Raging Storm

by Vannetta Chapman

  Bianca moved closer to Shelby. “Antithesis? What is up with these kids? They don’t even talk normal.”

  “They’re not normal.” They moved through the second floor of a scholastic building, down a stairwell, and out into the noonday heat. “They were raised on zombie movies and high tech. Now they’re living the script from their favorite show.”

  “And the technology is gone.”

  “Exactly.”

  As they approached the red-roofed building, their group drew more than a few stares. They crossed the street and had barely set foot on the lawn in the courtyard of the u-shaped building when they were surrounded by more teens with weapons—everything from pistols to iron rods to baseball bats.

  Shelby knew she should be concerned. They were outnumbered. They had no weapons of their own, other than the knife in Patrick’s pocket and the gun in his waistband. Patrick’s skills were superior, but even he couldn’t win a twenty-to-one fight. Clearly, there was no path for retreat. She wasn’t worried, though. Her mind was too busy processing what she was seeing. Hundreds of college kids stood watching, all ages and ethnicities. More than half of the students surrounding them had shaved heads. Why? What were they even doing here? In her mind, she’d thought they would have all gone home. But maybe that hadn’t been possible. Maybe they’d decided to hunker down. And now they were surrounded by Dr. Steiner and his goons.

  A man with a gray beard and shaved head stepped through the crowd, walked up to Mitzi, and said, “What’s going on here?”

  “Lanh brought them in without approval. And he—” She nodded toward Patrick. “He’s some kind of military guy or something. Had me on the floor before I knew what had hit me, and he took my gun. Lanh allowed them to ambush me.”

  “They didn’t ambush you,” Lanh countered.

  “Same as. You didn’t follow protocol.”

  “Because I knew you would overreact.”

  “This is not overreacting.”

  “They need to see the professor.”

  The man raised one hand chest high and slicked it through the air, karate chopped their complaints, and then he turned to Patrick. “Give her back her pistol.”

  “I will if you’ll guarantee she won’t shoot us.”

  “You will, or you won’t get any closer to the professor than this.”

  Patrick glanced at Max, who nodded once. He returned the pistol, and the man motioned for four of the guards to step forward and frisk them.

  “No weapons,” one declared, “other than this knife.”

  The older man stepped forward and claimed the knife.

  “All right. Now tell me what you’re doing here.” He frowned when Max attempted to answer.

  “Not you.” He pointed to Lanh. “You.”

  “They need to see her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the lady’s kid is sick. She needs meds for him.”

  “So go to a hospital.”

  “You know they won’t help her.”

  “Not my problem.”

  “Let them ask the professor. She might feel differently.” Lanh didn’t seem a bit intimidated by the man.

  The older guy was not overreacting, but he also wasn’t standing for any nonsense. Shelby was beginning to think he must have been a police officer or detective in his former life.

  “She likes you, but you’re pushing your luck here.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Why should we give them anything?”

  “Because they have information.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “They’ve been in the capitol—inside the compound.”

  The man shook his head in disbelief. “You believed that?”

  “It’s true.” Max stepped forward. He didn’t flinch when the man’s hand went to his firearm. “You want to shoot us? Is that how you’re handling things here?”

  “If we have to.”

  “Well, you don’t. And if you want to know what Governor Reed is and isn’t doing, you need to take us to meet this professor.”

  SIXTY-THREE

  Ten minutes later they were sitting in the office of Professor Agnes Wright. Lanh had been politely dismissed. Shelby tried not to stare at the professor, but she found herself unable to look away from this five-feet-six-inch enigma who held Carter’s life in her small hands. Agnes—she insisted that they call her by her first name—sat behind her desk as if she were holding a student conference. The light that pierced through the dissipating clouds shone through the window, reflecting off her bald head.

  Shelby glanced at the photo on the wall—Agnes handing a diploma to a student, chestnut hair cascading down her shoulders, and a look of adoration shining on her face. Obviously the person meant a lot to the professor, though there was no indication who the student in the photo was.

  She turned her attention back to Agnes, who had finished with pleasantries and finally seemed ready to get down to business. Shelby realized with a start that Professor Agnes Wright was beautiful—not just pretty, but movie star gorgeous. Her age must have been over fifty—there were fine wrinkles around her mouth and eyes and the beginnings of sunspots on her hands. Her shaved head somehow accented her oval face and excellent bone structure, but it was her brown eyes that caught and held a person’s attention. Though she didn’t exactly smile, her eyes looked deep into yours and seemed to promise—something.

  Hope perhaps.

  Shelby briefly wondered if she was a part of the Remnant, and then she dismissed that idea. Agnes had apparently been on campus since the flare. She’d have had no chance to even hear of the group, let alone join it.

  “We don’t receive many visitors from outside.”

  “Between the barricade and the armed guards on your side of the locked doors, I’m not surprised.”

  She waved away Max’s comment. “Tell me what’s going on out there.”

  Max described their trouble in reaching the compound and how the central blocks had been fenced off and were now guarded.

  “How did you get in?”

  “We had a doctor with us. Turns out the state government had a fallback plan of sorts. We don’t know all the details, but they deployed military personnel to every county seat.”

  “What sort of personnel?”

  “Ones that would blend in—doctors, nurses, mechanics, pretty much any profession you can think of.”

  “Why?”

  “Their assignment was to watch, help if possible, and report back to the governor during the first thirty days.”

  “They knew about the flare before it hit.”

  “NASA sent out the alert to top governmental agencies approximately twelve hours before.”

  “Yet there was no attempt to warn the public.”

  “What good would it have done? One soldier I spoke with assured me that there was an attempt to land or cancel as many flights as possible without creating a panic.”

  Shelby couldn’t fathom making that decision, being given the numbers for how many would die if an emergency announcement wasn’t made, and how many would die if one was.

  “So this doctor of yours—”

  “Farhan Bhatti—actually, we recently learned his real name was Gabe Thompson. We didn’t know he was a part of the emergency task force. Our mayor insisted he ride along to help procure medications for the town. When we arrived at the gate…” Max paused, stared down at his hands, and then looked back at Agnes. “We would have been killed. The people outside the gate are desperate. It was just before dawn by the time we got there, and the crowds were waking, stirring. They were hungry and angry. They would have, at the very least, taken our vehicles and anything we had they could use.”

  “You think they would have killed you?” Agnes seemed more fascinated than shocked. “And the guards on the other side would have just let them?”

  It was Patrick who answered. “Have you ever been to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier or Buckingham Palace?”

  When Agne
s nodded, he continued, “It was like that. Stare straight ahead, rifle at the ready position, do not make eye contact. If we’d been attacked, they wouldn’t have done a thing because their reason for being there was not the people on the other side of the fence. Their reason for being there was to protect the capitol.”

  “You mean the governor.”

  “I mean the seat of power for the state of Texas.”

  Agnes sighed, sat back, and motioned for Max to continue.

  “Gabe knew a code word. When he said it to the soldier, they opened the gate and let us through.”

  “And you actually met with Governor Reed?”

  “We did, though we didn’t learn much directly from her. She approved our request for medications—antibiotics for people in our town and insulin for Shelby’s son.”

  “Supplies that were later stolen by one of her own men.” Bianca’s tone was bitter.

  Shelby sat listening as if the story were about someone else. It was difficult for her to absorb all they had been through since arriving in Austin.

  Max continued. “We did learn, through some other officers, that she has no plans to help the university. She’s heard that there are different factions, and she doesn’t want to be seen as ordering the inciting incident for a bloodbath.”

  “So she would allow us to die here?”

  “They’re expanding the government circle to the south, with the hopes that her control over warring factions will solidify. Then she’ll make her way north.”

  “By then the outcome will already be decided.”

  “Maybe that’s what she’s hoping for.”

  Agnes was quiet for a few moments. She didn’t seem particularly disturbed by what she’d heard, almost as if they’d only confirmed her fears. “What do you want from me? Besides insulin?”

  “You could start by explaining what happened here.”

  SIXTY-FOUR

  When Agnes didn’t answer his question, Max added, “Class of ’93, Interdisciplinary Studies.”

  “You found work for that?”

  “I went on to earn my law degree from Baylor in ’96. Passed the bar two years later.”

  “Criminal?”

  “Family.”

  Agnes folded one hand over the other, glanced out the window, and then focused completely on Shelby and Max and Bianca and Patrick.

  “The university fell forty-eight hours after the flare. I was teaching an evening class of grad students when the power went out—a Friday class, which is a rare enough thing. Many of those caught here on campus thought we had experienced a failure of the power grid, but I knew it was more than that when the phones stopped working and the cars wouldn’t start. My house is less than two miles from here. I walked home, packed a bag, and came back.”

  “Why would you do that?” Patrick asked.

  “I knew this wasn’t a temporary phenomenon. NASA has been warning the government for years, but those press releases rarely made headlines.”

  “Why did you shave your head?” Shelby realized the question was a minor one. She should have been asking about insulin and routes home, but this woman fascinated her. It could be that she held the answers they needed. More answers than where to find medical supplies. Carter could very easily have been on a college campus if the flare had happened six months later. Shelby wanted to understand what had happened to the students and the professors.

  “Do you know anything about human ecology…”

  “Shelby.”

  “Do you know anything about it, Shelby?”

  “No. I’ve never heard of it before today.”

  “It is the study of the relationship between humans—between us—and our environment.”

  “Sociology,” Bianca offered.

  “Yes, but what we study is more complex than that. We factor in the natural environment as well as the environment that has been built around us.”

  “Such as what?” Patrick asked.

  “Well, everything that isn’t natural—buildings, parks, homes, neighborhoods, infrastructure.”

  “You were expecting this.” Max crossed his arms and waited.

  “In a sense. Every organization breaks down at some point. In regard to life and death, no person or organized system is immune to it. Even our solar system is dying.”

  “You’re an atheist?” Shelby asked.

  Agnes laughed, and the smile on her face grew. “Hardly. I see a divine hand in both the living and the dying. But you were asking about my hair. When I realized that the old world was gone, that it wasn’t ever coming back, I shaved it.”

  “So it was a symbolic gesture?” Shelby couldn’t help reaching up and running her fingers through her curls.

  “In one respect, yes, it was. But on a practical level, I believe that shampoo and conditioner are a thing of the past.”

  Max leaned forward, his elbows propped on the arms of the chair. “So all those kids we saw with shaved heads—they buy into your theory that we’re living in a different world now.”

  Agnes shrugged. “We have more than forty thousand students at this university. Only twenty percent live in university housing, and even fewer than that in the summer. Still, with six thousand students on campus, I wanted to be here. That is why I packed a bag and moved into my office in the early morning hours of June 11.”

  “You wanted to study them.” Max looked surprised.

  “Yes, of course I did, but I also knew that the luxury of academia was swept away with the aurora borealis. Study? Yes. But, more importantly, there would be a need for guidance as we transition to a new ecology.”

  “And you’re that guidance?”

  Instead of answering, Agnes glanced at the picture on the wall—the one of her handing a diploma to a student. “Dr. Steiner’s grandson was one of my students—a very special student who showed unusual promise. He had a grasp of human ecology that I’ve rarely seen, and yet he died in the first forty-eight hours. Killed by some punk with a pistol who thought he needed fifty dollars. Perhaps that was what pushed Robert over the edge.”

  No one spoke for a moment. Shelby thought of all she’d seen since the night of the flare, of all she had done. Could she be pushed over an edge? Yes, she supposed she could, but not the one that Robert had gone over. Despair lurked around her. It threatened to swallow her at times. In spite of that hopelessness, she would defend herself and those she loved. Hadn’t she been in the line of Abney citizens that had fought with the people of Croghan? Hadn’t she been the one who had killed a guard that threatened her and Bianca?

  That was different, her conscience whispered.

  But was it? Was what they had done, what she had done, any different than what Dr. Steiner was doing? Her world had once been so black and white, but now it was gray. Morality became an entirely different thing when you mixed survival into the equation.

  Agnes was studying her. She leaned forward and said, “Tell me why I should give you the insulin.”

  SIXTY-FIVE

  Carter woke with his head throbbing and his throat parched. He pulled out the bottle of water and downed all that was in it before he could question whether he should. He was sitting in a stream! If he had to, he’d drink the creek water, though he’d been warned often enough against doing that.

  “Always boil the water,” Georgia had reminded him.

  “You don’t want giardia,” Max had cautioned.

  “Don’t even ask him what that is.” His mom had glanced at Max and laughed. They did that a lot. They always had. Some long ago, hilarious memory passing between them. Carter thought of Kaitlyn, and he nearly allowed himself to sink into that memory, to ignore what was happening and fall back asleep.

  Then he remembered the men who had taken their fish, the same men who had shot Tate. They were coming back. If Roy happened to be here, to be looking for him when they came back, he could be ambushed or shot or killed.

  Carter sat up straighter.

  He didn’t have many choices—really only two
. He could stay where he was and hope that someone found him before the creeps who were poaching off their land came back. If he wasn’t found, he could defend himself with the pistol in his backpack, though he doubted his ability to make a decent shot given his physical condition.

  His second option? He could make his way downstream.

  Anger and fear and humiliation burned through him with lightning speed. Why was this happening to them? Why now, when it seemed as if they were finally going to catch a break? Would things continue to spiral out of control—growing worse each day until they wished they were dead?

  He thought again of Kaitlyn, of her funeral. Pastor Tony had spoken for a moment, and although he too had been grieving, there had been a quiet confidence about him. What was it he’d said? Something about trusting God. From what Carter could tell, God didn’t seem too trustworthy. After all, Carter was sitting in a creek with a broken leg and goons on his trail.

  But there was something else.

  Pastor Tony had also talked about the remnant.

  Carter closed his eyes and forced his mind to focus. Suddenly, what Tony had said was more important than anything else—more important than insulin or water or a path back to the ranch house.

  “Are we the remnant of Christ? I can’t answer that…”

  Carter felt an intense desire to scream at the man. If he didn’t have answers, what good was he? Why even pretend to lead them, if he couldn’t explain what was happening?

  But there was something else he’d said. Something about their agony and despair. Those words he ought to remember well enough. Agony and despair seemed to describe his past and his present and even his future.

  Then Tony’s words came back to him so clearly that he actually glanced to his left and right. “Even in the midst of your agony and despair—you remain under the provision and care of your heavenly Father.”

  Carter didn’t realize he was crying until he tasted salt. Did he believe that? Did he believe God cared and provided for him?

  What about Kaitlyn? Dead.