Storm Surge

by Rhoades, J. D.

  “The asshole who killed Barstow.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Who else would take out the generator?”

  Blake grimaced. “Okay,” he said. He strode back into the office, coming out after a moment with the machine gun he’d left there. “Let’s go.” They made their way out of the master suite and down the stairs: Blake in the lead; Worth behind him; Moon, silent, cat-footed, bringing up the rear. As they reached the bottom, Worth saw the open door. The beam of his flashlight showed a silver curtain of rain. The wind was blowing it inside, great gouts of water sluicing across the tile floor of the entranceway. They advanced slowly on the open door, weapons at the ready. As they reached the door, Worth’s spotlight picked out a running figure, headed for the dunes.

  “That’s Barney,” Blake said, his voice tight. “Worth. Go after him. Moon and I will take the generator. That’s where the asshole’s probably waiting.”

  Worth started out after the fleeing man, who had disappeared into the rain. A sudden flash of doubt made him draw up short. “Blake,” he said. Blake, already headed around the side of the house, turned and looked back impatiently. “What?”

  “Nothing,” Worth said. It was nothing he could lay a finger on, just a vague unease.

  “Kill that fucking yokel,” Blake said. “I don’t care how.”

  “Roger that,” Worth said. He began running across the once-luxurious lawn, head down against the wind. His feet sloshed in the turf that the storm was rapidly turning to thick, oozing mud. He was two thirds of the way across the lawn, almost to the dunes, when he spotted the flight suited figure struggling up the highest point ahead. He raised his machine gun to fire.

  Something hit him in the back with a crushing impact, dead weight bearing him down to his knees and then full length onto his face in the mud. He felt the pressure and pain of knees digging down onto his spine, the full weight of a grown man pressed down on the nerves with a deliberate cruelty. There was a hand suddenly tangled in his hair, slamming his face down into the mud. He groped for the trigger of his weapon, felt it torn away from his slack hand. The hand on his head bore him down into the water and muck before his face. He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t dare try. He attempted to rise, bucking like a bronco, but the weight on his back was relentless, the hand at the back of his head pressing his face, his mouth, his nose, down into the mud. He felt the blades of grass grinding against his face. God, he needed to breathe. It was all he could think about. But to take a breath of the mire in his face would be suicide. I’m drowning, he thought, and the idea sent a desperate galvanizing spasm through him. The effort he made to throw off the weight was greater than anything he had ever imagined himself doing. But it was no good. The weight on top of him bore him even more viciously down into the mud. He began to pray, for the first time in years, knowing he’d probably used up all his capital with the Almighty long long ago. Please God, he begged silently, No. Please. God. Not like this. Anything. But. This. There was no answer. The pressure in his lungs was insupportable. He opened his mouth and took a deep breath. The shock of cold salt water and mud being sucked into his lungs paralyzed him. He felt consciousness slipping away, a great roar coming up from out of a deep dark place, until there was silence, and darkness, and a strange feeling of warmth and peace. Then there was nothing at all.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  “Son of a bitch,” Blake said, looking at the dead generator. “Son of a BITCH!”

  Moon stood by and said nothing. Blake crossed the utility shed to where the generator sat on a raised platform, its sleek metal cover off and its complicated insides open to view. He stood over it, fuming, playing the light over it. Moon came up to stand beside him. “Spark plugs are gone,” he said.

  “I can see that,” Blake said through gritted teeth. “The question is, where’s this Mercer?” He looked up from the generator, then to the open door of the shed. He bolted for the door, his machine gun at the ready. Moon followed.

  They found Worth, face down on the lawn. His hands were still sunk into the grass and mud, long furrows showing where he had clawed the ground in panic. Blake advanced and grabbed a handful of hair. Worth’s face came free of the mud with a wet sucking sound. Wet mud ran from his nose and open mouth.

  “There,” Moon croaked, his words nearly lost in the tempest. The word was followed immediately by the flash and chatter of a long burst from his machine gun, aimed at the dunes. Blake was in the middle of raising his own weapon when an answering blast of gunfire came from the darkness.

  “He’s got Worth’s weapon!” Blake yelled to be heard over the wind. Moon said nothing, just fired again. Blake snapped off his flashlight. “We’re exposed here! Fall back!”

  Moon still didn’t answer, but walked backwards, firing before killing his own light. Blake turned, ran a few steps, then turned back and fired blindly. He didn’t know where his mysterious assailant was, exactly, but at least he could try to keep the bastard’s head down. No answering shots came from the darkness as Moon bolted past him, turned and squeezed off a burst to cover Blake’s retreat. They worked their way back to the house like that, alternately firing and running until they were back inside the door.

  Upstairs, Montrose could hear the shots and Blake’s voice raised, shouting commands. She went to the shuttered windows and strained her ears trying to hear better. It sounded like fucking Iraq down there. She started to turn from the window and stopped when she felt the barrel of a gun pressed against the side of her throat. “Why are you here?” a deep voice said.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Bohler squeezed off a last burst at the house, then turned and ran hell-for-leather through the dunes, parallel to the shoreline. The rising water clutched and pulled at his calves, swirling around his legs. For a brief, insane moment he had the feeling that the water was glad to see him again, glad to get another chance to embrace him. He could feel a hysterical laugh trying to bubble out of his throat at the absurdity of the thought. He shook his head to clear it. Keep going, he said. Mercer had said to fire a few diversionary rounds, then pull out and meet him at the crossroads.

  Mercer. This had to be the man McMurphy was after. He had killed the worried man as calmly as if he were slaughtering beef. Bohler though of the leader, the man who had held his head beneath the water, then laughed at and mocked him, and he felt a rage as black and roiling as the night that covered him, so pit-black he knew in his heart he could have killed the man. But there had been no rage in Mercer. He had been…the only word Bohler could think of was businesslike. He felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the wind and his drenched clothing.

  Down the beach, then inland, he thought. I have to hit the beach road soon if I do that. And then he’d figure out what he needed to do about Mercer.

  ***

  “I tell you, friend,” Montrose said, her voice shaking a little, “Times like this, I ask myself the same question.”

  She heard a brief intake of breath, like a gasp of surprise. There was a click and her own flashlight was shining full in her face. “You’re a woman,” the voice said.

  “Naw,” Montrose said belligerently, “ya think?” There was no answer. “So, you got a problem with that?”

  The light snapped off. “You could say that,” the voice said. There was a clatter from downstairs. She heard Blake’s voice calling up. “Montrose?”

  The pressure of the gun was gone, but she didn’t dare call out to them. She heard a brief rustle in the darkness, then nothing. She tried to stay absolutely still, listening as hard as she could to determine where the man was, or if he was still there. She heard them coming up the stairs. She thought of calling out, of warning them, but the thought of that gun somewhere in the dark, stopped her. Fuck ‘em, she thought. I ain’t dyin’ for those assholes. When they came into the room, however, flashlights stabbing through the darkness, the man was gone.

  “Did you see him?” Montrose said.

  Blake shined the light in her face. “Who
?”

  “That guy. They guy who…he was right here.”

  “What? Here? In this room?”

  Montrose nodded. “He had a gun on me, man. How could you not have seen him?”

  “Moon,” Blake said. “Backtrack. The bastard may still be in the house.” Moon hesitated a moment, then headed out the door, his gun at the ready.

  “Did he say anything?”

  “He asked why I was…why we were here. Hey, where’s Worth?”

  “Worth’s dead. Mercer killed him.”

  “Who’s Mercer?”

  “The asshole that’s causing all this trouble.” Blake played his light over the room, as if he expected Mercer to be crouched in a corner, ready to spring. The circle of light came to rest on the desk where Montrose had been sitting. “Montrose,” he said. “Where’s your headset?”

  “My…”

  “Your radio! It was right here, wasn’t it?”

  Moon came back into the room. “There’s a bedroom window open down the hall,” he said. “He’s gone.”

  “And unless I miss my guess,” Blake said, “he’s got one of our radios.” He reached up and touched the headset switch to engage his microphone. “Four, One,” he said. He waited for the acknowledgment. “Communications have been compromised,” he said. “Repeat, communications are compromised. Stay off the air.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  “Acknowledged,” Phillips said from his aerie. “But you’ll want to get under cover, and get your heads down.” He watched with fascination at the writhing pillar of white out over the ocean, illuminated by the strobe-light glare of the lightning. The waterspout was a slender ribbon, gradually thickening with each flash. The electrical discharges were almost constant now, and St. Elmo’s fire sputtered and flared along the metal railing of the outside catwalk like capering demons. Phillips knew he should get down, out of the lantern room and the huge glass windows that the waterborne tornado would turn to flying shards if it came ashore near him. But he couldn’t take his eyes off the thing. It undulated in the middle like a belly dancer, moving slowly towards the opposite end of the island. Then, as it made landfall, the spout seemed to disappear. The next flash of lightning, however, showed it moving with sinuous menacing determination up onto the beach, no longer white with foam but dark with the sand and rock ripped into the sky by the updraft. It moved inexorably towards the clubhouse. Phillips raised his binoculars for a closer look. The roof of the clubhouse was rocking up and down, as if it were trying to tear itself loose from the building below. Then the tornado came into the glasses’ field of view. The next flash he saw caught a glimpse of lumber and metal flying through the air. The building came apart as if a bomb had gone off inside. There was a dull red flash as something flammable went up. A few seconds after, a dull muffled boom reached him. Some sort of fuel tank, Phillips figured, ruptured by the disintegration of the clubhouse and set off by the electricity that filled the air. He considered breaking radio silence and letting Blake know that if anyone was hiding out in the clubhouse, they were unlikely to be a threat anytime soon. But if someone else might be on the line…he put the thought out of his mind. He raised the binoculars again and scanned for more tornadoes.

  ***

  More trees were down in the road. Bohler had had to clamber over half a dozen trunks and fallen limbs to reach the crossroads. Now he huddled, wet and miserable, in the V that had once been near the top of a massive live oak. Hundreds of years of growth had been uprooted and dashed to the ground by the wind that whipped around him now, buffeting and pushing and prodding relentlessly until he wanted to flail wildly back at it to get it away from him, get it off him for just a second. His broken nose felt like a hot balloon of pain in the middle of his face. He jumped as a sudden concussion thudded in the air. Then without warning, Mercer was beside him. It was as if the man had conjured himself out of the dark and rain.

  “What the hell was that?” Bohler said through chattering teeth.

  “Sounded like something at the clubhouse,” Mercer said. “Propane tank, maybe.” He reached for the machine gun. “Give that here.”

  “I’ll hang on to it for the moment, thanks,” Bohler said.

  Mercer looked irritated. “Look,” he said, we’re going to have to…” He looked down at his feet. “Uh-oh.”

  Bolher felt it too. He looked down. Water was swirling around their ankles and it was rising, even as they watched.

  “We’ve got to move,” Mercer said. “Follow me.”

  “Where are…” Bolher cursed inwardly as he had to struggle to remember their names. “Sharon Brennan? And her daughter?”

  “Safe. As long as they’re smart enough to get on a higher floor.” He smiled a little. “And I don’t have much doubt about that.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Sharon grabbed up the shotgun as she heard the door crash open downstairs.

  Glory sat upright in the bed where she’d been sleeping. “What? What is it?” They had found a Coleman propane lantern in a closet downstairs, and Sharon reached over to turn it up. The dull white glow flared to a sharp white flame that it hurt to look directly at.

  Mercer’s voice came from below. “Sharon? Sharon, it’s me.”

  “Ms. Brennan?” Another voice. Strangely familiar. Sharon’s hands tightened around the shotgun anyway.

  “Who’s that?” Glory whispered.

  “Shhh.”

  “I’m coming up the stairs,” Mercer said. “It’s okay, The guy with me is a cop. He got stuck here, too.” Mercer appeared in the doorway His clothes were soaking wet and plastered to him. He had what looked like a pair of headphones draped around his neck. Behind him stood a man in a mud covered flight suit. The other man looked awful. His nose was grotesquely swollen, and blood was crusted on his upper lip. His eyes looked swollen too, as if he was getting ready to have a shiner. He was carrying a machine gun awkwardly cradled in his arms.

  Sharon put the gun on the bed and stood up. “Kyle,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  He stepped into the room. “I’m fine.”

  “Ma’am,” the man in the flight suit said. “Are you and your daughter all right?”

  “Yes, we’re fine,” she said, a little puzzled at his tone.

  “Good,” the man said. “Mr. Mercer, step to the other side of the room, please.”

  Mercer turned. The man in the flight suit had the gun raised and pointed at the center of Mercer’s chest. Mercer didn’t speak, just stared into the man’s face.

  “Kyle Mercer, I’m placing you under arrest.”

  “What!?” Sharon said.

  Mercer looked amused. “For what, exactly?”

  The man in the flight suit ignored the question and spoke to Sharon. “I’m Deputy Len Bohler, ma’am,” he said. “I came to get you. And this man is wanted for questioning by the FBI.”

  “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Mercer said.

  “I said Step BACK, sir!” Bohler snapped. “And take the pistol out of your waistband.” Mercer raised his hands and stepped back slightly. He was still smiling. Bohler went on. “I also just witnessed him killing a man. In cold blood.”

  “This would be the guy,” Mercer said, “who used to be the owner of that weapon you’re holding.”

  “You may have a plea of self-defense there, sir,” Bohler said. “I can’t give you legal advice. Now reach down, one hand, two fingers. And take that gun out.” Still smiling, Mercer did as he was told, withdrawing the pistol from the waistband of his jeans.

  “Now throw it here.”

  Mercer gently tossed the weapon, underhand, a few inches from Bohler’s feet. His eyes never left the deputy’s face. Bohler started to bend over, as if to pick the pistol up, then stopped himself. “Nice try,” he said. “You have the right to remain silent….”

  “Deputy,” Sharon said, “I think you may be misunderstanding…”

  Bolher raised his voice and overrode her. “Anything you say can and will be used against
you in a court of law…”

  Sharon stepped toward him. “Deputy…”

  “Step back, ma’am!” Bohler was trying to sound commanding, but his voice nearly cracked with strain.

  “PUT THE GUN DOWN!” Glory shouted.

  Sharon turned. Glory had snatched the shotgun up off the bed. She was kneeling up on the mattress, pointing the weapon at Bohler. Her hands were shaking.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  “Glory!” Sharon screamed.

  “Kid,” Mercer said calmly, “Put the gun down. Don’t be stupid.”

  “You leave him alone!’” Glory screamed at Bohler. There were tears on her cheeks. “He hasn’t done anything wrong!”

  Bohler was looking stupefied. The gun wavered back and forth between Mercer and Glory.

  “Don’t do it, Bohler,” Mercer still had that same deadly calm in his voice. “The shotgun’s not even loaded. She’s bluffing. Keep the gun on me. Keep looking at me.” Bolher’s aim continued to oscillate back and forth. He looked sick.

  “I’ll do it,” Glory sobbed. “I’ll shoot you. I swear it.” She raised the gun. Bohler’s aim tracked more decisively towards her.

  “Oh, god, NO!” Sharon screamed, and tried to put herself in front of the gun barrel.

  Mercer moved with the quickness of a striking cat. Before Sharon had even registered that he was moving, he was across the room, almost on top of Bohler, with his left hand pushing the machine gun barrel the rest of the way through its arc, past Glory, past Sharon. At the same time, he brought his right forearm up hard, smashing it across the bridge of Bohler’s swollen nose. The deputy screamed in agony and his grip on the gun loosened. Mercer stripped the weapon away from him with a smooth practiced motion. Bohler sank to his knees, his hands over his face. Bohler kicked him in the stomach, hard. Bohler curled in agony on the floor. Mercer raised the gun and took aim.

  “Kyle, NO!” Sharon cried.