Stormbreak (The Serenity Strain Book 1) Read online

  Afterward, they’d spent the day roaming as a group around the courthouse, never straying out of shouting distance. It was Sunday and two gigantic hurricanes had just passed over. No one was around. But wandering around the massive building passed the time. And having something to do helped the Maestro keep his musicians in line.

  “I think you scared God,” Maggie said, giggling as she realized her eyesight was returning.

  They stood in the rotunda of the courthouse, the center of their world of darkness for the past twenty-four hours. Franklin had been the first to notice his eyesight coming back. Then Simpson. Now Maggie. Still sightless, Marsten began to regret his challenge to the Almighty. Finally, his vision hazed itself back into being. Juggs and Smack soon followed suit.

  “Damned right I did,” growled Marsten. Time to reestablish control. Fend off any of the others who might see an opportunity now. Heh, see an opportunity, he thought to himself. Good one.

  With their vision returned, they’d broken into offices and eventually found the courthouse cafeteria. The power had been off for a while now, so milk was bulging in plastic containers, and even Maggie refused to touch the ham and turkey sandwiches under the glass display case. But there were plenty of bagged peanuts and jerky and fruit, and the six of them stuffed themselves with it.

  “Damned prison food made me forget what good food could taste like,” Juggs said around a mouthful of peanuts.

  “Got that right,” said Smack.

  “There’s a lot we got used to we ain’t got no need to worry about anymore,” said Marsten.

  Maggie caught his eye, then used both hands to slowly stuff a whole banana in her mouth. She winked.

  “What’s next, Chief?” asked Simpson.

  Always ready to move on, that one, thought Marsten.

  “It’s Maestro,” he said.

  “What?” Juggs again in that perennially pissed-off tone of hers.

  Marsten turned to face her. “You’ll refer to me as Maestro from now on.”

  Smack laughed out loud. Marsten felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle up like porcupine spines.

  “I like it!” said Maggie.

  Juggs scoffed. “You’d like it if he walked around buck-naked.”

  “Why yes. Yes, I would. Now that I can see again.”

  “What the hell is that?” challenged Smack. Affecting a Southern accent, he said, “Y’all the new sheriff ’round these parts?”

  Marsten tossed the jerky he was eating aside and advanced on him. The others, including Smack, stopped eating.

  “Yeah, not really,” growled Marsten, drawing up in front of the smaller man. “Kingpin, more like. A capo dei capi, to put it in Godfather terms for you. You wanna be one of my caporegimes? Or would you rather I just squeeze your head till your eyes pop out? Cuz I’m good with either one.”

  Marsten’s voice lingered on the tall marble walls and floors of the courthouse. Smack stood his ground, dropping his piece of fruit. The others, who’d been sitting down to eat, stood up.

  “What makes you Big Chief Indian?” asked Smack. But his voice was uncertain. They all heard it. His eyes flitted back and forth between Marsten’s.

  The Maestro moved into his personal space until their noses were an inch apart. His massive form loomed over Smack’s lighter frame. The challenger had to look up to keep eye contact with the champ.

  “Tell us again, Smack. What were you in the Walls for?”

  Smack hadn’t expected the question. It wasn’t something he liked to advertise. No one guilty of his crimes did. Even hardened criminals had a code. So his answer was tentative, and that only emphasized the tremor in his voice.

  “I like kids is all. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong at all with liking kids.”

  Marsten grunted. Killing a child was one thing. But the other?

  “And one of ’em died when you were liking them, is that right?”

  Smack nodded. He realized he was leaning backward under Marsten’s breath. It smelled like beef jerky and blood.

  “So, by all rights of the Prisoner’s Code, you should probably be dead already.” Marsten stood away from him then, glanced to the others for confirmation. “Right?”

  They each met his eyes in turn. Juggs stared defiantly. She might be on Smack’s side, Marsten thought. Simpson met his eyes, then didn’t. Franklin held his gaze but seemed uncommitted. Typical.

  “Right!” Maggie said. Was she salivating?

  “Look, Marsten—”

  The bigger man rounded on him and Smack fell backward a step to avoid getting head-butted.

  “I’m gonna tell you one more time. It’s Maestro. Please be so good as to let me know now if that’s really gonna be a problem. We’ll sort this all out right here and now.”

  He heard someone take a step. Then he heard someone else move in response. Scuffling sounds, then “Get your hands off me, bitch!”

  Marsten turned. Maggie held Juggs around the neck, which wasn’t easy considering how much smaller she was. The tip of a stainless steel bread knife was poised to enter Juggs’ left ear.

  “Looks like it’s four-on-two,” breathed Marsten. “Think that’s a dogfall?”

  Smack held his eyes, but Marsten could tell the fight was over before it’d begun. With a quick flit of his eyes to Juggs and a shake of his head, Smack stepped back.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No … Maestro.”

  Marsten smiled, spreading his arms. “Still, I’ve always thought of the Prisoner’s Code as more a set of guidelines,” he said, finding authority in the movie quote. He turned his back to Smack and faced Maggie and the others. “Let her go,” he said.

  Maggie released her grip on the other woman and stepped quickly away, out of arm’s reach. Juggs rounded on her.

  “Bitch, you ever put your hands on me again, I’ll—”

  “Shut up!” Marsten’s voice boomed in the empty courthouse, each syllable a staccato command. “All of you,” he rumbled in a normal voice.

  “You tell ’em, lover,” said Maggie, smiling.

  “Shut your mouth,” said the Maestro.

  Maggie’s head jerked back an inch as if she’d been physically slapped. Marsten ignored her.

  “Here’s how it’s gonna be,” said the Maestro. “I’m in charge of our merry band.” He began to pace around the rotunda. “What I say goes. It’s that simple.” He stopped and cast his eyes on each of them in turn.

  No one said a word. Most of their faces were blank, like someone had just told them the president was shot. Juggs was fuming, he could see it in her eyes. But her mouth stayed closed, and that was good enough for now. He glanced at Smack, but that little war was already won.

  Absurdly, Maggie raised a hand. Well, that was progress, acknowledged Marsten. He nodded permission to speak.

  “What’s next for us then … Maestro?”

  Though he kept his face impassive, Marsten smiled inside when she said it. The way she pronounced his title, the quality of her voice when it trembled from her lips. Respect wrapped in fear.

  “I had a dream last night,” said Marsten.

  Juggs sneered, “Was it an awesome dream?” When he cowed her with his eyes, she actually looked away briefly. “Sorry,” she said, an unbelievable act of submission for her. “I couldn’t help myself.”

  “I like humor,” shrugged Marsten. “I’m a funny guy myself.” Now was the time to rebuild relationships. No—to build them anew. Now was the time to make friends again. With him at the top of the food chain.

  The others tittered at his response. Even Smack. Good. Very good.

  “But to answer your question—as a matter of fact, it was. Someone is coming.”

  Simpson looked around, ready to run.

  “No, imbecile,” said Marsten. “Not the law. Someone beyond the law.”

  They glanced around at one another. There was silence as they waited for him to explain. When he didn’t immediately, Maggie raised her h
and again and asked, “Maestro, what do you mean?”

  “Dreams are important to me,” began Marsten. He turned around and motioned for Smack to join the others. “Always have been. They’re signs of things to come. Portents. They have meaning. Magic, even. And when we all slept blind last night, I had the most disturbing dream of my whole damned life.”

  That was saying something. They all knew how he dreamed. Few secrets survived prison.

  “Tell us,” said Simpson quickly. As a group and unbidden, they sat down on the floor and stared up at him. Franklin crossed his legs, yoga style. Something about the words the Maestro was choosing, something about the tone of his voice had captured them.

  “There is a beautiful lady coming,” said Marsten. He noticed Maggie cock her head to the side. “Beautiful physically, yes. But she’s more than that. Much more than that.” He waited a moment. Staring directly at Maggie, he said, “She’s a god.”

  “You gotten religion then, Maestro? Or was it just a wet dream?” Juggs said, a bit of the old fire and sarcasm in her voice.

  “Shut up, Juggs,” Maggie said to the other woman.

  “You shut up,” Juggs snarled back.

  “You both shut up!” Marsten’s voice bounced off the marble again but faded quickly. He took a breath. Children, he thought. I’m saddled with fucking children for warlords. But at least all eyes were back on him, now.

  “I know what you’re thinking. A dream? He’s crazy.”

  Surveying faces showed him it was true. By naming his own psychosis, he’d given them permission to acknowledge it. But naming it also gave him power over it. Even where they were concerned.

  “But it was more than a dream. It was an interview. An audience.”

  They sat, enraptured again. His voice spoke to them with a sermonizing quality. With a tone demanding they listen to an incontrovertible truth.

  “She named herself to me. Her name is Id.”

  Maggie shared a conspiring glance with Juggs. “Not a very sexy name, Id.”

  Juggs rolled her eyes, refusing to join in the moment of sisterhood.

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” said Marsten.

  Maggie looked offended, then hurt.

  “She is sex itself,” he continued. Marsten began to pace slowly, a preacher with the fire of absolute belief moving him to and fro.

  Maggie’s expression melted from hurt to pissed. As if she might come off the floor at him, despite his humbling of Smack a few minutes ago.

  “And also hunger. And violence. And greed. She embraces all forms of lust and self-gratification.”

  They heard his words but didn’t understand.

  “All the major food groups then,” joked Juggs at last, just to break the silence.

  Marsten nodded. “Everything we are and then some. Everything we love and want and need.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Simpson. “You want us to believe an actual god—or goddess—spoke to you?”

  Marsten regarded him for a moment until he knew he was making the flighty Simpson uncomfortable. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “This isn’t a cult,” said Smack. “I ain’t following no cult leader.”

  Marsten moved his eyes to Smack. “I’m not asking you to. Would you like to meet her?”

  They shared looks with one another again. Uncertainty. Assessments of Marsten’s sanity. A desire to believe.

  “I’d damned sure like to,” said Maggie, who’d foregone communing with the others. “Where the hell is she?”

  Marsten smiled. “South. But she’s coming this way.”

  “So we wait here, then?” asked Juggs. “Cuz waiting isn’t really what I do best.”

  “Me either,” said Marsten. “No, we move south. We hook up with her.”

  Maggie flinched at his choice of words.

  “Where?” asked Franklin, finally joining in the conversation.

  “Wherever. She’ll find us. And now for the best part,” Marsten said. For this, he looked at Maggie directly until the bitterness for her rival drained from her eyes. “We’re going to wreak havoc. It’s what she wants us to do. We’re going to spread Serenity. We’re going to liberate as many people as we can from the chains imposed by those sheep that put us in prison. We’re going to make a brave new world. One where we’ll be kings. And I, the king of kings.”

  “But …” Juggs paused, not wanting to dissent, especially when Marsten looked at her sharply. “I mean … Stavros used the virus to change us, sure,” she said. “But it’s not something we can pass on. He told us that. It’s not com … communi—”

  “Communicable” Marsten said. He blinked once. “It will be.”

  “What? How?”

  “I told you. Id. Nothing is beyond her.”

  His caporegimes shared another look. Maggie joined them this time.

  This, of all places, might be where he lost them, he knew. He fell back to plan B.

  “Have a little faith, people.”

  Simpson shrugged acceptance. His gesture said it was over his head and what did he care anyway? Maggie’s face remained dubious but showed she wouldn’t push it. The rest fell into line, even Juggs.

  Now that he had them back, the Maestro spread his arms and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s head south to the lovely metropolis of Houston, Texas. Cuz the big city is where all the fun is.”

  Chapter 13. Sunday, morning.

  His sight came back slowly. Almost like someone was unwrapping sunset-colored gauze from around his head. One at a time, each layer faded away, each less orange than the last. He’d sat on the floor of the stall next to Bradford’s, listening to the

  dink … dink … dink

  of the dead man’s blood hitting the toilet bowl. Eventually even that had stopped. Faded with the sounds of Helen’s wrath as she moved on to die somewhere in Arkansas. All he could hear now were the empty echoes of a deserted prison, its inmates released. Its custodians dead or missing.

  Stavros opened the door of his stall. He shambled past the still-hanging Bradford without looking at him again. At the men’s room door he looked lazily left, lazily right, and then moved into the main hallway. He passed a guard near the main exit from the prison. Obviously, Marsten had been here. The guard died hard. Of course he had.

  Stavros stared at the corpse’s gun, still in its holster. He reached down, unbuckled the belt from the corpse, and fastened it around his own waist. A 9-millimeter pistol, two clips of ammo, and a billy club.

  He’d never fired a gun in his life.

  “I guess I’ll have to learn how,” Stavros said out loud. As usual, it helped to hear his own voice. Only now, it wasn’t just reinforcement for him. Now it was companionship. A voice of life in a building from which death had sprung like a plague carried by rats during the Dark Ages. All the prisoners released by Marsten were now stalking an ignorant populace.

  “I’ll need more ammunition for the rats,” Stavros said.

  He found other corpses and a rucksack in one of the offices. Someone had brought their gym gear to work. Stavros emptied the bag but kept the squeeze bottle for water, then stuffed the sack with ammo he took from the other dead guards. He pulled a vending machine over in the guards’ break room and it made a horrible, booming crash that batted around the prison walls for what seemed like forever. Yesterday, making that much noise would’ve scared him to death. He scavenged plastic bags of snacks from the machine and several bottles of water from the putrid, unpowered mini-fridge on the counter.

  Today, he didn’t bat an eyelash at the noise or the smell. Stavros patted the pistol he didn’t know how to use on his hip. Maybe this is another experiment, he thought. Maybe someone’s watching me under some cosmic microscope. Writing down on some alien scratch pad how I react to the stress of my situation.

  The thought of the two one-eyed green aliens from The Simpsons making notes with their tentacles made him laugh.

  Cosmic karma indeed, he thought.

  His ru
cksack loaded with water and ammo, Stavros strode through the corridor away from the break room. He considered popping by Warden Parker’s office, but he figured he knew what he’d find there. Hell, maybe the warden got away. Parker had been right all along. Hopefully he got some cosmic justice too and got home safely to his family.

  If anywhere was safe with all those prisoners on the loose. After the hurricanes. Stavros remembered Katrina in 2005. He’d been at a conference in Washington State, thank goodness, but he’d been glued to CNN like everyone else.

  The overrunning levees. The unspeakable loss of life. The disintegration of social order as police were overwhelmed, becoming vigilantes with badges rather than rules-bound enforcers of civilized justice. Overwhelmed both physically and ethically by citizens stripped of their lives of luxury. But stripped also of the basics: access to food, electricity, and fresh water. No more hopping in the car and running down to Kroger’s for a package of skinless chicken breasts to whip up with instant rice for dinner. No more “Get me a beer, hon” from a fridge powered by an automatic withdrawal from a checking account. No more leisure time spent for its own sake. New Orleans became an urban jungle of survivors clawing and scraping their way to a whole new Stone Age, only with modern weapons instead of clubs.

  As he walked out from Huntsville Prison, he found a bluish sky clearing of clouds. It was a balmy Sunday morning, where birds were beginning to sing again. Stavros patted the pistol on his hip.

  “Cosmic karma,” he said aloud.

  * * *

  People milling around. And the corpses of those who’d tried, when it was too late, to abandon their vehicles. A world once content in its rituals and daily habits, now stopped like a broken watch, frozen and useless. Those were the images that struck Lauryn most as they made their way north from Mark’s apartment. The few people that were out and about looked lost, adrift. Ties hanging loosely. Dresses torn at the shoulder. Faces blank. Purposeless people. They wandered among the desolation that would’ve appalled them a few days earlier. Today, few seemed to notice. Even Megan was normalizing to their new reality, though she seemed obsessed with finding Jasper.