Secrets of the Storm (The Rain Triptych)

by Brad Munson

  “No you don’t! We have to go!”

  She was dragged roughly across the room and found herself standing weakly, nauseated, while Little Jennifer was freed and pulled up as well. TEACHER shoved them out the door, into the room beyond.

  I should fight, Katie thought numbly. But her thoughts seemed soft and squishy in her head; they tumbled over each other as TEACHER urged them across a dimly lit room filled with storage shelves and broken furniture. This is my chance. But TEACHER had come in so fast, and it had been so long since she’d eaten, and now everything was happening in a rush.

  They came to a wooden staircase leading upward to a rectangle of misty gray light. Up, she thought dimly. I was right, we are underground. Water was tumbling down the stairs like a waterfall, so swiftly it was hard to climb them, but TEACHER pushed and pulled and wrestled them up.

  They lunged into a wide corridor with mint-gray walls and a heavily varnished floor. Katie flinched at the light. The water was just as deep here; it gurgled and foamed around their knees as they were forced down the hall to another set of stairs leading upwards.

  “Don’t talk,” TEACHER whispered harshly. “Don’t say a fucking word.”

  Katie recognized this hallway. The colors. The doors. The posters on the walls: SPRING FORMAL TICKETS ON SALE NOW!! VOTE FOR TRACI FOR JR. CLASS PREZ! GO SCORPIONS!!!

  This was the upper-class building. Where the high school kids went. They had been at DHPS all along.

  There was no one in sight. She almost fell again as TEACHER pushed them up to the second floor, then up to the third, then down the hallway towards a narrow door marked ROOF ACCESS – NO ADMITTANCE. It was barely wide enough to fit them through, and the concrete stairs upwards were high and slick with moisture. The sound of the door slamming behind them was like a gunshot.

  They burst onto the roof and the storm SCREAMED at them. Katie was drenched in an instant. Even TEACHER had to stop for a moment as the wind slammed into them. The raindrops were hard and sharp; they stung like salt when they hit Katie’s eyes.

  TEACHER pushed them forward, staggering across the uneven, rain-soaked roof. After a few feet a tiny shack made entirely of corrugated steel and tarpaper appeared out of the endless gray. Far in the back of her mind, Katie remembered hearing about this place. This is the janitor’s shack, she remembered. She’d heard stories about it. Flaco’s office. Sometimes kids came up here for punishment, to help him clean. Never her, of course. She was one of the good kids. But Jennifer –

  Jennifer was trying to pull away, fighting harder and harder. “Not in there!” she said. She obviously recognized the place; panic was glittering in her piggy little eyes. “Not in there!”

  TEACHER kicked open the door. It hadn’t even been latched. They were thrown in like bags of sand, colliding with mops, boxes of magazines, an old desk chair, a pile of tools. Katie slipped and fell onto her back, still dizzy and disoriented.

  It was very small. She could almost touch the walls on both sides at the same time, just by spreading her arms. And the noise was incredible. The rain pounded on the tin roof in a deafening roar that made her ears hurt.

  TEACHER suddenly, almost impulsively, knelt down in front of her. A hand came towards her and Katie closed her eyes, closed them tight, expecting the worst. “Everybody’s dead now, Katie,” TEACHER whispered, directly into her ear. “Your teachers. Your friends. Your parents, they’re all dead in the flood.”

  Katie lay limp on the floor, water gurgling around her, and tried not to cry.

  “I should just kill you,” TEACHER whispered, almost weeping. “You are such a disappointment, such a trouble-maker.” Katie felt wet fingers stroke her cheek, cup her chin. “But I can’t. I can’t … I …”

  Her kidnapper suddenly clamped Katie’s neck and pulled her forward hard. She felt a wet, gasping mouth right next to her ear, hot breath almost burning her.

  “This place,” TEACHER hissed, telling her a fierce and dangerous secret, something that couldn’t be said out loud. “This place makes you do terrible things. I wouldn’t ever … I could never …”

  Lightning flared over their head, cut through the open doorway. For a long moment, they were frozen there, held in place like two people caught in a camera’s flash. Then, in an instant, TEACHER was gone. The door SLAMMED shut. Katie heard the lock chunk shut, and something hard and heavy was thrown against it. It was a bad sound, a thick sound, but it was faint and somehow unimportant against the constant, massive roaring of the rain on the roof.

  They were alone again and still trapped.

  But that’s not so bad, Katie thought. Really it isn’t. At least I can move.

  Maybe there’s still a chance …

  Thirty

  What was left of Dos Hermanos, California died that night. The hurricane-strength wall of wind from the north, combined with the massive displacement of water from the falling Tower, was perfectly timed to amplify the damage and kill everything it touched. It was the final blow.

  Thousands died in the first five minutes. Thousands more fell to the creatures as the night spread its black and howling wings. The intelligence behind it all rejoiced as each ember of human thought flickered, dimmed, faded away.

  The sun did not rise the next day. The clouds shifted gradually, sullenly, from soot-black to ash-gray. Details emerged from the darkness, but nothing more. There was no electricity, no heat, nothing dry or unbroken. Noting safe.

  The creatures had conquered Dos Hermanos. The creatures and the rain itself.

  The few survivors who remained had only one hope: escape. And escape was far, far away.

  THE THIRD DAY

  Thirty-one

  The sky was made of acoustic tile. And Frankenstein’s Monster was offering her a glass of slime.

  Lisa had only just opened her eyes. She decided it was a good idea to close them again. Just to sort things out. She returned to the warm darkness behind her lids and tried to remember. What had happened? Ah yes: that horrible wind, that wall of water hitting the clinic, washing them away. And Geoff’s body, floating. Creatures lashing the water around her.

  She remembered hitting a stucco wall, so soaked with rain it was turning to sponge. She hit it hard, only half-seeing it in the darkness, and turned to see a white crest of water, as high as her face, surging towards her, with an eyeless face of bone behind it. It pushed forward, jaws stretching wide –

  Someone reached down out of the dark and seized her under the arms. She was pulled straight up, out of the water, hauled through an open window and into a second-story room filled with chairs and chalkboards.

  She remembered the sharp shock when her head hit … something. Light and darkness bloomed behind her eyes and she fell up and away, into blackness …

  “It’s orange juice,” said a deep, booming voice. “Fresh out of the can. Come on; it might make you feel better.”

  Against her better judgment, she opened her eyes and looked at Frankenstein’s monster again. He really wasn’t so bad this time. He had blue eyes and a pug nose in his huge face and a ready smile under a thatch of recently dried, completely uncombed black hair. His jaw was ridiculously strong. He was least seven feet tall.

  “My name’s James Barrymore,” he said. “I’m the PE coach here. You’re at Dos Hermanos Public School, and you’re okay. For the moment.”

  “You’re the one who pulled me out of the water,” she said. It had to be him; no one else was large enough to do what he had done single-handedly.

  “Well,” he said, and smiled shyly. “I helped.” A rich yellow patch of texture fluttered down his temple and jawline, from inside his hair to under his collar.

  “Don’t lie,” she said. “It doesn’t work with me. You saved me.”

  He nodded, embarrassed. “Look: there are about a hundred kids and a dozen adults here. We barely survived that wind and wave, and this building is leaking like a sieve. You think you’re well enough to help?”

  Lisa started to sit up, and was surpris
ed to find a damp cloth on her forehead. Strange how good that feels, she thought, when everything is already so damp. She swiped it away and got up on her elbows. “Yeah,” she said, “I’m okay. Thanks. And my name is Lisa, Lisa … Corman.”

  Why am I still stumbling on that? she wondered. I had it for twenty-three years; I took it back almost twelve months ago. Why does it sound wrong?

  She saw that she was lying on a cot in a tiny office. Barrymore helped her stand up, and she said, “I’m okay,” even though everything went a little swimmy for a moment. He had a paper envelope with two pills in it. “Take these,” he said. “The last of the Tylenol.” She accepted them with a grateful nod and swallowed them dry. “Now: Come meet the others.”

  They left the little office and she found herself on a wide sheet-metal mezzanine that seemed to be sagging in one corner. It overlooked a combination basketball court/auditorium/cafeteria, lit only by half a dozen Coleman lanterns and battery-powered EXIT sights. They cast strange amber and ruby shadows on a small crowd of people below. Mostly children. Morning light was just beginning to sift through the skylights.

  “How long was I out?” she asked, running her fingers through her hair, searching for balance.

  “About nine hours,” he said. “It’s around seven a.m. Not that time has a whole lot of meaning these days.”

  “No kidding,” she said, almost under her breath.

  The metal landing under her feet rang softly with each step. She turned to look back at the room they’d come from, still trying to get her bearings.

  “My office,” Barrymore said, trying to help. “There’s a projection and tech booth there in the middle, and a team room we use as a storage room on the right.” He pointed down to the floor below them. “Over there: The doors to the street. On the other side: Doors to the locker room. Right under us: The kitchen. And it’s frankly amazing the whole thing isn’t flattened and underwater now, like the rest of the town.”

  She blinked as she took it all in. “Is it that bad?”

  He signed. “It’s worse. No electricity, no Internet, no phone service … and nobody. We haven’t seen a living soul since a few minutes after the …” He groped for a word and finally just spread his fingers and made a sound with his mouth, like a teenager playing Op Center: “Boooom.”

  She nodded quickly, if only to make him stop. “Yeah. That I remember.”

  A voice – very deep, very male, very dark – floating up from below. “James? You may want to get down here.” Lisa looked over the metal-pipe railing and saw a second huge man, every bit as large as Barrymore, standing next to a little girl. He was the only African American adult in sight.

  “Come on,” Barrymore said, and they took the metal staircase down to the main floor. It seemed to sway under her for a moment – more than she liked – but she wasn’t sure if it was the stairs or her own recent head injury.

  It didn’t matter. She’d deal with it either way.

  They were greeted at the foot of the stairs by a slim-shouldered, big-butted, originally well-dressed man with sandy hair and lively gray eyes. “David Drucker,” he said. He cocked his head at the amply built Latina with the explosion of curly hennaed hair who was coming up behind him. “Trini Garcia.”

  Lisa nodded. “Lisa Corman,” she said. “I can’t exactly say I’m happy to meet you, but …”

  “Yes,” Drucker said, “’Happy’ doesn’t seem the right word for anything right about now, does it?”

  Thunder rattled through the rafters. She saw the blank, white faces of children turn upwards, then duck down again, more frightened than ever.

  The large black man who’d called out to them sidled up, the little girl close by his side. Lisa immediately recognized the body language. Daughter, she thought. And he was probably wise not to let her get more than an arm’s length away.

  “Ty Briggs,” he said.

  She nodded. “Lisa Corman.” She looked at the girl. “And you are …?”

  “Kerianne,” the little girl said. “This is my dad.”

  “I see that. You look alike, you know.”

  She brightened by two thousand watts. It was a hell of a smile. “We do?”

  Even the big man had to grin. “Thanks.” Then, to Barrymore: “Hey … the water’s rising outside. It’s starting to come in under the doors. We need to do something to slow that down, until … well, we need to slow it down.”

  Barrymore nodded in agreement. “There are a ton of towels and some tarps in the locker room. You want to grab a bunch and start plugging cracks?”

  Ty looked at the swinging doors that led to the locker room. “Sounds good.”

  Trini tugged at Barrymore’s arm, and there was something in the gesture that Lisa recognized – something comfortable and intimate. They’re together, she realized immediately, and for some reason she felt good about that. “Hey,” Trini said. “These kids are starving. Why don’t you let Mr. Briggs deal with the plugging, and we go put something together in the kitchen?”

  One of the few remaining adults in the room, a slim little woman with a lot of brown curls, suddenly appeared at Trini’s side. “Good idea,” she said. “I’ll help, too.” Trini opened her hands and moved them up and down in the general direction of the new arrival, as if presenting a new prize on a game show. “Ms. Elli Monaghan,” she said to Lisa.

  “A pleasure,” Lisa said, smiling.

  “Not really,” Elli said, “but I get your meaning.”

  Barrymore, Trini, and Elli moved quickly across the room to the swinging door that led to the kitchen. A moment later, Ty picked up his little girl as if he was lifting a doll and planted her butt squarely on a grandstand seat, four rows up. “You stay right here,” he said. “We’ll be back in a couple of minutes.” He cast an eye at Dave Drucker and said, “Want to help?”

  Drucker bobbed his head like an eager Boy Scout. “You bet,” he said, a little too enthusiastically. “Let’s do it.”

  They were halfway through a turn towards the locker room when something pounded at the entrance doors.

  Everyone froze. There hadn’t been a noise like that since the tidal wave, hours ago.

  After a beat, Ty turned his head – only his head – to see what had caused the knocking.

  There was a shadowy figure – broad-shouldered, large-headed, as tall as a man – just outside the entrance. The rain coursing down the glass and the condensation from inside the Cafetorium turned it into nothing more than a blurred shadow. But it was big.

  As they watched, it lifted a thick limb and pounded again: Boom. BOOM!

  “Well, shit,” Ty said. “Now what?”

  Thirty-two

  The kitchen was so neat and undisturbed and dry that it looked unreal – almost haunted. Mrs. Tarkanian, the school cook, hadn’t shown up for work since the day before, but no one else had dared to enter her domain even though she was absent. Now it felt more like a memorial than a work room.

  Trini was all business. Barrymore loved to see her this way. “Okay,” she said. “No electricity or gas, so that means no cooking. What can we do instead?”

  “Sandwiches,” Elli said. “There must be plenty of cold cuts and cheese around here. And plenty of bread and fresh fruit.”

  Barrymore smiled sadly. “Well, at least we won’t starve to death.”

  Elli actually brightened. “And ice cream! Whatever Mrs. Tarkanian has here! We might as well eat it before it melts.”

  Now Trini was grinning, too. “Excellent idea!” she said. There was a large standing freezer, widely known as the Goodie Box, where all the frozen treats were kept … and that no one except the dreaded Mrs. Tarkanian was allowed to open. Elli stood in front of it now and hooked three fingers under the release handle. “Do I dare?” she said.

  “It’s the end of the world as we know it,” Barrymore said. “Might as well.”

  Elli popped the handle, lifted the lid … and froze in place at what she saw.

  Trini, halfway across the room,
frowned at her. “Elli?”

  Barrymore took one step towards her and looked down, into the case.

  The mutilated corpse of Carole Ann Johnson was stuffed into the freezer on top of the ice cream sandwiches.

  It took Barrymore a long moment to pry the lid out of Elli’s hand and close it. He fumbled a moment longer to make sure it was latched and locked.

  Trini had seen it, too. “Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God.” She couldn’t stop repeating it. “Oh my God.”

  Barrymore eased Elli onto a straight-backed chair in the corner – the chair they all recognized as the one where Mrs. Tarkanian would allow herself fifteen minutes of rest instead of a lunch break. The history teacher felt fragile and loose-boned to Barrymore, like a sack of sticks poorly bound together.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said to her, knowing it wasn’t true. “It’ll be okay.”

  She didn’t move for the longest time. Then suddenly, without prompting, she shot out a hand and seized Barrymore by the arm.

  “Don’t tell David,” she said. “Don’t. He’ll lose it.”

  He tried to be soothing. “We’ll be careful. Nobody—”

  “No!” she said, urgent and intense. “No. I mean it. He’ll lose it. They … they were close. Close, you know? Like you and Trini.”

  Barrymore was startled. He’d had no idea. He looked at Trini, expecting to see the same stunned surprise, but … no. She was wearing a grim smile. A knowing smile. “It’s been going on for months,” she said. And David’s been on medication for more than a year. He didn’t want anybody to know. She’s been helping him with it.”

  Barrymore cocked his head. This wasn’t computing. “But … how do you … I mean, why don’t I …?”

  She put an affectionate hand on his chest and said, “Because I’m Ms. Trini, James. And you’re James.”

  Elli put a hand over her eyes and started to cry.

  And Ty Briggs began to shout from the other room.