Raging Storm

by Vannetta Chapman

  “And why?” It was the first that Shelby had spoken.

  She’d been watching Lanh. He looked to be about twenty, was thin, and only an inch or so taller than her. He wore reasonably clean clothes, which was something of a miracle. His dark black hair had grown past his collar. He kept it covered with a well-worn University of Texas baseball cap. Despite her determination to remain suspicious of anyone and everyone, there was something about the kid she liked. He spoke his mind, she would bet he wasn’t hiding anything, and he wasn’t flustered by the world falling apart around him. He reminded her of Carter before the explosion, before Kaitlyn died.

  “Steiner rules by fear, the same way he ruled his classroom. Trust me, I took his intro to economics class. It was my only B my freshman year.”

  “Everything else Cs?” Patrick cracked.

  “As across the board. I’m Vietnamese, remember? We’re smart.” He laughed as he said it, as if there was some private joke there. Turning to Shelby, he said, “As to why, like I said, he’s a psychopath.”

  Shelby leaned forward, not an easy thing to do sitting on a futon. It tended to pull you into it, and there was a part of her that would have been happy to forget the rain and the campus and the insulin that might or might not be there. She just wanted to curl up and sleep for a week. Forget her responsibilities and the harshness that now colored her life. But she wouldn’t do that. She’d fight to her dying breath, and something told her it might actually come to that. So be it. As long as she went down attempting to save her son.

  “Can you help us find a way onto the campus? We need to go to the student health center. My son has diabetes, and we’re…” Tears clouded her vision, but she pushed on. “We’re looking for insulin.”

  “I don’t know what they have, but I can get you in.”

  “You can, but will you?” Now Patrick sat forward, watching him, plainly wanting to trust him.

  Before Lanh answered, Max said, “We’re willing to pay you. We have money, which we realize has limited value.”

  “No value.”

  “And we have some supplies. You can look over what’s in our packs back in our cars. Take what you want.”

  Lanh was already shaking his head, and Shelby wondered how much more she could take, how many more false leads they would have to endure. But Lanh surprised her. When she glanced up, he was looking directly at her. “I don’t want your stuff. I want to go with you.”

  “Go with us where?” Shelby asked.

  “Wherever you live. Any place that isn’t here.”

  SIXTY

  Carter woke with a jerk and stared left, center, right—at the creek, the bank, and finally his leg. The realization of what had happened to him came back all at once. It physically buffeted him like a wind that threatened to blow him over.

  The broken leg didn’t hurt anymore, perhaps because it had been resting in the cold water. He couldn’t feel it at all, but it had begun to swell. He tried to raise the fabric of his jeans, and found the denim was stretched too tightly.

  He glanced back up the bank, where he’d been before he’d fallen, remembered the snake, and shivered. At least it hadn’t feasted on him after he’d passed out. He didn’t remember much of the slide down the bank, splashing again into the water, or losing consciousness. How long had he been there? And what time was it?

  He’d stopped wearing his watch when they moved to High Fields. Time didn’t seem to matter so much anymore. As long as he was home by dark and up by sunrise, what difference did it make? He squinted at the sky, and a few remaining raindrops plopped onto his face. Realizing he was thirsty, he unzipped his backpack and pulled out his water bottle. He guzzled half of it before it occurred to him that he might need to ration what he had. He capped the bottle reluctantly and tried to assess just how big of a mess he was in.

  Roy and Georgia would expect him for dinner, but they wouldn’t really worry, wouldn’t look for him until dark—probably another nine hours, maybe ten.

  And then it would take a while for them to find him.

  He thought he could survive ten to twelve more hours. After all, he didn’t have a life-threatening injury. Then he remembered that he hadn’t brought any food. He’d told Georgia he’d grab something at Tate’s after baiting the trotlines. He’d checked his blood sugar levels, taken his daily shot, eaten the oatmeal, and grabbed a handful of pecans.

  He stared down into it his backpack.

  No food.

  No insulin.

  A handgun and one half bottle of water.

  His heartbeat accelerated, and he closed his eyes, forcing his reaction to be calmer, more deliberate.

  He’d taken his morning injection, which under normal conditions would last all day, but without lunch or dinner his blood sugar would begin to bounce. And that was without factoring in the effects of his injury. He usually took his evening dose around four in the afternoon and they ate early, usually around five. He’d quickly grown used to that schedule.

  Type 1 diabetes meant that he was insulin dependent. He’d taken his injections twice a day since he was very young, and he’d rarely missed a dose—never by more than an hour. When he was young, his mom and his doctor had impressed on him the importance of being consistent, of managing his disease.

  Which all meant it had been a long time since he’d heard the “what can happen if you miss your injection” lecture. He stilled his mind, pushed his thoughts away from the predicament he was in, and tried to remember what he’d been taught.

  Within a few hours of his missed dose, his blood glucose would skyrocket. He’d begin to dehydrate and experience hunger, thirst, nausea, and fatigue. Well, he did feel awfully tired, but then he’d broken his leg and fallen off a slope. Should his condition deteriorate, signs that he was in big trouble would include a severe headache and blurred vision.

  He opened his eyes, feeling somewhat calmer.

  He’d be all right. It was possible that Roy would find him before dark, and if not—he’d simply take one of the fast acting insulin doses once he was back at the ranch. They had a few that his mom had purchased from the pharmacy the first day after the flare.

  The broken leg? Well, he wasn’t sure how his diabetes would affect his recovery time, but maybe Georgia would know. She seemed to know nearly as much about the disease as Carter and his mom.

  Carter squirmed until his back was once more resting against the bank and steeled himself for a long wait. He tried to focus on the gentle sound of the water moving downstream, the call of a red bird in the tree above him, and the warmth of the sun, which had peeked out from the fleeing clouds.

  But only a few minutes later he heard voices. They were coming from around the bend, from above the location of the trotline. When he’d slipped and broken his leg, he’d fallen downstream. If he looked left, he could see Georgia’s Tupperware container stuck in a clump of weeds farther downstream. But when he leaned forward and looked right, looked upstream, he saw a group of men, sporting guns and crossbows and headed his direction.

  He sat back, flattened himself against the earthen wall that rose fifteen feet over his head. His leg remained jutted out in front of him. There was nothing he could do about that. He couldn’t move it, and if he tried he’d only draw their attention to where he was.

  Scrub brush and grasses blocked his view toward the trespassers, but he could hear them well enough.

  “Trotline’s empty,” one said.

  “I’m not surprised. We took all the bass and catfish last night. At least someone has baited it for us again.”

  This brought a chorus of laughter, but the man’s next words sent a shiver down Carter’s spine. “Good thing we have those goats if we get hungry.”

  “And we know where to find more if need be.”

  So they had stolen the Murphys’ goats. They were the men that Jerry had warned them about.

  “It’s too hot to do this now.” The guy who said this seemed to be the leader of the group. “We’ll come back t
onight. Clean off the trotline and go downriver a bit. I imagine there’s some nutria in that bank.”

  “Nutria’s good when you stew it up,” a third man said.

  “I don’t know about coming back tonight.” The voice was whiny, argumentative. He sounded like a math teacher Carter had once. The guy could argue with a post. “We’ve seen the old man come this way near sundown. What if he catches us?”

  “That won’t happen. We’ll come after dark, and you know as well as I do that everyone around here beds down at night.”

  “Yeah. Especially after we shot that kid.”

  “If you’d been a better shot, we would have us a good truck now.”

  “Wasn’t my fault that he accelerated after he was hit. Who would have thought he could drive home with a slug in his shoulder?”

  “You shoot to kill,” the leader reminded them. “An injured enemy is a dangerous enemy. A dead one? He can’t hurt you at all.”

  No one argued with that. Carter felt as though a giant hand were pushing on his chest, as though he couldn’t draw in a breath deep enough to offer relief. Sweat was pouring down his face, and he fought the urge to reach up and wipe it away.

  “Tonight, after dark,” the leader said. “We’ll come back. There’s no telling what we’ll find.”

  “And if we don’t find anything?”

  “Then we’ll climb this here bank, go up to their houses, and take what we need.”

  SIXTY-ONE

  The rain had stopped, and steam rose off the pavement. Max guessed the temperature was inching near ninety, maybe ninety-five, and it wasn’t yet noon. Lanh led them toward the northwest corner of the campus. He seemed to have an internal radar for trouble, avoiding ragtag groups effortlessly.

  “This kid would have been an asset to the army,” Patrick said as they held up behind him and then scurried to the right on a main road and to the left down what looked like a freight area but ended up being an alley.

  There were barricades on both sides of the 27th Street Garage, but Lanh darted across the street and headed toward the middle of the building.

  “No way in through the parking garage,” Bianca said, and she was right. Cars had once entered to the right and exited to the left. Both of those routes had been plugged tight with debris. It would take hours to pull out enough to make a way through, and doing so would undoubtedly attract too much attention.

  Lanh wasn’t headed toward the entrance or the exit. He walked directly toward the center of the concrete wall. Max could see now that someone had done a good job of plugging all of the first-floor and even second-floor openings, where one might have looked out over the city. There was no way through on this side of the structure, that was certain.

  But Lanh was already reaching for a crevice above his head, pulling himself up and then disappearing over into the second level. He reappeared, sticking his head way out and looking left and right, before urging them to hurry.

  Max intertwined his fingers, palms up, and gave Shelby and then Bianca a boost. Patrick kept watch. Once the girls were safely in, Max grabbed the ledge and pulled, deeply regretting that he’d given up his gym membership some years ago. He managed to scramble over the ledge and turned to help Patrick—who skimmed up the wall as easily as Lanh had.

  “How’d you know this opening was here?” Max asked. “It’s impossible to see from the street.”

  “I knew about it because I made it.” Motioning for them to follow him quietly, he led the way across the parking garage, up a staircase, and to an enclosed pedestrian crossing. They were halfway across it when Max stopped and took a closer look out the glass walls at the campus of his alma mater.

  University Drive was directly below them. He first looked in the direction they’d come. The barricade from this direction looked massive. They would have never made it through. From where they stood, he could see that the blockade had been well engineered. No one would come through that unless they were invited, and even then he wasn’t sure how they could move enough of the material to make a passage.

  He leaned closer to the glass and saw what he hadn’t made out on the other side. Small, rectangular openings, where a guard could sit on the campus side, watch for intruders, and shoot if necessary.

  “Like castle loopholes,” Shelby said.

  “Looks like it. I saw some once in northern England and Scotland.”

  “And I researched them once for a book.”

  They shared a brief smile. Maybe it was because they were moving again, doing something instead of simply reacting. Whatever the reason, the mantle of despair seemed to have dropped away from Shelby. She looked once again like the girl, the woman, he’d always known.

  “Quite different from Steiner’s setup.”

  “He seemed to be big on bravado.”

  “Flexing muscles and grunting.”

  “Yeah. The shotguns helped too.”

  “This has been well thought out.” Shelby pointed toward the ledge on their side of the barricade where the guards could walk back and forth.

  “A functional design for maximum surprise and effectiveness.”

  “Are you two coming?” Patrick called. They’d stopped near some double doors, pausing to drink from their water bottles.

  But as Max turned toward the far end of the walkway where the others were waiting, his peripheral vision caught sight of the center of the campus. He stared in disbelief and felt Shelby turn in his direction. Together they walked toward the opposite windows.

  Buildings lined University to the east and west, before the road circled around a building two blocks down—the Mary E. Gearing Hall. With tan walls and a red roof, the u-shaped building had been there since before Max was a student.

  “Looks like a normal day on campus. Looks untouched.”

  Instead of answering, Max placed his fingertips against the glass.

  “What is it? What do you see?”

  He pointed out the building. “It was once the home economics building, but in the years when I went to school here they switched it over to human ecology.”

  “I don’t even know what human ecology is.”

  “Study of the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and built environment.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Brown bag lunches. I didn’t like eating in the cafeteria.”

  “So you listened to sociology lectures?”

  “Among other things.”

  Shelby stepped closer to the window until her nose was practically pressed against it. “Are those people?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “I don’t know, but I have a feeling that’s where we’re going.”

  He nodded toward the exit where their group was waiting. But the vision of the building stayed in his mind, along with the people walking back and forth. It wasn’t the student health center, but it just might have the answers to their problems.

  SIXTY-TWO

  The double doors were locked, chained from the other side. Lanh removed the lid from a trash can that was in the corner, reached down inside, rummaged through papers and hamburger wrappers and soda cups. Finally, he pulled out a walkie-talkie and turned the dial to a preassigned frequency.

  “Lanh here. Anyone awake on your side?”

  There was a crackle, but no answer. Lanh repeated the message. Shelby locked eyes with Bianca, who reached out and squeezed her hand.

  He was about to repeat a third time, when a voice came back toward them.

  “This is Gus. You bring us something for dinner, Lanh?”

  “Nope. Something even better.”

  “Better than squirrel?” There was laughter in the background, and then the person said, “Sending someone to unlock the doors.”

  Lanh turned off the device, stored it back in the trash can, covered it with the trash, and replaced the lid.

  “Now what?” Patrick asked.

  “We wait.”

  Shelby didn
’t have time to grow impatient. Within a few minutes they could hear the sound of a chain being unlocked and unwound through the door handles. A girl with long red hair poked her head through, but Lanh didn’t give her a chance to retreat. He tugged on the door, jerking it open all the way, and the girl went for her weapon.

  Patrick threw her to the ground, wrenched her arm behind her back, and rested his knife at her neck. It happened so quickly that Shelby didn’t realize the girl was holding a handgun until it clattered to the ground. Patrick had the situation under control before she’d even recognized the danger.

  The girl grumbled, “Get off me.”

  Patrick scooped up the pistol, pocketed his knife, and helped her to her feet.

  “What’s going on?” She rubbed her shoulder and glared at Lanh. “You didn’t say you were bringing outsiders.”

  “They’re on our side, Mitzi.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I do.”

  “No, you don’t. You could be putting us all in danger.”

  “Quiet. Both of you.” Patrick checked the pistol to be sure the safety was on, and then he stuck it in the back of his waistband.

  “That’s mine, and I’d thank you to give it back.” The girl was a spitfire—a few pounds on the heavy side, with beautiful red hair that ran in waves past her shoulders. Her complexion was light and freckled, and her green eyes practically shot daggers at them.

  “I’ll give it back to you later when I’m sure you won’t shoot us.”

  Max stepped forward. “We’re not here to hurt anyone. Lanh is vouching for us, and you trust him, right?”

  “I guess.” Her tone plainly indicated that she was none too sure.

  Lanh rolled his eyes and said, “Let’s go. I’ll take you to the professor.”

  “The professor?” Bianca asked.

  “Yeah. She’s the antithesis of Dr. Steiner.”

  They marched through the double doors. Max led, followed by Mitzi, who was still being watched by Patrick. Shelby and Bianca stayed close on Patrick’s heels. Lanh held back to relock the doors, and then he hurried to the front to lead the way.