by Ray Garton
“These people wouldn’t have changed,” he continued. “They don’t rehabilitate. They just reproduce.” He released one cold, steely laugh. “These won’t. Now, your boy is with you, and that cunt, that traitor to her own son, is gone. I know it’s harsh, Andy, but it’s the only way to deal with them. I know. My wife was gonna take our kids. She was gonna take ’em away from me. That fucking cunt was gonna take our kids and leave town and divorce me and keep me away from my own fucking flesh and blood.”
His voice was getting tighter and his upper lip began to pull back as he spoke. He was making himself angry.
“She’s been fucking somebody else. Can you believe that? Some other guy, some cocksucker. I don’t know who yet, but I’m gonna find out, and I’m gonna take care of him. But I had to take care of her first. And I did.”
He winked at Andy and suddenly broke into a bright smile.
“Took care of her tonight. That cunt ain’t gonna pull that shit with me, nofuckingsiree. So I know what I’m talking about, Andy. From personal experience. There’s only one way to deal with them, and it’s harsh, but when it has to be done, you’ve just gotta fuckin’ do it.” He turned and headed for the archway. “Let’s go, Andy. Let’s get you and your boy home.”
Andy was afraid his legs would collapse beneath him, but he tried to move with confidence as he followed Ram. He had to keep himself steady, stay calm, and play along until he and Donny got home. Somehow, he would have to signal to Donny to say nothing once Ram was behind the wheel.
As they went out into the storm, he feared for Ram’s wife and children, hoping they were safe. And he feared for Donny, and for himself. Because Ram was clearly insane.
30
“Get it off me!” Corcoran screamed. “Get it off me!”
Fara pressed her back to the wall and watched Corcoran struggle under the angry man punching him in the back of the head. She looked around at the others. No one would move. They were all thinking the same thing, she was certain—that the blood on that crazed man could infect them.
Everyone was frozen in place, in a position that suggested they were trying to back away even farther.
Corcoran struggled and screamed.
Fara thought, I should do something. This is my responsibility. I should help him, but I don’t know how, and I’m afraid, holy shit, I’m so afraid.
All she wanted to do was run from the room, run to her car, and get as far away from Springmeier as possible.
Time seemed to stretch like warm taffy as they stood there and watched that angry, bloody man pound on Corcoran’s head forever and ever.
But only seconds passed, just under three, and the man Emilio called Ollie stepped forward confidently, pulled back his right foot and kicked the bloody man in the ribs. The man grunted and fell off of Corcoran, landing on his side, but he did not let go of him. Ollie stepped over Corcoran’s legs and kicked the man in the back. He cried out in pain and lost his grip on Corcoran.
Ollie nudged Corcoran with his toe and said, “Get up, get up.”
Corcoran crawled on hands and knees away from his attacker, straight toward Fara. He got to his feet and turned around as the bloody man was trying to get up.
Ollie aimed his gun at the man’s head and fired. He dropped flat and stopped moving. Ollie stood there and stared at him for a long time, his back to the others, head down, arms at his sides.
No one moved. Fara, Emilio, Corcoran, Ollie, and his two men—they all stared at the dead body. Fara felt something new in the air, something that hadn’t been there just a moment ago: dread.
A life had just ended in front of them because of all this, and suddenly, it became real, the scope of the threat became real, and they were all in great danger.
Ollie turned around and locked a withering gaze onto Fara, then Corcoran.
“I knew that man,” he said in a quiet, trembling voice. “Killing him has not put me in a good mood, so I don’t want any shit from you two. You got some kind of antidote to this?”
Corcoran did not seem to notice Ollie. He continued to stare at the dead body. His lower lip trembled and his eyebrows pressed together above wide eyes.
“No,” Fara said.
Ollie squinted at Corcoran as he approached them slowly. “The hell’s wrong with him. Is he sick?” He looked at Fara. “Does it kick in this fast?”
“I’m sure it’s drugs.”
“Drugs?” Ollie’s eyes were disbelieving. “What kind of drugs?”
“Who knows. Pills, cocaine.”
“He’s been running this place on drugs?”
“I’m afraid so.”
The quivering in Corcoran’s lower lip spread over his face and he appeared to be near tears. He was shaking all over as he continued staring at the dead body.
Ollie turned to Corcoran. “How many are there?”
Corcoran’s head began to turn back and forth, slowly at first, but steadily faster.
To Fara: “Do you know? How many of these test subjects are there?”
“I’m not sure. At least a dozen, but beyond that, I don’t know.” She turned to Corcoran. “Dr. Corcoran, you need to snap out of it,” she said firmly. She stepped in front of him, closed her fists on his scrub shirt, and shook him, saying, “Goddammit, snap out of it!”
Corcoran pushed her away limply, turned and staggered to the couch, where he dropped down into a slumped position, a look of pain and terror on his face.
“A dozen upstairs,” he said, his voice a croak.
“What about the survivors?” Fara said.
He looked as if speaking were painful. “Nine.”
“Where are they? Where are you keeping them?”
“The subbasement.”
“How did you get them down there?”
“I . . . had help.”
“Who? Who else knows about them?”
“Just . . . Holly. And Caleb.”
“Tell me something, Ollie,” Fara said. He flinched at her use of his name, but she ignored it. “Do we have any security team left?”
“They were very aggressive, and we were very determined. There may be some still alive, but they aren’t functioning.”
“Then this is going to be up to you and your guys.”
“What is?”
“We can’t let those people get out of the building. They are going to be angry and violent and irrational.”
“Those are the people we came here to help.”
“Yes, well, that wasn’t a very good idea, was it? Now you’re going to have to help everybody else by finding them and killing them. Maybe next time you want to raid a facility like this, you’ll give it some thought first.”
Ollie’s eyes stared icy daggers at her for a moment. He said, “I need to borrow somebody’s cell phone. I lost mine upstairs.”
Fara took her purse from the couch, got her phone out of it, and handed it to Ollie. He took it and punched in a number, then turned away from her.
“You hearing that storm out there?” Emilio whispered to her.
She listened for a moment. The wind roared outside the walls like an army of banshees. She heard the faint crash and clatter of things blowing around outside, slamming into the building.
“I think Quentin has arrived,” Emilio said.
Ollie finished his call and said to Fara, “I’m gonna have to keep this phone while I’m here.”
She nodded.
“Are the only exits in the rear?”
“Yes,” she said. “Everything is locked up pretty tight except for the entrance and one emergency exit in the rear.”
“Okay, I got a couple of men on that.” He turned to the two masked men, waved toward the door, and started to lead them out. He stopped and turned to Fara and Corcoran, mouth open to speak, but an explosion went off somewhere in the hospital. Everything shook and the explosion dissolved into the sound of heavy things collapsing, sounds of destruction and collapse.
After that, the storm somehow became louder.
Hurricane Quentin arrived on the northern California coast at 9:14 p.m., more than thirteen hours earlier than originally forecast. The storm already in progress suddenly became infused with malicious intent as its strength doubled, then tripled as Hurricane Quentin roared into Eureka like a demon. Trees bowed to it, and some snapped and went down forever under its force.
The Pacific Ocean seemed to take notice of Humboldt County for the first time in recent memory and rushed in to see what these industrious upstarts were up to, do a little damage, put them in their place.
The community of Samoa, in the northern peninsula of Humboldt Bay, was a collection of residential neighborhoods, with houses lined up in neat rows on clean streets. The hurricane slammed into them like the tantrum of a god. Fences were ripped out of yards and sent cartwheeling through the air. Trees were toppled and sent into empty, evacuated living rooms and bedrooms and kitchens. Tool sheds and pool houses were flattened. Lawn furniture and garbage cans that had not been put away traveled through the air like missiles.
The vast, barn-red Samoa Cookhouse—the only authentic cookhouse remaining in the West, which had fed the workers from the Hammond Lumber Company at the beginning of the twentieth century and now fed hungry tourists who belched their eggs-and-sausage breakfasts as they wandered through the historic museum and gift shop after eating—was flooded by the storm surge, and the wind tore off great segments of its peaked roof, flinging them into the night.
When the old man staggered through the front door, shouting, and firing his gun, Latrice turned and hurried back the way she’d come. As she put the living room behind her, she glanced at the love seat to see Jada still curled up on her side. Latrice found herself in the kitchen again, with Rosie scurrying in behind her, moving in short, staccato steps, her head down, as if she were ducking bullets.
“You said there are kids in here somewhere?” Latrice said.
“They’re in their rooms playing games.”
“Well, Jesus Christ, girl, who’s taking care of them?”
“They won’t come out. They know better.”
“Fuck, what kind of people are you?” she said as she rummaged in her purse for her phone.
There were two more gunshots in the living room and a lot of shouting.
Latrice held her phone in a shaking hand as she pressed three buttons.
“Who you callin’?” Rosie said.
“The police.”
Rosie’s gasp was loud as she lunged toward Latrice and reached with both splayed hands for her phone. Latrice stepped backwards, but Rosie’s hands latched on to the phone, one on each side.
“No, you can’t do that!” she hissed. “Giff’ll be so pissed ! Don’t call the cops, Latrice, please!”
As she pleaded with Latrice, she tried to pull the phone from her hand.
Another gunshot exploded in the other room.
A man screamed, “No, goddammit!”
A deranged cackle rose and fell a few times.
Another gunshot.
Latrice feared the old man would run out of people to shoot and come in here.
“Let go of the phone or I will fucking deck you,” Latrice said, her voice surprisingly calm as she struggled with Rosie.
“No no no, you can’t he’ll be so mad please don’t—”
She heard more screaming from the living room, a man shouting, “Jesus, no, get him off me, get him off me!”
Adrenaline surged through Latrice and made her ears ring and her own terror overwhelmed her desire not to hurt Rosie. She punched her in the face.
Rosie immediately stopped talking and collapsed to the floor like a skinny, multijointed marionette whose strings had been cut, limbs splayed, eye patch askew.
When Latrice put the phone to her ear, a woman was already saying, “—your emergency, please? Hello? Is someone there?”
“Hello, yes, I’m here. I need help. I’m trapped in a house where some guy has gone crazy and is shooting people.”
“Where are you?”
Latrice had memorized the address on the drive up and recited it.
“Who’s shooting?”
“I don’t know, some old man who—”
Another gunshot startled Latrice so badly that she almost dropped the phone.
“Is that more gunfire?” the dispatcher said.
“Yes. I’m in the kitchen, he’s in the living room.”
The dispatcher didn’t say anything for a moment and Latrice heard silence in the other room.
The voice said, “I’ll have someone there in—”
He came through the doorway, his dark clothes soaked, his face and bald head bloody, holding the gun in both hands, arms outstretched, elbows locked, and he ran toward Latrice shrieking.
It slammed into Old Town and wailed down its narrow streets and alleys. Shingles leapt from the roofs of the shops and two of the decorative, sculpted trees planted along the sidewalk did a dance down Second Street, bobbing and tumbling.
The Carson Mansion, constructed in 1886 by lumber baron William Carson for his wife, Sarah, stood in Old Town like an enormous Queen Anne music box, emerald green and intricate in its baroque design, ready at any moment to become animated as it played its delicate, tinkling tune. In a town filled with cakelike Victorian mansions, this one was considered to be one of the most grand in the world.
The wind tore at it like a thousand talons, ripping and scratching and pounding, clawing at shingles and slats and eaves and ornate pieces of carved wood, slashing pieces from the extravagant old house and sending them flying into the storm like pieces of old dead skin sloughing off. Finally, a segment of the roof lifted up like a great mouth opening until the top part was sheared away by the wind and tumbled into the night.
While the wind assaulted the old house, the ocean surged into the bay, attacking the marina, sending docked boats slamming into piers and each other. Water rushed up over the land and flooded First Street, then covered the green grounds around the mansion, gushing through the bars of the wrought-iron fence and washing away the sign that identified the mansion as the headquarters of the Ingomar Club, before rushing the house itself and splashing against its green walls.
Andy had insisted that Donny put on his seat belt because Ram was driving much too fast for the weather, which rapidly grew worse. He watched Ram carefully through the Plexiglas divider and tried to determine where they were going. It would be a mistake, he thought, to assume Ram was taking them home. He had no idea where they were going, and he was afraid to ask, afraid to do anything that might divert Ram’s attention from driving.
Every time a voice crackled over Ram’s radio, he tipped his head toward it and listened, and when the voice stopped, he held his head upright again. He did not appear to be a man who had just killed a room full of people. He seemed to be in thought as he drove, sometimes frowning, but relaxed and calm.
Donny whispered nervously, “Dad, where we going?”
Andy touched a vertical finger to his lips. He especially didn’t want Donny to get Ram’s attention.
Outside, the storm was on a rampage. As they drove through the residential neighborhood, Andy saw shingles and pieces of siding flying off of houses on both sides of the street while trees were bent and twisted by the storm
Ram slammed on the brakes when a mailbox, still attached to its post, tumbled into the street and clattered and banged to the opposite sidewalk, crashing into a house.
Andy was afraid they were in more danger from Ram’s driving than from Ram himself. He didn’t want to speak to him, but he feared Ram was so lost in thought that he wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing.
“Uh, Ram, I think the hurricane has arrived,” he said.
Ram glanced at Andy in the rearview mirror and barked a single laugh. “Yeah, sure looks like it, huh?” He was friendly, jovial, and relaxed, with a smile Andy could see in his reflected eyes.
“Where, uh, where are we going, Ram?”
“We
ll, I was thinking. Maybe you and your boy oughtta come to my house. I got a basement, you know. We can go down there and sit it out. I got a TV down there, too. And a generator, of course.”
Andy was painfully aware that Ram’s references to the house made it sound like he lived alone now. And after what he’d said about his wife earlier, Andy thought he might. But he found himself wondering if Ram’s wife was still in the house somewhere, and what had happened to his children.
“Well, Ram, that sounds great, and I really appreciate the offer, but I need to get home. I, uh, have to take some medication. It’s a nightly thing.”
Ram frowned in the mirror. “You sick?”
“No, I’m not sick. But I will be if I don’t take the medication.”
“Oh, I see. Well . . . yeah, sure. I can take you—”
There was a burst of chatter from the radio and Ram stopped talking, inclined his head, and listened.
Andy caught a word here, a number there, but other than that, he couldn’t understand what the dispatcher was saying.
The radio fell silent and a moment later, Ram barked that single laugh again and said, “Well, hot damn, that’s the Clancy place! Sounds like maybe Giff’s having some problems tonight. And we’re really close.”
Ram suddenly took a sharp left turn and increased his speed. He hit a button and red and blue light began to dance in the darkness in a swirling pattern around the car as it drove through the night.
“You two just sit tight,” Ram said. “I gotta take this call. You two stay in the car and you’ll be fine, okay?”
Andy turned to Donny, who looked afraid. Andy knew exactly how he felt. He could not believe Ram was taking them on a call. He really had lost his mind. But Andy said nothing.
When he got no response, Ram shouted at the top of his lungs, “Okay?” It was a sharp, piercing sound in the small space and it made Andy’s ears ring.
“Sure, Ram, sure, okay,” Andy said quickly, because there was nothing else he could say, nothing else he could do. Like it or not, he and Donny were in Ram’s hands.