by Ken Pelham
There came a tortured shriek of twisting metal. Overhead, the tin roof peeled upward and tore loose and flew away.
They scrambled through the shattered window as water poured onto the porch.
* * *
Kyoko hurtled downward, the flooding ground below rushing up to her. The cable, wound three loops around Kyoko’s right arm and once around her left, yanked with a ferocious jerk, nearly wrenching her shoulder out of its socket. Her legs swung wildly below her. The steel fibers of the cable bit into her flesh.
The base of the lighthouse below was swiftly engulfed by the flood. She swung out of the leeward side into the winds of Celeste and was instantly whipped out and away from the lighthouse. Raindrops, flying laterally at one hundred fifty miles per hour, stung like bees. Again her shoulder was yanked sharply as the cable reached its length. Pain shot through her and radiated down her arm.
The wind flung her far out from the lighthouse and shoved her back into the narrow wind shadow of the structure. She slammed into the lighthouse with a bone-jarring impact, caromed off the wall, flew out, and again struck the wall. The breath was knocked from her and she gasped, desperately trying to suck in air.
Water splashed in her face. Not from the rain, she realized; she was in the shadow protected from the driving, stinging bullets of rain. She looked down. To her horror, she realized how high the sea had climbed. Twenty feet below, water rushed by, encircling the lighthouse, submerging the main door at its base. The storm surge was at least ten feet deep and climbing. Above the surge, waves ten feet high peaked and fell, racing past, their tops blown off by the thundering winds in sprays of white foam. A wave crashed into the lighthouse and exploded upward, dashing her with water.
The surge climbed inexorably. A rectangle of blue floated past her, rolled, and revealed a windshield. A car, tumbling along in the storm. It struck the lighthouse with a crunch, rolled again, and disappeared under the water.
What had they predicted about Celeste? A storm surge of twenty feet, with waves ten feet high over that?
The water rose, sweeping lethal debris along with it. Within minutes it would engulf her and pluck her off the lighthouse like an insect. She would be at its mercy.
Something pinged against the wall next to her. She looked up. Far above, Blount leaned out over the edge of the lighthouse. The gun flashed and barked. A bullet whistled past, grazing her hip, nicking her flesh with a stab of intense pain.
* * *
Water swirled around the keeper’s house, rising with each second. Grant cast about inside, searching. The house was empty, devoid of furniture. “Nothing here. We’ve got to fortify the door and hope the water doesn’t reach the windows.”
“The lighthouse and the keeper’s house were already on an Indian mound and then built up a century ago,” Hammond said. “New buildings are mostly on stilts, to get above the flood level, but I’ll bet eighty percent of the buildings are just a few feet above sea level. We’re on the highest point on Brigands Key right now. The whole island is under water. If anybody didn’t get off the island…”
Water was now a foot deep inside. “How strong is this building?” Grant asked.
“Damned strong. Strongest building on the island. Poured concrete walls a foot thick, reinforced with steel, faced with brick. Built to survive. When the town was in its infancy, this house was the storm shelter for the whole populace.”
“Yet it already lost the roof.”
Hammond raised his hands in a so-what gesture. “Roofs come and go.”
Grant looked out the window, awestruck at the unleashed fury. An ancient oak, forty feet from the house, leaned and toppled into the water. “Another tree down,” he shouted. “We’ve got a problem.”
“There are going to be a lot of them blown over,” Sanborn said.
“This one wasn’t blown over. It was undercut. It was on the edge of the mound we’re on.” He turned to face them. “The house may be strong as granite, but the mound is washing away. No house can stand on dirt that’s not there.”
His companions hurried to the window. A great slab of mud calved and slid down the side of the mound.
“Son of a bitch,” Hammond growled.
Sanborn twisted his head, listening. “Did you hear something?”
Hammond shook his head. “No. What…?”
“A gunshot. There’s another one.”
Charley pointed. “Look!”
Grant felt the blood drain from his face. Across the flood, dangling just above the crashing waves and rushing water, whipped by wind, was Kyoko. And high above her, Artie Blount took careful aim at her and fired.
“Take him out, Sanborn,” Grant shouted.
Sanborn nodded, drew his pistol. He set up in the window, his elbows propped on the sill, his left hand cradling his gun hand, steadying it. He sighted carefully. “I’ll never hit him at this distance in a storm with a pistol, you know.”
“Take him out!”
Sanborn held his breath, aimed high, taking a wild guess at an adjustment for gravity and hurricane winds. He squeezed the trigger.
The gun roared, deafening in the small space of the room.
A puff of white sprayed off the wall of the lighthouse, a few feet below Blount and to his side. He jumped, startled, and glanced about. Sanborn adjusted his aim, fired again.
The second bullet struck inches from Blount, shattering one of the long rectangular panes of glass that enclosed the light. He backed away from the destroyed window and his silhouette reappeared on the opposite side of the lantern room.
“Kyoko will be dead in minutes from the storm or from Blount,” Grant said. “I’m going after her. How many rounds you got?”
“This a Glock .40 caliber. Fourteen left in the magazine, two more magazines of fifteen each in pouches. Forty-four rounds.”
“Don’t save them for a rainy day. Keep Blount pinned down.” He began to climb through the window.
“Wait!” Hammond said. “You won’t be any good to her dead. You won’t get thirty feet before you’re tumbled underwater.” As if to punctuate his sentence, a sudden swell rolled over the porch and water poured through the open window.
“I’m a hell of a strong swimmer,” Grant said. “And I don’t have a choice. I can make it.”
“You’ll never make it. I can give you a chance. Everybody upstairs, quick. We’re losing the first floor anyway.”
Grant hesitated.
“Trust me, Grant. I know you need to help her. But just trust me. Come upstairs.”
Grant nodded reluctantly and slipped off the window sill. A gunshot sounded and a bullet struck the window frame, splintering wood.
“Blount’s got a fix on us now,” Sanborn said.
They bounded upstairs, the old steps threatening to cave in with each step. “This is the keeper’s bedroom,” Hammond said, trying the first door they came to. Locked. He stepped aside, motioning to Sanborn. “You’re the law. Nobody will arrest you for breaking and entering. More importantly, you’re the biggest guy here.” Sanborn nodded and kicked the door in.
There was no ceiling, it having been ripped away with the roof, and the wind howled overhead. The room was cluttered with odds and ends. Old furniture, wood crates, boxes of nails, stacks of lumber. “This room became the storage closet of the various agencies that maintained the lighthouse since it was shut down,” Hammond said.
Hammond hurried to a crate along the far wall and pried open the lid. “Still here,” he said. He pulled out a pair of old, faded life preservers. “Take these,” he said, tossing them to Grant. “They’re old but serviceable. We bought ’em for the last lighthouse keeper. I think you’ll drown anyway, but at least you’ll have a fighting chance.” He handed more lifejackets to Charley and Sanborn. “You too. I have a feeling we’ll be fighting to keep our heads above water in another ten minutes.”
Grant pulled one on and snapped the straps into place across his chest. “Thanks.” He went to the upstairs window and looked o
ut. Blount still held guard in his tower, searching for them. He apparently considered them his only threat at this point; Kyoko was as good as dead.
“Not while I’m alive,” Grant muttered. He turned to Sanborn. “Cover me. I need ten seconds.”
“You got it.” Sanborn took up a position at the north window, looked up, took aim, and fired.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Roscoe Nobles staggered across the loft of an ancient, ramshackle warehouse on the waterfront, his right foot dragging lifelessly.
The building leaned and groaned as if alive, slowly giving way to the bludgeoning power of nature.
Burning, blinding pain coursed through his body. He had never imagined how much an entire body, how every cell, from his skin right down through his muscles and organs, could burn like fire. Searing pain was all he could feel, a universe of pain. His thoughts were muddled and confused, but he had a purpose and when confusion threatened to overwhelm him, he concentrated on his purpose. That was all he had left. Everything else, his life, his home, his unquenchable, incurably romantic dream… all gone. Swept away by furious, uncaring nature and an evil human being.
Mother Nature you forgive. You just do.
Not so with a human being that has destroyed your life.
All he had left was his purpose.
Revenge.
He hoped like hell he had enough life left in him to exact it. He coughed up a sticky mass of blood and phlegm and stared at it numbly. He had his doubts.
Snap to, he thought. Stick to your purpose.
He had somehow stumbled, dazed, across the island, ducking into the lee of buildings, crawling, to reach the wharf seconds before the flood. To get here, the best place on the island to hide something from that pig, Blount.
In one of Blount’s own properties.
Blount, the realtor, the land speculator, was the biggest property owner on Brigands Key, outside of that carpet-bagging outfit from Tampa. And Blount was in cahoots with them, too. Son of a bitch was never satisfied. Never.
Blount owned over two-dozen properties but not for the hell of owning them. He’d always put on a big show of opposing big development, and all the while he was buying up derelict properties from bankrupt fishermen. That was part of his scheme. Fight the developer, be the friend of the little man, and buy ’em out. Once Bay View got up and running, land values would skyrocket.
So Blount had all these properties and never spent a plugged nickel on them and never set foot in them. Just sat on them, waiting for his big score.
Until he stumbled onto a chance for an even bigger score.
Claim-jumpers got strung up in the old days. And a claim-jumper was exactly what Blount was. Except he’d also graduated to kidnapper and murderer.
Blount was looking all over the island for Roscoe’s treasure. He’d looked everywhere except in his own rundown warehouse.
The warehouse stood a hundred feet from Roscoe’s boat slip on the dock. Roscoe had hid it there, high in the loft, the night he’d found it and brought it to the island.
Revenge…
Except for three people, the island had been abandoned. He was sure of that. No sign of another human being anywhere on the island. Even the high school gym, the storm shelter, was abandoned. Good thing. It wouldn’t be standing in another hour.
Just as he reached the warehouse, the flood had swept in, engulfing everything. He’d managed to pull himself up the ladder to the loft. From there, he’d peered out to witness the destruction of his town. Houses collapsed and rushed past in the apocalypse.
Three people left. Himself, Blount, and that woman that had cut him free. He’d never seen her before. All he knew was that she was an outsider and an angel. She was now a victim too. Blount had surely killed her.
With swollen, pulpy hands, he pried up a loose board in the deck of the loft. Beneath it were two bags. He withdrew the bags and opened them, studied the contents. Not the great hoard of gold he’d once envisioned. But far more valuable. And lethal. He knew what it was from what it had done to him.
He strained to lift the heavy bags from the cubbyhole. He raised them an inch or two, struggling mightily. It was like lifting a grown man. He gasped and set them down again, panting. Too heavy! His strength was a shadow of what it had been. Failure…
He saw in his mind Blount’s smug face and remembered the years of lies. His anger swelled. The son of a bitch would not get away with it. He gritted his teeth, tightened his grip on the bags, and heaved. He swung them free. He gasped, his breath rattling wet in his lungs. Groaning, every fiber of his body screaming in agony, he managed to drop them to the flooded floor of the warehouse, making sure he kept them apart. Water poured into the building through the sagging door, and the two bags struck with a splash. He descended from the loft and waded through the water and retrieved them. He dragged the bundles to the leeward side of the warehouse, facing the dock.
The marina had been devastated. Boats were capsized and shattered and submerged, others were broken free and being driven, rolling, across the channel toward the mainland by the shrieking wind and towering seas. Only one boat remained moored in place: Electric Ladyland.
Roscoe had been held captive since before he knew a hurricane was headed this way. He wouldn’t have known at that time to moor it to swing with the wind and waves on a long chain, long enough to ride above an impossibly high storm surge. Someone had rigged it for him.
Charley. His friend.
Roscoe found the cobwebbed aluminum skiff Blount kept in a corner and turned it over. It appeared okay… for a calm day on a pond. It would not last a minute in this storm.
But all he needed was a half-minute. He emptied the water from the skiff and it floated free. A small two-horse motor was fixed to its transom. On a shelf above the boat was a gasoline can. He lifted it, shook it. It had maybe an inch of gas inside. Or maybe it was water. It would have to do.
A splintering sound cracked nearby. The building shifted and a seam opened in the west wall from floor to ceiling. The building was about to go.
He opened the tank on the motor, poured in the gas, fumbled the cap, replaced it. He had no confidence Blount had ever done any maintenance on the motor and that there was any chance of it starting.
He gripped the starter cord and pulled. The tiny motor coughed and sputtered to life.
Summoning his strength, he hoisted the bags into the boat. God, they were heavy. He dragged himself over the gunwale and into the little boat and pushed open the side door of the warehouse. The flood rushed in, raising the skiff. The tempest raged just inches away.
One shot. He aimed the skiff at Electric Ladyland and chugged out into the tossing storm.
All doubt washed out of his seared body. Doubt was for men who still had lives. He had nothing but revenge and spiteful sea gods aligning events to guide him to success.
* * *
Sheets of rain whipped around the lighthouse, lashing Kyoko. She turned her face from the stinging water and pushed with her legs away from the wind, edging more into the wind shadow. Water reached upward and lapped at her feet.
Blood squeezed from between her fingers and ran down her arms, the cable biting deep, making slippery her hold on it.
Miraculously, Blount had stopped firing at her. Maybe he’d run out of ammo, but she found that unlikely. Something had distracted him.
As if to punctuate the thought, a sharp sound echoed, masked by the dense noise of the storm. It sounded like a gunshot, but with a different pitch than the shots fired by Blount.
Another gunshot, from somewhere off to her left on the opposite side of the lighthouse. She was sure it was a gunshot. Hope surged through her. Someone was engaging the bastard in a gunfight!
Her strength was fading fast and she had a choice to make. She could hang on and hope that someone succeeded in killing or wounding Blount. Yet it was an almost impossible shot for someone to hit him at that height, in that wind.
Or she could release herself and pl
unge into the water and hope that she could swim, blown by the storm, to one of the trees that still clung to weakening ground, and ride the storm out. There was no chance of swimming around the lighthouse into the teeth of the storm to reach whoever was firing on Blount. That was a physical impossibility.
She felt a sudden vibration, a tug, in the cable that suspended her. She felt it again, stronger. The decision was being made for her. Blount was unfastening the cable to let her plunge into the flood.
The cable plucked again and she dropped a few inches. She had only seconds before she would plummet into Celeste’s furious waters.
* * *
“Blount’s backed away from the glass,” Sanborn said, maintaining his aim upward. “Now’s your chance.”
Grant didn’t bother to respond. He threw himself through the window. The force of the rushing water grabbed and tumbled him head over heels, forcing him under. The lifejacket righted him and pulled him back to the surface. The second lifejacket he carried was nearly torn from his grasp by the water. He reeled it in and clutched it under his arm.
The wind and waves drove him toward the lighthouse, but he could see that the angle would blow him past it, missing by twenty feet. No good. He had to make contact with the structure. He would only get one chance.
He kicked furiously against the current. His angle improved but he saw with dismay that it would not be enough. He would be swept past the tower and out into the channel.
He slammed into something hidden just under the surface. The old concrete monument that detailed the history of the lighthouse. The blow drove into his ribs and he heard and felt a snap and a sudden shooting pain, the snap of a rib breaking. He arched his torso sideways to ease pressure on the wound.
He was caught up on the submerged monument, pressed against it by the surging water. He worked his way around, braced his legs against the monument, and pushed from it with all his might.
The maneuver gave him the few extra feet he needed.
The water whisked him within inches of the lighthouse. He lunged and caught hold of the frame of the door and pulled himself against the concrete wall. Pain coursed through his body, and sudden nausea dizzied him. He winced, gritted his teeth, willing the pain to ease. It refused and paid him back in spades for his effort.