Voices of the Storm

by Brad Munson

  “ON THREE! ACTIVATE THE EXTENSION CORDS ON THREE!” The light from the spots shimmered along the wires as they stretched back past the monster, into the open window.

  Maggie didn’t respond.

  The creature kept coming. Rose could hear the skirl of its claws knifing against each other and chunking into the wood.

  “MAGGIE!”

  “YES,” she said. “I UNDERSTAND.”

  “I hope to fuck you do,” Lucy said under her breath. She braced herself and spread her arms even wider. “One!” she shouted.

  She crossed her arms and caught the creature between the two cords. They looked ridiculously thin, like trapping a bear inside a loop of kite string. “Two!” she shouted.

  Lucy twisted the ends together with one massive wrenching movement and threw the knot into the wind even as the creature lunged forward. The wind took them, just as she planned. They wires whipped even more tightly around the crawling, clawing, dagger-tipped creature.

  “THREE!”

  The lights in the house dulled to nothing as a deep, ugly THRUMMMM flowed down the line. The creature exploded into sparks, twitched up, and landed heavily on the board, writhing in every direction at once. Smoke curled from its edges and crevices. It jumped again. And again. The board itself began to smoke as the spotlights faded...and faded...

  “OKAY, MAGGIE!” Lucy called, suddenly concerned.

  The power kept flowing into the motionless corpse of the creature. The BUZZZZ got louder, harsher. The wires started to melt. The spotlights flickered out.

  “MAGGIE!” Ken bellowed. “MAGGIE, STOP!”

  The electricity didn’t stop. Not for the longest time. It went on and on, and finally, after what seemed like ten minutes, the horrible sound cycled down, and the smoking remains of the creature, flash-fried and crackling, shifted to the side and tipped off the plank. It glided off into the relentless wind, light as a dandelion thistle, and the board slipped off with it, teetering off the stumpy stone tower and splashing thickly into the mud lake.

  The spotlights had gone completely dark. There were no lights left on in the house. None at all.

  Ken stood and stared at the house for the longest time. Lucy let him until she could catch her breath. Then she turned around, still on her hands and knees, and glared at the eucalyptus on the far side of the yard—the one with the rock outcroppings at its base.

  It was very tall and very bushy. The wind was tearing it back and forth, making it whip in the gray morning light like an overactive cat-o-nine-tails.

  “We can jump into that tree!” she shouted over the wind. “Lots of branches and foliage to grab onto, and I’m sure it can take our weight!”

  “You’re sure?” Rose said. “What, like you did a study?”

  “You got a better idea?” she shouted back.

  “No, but I don’t have to fucking like it!”

  Lucy glared at her one second longer…then burst into laughter. It sounded so odd, and so wonderful, in the howling, gurgling anger of the storm.

  She tugged at Ken’s sleeve.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s jump.”

  He tore his eyes away from the house. He nodded tightly. “Okay,” he said. “Me first. Let’s see if this works.”

  He turned his back on the hacienda and took a deep breath. Then, with barely a glance at his daughter, he ran the all-too-short length of the rock table and threw himself into the air.

  The tree really wasn’t that far away. Three yards, maybe five, the width of the driveway far below, and not much more. It looked like a mile. Ken spread his arms as he flew, and the instant he collided with the branches he wrapped them tightly around whatever he’d hit. Sure enough, it welcomed him, pulled him inside, into a knot of leaves and twigs.

  Rose saw the branches bend under his weight, but they held him. She grinned as her father’s natural-born clumsiness reasserted itself; he barely managed to scurry down a few feet and find a stable spot where two branches met without twisting off a foot.

  “Son of a bitch,” Lucy said again. “It actually worked.”

  Rose was shocked. “You mean you weren’t—”

  “Oh, hell, girl, it was a guess. Who do I look like, Indiana fucking Jones? Now jump!”

  Rose looked at her, looked at the tree, looked at the rock floor, and ran. The rain slapped her in the face, stinging like angry bees as she launched herself up and up and up …

  The leaves were stiff and surprisingly sharp when they crashed into her chest. She wrapped her arms around the same tangle of twigs and branches that had cushioned her father. A moment later her feet found purchase. It took only a second to clamber down to a branch right below his, her heart racing, her blood high.

  Lucy was a few feet away, grinning like an idiot. She backed up to the very edge of the platform, put her head down like a bull about to charge, and ran at them, hard as she could.

  She jumped well. Not much elevation, but right on target. She was heading in a straight line for the welcoming branches of the eucalyptus, arms out in front, like some great huge out-of-shape super-heroine –

  – when a single huge spike, as thick as a tree trunk, thrust up out of the muck and impaled her.

  Straight through the chest.

  Rose was low in the tree. She saw the exact place it penetrated Lucy’s sodden Pendleton shirt. She saw it emerge from the other side so quickly and cleanly there wasn’t even a drop of blood.

  For the one long beat that she was suspended there, Lucy Armbruster looked like an insect skewered on a pin. Then the three-sided spike that had found her teetered like a falling tree trunk and slammed lengthwise back into the lake of mud, taking Lucy Armbruster with it.

  She was gone. Just like that. Gone.

  Rose looked up at her father, who looked down at her with a blank, stunned expression. Without a word, they climbed down to the rocks at the base of the tree and paused, momentarily sheltered from the storm by the low-hanging branches and formidable trunk of the eucalyptus.

  Neither of them spoke for a long time. Then:

  “What do we do now?” Rose asked him.

  “Honey, I don’t–”

  She stopped him with one dripping hand. “Don’t. Don’t say that. You have to know. There’s no one else to ask. Maggie is fried and Lucy is dead and I’m too… I’m too… there’s just no one else, Dad. So…?”

  She was looking at him with huge, terrified eyes. He hated seeing her like this.

  “So what do we do?”

  * * *

  Ken Mackie stood with one hand on the trunk of the eucalyptus, the wind tearing at him, the rain stinging him, and looked into the face of his only daughter.

  They could head north right now. Travel along the ridge line as much as possible, run and dodge the monsters of the storm. With a little luck and a lot of determination, they could make it on foot to the Notch and escape the crater valley forever. All they had to do was turn north.

  Or they could turn south. Revisit the ruins of VeriSil and what lay beyond. Climb the nearly vertical slopes of The Two Brothers and confront the thing, the Intelligence that was working so hard to slaughter them all. All they had to do was turn south.

  He had no idea which way to go.

  It would have been nice if revenge alone was good enough. Lucy Armbruster was a fine woman, even if she had been a pain in the ass. She had given him the secret of the creatures of the storm, she had put his daughter’s life before her own. Avenging her death should have been reason enough to risk his life and murder the murderer.

  However, it wasn’t enough. Not really. She wasn’t really a friend, was she? He barely knew her. It wasn’t like he owed her anything.

  It would be nice if simply Doing the Right Thing was enough. The push was coming to the shove here, the rubber was meeting the road. This was when the hidden hero was supposed to rise up in Ken Mackie and make him something special, so he could turn to the south, courageous and supremely powerful. All the fear would burn away, an
d he would fight, he would win, because fighting this creature was just plain Right.

  But Wrong won all the time, didn’t it? Bravery, foolishness, denial – they were simply different names for the same thing, and he was far too smart to swallow that shit. Besides, who would ever know? He could slink away and save his ass – and his daughter, yes, save her as well! – and no one would say, “Why didn’t you kill it? Why didn’t you win?” Because no one would ever know he could have. No one would ever know.

  He didn’t feel any swelling heroic impulse. He was no comic book superman whose hour had come around at last. What he felt was terror. Paralyzing fear.

  I’m like everybody else, Ken realized. I don’t want to die, ever. For any reason. Not even to save the world.

  No, being the hero simply wasn’t enough.

  He looked north again and saw nothing but darkness and rain. He looked south, through the twisted “V” of the groaning eucalyptus, and saw lightning rip the sky. No hints. No signs from God about which way to go.

  Then he looked at Rose.

  His daughter. His beautiful daughter with the violet eyes. And she looked at him, as if she was expecting something, needing something, and not for the first time.

  I’ve done so many things wrong. I have made so many bad decisions.

  That was the central truth for Ken at that moment; that was what moved his feet.

  He simply couldn’t face making another mistake. Not when she was watching.

  Standing there in the driving rain, shivering and terrified, ready to quit, Ken Mackie decided to save the world, or at least to try. Not for vengeance. Not for humanity. Not because it was The Right Thing to Do.

  Simply because he didn’t want to disappoint his daughter again.

  “We go south,” he told her. “And we kill this motherfucker.”

  Thirty-three

  The front door of Rex and Diana's mini-mansion blew inwards and flew across the entry alcove, turning in midair to crash corner-first into the decorative mirror at the far end of the corridor. A moment later Ken Mackie stumbled in. Rose was a step behind and far more cautious.

  “Hell of a noise,” she said as they moved completely out of the rain.

  “I knocked first,” Ken said, surveying the alcove with grim efficiency. He sounded a little defensive.

  So maybe I kicked it a little too hard, he thought grudgingly, but desperate times and all that.

  They strained to hear any alarm, any call for help inside the house, but the rising roar of the storm raging right outside the broken doorway made that all but impossible. They made their way deeper into house, exploring the endless shadowy rooms of the over-large mansion, calling and waving the flashlight as they moved. They had no intention of being blasted by the nervous impulse of Denise Tartaglione because they'd been too polite when they entered.

  They needn't have bothered. After eight minutes of careful investigation, they found her lying on the still-made California King in the master bedroom.

  Rose was the first one into the room. “Is she dead?” her father asked.

  “No,” Rose said. “Look, you can see her breathing. Not even that slow.” She noted the overturned, empty bottle of a decent Cabernet on the deep-pile carpet and a half-empty bottle of fat little pills next to the reading lamp. Rose could identify the prescription from across the room.

  “Suicide attempt?”

  She snorted. “Not even close. All she wanted was a good night's sleep, even if her hubby was still out in the rain. And that's what she's getting.” Rose sighed bitterly and turned her back on the woman. “If she’s lucky, she’ll miss the whole end-of-the-world thing completely.” There was a momentary pause in the catastrophe unfolding outside the window. In that tiny lull Ken could hear the soft sound of Denise snoring.

  They didn't bother staying quiet as they ransacked the rest of the house. They picked up a backpack, towels, kitchen knives, some bottled water, even an umbrella. After a quarter hour they ended their looting in the attached garage, in search of the item they’d broken in to find. It was a waste of time.

  After Lucy’s death in the driveway, it didn't take Ken and Rose very long to work their way down from the eucalyptus tree to the river stone gate. Once they found themselves standing in the shallow river that had been the East Ridge Road, they realized how completely unprepared they were for the trip south. They had fled the hacienda with nothing but the soaked-through clothes on their backs. No food, no decent clothing, no weapons of any kind, and a four-hour walk in front of them at the very least.

  It was Ken who thought of his neighbor. “Maybe he made it home!” he shouted in his daughter's ear.

  “Sure he did!” she shouted back. He thought it was remarkable how the sarcasm translated even through the bellowing wind.

  But now...

  “No way,” Rose said from the doorway to the garage.

  “So what if we couldn't find the key?” Ken said, feeling more defensive than ever. “You could hotwire it or something.”

  “I could hotwire it?” Rose said, looking deeply offended.

  “Well...yeah. All that time on the streets. All the things you learned, I figured...”

  “Gee, Dad, I'm sorry. I must have missed the seminar on car theft when Huggy Bear came by with Starsky and Hutch.”

  Ken started to say something more, then thought better of it and closed his mouth.

  “Besides,” she said, “even if we had found the keys, look, it's a Cadillac Seville.”

  He shrugged.

  “Dad, come on. It's a fucking wasteland out there. This thing would get twenty feet, max, before it got stuck in the mud and potholes. We need an off-road vehicle, at least something with four-wheel drive. Obviously Mr. Tartaglione wasn't that kinda guy.”

  She was right. Ken sighed and turned around. “One more thing, then,” he said, and disappeared deeper into the house. Rose followed.

  He paused by the back door, the one that led to the swimming pool. Ken almost called out to Maggie to check if the coast was clear until he remembered...all of it. He looked one way and then other, and saw no movement on the patio or in the pool, only the shining curtain of the vertical rain and the churning surface of the Olympic-sized pool itself, dancing from the impact of a thousand raindrops every second.

  If the lights were on, he thought distantly, it would actually be beautiful.

  “We're going to be spending plenty of time in or at the water,” he said aloud when Rose joined him at the door. “Maybe he's got a raft or a float or something we can use.”

  They shrugged into the new coats they’d stolen and rolled out into the backyard, using the flashlights they'd found in the utility closet to search for more salvage. There weren't a lot of choices, but anything, Ken reasoned, was better than nothing.

  When the Mackies left the Tartaglione home for the last time not ten minutes later, they left with the best parting gifts they could find: warm clothes, flashlights, a Styrofoam floatie, two life jackets, and a pool noodle.

  * * *

  They trudged wordlessly down the flooded road, ducking under the sheer power of the storm. Ken was thinking of Half-Life, one of his favorite video games. When you first started playing it, you were subjected to an apparently endless cut-scene, minutes of entering a high-tech plant out in the middle of nowhere, riding on the commuter monorail, checking in at the gate, taking the elevator down past the administrative levels and the cafeteria and the little offices and equipment lockers to your own cool-as-shit laboratory in the sub-sub-sub-basement, where some fancy end-of-the-world experiment goes totally wrong. There is a reality-ripping explosion and massive destruction all over the facility, and you have fight your way out of the devastation in your handy-dandy exo-suit.

  The thing was, you had to take the same path out that you took coming in. All along the way, you had to fight through nightmarish, dangerously wrecked versions of the same places you saw on the boring trip down, but in reverse order: the equipment lockers fil
led with bodies, the cafeteria crowded with insect-headed aliens snacking on the off-duty workers, the admin offices where they're building a monster bigger than your Volvo. Everything's all boring and normal one minute and a deadly fucking nightmare the next.

  And here they were. Same thing. He'd taken this trip south to VeriSil, the exact same route, again and again over the last two years, most recently barely twenty-four hours ago. Now nothing was the same. Now the familiar old world was choking on rainwater and covered in mud, blasted and chewed to pieces by creatures that he’d never even dreamed of. And yet he was still on West Ridge Road, right outside the Tartagliones' place, like yesterday and the day before.

  At least it's mostly downhill, Ken thought wearily as he slogged forward. And at least there were no creatures attacking them at the moment. He had no idea where they’d gone, but for some reason he and Rose were no longer the center of attention.

  Ken had to admit it: he understood next to nothing about the creatures. They didn't behave like any known species; they didn't seem to reason at all. All of his insights about remote-control bone robots aside, after reading THE NEW TAXONOMY, he had a strong suspicion that even the sensory systems of the creatures of the storm were entirely different than any other living thing, and maybe beyond their understanding. Where were their eyes? How did their joints work? He wasn't even sure they could hear. Neither Steinberg nor Armbruster had found anything resembling a sound-sensing organ in their autopsies. Maybe they sensed movement; maybe it was light. Perhaps they could track the unique electromagnetic signature that every living creature generated. Or maybe the monsters weren't attacking now because they had simply moved deeper into the flooded crater because the available food supply was more plentiful and easier to get to, assuming they needed food at all.

  Ken Mackie was a guy who liked to know things, and it was maddening to be this clueless. All he knew for sure was that he and Rose had seen nothing but pelting rain, mud as thick as pudding, and the occasional blinding flash of lightning in almost two hours.