say. “We double back. Find the first gap in the flood barriers, then—”

  “Nah.” Annie points upriver. “We’re going that way.”

  “You literally just told us there’s a giant flash flood coming from that direction.”

  “I think…” She bites her lip. “No, I’m sure. The nearest flood exit to us is actually past the camp. I’m positive.”

  “Then why is everybody else heading away from it?”

  “Beats me. Maybe it’s bottlenecked – too many people trying to get out at once, so folks’re looking for alternatives. Doesn’t make a difference for us though. We go through the camp, pop out the river first chance we get. OK?”

  It sounds crazy. It is crazy. But if Annie’s right, then it gives us more of what we need: time. Time to plan, to maybe scope out the park where the Zigzag Man wants to meet, plan… something better than the shitshow of a strategy we have now. If we double back, who knows how much time we’ll lose?

  “You still want to do this?” Nic says to Leo.

  Leo bites his lip, then nods. “I think so.”

  “All right.” Annie starts walking. Fast. “It’s not far. Let’s move.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  Reggie

  When Reggie opens her eyes, she’s back in Nemila.

  She is sitting in a wooden chair, jagged splinters digging into her legs. Plastic zip ties bind her wrists to the arms of the chair, digging into her skin. Two more at her ankles. There is no other furniture in the room – just a single bulb, hanging from the roof. The room is deep in the basement of the farmhouse, the air stale and still.

  No. It’s not real. It can’t be. We got out.

  But she can taste the air, feel the splinters, the rigid hardness of the chair back digging into her spine.

  I was going to the LA River. I was chasing Teagan. I wasn’t—

  But she’s already turning her head to the right. She doesn’t want to, but she has no choice. And on the wall, just visible beneath the grime: the drawings. Ancient crayon, flowers and boats and castles, something that might be a bird floating free.

  A scream begins to claw its way up Reggie’s throat, moving far too slowly, as if it knows it has all the time in the world. And oh, there are the footsteps outside the door, the heavy boots, the door creaking open, the men bringing jumper cables and fists as heavy as anchors, and the scream is in her mouth now and this time there will be no Moira Tanner coming to save her, not this time, she’s going to die here, she—

  A woman’s voice, calm, speaking almost right next to her. “Clarify.”

  Reggie snaps her head towards the sound, her breath coming in horrified gasps. The door is still opening, slowly, slowly.

  “Rhetoric. Parallel. Window. Prospect.”

  The colours in the drawing are starting to run together, the light from the ceiling bulb flickering and flaring.

  “Triangle. Altitude. Zigzag. Zigzag. Zigzag.”

  For the second time, Reggie gasps, choking awake, her eyes flying open.

  She’s in an open space under a dark night sky, absent of stars. There’s the sense of clouds hanging low, and a very gentle drizzle is falling, the drops almost kissing her skin. Oh God, her head – it aches, throbbing with a sick, horrible pain. And she’s cold, too, her skin prickling and sensitive.

  Grass underneath her. Dry, crackly. She’s desperate to roll over, get her bearings, but her body won’t cooperate. Where’s her chair? Where the hell is she? And what happened to Nemila? She was there, back in that room, the terror as fresh and clean as a scalpel cut.

  “I’m sorry about that,” the woman says. “Sometimes, I don’t even know he’s doing it.”

  Reggie snaps her head to the side. She can’t see the speaker from where she is. Instead there’s a man, sitting cross-legged a few feet away from her. He’s dressed in black, his face almost hidden underneath a gigantic mane of scraggly grey hair. Underneath his beard, his mouth is moving silently. Eyes closed, his head bowed, as if in prayer. His left hand rests on his knee, but the other slumps in the grass at his side.

  The voice comes again, from somewhere behind her head. “I can sit you up, if you’d be more comfortable.”

  The speaker is a woman – the woman who offered to help her, and who (the memory comes reluctantly, as if it doesn’t want to be pulled into the light) stuck something in her neck as they were approaching the slope.

  Comfortable? Reggie has to bite down on the urge to yell at her, to scream. It won’t get anything done – and if she’s sitting up, if she could just see where the hell they are…

  Before she can respond, there are hands under her armpits, pushing her upright. Something with a few soft edges – a pack or bag, maybe? – is pushed under her upper back.

  They’re in a park, on what looks like gentle slope. The slope leads down to a wide expanse of grass – a soccer field, Reggie realises, currently empty. There’s a basketball court beyond it.

  “What the hell did you do to me?” she croaks. “What was that?” There are so many other questions she has, but right now, there’s nothing more important. She was back in Nemila, back in that room, and she knew it was real. How did—?

  The woman sighs. “I can’t control what he makes people see. I can barely control him. I’m glad I caught you when I did – if you stay in the worlds he makes for too long, it’s much harder to get out.”

  She has a soft voice, al
most delicate. “Are you cool enough?” she asks.

  “My – I’m sorry, what?”

  “Your body temperature. I’m aware that differently abled people sometimes have trouble with—”

  “Differently abled?” Reggie snarls. Whatever’s happening right here, she’s not about to let whoever this is pull out that old chestnut. “I’m disabled.”

  “I… apologise. I meant no disrespect.”

  Reggie’s awareness is coming back now, along with a dose of righteous fury. That man – these people – put her back in the worst memory of her entire life. She has no idea how the hell that is possible, but she feels… violated. Unclean.

  “Listen here,” she says, “you plan on putting a blanket on me, you better keep that pretty nose clear, ’less you want it bitten off.”

  “Do you need any water?” the woman says, as if Reggie hadn’t spoken. “The sedative might make you thirsty, I think.”

  Reggie’s throat is a barren wasteland, the headache still blaring in her skull. She yet again tamps down on her anger, grunts an assent. A water bottle is held to her lips, and she sips delicately. It helps, a little.

  She thought the man’s lips were moving silently, but that’s not quite true. He’s whispering to himself, very quietly, and very quickly.

  “Why are we here?” Reggie asks.

  “We won’t be bothered, even when Teagan joins us.”

  Teagan. Reggie closes her eyes, helpless anger flooding through her.”

  Just like that, Reggie remembers the knife. She glances down at her pocket – it’s still there, the handle tenting the fabric ever so slightly. The woman didn’t frisk her, probably didn’t think she needed to.

  Except: there’s no possible way she can find it, slip her fingers into the handle, pull it out and use it – not before the woman takes it away.

  No matter how far Reggie turns her head, she can only catch a glimpse of the woman from the very corner of her eye.

  “This is about the boy?” she asks. “Isn’t it?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Why’d you send him? What is it you’re trying to—?”

  “Send him?” The woman makes an irritated mouth noise. “I didn’t send him anywhere. He wasn’t even supposed to be here.”

  “You’re not doing very well then, are you?” Reggie spits. “This is the second enhanced child you’ve lost in a year.”

  “Enhanced.” Amusement in her voice now. “I suppose you could call us that.”

  Us.

  “In any case,” the woman goes on. “Matthew certainly wasn’t lost. He did exactly what he was supposed to.”

  “What, nearly destroy the whole damn west coast?”

  Another pause, as if the woman is weighing up whether or not she wants to talk to Reggie. “You couldn’t possibly understand.”

  “Try me.”

  “No. I don’t think so. This isn’t a comic book. I’m not just going to explain everything while we wait for Teagan. Especially not to someone who works for the intelligence services.”

  “There is no end,” the man whispers. “Only the black only the walls and halls and lights—”

  Reggie closes her eyes, trying to shut out the insane words. Whoever this woman is, she was planning to make use of the two boys – Matthew Schenke, with his power over the earth, and the boy who can control electricity. More than anything else, what Matthew did caused chaos. It destabilised Los Angeles, fractured it. It changed the status quo.

  She’s trying to do the same to the whole country. She wants to take over.

  But that’s absurd. You couldn’t take over the United States. Even for somebody in command of enhanced individuals, it was too big. Too many people, too many balls you’d have to keep in the air, too much ground to cover. At best, you could hold a small section of it, but even that wouldn’t last long – not when you’d face resistance within and without.

  So what, then?

  Maybe she wasn’t trying to take over. Maybe she was simply trying to destroy, bring the country to its knees. But that didn’t make sense either. What did that even mean? In real terms? The United States isn’t a single thing. It’s towns and cities, people and ideas, scattered across thousands of miles. Trying to destroy it in any meaningful way is pointless – and Reggie has the sense that this woman, whoever she is, would know that.

  Reggie is hurting, but she’s awake now. The pieces whirl in her mind. The two boys. The woman. Teagan. The School. Round and round they go.

  And then just like that: they snap together.

  What was it the woman said? You couldn’t possibly understand. This isn’t about power, or destruction.

  This is about survival.

  “Money,” Reggie says, breathless.

  The woman doesn’t reply. But Reggie could swear she shifts slightly, her clothing rasping against the grass.

  “All of this… you’re doing it for money.” Reggie speaks quickly, trying to keep up with the torrent of thoughts. “What did you do, short the markets before the quake? Invest in construction?” It sounds so boring, so mundane – but what else could it be? “You’re trying to buy your way out. You want people – your people, enhanced people – to be safe. You’re trying to protect them from the government. From everybody.”

  It made sense. If you controlled disasters, if you could make them happen on a whim, you could make incalculable amounts of money. Enough to buy or create a safe haven for any number of enhanced individuals. Reggie doesn’t know what that would look like – it’s almost too big for her to wrap her mind around – but she’s already figuring out the rest.

  “I’m impressed,” Reggie continues, almost spitting out the words. “Money’s one thing, but it only gets you so far, doesn’t it? Sooner or later, the government would find you, and they’d move in. They’d destroy you. Unless, of course, you made it almost impossible for them to do so.”

  All at once, Reggie is back in Afghanistan, tasting the dust and the heat. She doesn’t even need the psychopath in black to get her there – she can see it clearly in her mind.

  There was a term the military used when battling insurgents: asymmetrical warfare. Regiments of trained soldiers with their guns and tanks, powerless against random roadside bombs, RPG attacks, suicide strikes. A war they could never win, because they could never see the enemy.

  What this woman is doing is the ultimate in asymmetrical warfare. How could you fight a war when the consequences of the attack left you completely unable to function? When you couldn’t even be sure that it was an attack at all?

  And that was the genius of it. Sending children with abilities out into the world to wreak havoc was just the kind of thing that would draw unwanted attention… but to everyone else, an earthquake would just be an earthquake, no matter how deadly it was. Reggie had only discovered the existence of Matthew Schenke through a lot of digging, and not a small amount of luck.

  She still has nightmares about what would have happened if she’d let it go, if she’d listened to the rest of China Shop and ignored her instincts. They would have written it off as just an earthquake. And when Cascadia was triggered? The even larger fault line, running up the west coast? Same thing. They wouldn’t ever have known it was an attack at all.

  The woman didn’t need to destroy the United States, or capture it. She just needed to keep it on the back foot, always reacting, unable to respond effectively. Unsure if the attacks even were attacks. She can turn an enhanced individual lose any time she wants, and it’ll make her money. And every time it happens, it becomes even harder to stop her.

  It’s Moira Tanner’s worst nightmare. Everyone’s worst nightmare. If she lets this woman take back the boy, the one who could electrify entire buildings, rain thunderbolts…

  Dear God.

  “I am sorry, by the way,” the woman says.

  Reggie’s voice is cold fury. “There is nothing you could say right now to—”

  “I tried to do this without hurting anybody
,” the woman says, talking over her. “If Leo’s father hadn’t run—”

  “Leo? The boy?”

  “Mm. But he did, and I’m tired of chasing down Teagan and her friends. So I had to bring you in. Don’t worry – if everything goes to plan, we’ll all make it out of here alive.”

  “Alive.” Reggie almost laughs. “That’s rich. How many people did you kill when you sent that boy Matthew to California? He was a monster, you knew he was a monster, and you still turned him loose.”

  Before Reggie can continue, the woman says, “You use that word so freely. I would have thought someone like you would be more… understanding.”

  “What word? Monster? Honey, that little boy hated everything and everyone. All he wanted was to do was burn the world down and spit on the ashes.”

  The woman sighs. “Matthew – Lucas, I should say, that’s his real name, by the way – is…” She pauses. “Complicated.”

  “Wrong. He was—”

  “Is.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Not was. Is. He’s back with us now.”

  Reggie’s heart stops beating. That’s what it feels like. Just frozen cold in her chest. The thought of that… no, goddammit, she will call him a monster. The thought of him still alive is abominable.

  “He’s complicated,” the woman says again. “But he’s also one of us. He’s like me. Like Leo. And like Teagan, although I’m not sure she’d appreciate the comparison. And I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you’d use the word monster after all – it’s what I’d expect from someone who doesn’t have what we have.”

  “Teagan’s no monster.”

  “That she is not,” the woman says, a strangely warm note in her voice. “But she’d be called one, if people knew what she could do. All of us would be. We’d be seen as freaks.”

  The seated man has stopped whispering. He’s humming now, a single tuneless note, almost inaudible. He hasn’t opened his eyes.

  Reggie says, “The people I work for—”

  “Moira Tanner.”

  “So you do know her. Then you know how she operates, and you have to know that she’ll find you. We’ll find you.” Saying the words before she can stop herself, aware that she may no longer be part of the we.