Secrets of the Storm (The Rain Triptych)

by Brad Munson

  “Donald! Sheriff! There’s something going on outside, you have to come look!”

  Her voice was lost in the shouting. Nobody heard – especially not Donald. She heard the engine roar again, just beyond the door, nearly as loud as the storm itself, and she knew it was getting ready for a third ramming blow. “DONALD!”

  But Peck was shouting, too. “Let’s just get to the trucks!” he said, booming it into the microphone on purpose. “Let’s just line up at the doors—”

  “Why should we do what you say?” one man shouted. “This is your fault, YOUR fault!”

  “Let’s ride it out here! It’s still safe!”

  “My gran is still at the house! We gotta go get her—”

  “DONALD!”

  “I don’t want to, I—”

  “–can’t, I—”

  “– don’t—”

  “DON—”

  Donald Peck slammed his fist into the wooden podium right in front of the mic, hard and fast and loud as a gunshot.

  “JUST DO WHAT I FUCKING TELL YOU!” he bellowed.

  The people stopped shouting. Even the rain itself seemed to stop, and the wind held its breath. Linda stopped, just a few feet from the stage and gaped at him. Just like everyone else.

  “That’s what you want, isn’t it?” he said. “You want me to save you, to be your daddy, just like always! God, you worthless, fucking, stupid bunch of … of …”

  He stopped. He looked to the north.

  Now you hear it, she said, knowing it was far too late. Now. And in that last horrible moment, she knew it was more than just some madman ramming at the water tower. It was the storm itself, some impossible, unstoppable wind more powerful than a hurricane roaring down from the north at exactly the worse possible moment. And for some reason she threw up her hands, reached for Donald, called out his name as the wall of wind, as solid as stone, slammed broadside into the north wall of the Conference Center and blew it to pieces.

  Linda Kramer didn’t live long enough to see the huge curved side of the Water Tower crash through the roof. She never even felt the rush of water fill the room and kill hundreds in a few seconds. She was among the very first to die, blown into unconsciousness by the shock wave of the wind and smashed to pulp against the east wall.

  Still reaching for Donald Peck. Still loving him until the very end.

  The Greenaways made it to Dos Hermanos School just before The Fist fell.

  Miriam Lazenby had a scant three seconds to embrace her weeping husband before the blast wave took them.

  Stu Axminster of the DWP died instantly when a flying wall hit him in the face.

  Big Jennifer Toombs was already dead.

  Herb McAndless was already dead.

  The fat man who yelled at Donald Peck lived long enough to scream. Once.

  And Donald Peck died twenty seconds after Linda Kramer, suspended for an instant over the chaos, as the wind-driven force wave, like the very Fist of God Himself, spread out to kill the city.

  Twenty-six

  Dos Hermanos Public School was only three blocks from the epicenter. Three minutes before The Fist fell, the Greenaways arrived, drenched and angry beyond speech.

  “Meeting already over?” James Barrymore rumbled, stepping forward as they piled through the double doors that faced the parking lot.

  “They just want to leave,” Sharon said, the bitter edge to her voice obvious to everyone. “They just want to forget about her.”

  Douglas Pratt snorted. “Don’t be absurd.”

  Jim Greenaway looked at the other teachers. His eyeglasses glittered in the fluorescent light. “You better start packing up whatever you want to take,” he said. “The caravan will be here in a few minutes.”

  Sharon turned to him, her color high. “Jim! We’re not—”

  “No,” he said grimly. “We are staying. But the rest of them … they need to get out of here, Share. They deserve to be safe.”

  Pratt was fighting his way back into his raincoat. “This is bullshit,” he muttered. “I’m going to go talk to Peck before he goes off half-cocked. I won’t stand for this.” He tromped to the double doors and started to open them.

  “Mr. Pratt,” Trini said, “maybe you’d better—”

  “Maybe you’d better keep your own counsel, Treeni,” he said acidly. “I know what I’m doing.” His gaze raked across the assembled, full of righteous indignation. “I always know what I’m doing,” he said, and stepped outside.

  Ty Briggs was sitting with his daughter on the third row of the grandstand seats, looking through her drawings. “You are so good,” he said. “Your mom must be so proud of you.”

  Kerianne shrugged. She couldn’t stop staring at her dad. He looked exactly like the one picture she had of him. The one she’d found in Mom’s things a long time ago and had kept hidden only for herself. “They kinda scare her,” she said. “Ac’shly, they kind of scare me, too.”

  Ty nodded. “Yeah. I’ve seen some of these, you know. They are pretty scary.”

  “But we’ll be okay,” she told him. She was sure of that.

  “Yep,” he said. “We will. Now we will.”

  Barrymore heard a weird ringing sound far to the southeast, towards the Convention Center. “What the hell?” he said.

  “Was that an alarm?” Trini said. “Maybe something about the evacuation?”

  “No idea.” He stood up and climbed to the stage, holding up his arms for attention. “Okay, people! Looks like we’re going to have to start getting ready to go!” He pointed to some of the older kids and a few parents. “Lana? Faith? You want to get everybody kind of grouped together? As soon as the caravan arrives, we’ll want to move.”

  There was another BONG, even louder and weirder than the first. He looked at Trini, who spread her hands in puzzlement: I have no idea.

  “Ms. Trini will help with the … wow. What …?”

  They could all feel it. Something strange in the air. A sudden dip in air pressure; a sudden cessation of the wind as if the whole valley was holding its breath.

  David Drucker pulled his coat around him and said, “Son of a bitch …”

  Elli Monaghan’s deep green eyes grew huge. “Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God—”

  The Fist fell.

  ***

  Douglas Pratt was crossing the parking lot when it hit. He had been out checking the grounds and working on his grand plan. He was going to make this work, goddamn it, he was not going to give up like some frickin’ pansy. This was his school, in his town, and it had been for thirteen and a half years, and he wasn’t going anywhere—

  The shockwave of wind caught him square in the chest. He flew into the air, turning end over end, and slammed full-force into the windows at the top of the Cafetorium – the transoms that could only be opened by Flaco Delgadillo using a long, hooked pole.

  He shot straight through the glass like a flesh-and-bone cannonball and rocketed the full length of the long room, deep as a basketball court, before crunching, hard, against the far wall. As he slid down, he left a thick vertical streak of blood and tissue from twenty-five feet above the floor to the hardwood.

  His body landed in a red and white heap just beneath the hand-painted sign that read GO SCORPIONS! He looked like an inflatable puppet that had sprung a leak. He had lost half his height and two-thirds of his body weight.

  Every child and adult in the room saw it. One little boy, Teddy Arguello, said aloud what half of the people were thinking.

  “Cool,” he whispered under his breath.

  Then the tidal wave hit.

  Twenty-seven

  By the time The Fist reached the Borrego Clinic, just two blocks farther from the epicenter, the wind and water had joined into a single solid wave. It hit Lisa Corman Mackie, Geoff Chamberlain, and Jennie Sommerville as they stood next to each other, shoulder to shoulder, looking down at a badly injured man on a gurney in front of them.

  “Greenstick fracture,” Chamberlain said.
/>   Jennie touched the man’s arm. “Fell off his truck as he was trying to get out of town.” She was as good at ‘guessing’ what had happened as Lisa was, but no one had noticed. They were too tired.

  Geoff nodded. That made perfect sense.

  “My girlfriend,” the man said, seizing Lisa’s hand. “She’s—”

  The wind and rain cut off as if a switch had been pulled. They all looked up at the same time.

  “That can’t be good,” Jennie said.

  “No,” Geoff Chamberlain said. “It—”

  The doors blew in. The flooring lifted up like a linoleum blanket. The desk and couches and gurneys and equipment flew into the air all at once, then came straight towards them as the roof of the clinic peeled away and flew into the blackened sky like a fraying picnic blanket.

  Lisa was blown up and off to the right, through a gaping hole where the roof had been. For one moment she was actually flying like a comic book hero, until she wrapped herself into a tight little cannonball. Two heartbeats later she hit the water – hard – but stayed tightly curled, letting the current and unseen debris bump and tumble around her. Only when the aching in her lungs became unbearable did she let herself unravel. It took a moment to re-discover “up” and “down,” but she managed –

  – and found herself bobbing to the surface of a chest-deep, filthy, churning lake, half a mile to the north of the shattered clinic.

  She wiped the muddy water out of her eyes and looked in every direction. There wasn’t another living person in sight, but sight didn’t count for much: it was quite nearly pitch black. All the electric lights in DH were gone – gone forever, she imagined.

  What had happened to the others? The rest of the patients? Ruthie, Angry Carrie, Doctor Panj?

  A thick mass bumped against her as she treaded water in the swirling chaos. She clutched at it, turned it –

  Dr. Panj. His left arm torn away, a shoulder crushed. His deep brown eyes lifeless and glazed.

  “Oh, shit,” she gasped. “No—” and her mouth filled with water.

  She spun in the water, turned, spit it out, and another corpse bobbed to the surface. It took her a moment to recognize it at all: the head was a raddled mass of blood and tissue, and only the lantern jaw had survived obliteration …

  Geoff Chamberlain was dead. She didn’t have to look any longer, that much was clear.

  She swept her arms, twisted her torso, got away. She didn’t want to look anymore.

  She was trembling uncontrollably as she swam away, resisting the deep pull of a southbound current. She thought about the girl, Jennie, and the Lazenbys at the Conference Center, and all the people she had helped to save.

  All for nothing. Nothing.

  She searched the endless darkness for any hint of rescue, any possible destination. And then, finally – there, a mile or more off to the east: an actual light.

  She started towards it, completely ignorant of what it was or where it might lead.

  It didn’t matter. It was somewhere not here.

  It was a chance.

  Twenty-eight

  Allison Bryce, née LaMotta, fed the bedsheet out Kerianne’s window one foot at a time. They were good sheets – part of an order she’d made for a bedroom redecoration that was never going to happen now – knotted together by the fingers of an experienced tailor. It’s probably safer than a rope you’d buy at the hardware store, she thought as she fed out another foot. She peered down through the rain and mist and saw she was only five feet or so from the sidewalk – or the water running along the sidewalk, at least. It didn’t look more than six inches deep. Not like the alley. She had looked down on that cataract from her own window and seen a river that was at least five feet deep now. Even worse than when she had opened her door to it hours before.

  She had filled a backpack, put on three layers of clothing, eaten whatever food she could find hiding on the second floor, and forced herself to drink two big glasses of water out of the toilet tank. She slipped a long piece of two-by-two lumber, a piece from her little-used but much-beloved loom, in the straps of the backpack – her second-best weapon. She had the pistol with the three bullets still in it, safety on, tucked into the small of her back and held tight by a belt that was cinched extra-tight. She had a feeling she might need it on her walk to school.

  Allison was calm. She was determined. She was as ready as she was ever going to be.

  You can do this, she told herself as she securely tied the end of the sheet to Kerianne’s bedpost. You got away from Tyler all by yourself. You built this whole life single-handed. You’re strong. You can.

  She put one leg over the windowsill and looked back into the room a final time. She could feel her right leg already being soaked through. The storm was like a hungry monster that was trying to swallow her alive.

  It was a good room. It had been a safe and loving home for her little girl, and she was proud of it. Always would be. And she knew damn well she might never see it again.

  She pressed her lips together and put her other leg out the window. She felt a nail break as she dug into the soggy fabric of her sheet-rope as she lowered herself down – inch at a time at first, then a foot at a time.

  It took her forever to get down to the first floor level. She waited until her feet were dangling just inches above the water before she final let go and dropped – and landed flat-footed and solid on the drowned sidewalk with a gurgling splash.

  She held still for a long, long time. Nothing approached her. Nothing attacked.

  Allison didn’t have rain boots; she never thought they would be necessary in this town. So her nearly new athletic shoes – the remnants of a New Year’s resolution for fitness that didn’t make it out of January – were soaked through and squishing before she even stepped into Market Street and started north, towards the intersection with Bel Air.

  Two hours, she told herself as she waded forward. Tops.

  Something thrashed in the water to her left. Without a second thought, she whipped the loom-stick out of its loops at her shoulders, gripped it as hard as she could, and whacked the water right where the thrashing had been. She connected with something thick and brittle; it collapsed under her blow and wriggled away.

  She was safe.

  Good, she thought. I can do this. I will save her.

  This was the woman she had been before Tyler Briggs. This was the woman she could become again.

  She heard, more than felt, the first broken-bell ringing from the southeast – the Convention Center. She had no idea what it was, but she knew it was a wrong sound, somehow. She turned her head towards it, but she didn’t stop walking. She was at the intersection of Market and Commonwealth in a surprisingly short time. She turned left and moved forward as the second BONG! sounded – louder, somehow, and even more unsettling.

  Doesn’t matter, she told herself, and ducked her head against another onslaught of wind and rain. Just move up Commonwealth to Bel Air, right down the middle of the street. Left on Bel Air and five blocks down and –

  The rain stopped. Dead. For a moment the wind stopped, too, hesitated as if it was unsure what to do.

  Allison stopped, too.

  BONG!

  She had reached another intersection. She stopped in the middle of it and looked to the south, mesmerized. She saw a wall of wind and water, two stories tall, rushing towards her at sixty miles an hour. Straight towards her, as if aiming for her tiny body. She could see the mass of it churning with lumber, broken stone, bodies, monsters – all of it, coming for her.

  She fell to her knees, She tucked her face between them, covered her head with her hands, made herself as small and tight as she possibly could under her backpack.

  Kerianne, she thought. Wait for me. Wait for me. Wait–

  The wave hit.

  Twenty-nine

  Katie and Little Jennifer heard The Fist as it fell: a terrible roaring and trembling that seem to come from all around them. But things were already bad for the lo
st Little Girls; they’d been bad ever since TEACHER’s last visit, when water had started bubbling in under the heavy metal door.

  At first it had just been messy, pulling things off shelves and sloshing across the grimy concrete floor. Then the level started to rise like water in a bathtub. The churning sludge had covered their feet hours earlier, then moved up their ankles. Now it was almost to their knees.

  Katie was still chained to her desk-chair, more securely than ever. She kept working and tearing at the chains, but it didn’t do any good. They wouldn’t budge. And the water kept rising …

  “I don’ wanna die,” Little Jennifer whimpered from the back row. “I don’, I don’, I don’ wanna die.”

  “Will you just shut up?” Katie said. “TEACHER didn’t go to all the trouble of catching us just to let us drown. I—”

  “She’s touching me!” Jennifer bellowed. “My God, my God, SHE’S TOUCHING ME!”

  Katie pulled tightly at her chains so she could half-turn around to see Little Jennifer, still bound to her desk halfway back in the room. The body of Megan Katz was between them. The water had gotten so deep the corpse was actually floating now, face down, her dark hair spreading like a fan. One of Megan’s white and swollen hands was reaching out, its curling fingers bumping against Little Jennifer’s knee every time the water churned.

  “Make her stop!” Little Jennifer said, wildly hitching the desk away from the dead girl. “Make her stop MAKE HER STOP!”

  Katie was almost happy when she was interrupted by the snarling of the door chains. She turned back to see TEACHER barreling in, pea coat flapping like a raven’s wings, keys in hand.

  “Up we go! Out, out, out!” Katie’s locks were snapped open and chains pulled away in an instant. She found herself jerked to her feet by one pinching claw at her elbow. It was the first time she’d been allowed to stand in days, and suddenly all the blood rushed from her head. Her knees started to buckle, but TEACHER jerked her up.