Stormbreak (The Serenity Strain Book 1) Read online

  The word gets passed in the joint, Doc. And your name’s on the list!

  Bradford must’ve made the list, too. The thought settled into Stavros’ stomach like cold porridge, heavy and dense. There was no doubt that Bradford’s fate or worse awaited him should he actually find Marsten.

  Maybe that’s who popped the office door open when he was hiding under the desk a couple of days ago.

  Really? Has it only been two days?

  Maybe they’d been looking for him then. Maybe hiding had saved him then from being trussed up like a hog and drained of life by his own pumping heart.

  Stavros thought of the man beneath the desk, the egghead with shaking legs and a bursting bladder, the man who still didn’t know how to use a gun. He thought of Bradford hanging from the stall’s ceiling and swaying like the pendulum in death’s own clock, back and forth, the

  dink … dink … dink

  marking time in the toilet with drops of blood.

  He needed to know what drove Marsten to kill that man in such an appalling way. He’d been psychotic before, yes, but now he was vengefully so. A monster already, sure, but new and improved by the application of Serenity.

  But how? Stavros knew the exact genetic change that should’ve occurred in Marsten after Serenity took hold. But after that, what happened? Had the man’s own genetic code somehow overwritten the changes introduced by Serenity? He needed to know.

  But first, he needed to find Marsten.

  The word gets passed in the joint, Doc.

  Smashing glass brought his eyes up quickly. An inmate was breaking into the grocery store across the street. He’d cleared the glass and was climbing through.

  Stavros felt the weight of the pistol in his hand again. It comforted him, made him feel strong. Serenity had already cost him everything. If the future cost him his life too, so be it. He had to know.

  He looked left and right. He could hear the first sirens since the prison alarms sounding wanly in the distance.

  “Finally, the cops are waking up,” he said. “Too little too late, I think.”

  He quickly crossed the road and sidled up to the broken window of the store. Inside, he could hear sundries being tossed aside. Stavros stepped through the window and immediately winced when his loafer crunched broken glass. The shuffling inside the store stopped.

  Silence.

  “Whatever you want, they probably got it,” said a man’s voice. “Place ain’t been hit much yet. And I ain’t takin’ much myself.”

  Stavros didn’t move for fear of making more noise. He already knows where you are, his scientist voice told him.

  “Buddy? Can we keep this civil?”

  Stavros stayed quiet. Truth was, he didn’t trust the sound of his own voice to carry any weight of threat with it. Best to be quiet rather than let a hitching, frightened voice do the talking for him. Although, honestly, he didn’t really feel all that scared. Having the gun in his hand helped. But it was his determination to find Marsten that fueled him. He just didn’t think the rest of his body yet possessed the courage of his scientific curiosity. Like back in the prison, when his bladder had made him brave.

  “Come on, friend. Share and share alike?”

  The man was moving in his direction now. The time for hiding under desks was long past.

  Stavros took a large step into the store, missing the glass scattered on the floor. He moved deeper into the building, away from the approaching inmate. After two or three steps, he’d shaken the glass imbedded in his loafers, then decided to slip his shoes off entirely. He arranged them side-by-side, perfectly perpendicular to the shelf he was standing next to, and shuffled off down the aisle.

  “You sure are a quiet one,” the man said, back at the window now.

  Stavros knew where he was by the sound of crunching glass, and clearly, the man didn’t mind Stavros knowing. That worried the scientist as he crouched at the other end of the aisle across the store, waiting. His body threatened again to betray him with knocking knees. He closed his eyes and regained control. The cold metal in his right hand made him feel powerful. Almost invincible.

  More shuffling.

  “Now, that’s smart,” said the man. “Taking your shoes off. See, that way, I don’t hear your feet tapping on the floor. Or maybe crunching glass again. That what you thought?”

  Stavros heard his shoes dropped to the floor again.

  “But see, here’s the problem with that. Stores like this, they keep their floors nice and shiny for the customers.”

  He heard the tread of the man’s prison-issue work boots walking slowly, solidly up the aisle.

  “And that can make them slick, see?”

  In the empty store, every sound the man made was loud. A challenge.

  Stavros ran through the situation in his head. He tried to analyze it as a scientist would. The inmate’s confidence, his own ignorance of how removing his shoes actually put him at a disadvantage. His relatively new status as a gun-toting bad-ass.

  “Consider that my life lesson to you,” said the inmate. His voice was much closer. Another few steps and all the escapee would see was a crouching academic with a shaking right hand full of death he didn’t know how to deliver.

  Only one way to take back control of this experiment, Heisenberg be damned. He stood up and backed away from the end of the aisle.

  The inmate rounded the corner. The slight man, smaller than he’d sounded, stopped when he saw Stavros. “Well, there you are,” he said. He wore glasses that gave him a studious look, a bit like an older John-Boy Walton. He reminded Stavros of himself, actually.

  Stavros saw the man’s eyes drop to the gun in his right hand. “Now, then, what were you going to do with that? You don’t look like a gunslinger.” The inmate laughed lightly, as if he were thinking about inviting Stavros out for a beer.

  Stavros halfheartedly pointed the gun at him. “Where’d they go?”

  The inmate’s hands came up. One of them held a baseball bat. “Whoa, pardner. No need to get rough. Where’d who go?”

  “Marsten. The others.”

  The inmate raised an eyebrow. “Now, what would you be wanting with Daddy Marsten, I wonder?”

  “Put the bat down.”

  “What?”

  “I said, put the goddamned bat down.”

  The inmate took one step forward. “Now, I just got this for defense …”

  Stavros took a corresponding step back, then another. He heard the sirens in the distance again. He braced his gun hand with his other, just like he’d seen on countless crime dramas.

  “I said drop it.”

  The inmate’s face soured. “You ain’t gonna shoot me, Doc.” He watched as Stavros’ face went from confident gunslinger to cautious scientist. “Oh yeah, I recognize you. You don’t know me from Adam’s left nut, but I know you.”

  The inmate stepped forward, brandishing the bat. Stavros retreated, glancing behind to make sure he wouldn’t stumble.

  “I know you’re nothing but a bookworm with a beaker. I bet you ain’t ever even fired a gun, ’cept maybe at one of those paintball weekend birthday parties for one of your geek professor buddies.”

  Another step. He swung the bat once at the floor, brought it up and over his shoulder like Babe Ruth getting ready to place his home run in the center-field bleachers.

  “Stop!” Stavros placed his finger on the trigger.

  “Name’s Barcak. Good Texas Czech name, that.”

  Another step.

  “I said, stop!” On the last syllable, the gun went off.

  Barcak went down, yowling at the burning wound in his thigh. The baseball bat bounced off the floor, the noise clattering around the store.

  Stavros stood and watched the howling man. He hadn’t intended to fire, but maybe it was for the best. Barcak was giving him no choice here.

  “Where’d they go?” he stammered. His voice found its feet. “Where’d they go?”

  The veins in Barcak’s neck were distend
ed. His eyes looked like they might pop from their sockets.

  “You crazy mother—”

  Committed to his course, now, Stavros aimed the gun at Barcak’s head, careful to keep his finger off the trigger this time. The escapee clamped his mouth shut over his pain. He sat on the floor, clutching the hole in his leg.

  “Please. Just tell me where they went. I’ll bind that up for you. Benefits of being a bookworm,” he tried to joke.

  “How would I know!” The words burst out of Barcak. “Ah, Jesus God, why’d you have to shoot me, you wormy prick!”

  Stavros saw this wasn’t going to be easy. He shifted his aim to the warm cooler full of spoiled milk and eggs next to Barcak and pulled the trigger on purpose this time. The gun bucked in his right hand. He’d forgotten to stabilize with his left. A tiny hole cracked, fissures spreading into the glass. It fractured and crashed as Barcak covered his head. Rancid milk began to lump its way out of a bulging carton, splattering rot on the floor beside him.

  “Jesus!”

  “Word gets passed in the joint. Tell me where they went.”

  No sign of the egghead in his voice now. Just the need to know.

  “I don’t know for sure.”

  Stavros aimed the gun at Barcak’s head again. This time he didn’t remove his finger from the trigger.

  “Really!” The inmate grimaced and clutched at his leg. “All I know is what Marsten told us when he let us all out. He said the fun was south, in the big city. That he was going there. That we should all make our way south to meet someone. Someone special.” He trailed off, moaning. “Why’d you have to shoot me, man?”

  “South. He’s heading south?”

  Barcak grimaced, “That’s all I know, I swear.”

  Stavros nodded. “Thanks.” On an end cap two aisles over were gauze and tape and antibiotic ointment. Sticking the gun in his belt, he gathered up the supplies and brought them back to find Barcak already ripping apart his prison-issue pants.

  He stood over the inmate, hesitating.

  “What, man?” wheezed Barcak.

  “I’m going to help you. But you try anything—anything at all—and I’ll kill you. Understand?” He hoped the other man believed him, because Stavros wasn’t sure he believed it himself.

  “Yeah, yeah, sure,” said Barcak. “Please help me with this …”

  Stavros kneeled, offering the inmate an open bottle of peroxide. “Here, clean the wound with this—”

  Barcak lunged forward, his hand clawing for the pistol. Stavros slipped and fell backward, the peroxide falling and chugging onto the floor. He tried to back away as Barcak fought through the pain of his wound and scrambled after him. The inmate produced a crude knife from somewhere and the look in his eyes showed clear intent to Stavros.

  Barcak slipped in the peroxide, giving Stavros the time he needed to pull the 9-mm. He aimed carefully, with both hands again, just like on TV.

  Barcak froze his assault. “Wait!” His hands came up when Stavros sighted in. “Nononononononono—”

  The shot slammed Barcak’s head back, his whole body dropping its dead weight against the floor.

  Stavros sat, stunned, as the shot invaded his senses. Gunpowder and echo. The thrum of the recoil in his hands. The sight of Barcak with half his skull blown away, blood and brains now mixing with the lumpy milk from the cooler. He closed his gaping mouth once he realized it was open.

  “Only way to deal with a rabid dog is to put him down,” he mumbled mechanically. Parker’s words. But his voice.

  Chapter 16. Sunday, evening.

  They huddled in the minister’s office at the back of Capstone Church. Mark placed a handful of candles on the desk he’d scrounged from around the room, then decided against lighting them. There was no real point. They might as well get used to the dark, he’d told Lauryn. Who knew how long it would be before the power grid was restored? It took weeks to restore power after Katrina, he told her.

  So they sat on the floor in the dark holding hands on cushions raided from the couch. Megan rocked back and forth, her lips shaping the name “Jasper, Jasper.” Earlier, she’d given voice to her dog’s name. But Mark, his patience gone, had only snapped at her, and now she merely mouthed the name like a private mantra.

  The roof over this part of the church was still intact, hadn’t been touched, really, and the office was free of standing water. The church must slope toward the front door, Mark reasoned. Still, it smelled like the rest of the church, rank with the odor of wet carpet wafting from the sanctuary. But at least they were safe and the floor was dry.

  Lauryn sat with her eyes closed, willing her palms not to sweat. She wanted the connection with Megan, who wanted it with Mark, and so not to be an asshole and—if she admitted it to herself—because she needed it too, she held hands with her almost-ex. The three of them formed a triangle. At first her hand held his in a loose, uncomfortable touch, like one might offer a stranger in church when it was time to pray as one congregation. Then it became something more. Old and familiar and intimate. Needed, at first, and then wanted. That’s when her palms had begun to sweat.

  She knew she should be watching the door leading to the minister’s dais. If someone—or something—came, it would come from there. She could almost hear the yellow fog rolling overhead. Wind blew against the church, and somewhere they could hear something thump-thumping against a wall. But no more snakes appeared. No ghouls or ghosts, no young men scavenging DIY materials, no would-be rapists threatening to huff and puff and blow their church down. For now, at least, they were safe in their shelter.

  “I had a dream last night too,” whispered Megan to the stillness. It sounded like she’d been waiting a long time to say it aloud.

  “What?” Mark’s voice still sounded irritated, as if he’d just been waiting for her to start chanting Jasper’s name again.

  “I had a dream,” repeated Megan. “Like you, Dad.”

  Mark’s face immediately softened in the darkness. They hadn’t spoken of his dream since deciding to leave the apartment that morning. But it weighed on him. I hope it wasn’t like mine, he thought. I hope it wasn’t like mine at all.

  “What kind of dream?” he asked quietly. He squeezed his daughter’s hand the slightest bit tighter. Even with the wind buffeting the church, their voices carried in the small office. It was well insulated against the outside.

  Megan shrugged. He felt the shoulder movement through her touch. “A dream. It seemed real. I dunno. I think it was about Mom.”

  Lauryn opened her eyes in the dark.

  “What about Mom?” Mark asked.

  The hand-shrug again. “I don’t remember a lot of details. She was fighting with someone.”

  Mark closed his eyes and exhaled. Maybe it wasn’t like his dream after all. He remembered every detail of his dream, of the two alternate fates that awaited them. The two possible futures tied to whether they stayed in the apartment or moved on.

  “A woman, I think,” Megan said.

  “Your mom was fighting a woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “What woman?” Lauryn asked.

  The hand-shrug again. “I dunno. She was huge. Powerful. Evil. Like a snake.”

  Mark smiled to himself. It wasn’t a dream like his at all. Just an anxiety dream. “It sounds like you’re just worried, honey,” he said. “All of us are. I wouldn’t give it another thought.” Lauryn fighting with another woman? The symbolism was Psych 101 stuff, thought Mark. Megan had simply mixed up Lauryn’s recent killing of the moccasin with a dream that expressed her own latent anger toward Iris. She probably blamed Iris for breaking up their family. All Megan’s stress of the last few days directed at Iris the Interloper. Dreaming it allowed her to unload her anxiety. Maybe when this was all over, he and Megan and Iris could … but then Mark stopped the thought in his head before it completed. That future wouldn’t be possible now, he thought, remembering his own dream.

  “Jasper was in it too,” she said quietly.
>
  Now Mark knew she was just working her fears out in her sleep. All the characters from her stress-play were there. Her missing dog, probably dead, though he’d never suggest that to Megan. Her mother and Iris fighting. Associating Iris with the snake. Hell, the biblical temptation motif couldn’t be more obvious. Classic anxiety dreaming.

  “I’m sure Jasper is fine, sweetie,” he lied.

  Lauryn let his hand drop and wiped her palm on her jeans. “Now who’s sugarcoating the situation?” She squeezed Megan’s hand once, then stood up to stretch.

  “Lauryn,” Mark began evenly, “I didn’t mean to sugarcoat anything—”

  “No, it’s okay,” said Megan. “I know Jasper’s okay. From the dream. That’s the only other thing I’m sure of. That and Mom fighting with a woman.” Her voice was calm and quiet and sounded heavy beyond her years. Like when she’d insisted they get away from the window earlier. As if her older self had somehow come back in time and possessed her teenaged body to speak with the doubtless certainty of a life long lived.

  “Your mom’s right. I didn’t mean to lie to you, I’m just not sure if Jasper’s alive or dead. I was only …” Mark tapered off, feeling like anything more he said would only make things worse.

  “I know you’re just trying to make me feel better. It’s okay, Dad.”

  Mark tightened his hand on hers again.

  “I want to look out there,” said Lauryn.

  Mark turned to speak toward the source of her voice. “Why? We know what’s out there.”

  “Do we?”

  Mark released Megan’s hand and stood up. “Yeah, we do. Something that shouldn’t be there. Shouldn’t be here. Maybe even more snakes. I’ve never seen a storm like that. Never even heard of one like it.”

  “All the more reason we should see what we’re facing.”

  “Lauryn, for once in your life—”

  “Don’t.” Megan’s voice, speaking quietly.

  “Megan, not now,” said Mark.

  “Don’t talk to her like that! All you’ve done since we left the apartment is run her down about the damned dog.”

  “That’s not true. I’m just stressed is all. We all are.”