Bullets of Rain

by David J. Schow

  "Yes. And I don't know what's going to happen moment to moment, your showing up was a complete surprise, and now I feel like I'm being interrogated. If I had something to hide, I never would've opened the door."

  "So why did you open it?"

  "Because I'm not going to leave anybody out in that." Art lied yet again. "I'm sorry you think I'm acting weird. Wouldn't you?"

  Willowmore sniffed brusquely. "No need to apologize. Come on, Corporal." He spared Art the white heat of his gaze at last. Art thought of gun turrets muzzled in canvas covers.

  ***

  It took the men five minutes just to get redressed against the storm, yanking zippers and sealing Velcro flaps. Blitz emerged from the bedroom to apply his rapt interest to their every movement, far too late. Some accomplice, thought Art. He needed to keep his fear and anger at bay so he could decide what to do next. The dog had kept an eye on Suzanne; that was more important than unnecessarily playing Costello to Art's Abbott for the sake of the navy. Suzanne had played along, for reasons of her own. And the Navy was leaving.

  Grabbing the pistol before escorting his latest guests to their ride was out of the question, but Art knew he had to go outside with them. If the much-abused Bryan, or any part of him, was visibly lingering, bloodied and obviously in desperate need of assistance such as Willowmore was eager to provide, Art needed to apply bias. On a blueprint, you could force uneven lines to marry up; you could defy strict mathematics and mandate symmetry where the horizontals and verticals refused to agree. In a relationship, you could tint the shades until opposites equalized. And in a disaster, such as this weekend had already become, you could write your own history, depending on how picky your witnesses were. If the navy men insisted on knowing everything, or if Bryan inconveniently betrayed him, Art would have to add victims to the storm's body count. Simply.

  Rain shone whitely in the triangle of light spilling from the rent in the garage door; Art thought of reel scratches on spooled film. Wind pushed his hair into his face. The blow was strong enough to loft wet sand from the beach, dry it enough to make it airborne, and hurl it in the spaces between raindrops, which were already brutally large-to stand out here for any length of time was like getting sandblasted. Bryan 's body was not sprawled on the front walkway. So far so good.

  Captain Willowmore tapped his sleeved wrist, to indicate time. "It's fifteen-twenty hours now," he said, focusing his voice toward Art with a cupped hand. "I'm hoping this check is a milk run. No complications. We should be back here by sixteen-thirty, estimate."

  "Four-thirty," Brookman clarified.

  "I want to be out of here before night drops on our head. It's bad enough already. You batten this place down and be here when we get back."

  "Yes, sir," Art said, distantly amused. His spirits were buoyed by the fact that the Bry-Guy didn't seem to be around at all. Magic.

  The military Humvee backed into a two-point turn. Its lamps were not even clear of the first crick in the driveway before Art dashed back into the house, to arm himself and make a complete circuit of the grounds, gun in one hand, high-beam flashlight in the other. The still-moist blood skids on the garage floor suggested that Bryan had scuttled outside. Scraps of his flesh clung to the burst duct tape. You had to be strong and desperate to rip yourself free that way, like a coyote chewing off a leg to escape an iron-jawed trap. Art had rushed, too hurried, too sloppy; he'd noticed Bryan 's workout muscle, yet not trussed him more firmly. He should have mummified the guy's damned arms to the cross beams; should have used the whole fucking roll of tape.

  Clouds of moisture hung low and swirled, similar to the thick, ground-hugging smoke of a forest fire. The fierce wind reshaped them, but they remained airbrushed to the sky, blocking out the feeble sun, limiting vision to less than twenty feet, impermeable. If Bryan had left a trail, the storm had erased it already.

  If Bryan had escaped. If Bryan had ever actually been here at all. An icicle of pain calved his left eye, and it felt as though his sinuses were packed with rusty steel wool. He had plenty of evidence this time-the Buick, the ballbat, the bloodied tarp. Evidence wasn't his problem, this time. Now he was absorbed in thoughts more immediate and practical than worrying about his sanity. He could no longer fritter time in speculation about whether people had actually existed, or events transpired. Now he had to focus on covering his ass; what stories to tell which people. Which real people. Maybe he should start snapping Polaroids.

  Blitz waited at the door, unwilling to play outside. Art locked up and did a quick survey of the beach through the slits in the westward shutters. He saw nothing and nobody.

  What about the damned soldiers? nagged the serpent squeezing his heart, still digesting the rat of panic, Sailors. Whatever. Willowmore and Brookman-both fanciful, sylvan names. A black man in command of a white Southerner; another wish fulfillment. Authority figures who materialized out of the height of the storm to push every guilt button in Art's hardwiring, from his culpability for gun-shooting and hostage-holding, to his inherited baggage of Suzanne's damning injuries, making him suffer the incisive humiliation of a chess novice beaten by a computer. Willowmore had seen right through the husband-wife sham but had chosen to bypass it, for unknown reasons. For every move, no matter how considered, Art won the complication of a new wrinkle that threatened to end his illusion of control. He had felt like the storm was an isolated pocket of suspended time, in which he could try out unpredictably hazardous new emotions. Now, with every minute, he was becoming aware that once the storm of nature ended, a fresh tempest of consequences was going to touch down on his life's ground zero. Willowmore and Brookman could very well have been an externalization of his accountability, and pondering such subtle insanities could only drive him deeper into self-doubt about everything he saw and experienced.

  Then again, they could have been real… in which case Art had manfully outfoxed them and bought himself a caesura in the middle of a raging storm.

  Suzanne was drugged and logy in the master bedroom, her good eye cracked open, half in, half out of some unfathomable other-zone. Mostly in. Technically she was asleep.

  "Art? Need to tell you.'' Her voice was turbid and conflicted, distant behind layers of disorientation, bullied under the noise of the storm outside. Hasty, perhaps, to have given her painkillers so readily; Art had not considered which other drugs might already be freestyling through her metabolism, or maybe he just had not cared at the time he had pretended to be a pharmacist.

  He sat, said nothing, squeezed her hand, made sure she knew he was right there.

  "Sorry,'' she said, in a way that caused the snake in his chest to constrict. "Not my fault."

  Was she trying to apologize, or aver blame?

  "What are you talking about?" he said.

  "I gotta tell you I'm sorry. I need something for my head."

  "We already did that. No more pills. Sorry about what?"

  "Price. His idea. I didn't want to, really-" Her hand drifted up to touch her own face, as if touching a stranger's physiognomy in a dark room. She found her features rearranged.

  "What was Price's idea?"

  A long, depleted sigh leaked out of her. "Fucking with you."

  This was too touchy, fraught with bobby traps. Did she mean Price, the marionette master, had decreed that Suzanne wind up naked in Art's bed? Or was the scenario more cloaked, indicating a deeper and more sinister blueprint, making Art a game piece, and teaching him the real meaning of getting fucked?

  "I said no but he-"

  Her fragments were maddening. Each one forced ugly possibilities nearer, hidden flaws in the grand blueprint, with Art as their target.

  "He wouldn't… I couldn't… you can't say no to him."

  Yes, the snake was wide-awake now, warming, hungry malign, fed but wanting more. Tears glistened in Suzanne's good eye and leaked in reluctant drops from her ruined one. The best strategists played vulnerability as a lure; show 'em a weakness, then reel 'em in. Stick your face out into the world and
predators perked up, desirous of snatching fresh meat. When you considered the totally impersonal hazards out there, a hermit's existence did not seem so unreasonable, or deviant.

  "I'm just… sorry."

  Or was she throwing herself on his mercy, seeking forgiveness for damage done because it seemed like a good idea at the time? Art himself was utterly conflicted. Did he want some sort of savage biblical retribution, an eye for an eye… plus an arm and a leg, and two pints of fresh blood? This hurricane fever dream had all begun with Suzanne. Now she seemed to be apologizing. Was this real, or part of the next phase, leading to fresh torments?

  And what was up with his damned dog? Blitz seemed to be treating her like a member of the family, and Blitz had never done that. Well, almost never; he had taken a doggie shine to Derek, too. Was the dog just skipping grooves like everyone else around here? Art looked toward him, because he needed somewhere else to look.

  Blitz's eyes were open and alert, two dots of onyx in the dim light of the bedroom. He emitted a grunt; the sound of an old man settling into an easy chair. The air was enriched by the oily overcast of a dog fart.

  "Oh, for Christ sake,'' muttered Art. He should never have fed the beast so much processed ham.

  ***

  The power died at exactly 5:10 P.M. by the nightstand clock, the old-fashioned flip-over digits freezing in place while Art sat on the rim of the bed trying to figure Suzanne out. The deadness of the three-second delay on the emergency lights was especially unnerving. For several heartbeats there was total darkness, and nothing else in the universe but the assault of the hurricane. Then the floods tripped, and just like that atmosphere was acrackle with danger again, more problems to solve, new threats incoming.

  "Sorry,'' Suzanne said, oblivious to this world.

  Art rounded up the rest of his weapons and stuck them inside the gun safe, stopping short of locking the door. He kept the Heckler-Koch with him for the sake (the excuse) of confidence.

  Just what did he think he was doing?

  Did he really have the gristle to shoot another living, breathing, walking, talking person? Bryan, still missing in action, almost did not count. That had been easy, simple, one-way; Art had put him down without thinking. Wasn't that the way it was supposed to go? Instinct, reflex, bang, the threat is neutralized. Now it seemed inadmissible because his opponent had not been armed, too. A turkey shoot, fish-in-a-barrel time. Too easy, to plug somebody who wasn't shooting back. And what had it changed? Zero. Bryan had escaped despite the end-all solution of Art's weaponry.

  The only thing Art knew for certain was that he had fired the pistol. He still had the spent brass in his pocket to prove that. The rest was subject to conjecture. His wish fulfillment might have been egged on by the startling effects of Price's party drug.

  Also too easy. Almost desirable, as a story.

  He held the gun ready and stuck a rubber-gripped baton flashlight into his armpit. He eased up on the kitchen door to the garage, with Blitz providing silent backup.

  If he barked again, it'll be silent-but-deadly backup. Art thought, his senses lunatic, his perceptions so acute that he felt as if he were constantly plunging forward, trying to arrest the dark and divest it of any more surprises. He was a fool trying to grab ghosts and tie them in knots, recognizable configurations. Even the air seemed acrid and charged; the smell of burning psyche.

  He looked through the peephole in the kitchen door just as the bank of emergency floods in the garage was destroyed in a messy scatter of broken glass. The white pop in the magnified confines of the viewport left Art seeing dancing flashbulb globes, just as Blitz started barking his heart out; forelegs braced, ruff hackled, the compleat Monster Fighter. Art heard more civil unrest within the garage-the tool cart overturned, the autos taking dents, and, under the rollick of the wind and rain, a voice in primordial agony, almost howling, buying each destructive hit with a overdose of pain and effort.

  Art's own heart ramped up as he prepared to storm. The next intruder noise nearly launched him out of his shoes: three gunshots, grouped so tight they could have been one. The funnel acoustics made them loud as cannon fire. The howler ceased competing with the weather and the abrupt termination of his noisemaking was somehow scarier than all the portents of his mysterious attack.

  "Art! Art! You in there, man?! Oww, buck!" This last epithet was followed by another crash-somebody falling over something in the dark. The voice, familiar. Not "oddly" familiar. A friendly.

  Flat-handed pounding now, on the door. "Art! Come on, Art! Open up, chief! I hadda shoot this asshole out here and I'm freezing my tits off! Art! It's Luther, man, right?! You know, Luther!"

  The bottom seemed to drop out of Art's gut, leaving a direct tunnel from his mouth to his asshole; as the saying goes, you could see daylight. "Holy shit," he mumbled, his hands quickly depositing his hardware on the counter and moving for the bolts. "Blitz, shut up! Halt'd Maul! Hor' auti!"

  Blitz backed up half a dog-step. Stop what he was doing? I thought we were partners.

  Luther practically fell into the kitchen, bringing his own storm with him. He was bundled into a thin three-quarter leather coat as saturated as a bath sponge, collar up. His Eye of Ra earring dangled over the collar and his eyes were so wild they'd gone yellow. He rammed right into Art's embrace, knees sagging, the AMT Hard-baller in his right fist banging Art's shoulder, muzzle indifferently directed at the ceiling, then his ear, then the living room. Art caught him gun-first.

  "Jesus buck it's a shitty night!" Luther panted. "Super-hostile; damn!" As soon as he spoke, Blitz cut loose more barks in a cannonade.

  Art ordered the dog back to the bedroom: "Blitz! In's Schlafzim-mer! Sofjort!"

  Luther was shivering, trying to husk out his passwords, his rationale, anything that might buy him a tiny bit of shelter. "I knew you'd be here. Knew it. Christ, it's fuckin unbelievable out there. Trees are flying, boss. The sand is fuckin alive. Driven everybody bugfuck, it's like one muthafuck of a horror movie, like that Living Dead shit. The ocean is hungry, like Moby Dick. Counted on you being here, man. I knew it, figured ole Art's hanging tight against all the bullshit of the outside world, right? Knew it!''

  "Whoa, Luther-slow down, stow the piece, okay?"

  He gulped air as though it was being rationed by a miser. "Yeah, whatever, right?" He abandoned his beloved pistol on the counter so casually it was almost comedic.

  Art was still hanging on to him. "Calm down. You straight?"

  "Fuckin’ A. Caught that cocksucker dead center, triple-tap, end of story."

  "In the garage? Who?"

  "That fucker Bryan, man-all taped up, raving like a crazy person. I think you can smooch your generator bye-bye. He butt-fucked it with a crowbar. I came in through the bust in your door, the one that looks like he drove through it? I sighted him just as he swung at the floodlight. Clearly hostile intent, so I collected him." A bitter little smile divided his face as he made a rubber-stamping motion. "Bam-bam-bam; paid in full. We're even for that favor I owe ya."

  "I guess so," Art said.

  "Shit, not truly. It was a pleasure to plug that asshole directly, tell ya the truth. Man, I sure am glad you're here. Emergency station. Safe house. Fuck, I woulda been blown out to sea and the minnows would be chomping my butt about now. Damn it's cold out there, like the fuckin Arctic or something; Ice Station My-Ass."

  Art felt as though he was in a control tower, talking down an inexperienced pilot. He kept command, put a mug of coffee between Luther's shaking hands, left his coat in a pool on the floor, wrapped him in a blanket, and checked out the garage while Luther sat trying to fight his way back to zero.

  Bryan -the Bry-Guy-was spread across the hood of the Jaguar like flung laundry, an amazing amount of blood collecting in the bevels of trim and funneling away to drip across the chrome grille, mirroring itself with a candy-flake shimmer. By flashlight Art could see that when Bryan had freed himself, at considerable cost of his own shredded skin, he had used the du
ct tape to immobilize his malfunctioning arm and seal the gunshot wound he'd won earlier. It was an expenditure of energy and sheer will that Art would normally credit to a man out of his head on PCP, so many steps requiring stamina and endurance that Art doubted he could achieve the escape, let alone the survival, if he were similarly hobbled. The guy had grit, no lie. Grievously wounded, he had put all his gym time to work and torn himself free only to crab out into the broiling hell of the full-bore hurricane, perhaps holing up like an Inuit in a snow shelter as the storm tried to sandblast his face off. Not dying. Then crawling back and wreaking vengeance upon the garage where Art had held him prisoner, swinging with his good arm.

  The Jag's paint job was scored with gouges across the driver's-side flank, its even dust disturbed by runnels of water that lent it a berserk, abstract quality, like marbled paper. One headlight was smashed out. The generator was history, useful now only as scrap or a really big paperweight. The batteries charging the emergency system would fade soon enough. Bryan had come back long enough to run one of Art's own crowbars right through the heart of the house. Then Luther had blown in just in time to go bam-bam-bam. It was too much like good chess.

  No, Art thought, you were a twitch away from shooting him yourself, you would have, you already had. He'd be just as dead, probably in the same time frame… only you didn't have to do it. Not that those navy boys would buy any of this for an eye-blink of time; any lie Art could fabricate now would just be lame.

  "Anybody else make it?" said Luther, when Art had resecured the sundered garage door and locked up. He was a straggler, a forsaken point man asking for mission stats.

  "Suzanne, from the party," said Art. "She's in the bedroom. She's pretty messed up."

  "Suzanne, huh. Another chick. Don't know her."

  Neither do I, thought Art. "What happened at Price's?"

  Luther stretched his neck back against the sofa and Art heard three audible vertebra pops. "Storm kicked up full and Price kicked most everybody out. Coupla carloads headed for Half Moon Bay. I stayed long enough to watch half the house come down. Windows blew in. Most of that turret thing collapsed with some people on it. Cabana outside completely blew away like it was headed for Oz; when we checked on it, it was just gone, chief. The outside deck peeled up like piano keys. Coupla people took to their cars; they're mostly decorating the roadside now. Not that there's much road left. I took a tumble on the stairs and rolled, you know, but I lost a piece of time there. Hit my head. Woke up and most of the furniture was flying around. You said you was up here and I kinda force-marched it on the road. Saw a fuckin funnel cloud, man, that was scary as shit, close up. Was light when I started; don't know how long that took, but… fuck." He rubbed the tight crop of his skull, imagining a concussion lying in wait to mess him up. "I think I mighta passed out between here and there."