End Game (Calm Act Book 1)

by Ginger Booth

  Delivered from the power of the waves, we were now in the wind’s hands. Without Adam to hold onto, I was too light to withstand that, either. The sustained winds were now at Category 1 hurricane force, with gusts far stronger. One of those gusts hit us at the tree, and Adam crushed me between him and the trunk while he held on. As the gust subsided to merely unbearable wind again, he yelled into my ear, “You alright?”

  “I’m good,” I assured him. “Need a breather.”

  “Ten seconds for a breather,” he agreed. “We need to reach more shelter. Ready… now!”

  Oh, I hated him then. I had not gotten my breath back, and the wind ripped it away. My chest was burning, and one of my boots had sucked half-off my heel. I couldn’t stop to ram my foot back in, and we were still running through standing water several inches deep, alternating with slick muddy lawns. I’m nobody’s pansy, but I was sobbing. Being in the power of the storm was bad enough, but I was entirely at Adam’s mercy as well. And the damned man wasn’t about to consult me. I was far too afraid to be fair at this point.

  Adam dragged me along down his street, and up a side street leading uphill away from the beach. He finally yanked us to a stop several houses up the side street, dragging me down to crouch under a retaining wall between lawns.

  “How are you holding up?” he yelled.

  “I hate you!” I reported. I shoved my foot firmly back into my boot. The laces were too wet to tighten them. I was still gasping for air. He had picked us a good spot, though. We were just enough sheltered from the worst of the wind to get our own wind back without having it torn away from us.

  “Good. Use that anger,” he advised. He was too tanked up on adrenaline to take it personally. “I don’t know if you noticed, but the looters painted us with a flashlight a couple times. We need to catch our breath and start running again.”

  “Maybe one of these nice houses?”

  “Not with looters hunting us. It’s only one more block to the car, Dee. You can do it. Ten more seconds for a breather… Now.”

  So we ran uphill, buffeted by the vicious wind. There were cars on the street, that wouldn’t have been there if anyone expected a hurricane. But they provided some shelter to run past at a crouch. I saw the flashlights of the looters zip past us, and Adam checked behind his shoulder a number of times. But the way he held me and kept dragging me along, I couldn’t get a good look. I never heard any shots fired, as the wind tore the sound away. I did see a windshield explode in front of us from a gunshot behind us, though. It provided an extra spurt of motivation.

  We dove into the car. Adam starting it rolling before I even got my door closed. A looter leapt out into the street in front of us, aiming a rifle. Adam scowled and gunned the car straight at him. The looter jumped out of the way instead of firing. Adam turned one way, then the next, weaving us out of the tiny streets filled with fallen branches at hair-raising speed, until he got us out to the wide open north-south four lane main drag in that part of town. He headed straight up the middle, straddling the yellow lines, doing about 30, away from the beach.

  There was no other traffic. I almost complained, but one look at Adam’s face dissuaded me. He was entirely focused on his driving, struggling to counteract the wind buffeting the car and dodge debris in the road. We passed the southern turn toward Totoket and kept going for Route 1. I didn’t second-guess him. Those roads had downed power lines when we were through there over an hour ago. They were narrow and windy, hemmed in with trees, and the route included some low places near the Sound. On our current road or Route 1, even if a tree fell, there’d still be room left to get around it.

  Thankfully, there were no suicidal storm-happy looters up by Route 1. Adam pulled up to the barricade right behind Zack’s landscaping truck. Headlights and repeated honking eventually got through to Zack, who was in fact sitting in the cab of his truck. Judging from the under-chin glow, he’d been reading a book to pass the time. Zack shook his head at us through his rear window.

  Adam turned on the inside car lights to show us, flashed the head-lights, and honked at Zack.

  Zack held hands up facing each other, one above the other, spaced as far apart as the rear window allowed. He shook his head emphatically.

  “Adam, he’s trying to tell us something,” I attempted.

  “I’m not parking here, Dee,” Adam insisted. He honked and flashed headlights again.

  Zack reluctantly moved his truck just barely out of the way to let us through, flipped Adam the bird as we passed, then reversed his truck back into the barricade.

  “Stop!” I screeched, as Adam sped up to climb Route 1 to my house. It was mostly uphill, but there was that low point first. Adam stopped. We gazed at the reservoir, which now overflowed its bank into this low point, laying a sheet of water right across Route 1. I added, “That’s what Zack was trying to tell us. The water’s too deep. We can’t get up the hill this way.”

  Adam nodded. He closed his eyes and laid his head back on the seat, and just breathed raggedly for a bit. I didn’t interrupt him. The thudding of my heart was finally quieting down. Having time to chill out and breathe, be one with the storm outside the strong safe windows, was actually kind of nice. The wind bounced the car a bit, but didn’t move it. Of course, the wind couldn’t get underneath, since we were parked in about 6 inches of water.

  After a few minutes, Adam’s breathing smoothed out, and he roused. “Dee… I’m sorry. Are you OK?” he said quietly.

  “Yeah. Apology accepted.”

  “We can’t sit here. The worst of the storm isn’t even here yet, and this lake is growing. We can go back and park near Zack. Do you have any better ideas?”

  That plan was exactly what I’d been thinking. I was just biting my lip to give him time to calm down before broaching the subject. “Sorry, no. I think Zack is the best option.”

  So the three of us spent New Year’s Eve together. The eye of the hurricane passed us around midnight. We reluctantly got out of our vehicles and shook hands and exchanged hugs. God, that was awkward. A couple other guys were camping out there, too, manning the barricade. But they stayed in their separate vehicles.

  We were all asleep by the time the storm died out.

  Chapter 14

  Interesting fact: Global Jihad began as an alliance between Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIL in Syria and Iraq, the Islamic Jihad Union, Caliphate State, and other terrorist groups. When the U.S. withdrew its troops and oil dollars from the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Iran backed the movement. National borders became fluid between the Mediterranean and Red Sea to the west, and China and India to the east. Russian-backed Turkey and Kazakhstan held fast against them in the north. Large Muslim populations in Africa and Europe rallied to the cause. Global Jihad formed a chaotic pseudo-nation of over 400 million Muslims. Their goal was to unite the entire world under Islam and Sharia law. Sectarian and tribal differences were downplayed in favor of united recruitment. Jordan and Israel were simply overrun.

  Zack was gone when we woke up in Adam’s car at the Route 1 barricade. We were hungry and still sopping wet, and didn’t know what we’d find at Adam’s beach house. I insisted Adam take me to my house, and stay to get fed and clean and dry.

  There were downed boughs in the neighborhood, already being cleared by neighbors, and minor damage here and there, like missing shutters and bits of roof flapping loose. But for the most part my neighborhood and my house seemed to have weathered the storm OK. Without leaves to catch the high winds, trees don’t take as much hurricane damage in winter as they do in summer. The rain had stopped for the first time in days. There was still high cloud cover, rapidly breaking apart into scudding smaller clouds. The sun would be out soon.

  Adam kept his ark locker in the trunk of the car, so he had his own dry clothes to change into. I dumped our salt-sodden New Year’s Eve steampunk finery into the washing machine to wait for the power to come back. After taking showers in our separate bathrooms, we met over plain cereal and hot tea for
a subdued breakfast.

  There was no romance at all that morning. But simple kindness would do.

  “After breakfast,” I said, “let’s check out your house.”

  “You don’t need to do that,” Adam murmured.

  “How long have you had it?”

  “Three years, four in May.” He played with his tea mug a moment. “When my mother… died… She came from money. Dad invested it for us, my brother and me. Dad refused to touch it for college or anything – he wanted to pay for everything we needed. Every year, we’d have a talk about managing money, and how our portfolios were doing. The annual money management lecture.” He laughed softly. “It’s what Dad does. He manages investments for people. And he taught us. When I turned 30, he suggested it was time. I should buy a house or start a business or something. So I did.” He swallowed.

  “I’d wondered how much money an arkitect makes, to afford a house like that.”

  He snorted. “Not much more than a programmer, I imagine. But without a mortgage, so it’s almost all disposable income – it’s a lot.”

  “Yeah. Do you mind my asking, how did your mother die?”

  “An overdose. She was a party girl… I don’t remember her. I was only a year old when she died. My brother remembers her, but Dad and I don’t talk about her. I was about ten when Dad was willing to open up again, and started seeing my stepmother. She’s good for Dad. I like her. And my sister is cute.” He smiled bravely.

  “Sounds pretty rough. I’m sorry.”

  “No. No way.” He shook his head vehemently. “I’m not a poor little rich boy, Dee. I went to school with them for years. Yeah, sure, we had nannies. They were good ones, usually grad students. We still keep in touch with them. But Dad was home nearly every night. He checked our homework, made it to our sailing regattas and lacrosse games and wrestling matches and stupid school plays. The three of us worked together on our yacht most weekends, or robotics projects, or the cars. We sailed together, and took long vacations together every year. My brother and I went to off to boarding school at seventh grade. But Dad drove us there, drove us back, called twice a week, never missed an event that parents were invited to, never delegated parenting to my stepmom. I had a great family, Dee.”

  I smiled. “Sounds like it.”

  He gazed at me for a moment. “But yeah. The beach house is all I have of my Mom. And I’ve never known what to do with… that.”

  “Keep it light. Keep it fun. Avoid the drugs and alcohol and self-pity like the poor little rich girls, maybe.”

  “Yeah.” He played with his tea mug a while more. “I’ve been kind of an ass, last night. I’m sorry. But, um, I need to move onto the ark.”

  “Now?” I didn’t have any particular excuse for being surprised. But I was. And yes, he’d been kind of an ass. And that made perfect sense now.

  “Yeah. Tonight. I spoke to my boss while you were in the shower. So. Anything you want at the house, it’s yours. This may be the last time I go back there.” He winced. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “I don’t think you should do it alone. So, yes. I want to be there for you.” His father and brother couldn’t be there for him, not this time. Given what he’d said, that must have been horribly strange.

  “Thank you,” he said quietly.

  As we drove back to his house, several blocks up from the beach, we reached a grizzly new display. Three young black men hung from a tree, and a mixed racial handful of bodies were thrown over a white picket fence. Several guys were still working on stringing them up with rope for show. A detached garage door was tacked up against the next tree, with red letters a foot tall, ‘LOOTERS BEWARE.’

  I’d never seen dead bodies before, except peacefully arrayed in a funeral home. But I didn’t have any sympathy for these dead. Part of me was revolted, shocked. Another part thought, ‘Good.’

  Adam slowed in shock to take a look, and a guy with a gun flagged him to stop. Adam presented proof of residency in the neighborhood. We were waved on our way.

  Adam weaved us through the same streets we’d used last night, and parked on the same uphill street we’d run up during the hurricane, a few feet above the sand and seaweed line. I didn’t say much as we walked down to Adam’s street.

  The house at the base of the street, on the beach, was tilted 20 degrees off the vertical. Adam walked slowly through the sand on the road, staring, as other broken beach houses came into view. One to the left had a crushed front pylon. It looked as though once that corner of house sagged into the oncoming waves, the house had shattered across the street. He was staring at the debris field when his own house came into view in the other direction.

  “Adam, yours is still standing,” I murmured, touching his arm.

  He looked, nodded, and blew out through his lips. The houses on either side looked bad. One was laid open across the front. The other had half its roof off, and storm shutters hanging and banging in the fresh fishy breeze. The sun came and went rapidly as clouds tore across the sky.

  Adam’s street was still half-flooded, and he wanted to see everything from the beach side, anyway. We walked through the deep sand on a neighbor’s lawn out onto the beach. There were a couple of houses laid open across the front. Living rooms and kitchens and bedrooms sat open to the Sound, soggy furniture tossed about a little, looking like broken doll-houses. The beach had eroded several feet, leaving us to walk more on rock than sand. White-topped high waves continued to roll in. But the tide was out, so we had some room between sea and houses, even with the beach so eroded.

  Adam studied the first couple structural failures with an engineer’s eye, seemingly reluctant to continue on to his own house. I walked on ahead to see. The gorgeous wrap-around deck was broken and sagging down to the sand. There was no visible grass left on the lawn. Beach sand washed through under the house, to the storage garage and street in back. But the storm shutters appeared intact, and the thick stubby pylons. Their burlap wrappings had come unwound, and one pylon had a big concrete chunk bitten out of it, showing the rusty steel rods of its core. But they still looked sound. There was a lot of wreckage in the carport area under the house. The pretty wooden latticework that went around the carport was simply gone, probably washed away.

  Adam finally joined me. I put my arm around him, and he hugged me back. There was no question of using the outdoor steps up to the broken deck, so we headed around back toward the enclosed utility staircase.

  Adam yanked me to a halt and stared at the storm wrack in his carport. He swallowed and made a phone call. “Yeah, this is Adam Lacey. I, um, have another body for your looter display. Could you come pick it up, or should I just… leave it here? Thanks.” I hadn’t spotted the body, half-covered in sand. It was tangled in a broken stretch of steps from the deck. A hand still clutched a half-buried assault rifle. It didn’t seem real.

  I squeezed Adam’s waist again. He skipped the stairs and headed directly to the storage garage. The wide roll-up car door was badly dented, and he couldn’t get it open by just yanking at it. But the structure had a side door. He found a length of fence pipe inside and used that to pry open the big door.

  “The spare Tesla battery is in here, and my generator. You’ll want those?”

  “Yes, thank you. But Adam, don’t you want to look in the house first?”

  “The gas and power turn-offs are back here. I think I’d rather shut those off before going inside.”

  “Aha. Yes. That.” Now that he mentioned it, I did smell gas. “Though… it looks OK.”

  Adam shrugged. He pulled a couple suitcases with wheels out of the neat but tightly packed shelves of the garage, where they’d sat safely above the high water line. Then he went back in to grab a toolbox and add a few extra tools to it. Last out came a sodden four-wheel dolly, the kind you lay on to scoot under a car to work on it, plus a generously sized hand-truck, and a tidy bucket of bungee cords. “Want some camping gear?” he asked.

  “Sure!”

 
; Best quality tent kits, in two sizes, a gazebo, a couple cots and air mattresses, electric and manual air pumps, and sleeping bags piled onto the dolly. “I’ll get more out later. But I’ve stalled enough. Let’s go inside.” He brought the toolbox with him, and a suitcase. I rolled the other suitcase along.

  The lowest step, made of cinder blocks, was askew. Adam kicked the blocks back into place as best he could, but there were new rocks in the way. The door was broken off its hinge, and the indoor-outdoor carpeting of the stairwell was sopping wet. All this was to be expected – he must not have taken the time to properly shut the door last night when our lives were on the line. He paused halfway up the stairs, though. There was a rusty stain on the carpeting, above the water line.

  “Hello?” Adam called out loudly. “Anyone here?” No response, no noises.

  We reached the kitchen at the back of the main floor, and Adam blew out his breath. No water or wind had broken in. It looked fine. Except, the dinner we’d never touched was out of its box, and eaten, the containers lying empty on the table. Adam motioned me to stay put at the head of the stairs, while he walked out into the living room, looking around. But there was no one there. I poked into the liquor cabinet in the kitchen. Everything was still there, so far as I could tell. I packed the bottles into the suitcase, padded with potholders and dish towels to keep them from clinking together. Top-shelf booze had great barter value.