by Nancy Kress
Invasive species. Sissy didn’t look at Marianne.
Dr. Lopez went on about sand dune lizards, lesser prairie chickens (were there greater prairie chickens?), owls, reptile collection, habitat loss. Especially habitat loss. Sissy tried to listen and learn, but she kept glancing at the ground. Was that another scorpion moving over there? A snake? The sun poured down heat like burning oil.
Finally she said, “I’m going back to the car.”
Tim looked up from whatever he was examining on the ground. He did a three-sixty scan of the desert, looking for any threat to Marianne—like what, out here?—then said, “Okay, Sissy. I’ll go with you.”
Sometimes he could be really understanding.
Back at the hotel, Marianne worked furiously on her laptop, rewriting parts of her speech to include what she’d learned from Dr. Lopez. Sissy and Tim retired to their room and made very quiet love. Afterward, refreshed and happy, Sissy left him asleep, carefully put on her clothes just the same as they were before, and asked Marianne what she wanted to order from room service for dinner. Room service wasn’t a thing that most foundation speech sponsors would pay for, and Sissy did not intend to let the chance go to waste. Marianne just wanted soup. For herself and Tim, she ordered chicken-fried steak and garlic mashed potatoes and crème brûlée.
“What’s that noise?” Sissy said.
Marianne looked up. “What noise?”
“That,” Sissy said, and a shiver ran over her.
* * *
They ate dinner to the roar of the wind. Sissy had gone back into the bedroom to wake Tim, drawn back the heavy curtains, and ducked onto the balcony. How could weather change that fast? At noon, glaring blue sky. At 6:00 p.m., low sullen clouds, racing wind, leaves and trash skirling across the parking lot.
“Tim, get up. Dinner.”
He always woke as fast as he went to sleep. “Is that wind?”
“Lots of wind.”
Naked, he padded to the French doors and peered out. “Wow. What does the local weather channel say?”
“I’ll see.”
Marianne was already checking weather on the Internet. “Rain, high winds—damn, nobody’s going to come to the lecture.”
“Some people will come,” Sissy said, with more confidence than she felt. “Does Albuquerque get superstorms?”
“I’ll check.”
Tim, dressed, emerged from the bedroom. Room service brought dinner, which smelled wonderful. The wind howled louder, or at least it seemed louder to Sissy. She said to the waiter, “Have you lived here long?”
“All my life, ma’am.”
Sissy dropped her voice. “Does Albuquerque get superstorms? Or tornadoes?”
“No, ma’am. I ain’t never seen neither one.”
“Thank you.”
After he left, Marianne looked up from her tablet and said, “Monsoon season doesn’t usually start in Albuquerque until August—well, this is late July. There can be heavy winter storms and severe lightning storms, but the last tornado of any impact was 1974. And it was only an F2. New Mexico lies outside of Tornado Alley. And the city hasn’t ever had a superstorm.”
“First time for everything,” Sissy muttered.
They ate in silence except for the wind. Marianne scarcely looked up from her notes. Not that she wasn’t always this focused before a speech, but at least she was eating. Her speech outfit, dress pants, and a pretty burgundy blazer that Sissy insisted she buy, hung loosely on her thinner body, but she’d refused to go shopping for something that actually fit. Tim, who always gulped his food, left to meet with hotel security and do his final check of the ballroom. He said to Marianne, “You stay here until I come for you.”
She said, “Tim, it’s been over a year since anybody has considered me worth attacking with so much as a banana. Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”
“Better safe than sorry,” Tim said, winked at Sissy, and left. Instead of being reassured by the slight bulge of his shoulder holster under his jacket, Sissy felt oddly disturbed.
Snap out of it, Sissy. Mama’s voice, strong in her head. And good advice. It was just the wind making her so jumpy. Sissy knew the cure for that—good common-sense facts. She left the table, turned on the wall screen, and found the local news.
“… unusually high winds … moderate rains … travel advisory in effect…”
Marianne looked up sharply. “How high did they say the winds are?”
Sissy said, “Gusts up to fifty miles per hour.”
Marianne frowned. Sissy said, “You have somebody you can call?” Marianne knew a lot of scientists, all kind of scientists.
“Yes, but I’m not going to call him. Not enough probability. You just leave your tablet on during the speech, Sissy, and keep an eye on the weather.”
Sissy nodded, but she wasn’t happy. She didn’t even want to eat her crème brûlée.
She was even less happy after Tim escorted Marianne to the green room behind the ballroom and Sissy took her seat in a middle row of chairs. Most of the chairs were empty; Marianne had been right about people staying home. A raised stage had been set up at one end, with a lectern and two more empty chairs. The wall behind the stage had a little door. The ballroom had no windows and it must have rooms all around it, because all of a sudden Sissy couldn’t hear the wind. An elderly couple sat next to her. They looked nice, so she leaned over and said, “Excuse me?”
“Yes?” the lady said.
“I’m not from around here and I’m just wondering—does Albuquerque get tornadoes or superstorms? There’s so much wind out there!”
They both smiled. The man said, “No, miss. Oh, small ones sometimes, but it’s not a big problem here.” It was what Marianne had already told her, and Sissy felt better. She should have eaten the crème brûlée. Maybe it would still be on the hallway cart after the speech. Almost 7:30—she settled herself more firmly on her chair.
Then they came in.
A whole group of young men—fifteen, sixteen, seventeen—which in itself was trouble because they were too old for a class trip and anyway there was no teacher or professor with them. They all wore long dark raincoats with hoods, which didn’t look like gang gear but didn’t look good, either. No girls with them, and the raincoats were loose enough to hide anything. Where was Tim? Had security let these guys through?
Sissy walked back to the ballroom entrance and asked the guard there, “Where is the ladies’ room?” He told her, but there was something about the way he held his face and body, something she couldn’t name but felt as strong as the chill from a freezer door. She smiled and walked toward the ladies’ room, and when she turned to open the door, he was watching her hard.
In the bathroom stall, she heard the wind howling. She called Tim on her cell. The call didn’t go through. Sissy checked her tablet; the Wi-Fi had disappeared.
Sissy left the bathroom and turned the opposite direction from the ballroom. The security guard had been watching for her. He called down the corridor, “Miss! You can’t go that way!” He started toward her.
Sissy ran. No place else, no hotel or college campus or community hall or anywhere else Marianne gave speeches, had ever tried to stop Sissy from going backstage. She darted into a staircase, ran up one floor instead of down, and raced toward a different stairwell. Her sense of direction had always been good. She found the corridors that brought her behind the ballroom. Another Security guard stood outside the green room. He eyed her the same way the other one had.
“You can’t go in there, Miss Tate.”
He knew her name. She hadn’t met with these people—had Tim for some reason shown them her picture? Why would he do that? Sissy made herself smile appealingly and held out her tablet. “I have to go in, I’m afraid. Dr. Jenner forgot her notes! She’s always so forgetful!” She shook her curls at the man.
“You can’t go in there.”
“Well, she can’t go on stage without her notes! There’s a lot of numbers for her speech th
at she hasn’t memorized. Important numbers.”
He hesitated. Clearly he wanted Marianne on stage. Finally he said, “You go back to your seat. I’ll give her the tablet.”
“Okay.”
She handed it to him and turned to go. When he opened the door, she darted through ahead of him.
“Hey!” He was outraged but she saw he was also hesitant; whatever was supposed to happen on stage, he didn’t want Tim alerted to it. Sissy watched him pull himself together. “We got rules, but since you’re already in.…” She had never seen anything as fake or horrible as his smile.
“Thank you,” Sissy said sweetly. She closed the door behind her. Marianne and Tim stared at her. “Listen, Tim, there are some men in the ballroom, and I think that security is part of it and—”
“Tell me in order,” Tim said, just as Marianne’s cell, held halfway to her mouth, said in the slight vibrato of a speakerphone, “Marianne? I can’t talk to you now. Sorry. Bye.”
“Scott! Wait!” Marianne said. “I’m in New Mexico and I need to know if a—”
“New Mexico?” the vibrato said. “Where in New Mexico?”
“Downtown Albuquerque. Is there a storm coming? A big one?”
“How do you know that? We don’t even know that for sure. GOES East is offline again, fucking ancient equipment, but everything else up near you says the situation is deteriorating. It could all go away or it could be something big gathering. I—”
“How big?”
“Don’t know yet. But stay alert, okay? Is there a safe shelter where you are?”
“I—”
“Something that can withstand a major tornado?”
“Major? New Mexico doesn’t—”
“Gotta go. Watch the Weather Channel!”
Sissy said, “My tablet doesn’t work.”
“Of course it does,” Marianne said, holding up hers.
Tim said swiftly, “Yours didn’t work in the ballroom? They have a jammer out there?”
“I don’t know!”
“Okay, stay calm. Tell me what you saw in the ballroom.”
Sissy did, finishing with, “Who did Marianne call?”
Marianne said, “Friend of mine at the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma. Tim, what do you think?”
“I think—”
Marianne said, “Sshhhh!” and held up her tablet. A talking head, looking tense, said, “We have just gotten word from the Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma that a powerful storm system is forming over parts of New Mexico. Warm air drawn far northward from that Gulf of Mexico low-pressure zone is meeting colder air off the mountains and—just a moment, here comes an update, and … This looks like a tornado, folks, very unusual for New Mexico, centering on Albuquerque. Climate changes due to global warming have of course altered many usual—”
Marianne said to Tim, “Does the hotel have a safe shelter?”
“Just the basement. Sissy, were those guys in the ballroom carrying any signs or doing any chanting or anything to identify them?”
“No.”
“Were they armed?”
“I think so.”
“Fuck,” Tim said. “Okay, here’s what we do. We’re not going out that door to the stage. You two go in that coat closet there and wait while I deal with the hallway guard.”
Marianne said, “No! No violence! You don’t even know for sure that there’s any threat!”
There was a threat. Sissy knew it, and so did Tim. This was just Marianne being all trusting and liberal. Not that Sissy wished her to be any different, except in times like this.
“Do it,” Tim said, and locked his eyes on to Marianne’s. Something passed between them that Sissy didn’t quite understand, but when Sissy grabbed Marianne’s hand and pulled her into the closet, Marianne went.
It smelled musty, as if no one had put coats in it for a long time. Hangers rattled against Sissy’s shoulders. A few minutes later, Tim opened the door. “Come on.” They followed him back through the green room and into the corridor. The man Sissy had seen before lay on his stomach, very still. Sissy put her hand to her mouth.
“He’s not dead,” Tim whispered. “Come on!”
He led them away from the ballroom and down the service stairway Sissy had used before. One flight down, a door said EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY. ALARM WILL SOUND. Tim pushed it open and was blown back against Marianne, knocking her into the wall.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Tim cried.
Sissy saw the twister, then, moving toward them over the city. It looked just like in the movies, a swirling black cone of wind and dirt and God-only-knew what else. The wind howled and rain lashed into the stairwell. Tim staggered to his feet. Sissy’s tablet, which she hadn’t even realized she was still holding, blew out of her hand and smashed against the wall. Marianne clutched hers against her.
“Come on!” Tim screamed. There was no shutting the door against that wind. They staggered after him down the next flight of stairs, the wind following them like a shrieking demon. Only Tim’s great strength got the door at the bottom, which opened outward, wrenched apart. They squeezed through and the door slammed shut behind them from the force of the wind. Sissy pushed her hair off her face in time to get a confused glimpse of a cement-floored underground corridor, just before the lights went out.
“Hold hands and follow me,” Tim said. Sissy groped for Marianne’s hand. She must already be holding on to Tim because Sissy was tugged forward. Marianne followed. The lights went back on.
“A generator,” Marianne said. “The hotel has a—”
“Quiet,” Tim said. And then, “Get down!”
Sissy dropped to the floor and pulled Marianne down, too. From somewhere ahead, around some turn in the corridor, came shouting.
Tim looked around. Sissy knew what he was thinking, as clear as if the words appeared above his head in little balloons: No place to hide. He drew his gun and whispered, “Stay here.”
“Tim—” Marianne began. Was she going to argue now? Sissy pinched her boss, hard. Marianne, startled, jerked her head around and then nodded.
Tim moved sideways to the end of the corridor, then motioned them to come on. Sissy and Marianne crept forward. The bare corridor turned, and around the turn was another, much wider hallway lined on both sides with maids’ wheeled carts loaded with fresh towels, cleaning supplies, canvas bins for dirty linen, vacuum cleaners. At Sissy’s end of the corridor was a closet; the other end led to the hotel kitchen. Tim pointed to the closet.
But when Sissy tried the door, it was locked.
Shouts erupted in the kitchen.
Then it all happened at once. Tim ducked behind the cover of a cleaning cart, dropped to a crouch, and began firing. Sissy pushed Marianne behind another cart. A spray bottle of Soft Scrub toppled over onto them, followed by a stack of towels. Sissy shook off the towels, trying to get Marianne farther behind the rack. Tim kept firing, the sounds deafening in the corridor, and then the whole building started to shake. The whole hotel!
Someone screamed.
The lights went out again.
But that didn’t stop the firing, and in Sissy’s mind the gunfire merged with the sudden howling of the wind—how was she hearing the wind way down in the basement?—and the clean smell of the fresh towels all around them. Marianne cried out something in the dark, and then pain shot through Sissy like nothing she had ever imagined, not that she didn’t have a good imagination, and Marianne cried out again and it all went away, everything, all of it, forever.
* * *
A Force 4 tornado had hit parts of Albuquerque, where no tornado should have been. The city had had twelve minutes’ warning. Roofs and walls were torn off well-constructed houses; heavy cars were lifted off the ground and thrown; trees were uprooted. Two sections of the city were uninhabitable. The winds reached two hundred miles per hour, the storm path nearly one-third of a mile wide. The Albuquerque tornado had been only part of the superstorm now raging from Texas to Minnesota. Power wa
s out, cell towers down. There was massive flooding, hail in places, gale-force wind. From the desert site where the federal government was intermittently building its spaceship, came reports of major damage to the ship. Hundreds of people in five states whose luck or shelter-strength or warning system had failed, were now dead.
And so was Sissy.
Marianne could not take it in. She sat in the police station beside Tim. Outside, the storm had passed. She and Tim had been in this small, bare interrogation room for an hour—didn’t the cops have time for homicide? She hoped they were all out rescuing people and not doing anything as mundane as stopping looters.
“Tim,” she said, for perhaps the twentieth time, putting her hand on his arm. He didn’t respond. Drawn completely into himself, he sat with his head down, his arms pulled tight toward his body, a man carved of stone. Every once in a while his shoulders shook in a massive convulsion, but he made no sound. Marianne knew that for him this room did not exist, she did not exist, the two men he had killed did not exist, nothing existed but Sissy’s death.
They had made their initial statements to a wide-eyed rookie, the only person left behind in the police station. Sissy’s body had been taken to a relatively undamaged funeral home. Marianne had no idea who were the men who’d tried to kill her and had murdered Sissy instead. What Deneb-hate group had they belonged to? What had they hoped to accomplish? Had they been apprehended? What would happen to Tim?
She would get him a good lawyer. Even if it bankrupted the foundation, she would get him off from whatever charges were filed. He’d fired in self-defense, and in defense of her and Sissy.
Oh, God … Sissy. To never see her dance around the office in her outrageous sweaters, never hear her scold Marianne about her clothes or diet, never again see the softness in her eyes when she looked at Tim …