Raging Storm

by Vannetta Chapman

  Carter forced his mind to clear, pushing at the sleep and cobwebs that threatened to claim him. A groan escaped his lips when Georgia repositioned his leg. She tugged off his shoe and removed his sock.

  “I need to splint this, but first we have to get the swelling down.”

  Someone walked closer to the bed, and then he heard the cutting away of fabric. Georgia slit the seam all the way through the waistband.

  “Mom’s going to kill me. I was…” He stared up at the ceiling. Lantern light danced across it, throwing shadows this way and that. “I was down to three pairs of jeans.”

  “Well, now you’re down to two. Don’t worry about that. I can make you another pair out of Roy’s old overalls.”

  “Or you could make him overalls,” Roy teased.

  “This will make a nice pair of shorts with a little mending. Roy, help me get him out of his wet clothes.”

  He must have passed out again. When he woke, he was under a blanket, no longer shivering, and his leg was propped up on several pillows. Scanning the room left to right, he saw Roy nodding off in a rocking chair. The rest of the house seemed quiet.

  Georgia bustled back into the room, carrying a steaming cup of soup. His stomach growled as he attempted to prop himself up.

  “Wait.” She set the mug down and hurried behind him. Roy roused awake in time to help. Once they had him propped up and sipping chicken broth, Georgia turned to her husband and said, “Now go to bed.”

  “But you might need me.”

  “And if I do, I’ll wake you.”

  He leaned in, kissed her cheek, saw Carter watching them, and winked. They were good people, Georgia and Roy. He’d always known that, but it wasn’t until he’d been faced with people who were evil that he’d understood what a gift true friends were. He tried to finish the broth, but his teeth began chattering, his arm shook, and he was afraid he’d spill the broth all over the bed.

  “It’s the fever, Carter. Let me help you.”

  After the third spoonful, he shook his head, unable to stomach anymore. “Why do I have a fever?”

  “I can’t say for sure.”

  “Tell me, Georgia.”

  She sank into the chair next to his bed. “The leg itself shouldn’t be causing it unless you’re bleeding internally.”

  “Then what’s wrong with me?”

  “You had a few deep cuts. There’s some infection.” She pulled the covers away from his arm. He was surprised to see it bandaged from the elbow to the wrist. “You don’t remember how this happened?”

  He searched his memory, found nothing there to explain the bandage or the throbbing pain in his arm.

  “No…I don’t.” He fought against the shaking that jarred his body and made his head ache.

  “Take this ibuprofen.” She popped two pills in his mouth and held the cup to his lips. He nearly drained it. It felt as if every ache and pain in his body was competing for first place—his leg, his arm, his throat. His entire body hurt.

  “Do you want something stronger? We have a few painkillers from Roy’s surgery last year.”

  “Nah. Save them.”

  “All right, but tell me if you change your mind.” Georgia adjusted the pillows so he could lay back and told him to close his eyes. “Rest is the best medicine, Carter.”

  She walked to the end of the bed, pulled back the covers, and laid her fingertips against his leg as if checking it for fever. When she noticed him watching, she smiled and tucked the covers back around him.

  She sat beside him in a straight-back chair. On the table was the lantern and an old Bible. She didn’t pick it up, but she rested her hand on the top.

  Carter knew Georgia was a believer. She didn’t push, but she didn’t hide it either. It was simply a part of who she was. He closed his eyes and allowed his mind to slip back to the hours he’d spent in the creek.

  Had he called out to God?

  Had he prayed?

  Somehow he’d found the strength to push himself to the middle of the stream. He’d known that if he didn’t—

  The memory of what he needed to tell them returned with the force of a thunderbolt.

  “You can’t get out of bed,” Georgia said, pushing him gently back against his pillow. “Tell me what you need.”

  “I have to warn him. I have to speak to Roy.”

  “Roy’s asleep already.”

  “But he needs to know.”

  “Tell me, Carter. Whatever you can tell Roy you can tell me.”

  “I think…I think they’re coming.”

  SIXTY-NINE

  Max found Shelby sitting in a lawn chair on the roof of their dormitory building.

  “Room for one more?”

  She didn’t answer, didn’t welcome his company, but neither did she tell him to go away. He took that as a good sign, retrieved another lawn chair from where they were leaning against a rain barrel, and plopped it down next to hers.

  For a moment they just sat there, staring out over downtown Austin. It was well past dark, and there was little to see—the flicker of a lantern in a window, in the far distance headlights from a car driving down a road, starlight overhead, a three-quarter moon.

  “We could be home by now.”

  “Maybe,” Max agreed. “Or maybe we would have broken down in one of the more devastated areas. We couldn’t take that risk, and you know it. Best to travel in daylight, where we can at least see what’s coming at us.”

  She continued to stare out at the darkness. Max had no idea how to comfort her, how to reassure her. Was she worried about Carter? Afraid Agnes wouldn’t come through with the medicine? Regretting Patrick’s decision? He didn’t have the words to address all of those fears at once, so he sat beside her, silent, and waited.

  Her voice barely a whisper, she said, “During the day you can forget. You can look at the buildings, the ones that aren’t burned, and pretend that life is normal.”

  “Is that what you want to do? Pretend?”

  “No.” When she shook her head, her curls bounced and swayed. “I don’t want to do that. I want to face this thing…face it head-on, but sometimes my mind insists on playing tricks.”

  “Pretending.”

  “Yeah.” She glanced at him, a bittersweet smile tugging on her lips, but there was no joy in it. Some days he wondered if he’d ever see joy on her face again. Some days it occurred to him that he would do just about anything to wipe away the worry, even if only for a few minutes.

  “At night, especially here in the middle of downtown, the darkness is so unnatural.”

  “That’s true, but I think it’s what you’re seeing combined with what you’re not hearing—cars on the road, jets overhead, music from a bar…”

  “People laughing.”

  He didn’t know how to answer that. It was true that their world had become bleaker. They were like a ship ravaged by a terrible, relentless storm—still floating, but adrift, battered, and in danger of sinking.

  “We’ll be home tomorrow.”

  “I don’t want him to do it.” Her sigh was deep, troubled, trembling. “But Carter needs that insulin. I don’t…I don’t know what to do.”

  “There’s nothing for you to do.” He moved his chair closer, so that their shoulders were nearly touching, reached for her hand, pulled it into his lap, and held it in both of his. “This isn’t your decision. It’s Patrick’s. And we would all do the same for Carter. You would, I would, you know that Bianca would.”

  Shelby nodded. With her free hand she swiped at the tears falling down her cheeks.

  “Do you know what Patrick told me? That he’s a soldier. That this is what he’s supposed to do. He would have stayed in Abney—forever, I guess—but this is where he’s needed. The fact that he can put his skills to work—that’s his phrase, not mine—the fact that he can do that and help Carter. Patrick’s decision was made before any of us had a word to say about it.”

  “There is one thing that I’d like to do.”

&nbs
p; “Name it.”

  “Go by Donna’s school, like we said we would. See if there’s something we could do. Maybe there’s something, though I can’t imagine what. I don’t know. Maybe there’s one child that we could take to Clay. Surely we could find room for one.”

  “I’m sure we could, and that’s a fine idea.”

  “We’ll have to run it by Bianca first. I know she’s ready to be home, to see her family.”

  “She’ll agree.”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  They sat there another twenty minutes, looking out over the university. Finally, Shelby sighed and stood, but Max stopped her. He stood too, drew her closer, and wrapped his arms around her. She stood there, rested, for one minute and then another. She pulled back enough to reach up and touch his face. Her fingertips against his skin felt like the most intimate of caresses, felt like all he would ever need.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “For?”

  She started to answer, shook her head instead.

  Max glanced out over the university buildings, but he didn’t let go of Shelby. He turned her in his arms, so that she was looking out at Austin, but he kept his arms wrapped around her, as if he could protect her from what lay ahead. “When I decided to go to law school, I thought I could change the world.”

  He rested his chin on top of her head, breathed in the scent of her. “My dad admired my enthusiasm, but he warned me that the world doesn’t change that way—all at once.”

  “Maybe it did, on the night of the flare.”

  “Not our doing, though.”

  “God’s?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe it’s just the way of the physical world. Maybe we forgot that we’re susceptible to the laws of nature.”

  “So no changing the world.”

  “Not all at once.”

  “But we can make a difference?” She pulled his arms more tightly around her until it felt as if they were one person, one force to be reckoned with.

  “One person at a time. That’s what my dad told me. The world is changed one person at a time.”

  SEVENTY

  Shelby didn’t think she’d sleep, but she did. The next morning, everything proceeded like clockwork. Agnes sent two of her guards with them to retrieve their vehicles. Max gave the teen at the park the bulk of their food with the advice to “leave town with your family. Don’t try to stay in this park. Pick a direction and go. You don’t want to be here when things get worse, and they are going to get worse.”

  Once they were safely in their vehicles—Bianca and Patrick in the Mustang, Shelby and Max and Lanh in the Dodge—the professor’s guards returned the way they had come. Lanh directed them to the western side of the territory ruled by Agnes. They traveled down a one-way road, turned down an alley that became tighter and darker and dead-ended in a loading dock. One of the guards must have called ahead, because the bay doors opened. Max pulled through. Patrick parked his Mustang beside them.

  Together they loaded the refrigerator, solar panels, and boxes of insulin into the Dodge. Patrick spent an inordinate amount of time packing and repacking things in the cargo area. Shelby couldn’t see back there, the boxes were packed so high. By the time they were done, there was a small space in the second seat for Lanh. Max, Shelby, and Bianca would ride in the front.

  Shelby held back as the others said goodbye.

  She watched Max and Patrick exchange handshakes and then bear hugs. Some words she couldn’t hear passed between them.

  Next Bianca said goodbye, but not with words. She walked right up to Patrick, put a hand on each of his shoulders, stood up on her tiptoes, and kissed him on the lips. Shelby knew then that they’d talked the night before. That something was settled between them. When Bianca turned toward the Dodge, she was smiling and blushing and looking at no one in particular as she climbed into the passenger seat.

  Shelby didn’t want to do this.

  She stood where she was, her feet refusing to move, and finally Patrick walked up to her.

  “I can’t.” She looked up at him and forced the words around the lump in her throat. “I can’t say goodbye.”

  Instead of arguing, he pulled her into a hug, held on tight, and finally kissed her on top of the head. When he stepped away, he was grinning. “Tell Carter to have the chessboard ready. One year from today, I’ll be there.”

  It was with that image in her mind that she walked to the Dodge and slid across the seat. They wound their way through north Austin, retracing the route the Remnant had recommended, Shelby riding in the middle between Max and Bianca. She thought they were out of danger, when Max turned right and Lanh leaned forward.

  “Not that way.”

  “It’s how we came.”

  “The block has changed hands since then. Back up slowly, go down two more blocks, and then turn.” As he was retreating, Shelby saw two men step out of the shadows, rifles held loosely at their side.

  They reversed course and eventually traced their route back toward the school.

  “I’m glad we’re doing this, Shelby.” Bianca had the window down and tapped her fingers against the side of the door. “If anything, this area looks worse. I think Donna’s going to want those kids out of school even faster than she had planned.”

  The closer they drove to the school, the heavier the sense of dread settled in Shelby’s stomach.

  “Were all of these homes burned out before?” Lanh asked.

  “No. They weren’t.” Max’s voice was grim, his expression set in a scowl.

  After all the destruction they’d seen, Shelby still couldn’t believe the scene outside their window. “It’s only been three days. How could this possibly have happened in three days?”

  Smoke continued to rise from some of the homes, though none were in flames. Apparently, the fires had been set the day before. What could burn had, and the rest served as a charred reminder of what had been—brick facades, steel beams, shells of automobiles. They saw only glimpses of people—walking down back alleys, sleeping in cars, resting under hundred-year-old live oak trees.

  “Why?” Shelby asked. “What’s the point in burning things? I guess I can see homeless people, displaced people, wanting a place to live. But they can’t live here now. No one can live here.”

  “Maybe it was carelessness,” Bianca said. “Someone kept a candle burning or used a propane stove inside without adequate ventilation.”

  “One house possibly, but not an entire neighborhood.” Lanh leaned out the window, as if he could get a better look. “Doesn’t look like they bothered to empty the houses before they torched them.”

  “I imagine they took the food, any handguns or ammunition, maybe money.” Max had initially slowed down, but now he was picking up speed again. The last thing they wanted was to get carjacked in the midst of a smoldering neighborhood. “There’s a history of this sort of thing—from the Watts riots in 1965 to the Baltimore protests in 2015. It’s fueled by rage and by a sense of injustice, even though it isn’t logical to burn your only grocery store or an entire neighborhood.”

  They saw the ruins of the school before they’d driven into the parking area. The front of the building was burned out completely. The perimeter fence had been crashed through. It lay in mangled heaps here and there. There were no guards, no sign of anyone at all.

  “Tell me they got out, Max. Don’t you think they got out? They must have escaped before this happened.”

  He put the Dodge in park and squeezed her hand. “Stay here. Scoot over to the driver’s seat. If you hear any gunshots—”

  Max had opened his door and was getting out of the car.

  “No. Uh-uh. You’re not going in there alone.”

  “Shelby, I can do this.”

  “Not without me you’re not.” She had felt so sure that they should stop by, that there was something they could do to help. But what if she’d only succeeded in landing them in harm’s way? What if after all they’d been through, they were killed at the devastat
ed site of an ecologically friendly elementary school?

  She leaned back into the car as Max began pulling handguns and rifles out of their cargo area. “Patrick managed to trade for these. He thought we might need them.”

  “What did he trade? Another month of his life? For three guns and two rifles?”

  “You know Patrick. He can be convincing.” Max turned to Bianca. “I want you to drive. Follow us in the car as far as you can. Lanh, get up here and sit beside her.”

  Max handed the teen one of the rifles. “Do you know how to use this?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. Don’t shoot us, but if you see anyone else, anyone you even think is going to hurt you or Bianca…don’t hesitate to pull the trigger.”

  Lanh hurried around to the front passenger seat. Bianca put the Dodge into drive. Shelby and Max jogged ahead. They circled around to the back of the school. With the building burned, there were places she could see through. She spied the garden, the goat pen, even the outdoor play area, which ironically was unscathed.

  MREs had been ripped open and the wrappings scattered across the pavement. A child’s blanket was caught up in the coil of fencing. She thought she heard the sound of one of the chickens, but it was coming from the opposite direction. Perhaps it had escaped.

  They jogged down the distance of the back of the building. Shelby prayed that if any children were in there, that they would hear them, that they would find them, that they would be able to rescue them from this place.

  As they turned the corner, the Dodge still idling a few feet behind them, a large man stepped out of the shadows, holding a shotgun.

  “Better stop right there.”

  SEVENTY-ONE

  You just took ten years off my life, Bill. It’s us—Max, Shelby, and Bianca.” Max kept his hands at his side, waiting for the big man to acknowledge them, praying they wouldn’t be shot by accident.

  Bill strode toward them, still holding the shotgun though he lowered it to his side.