Stormbreak (The Serenity Strain Book 1) Read online

“Don’t.” Megan’s voice again, tight and insistent.

  “Megan, please!” Lauryn shouted.

  “Now, who’s yelling?” came Mark’s smug voice.

  “Stop it!”

  The church walls soaked up Megan’s command. Silence filled the room. Lauryn and Mark could hear their daughter getting to her feet.

  “Don’t you two understand?” Her voice was that of a teen: pleading, tinged with unshed tears. But her words came from her older, time-travel self. “You have to stop your bickering! There’s no time for it. No energy to waste on it. We all have to get ready for what’s coming!”

  Silence again. Mark closed his eyes and clenched a fist. Maybe hers had been a dream like his after all. The air around them, thick with stink and Megan’s lecture, lay on his shoulders like a leaden blanket.

  “What’s coming, Megan?” Lauryn’s voice told Mark she’d come to the same conclusion. Their daughter seemed to have some kind of insight, some kind of sixth sense about what was happening. Lauryn’s voice sounded afraid. She turned on the flashlight and shined it on Megan’s face.

  Squinting as her eyes adjusted, Megan said simply, “She is.”

  “The person who fought your mom in the dream?” asked Mark. For a moment, his heart beat a little faster. Had Iris escaped TranStar before Helen hit after all? He struck a match and began lighting the votive candles.

  “Yes,” said Megan.

  “Megan …” Mark paused, unsure how to ask the question. “Is this woman … who is she? Is she someone we know?”

  “No.” And then a bit of the exasperated teen reentered Megan’s voice. “She isn’t Iris, Dad.”

  “What? I didn’t mean—”

  “Oh, for the love of Christ,” said Lauryn. “Was that what you were fishing for?”

  “I just asked a question!” exclaimed Mark.

  “Don’t,” Megan said, and this time, once was enough. “The woman from my dream. She’s coming.”

  Holding the flashlight in her left hand, Lauryn flexed the fingers of her right. She felt the weight of the .40-caliber against her stomach. “Now?” she asked.

  Megan shook her head, the flashlight’s beam hiding, then revealing her face as she did. “No. But soon. And Mom?”

  “Yes, babe?”

  “We should move on. To Grammy’s, I mean.”

  Lauryn shot a look to Mark as he finished lighting a third candle. In the flickering light, she couldn’t tell what his response was to Megan’s suggestion. “But it’s dark,” she said. “And the fog—”

  “The fog’s passed over us,” said Megan, her eyes turning toward the roof. “And we’ll be safer moving in the dark.”

  Mark snuffed out the half-burned match he was holding. “I think we’re pretty safe right where we are,” he said.

  Lauryn snapped off the flashlight and the office began to flicker with the yellow light of the candles. “When I made that exact same argument at your apartment, you’re the one who said we needed to get moving.” Megan nodded her head. But when Lauryn saw Mark’s shoulders slump, she almost reconsidered her position. “And I want to find out if my mother’s okay.”

  Mark nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. We should get moving.” He began loading the unused candles into one of the backpacks.

  “Hey,” said Lauryn to his back. “You okay?”

  He glanced back at her, his hands working the zipper of the pack automatically. “Yeah, fine. Why?”

  “You just seem … strange, is all.” Lauryn’s voice carried genuine concern, the momentary flare up over Iris already forgotten.

  Mark handed the smallest of the three packs to Megan. “Just tired.”

  You always were a bad liar, thought Lauryn. But she decided not to press. She didn’t want to start arguing again, especially in front of Megan. And her daughter was right. They couldn’t afford the time or energy for it. “I’m going to take a quick peek,” she said, moving to the office door.

  Lauryn cracked it and was met with a new wave of carpet stench. She shined the flashlight around as much of the sanctuary as she could. Finding nothing but pews and puddles, she opened the door wider. A quick reconnaissance of the sanctuary showed it as empty as before. Emptier, really, by one water moccasin. “Looks clear,” she said.

  “Let’s go then,” said Mark. “No sense putting off what needs to be done.”

  Her fingertips brushed his as Lauryn took the backpack he handed her. The touch and his words struck her; both were familiar and strange at the same time. No sense putting off what needs to be done. She’d heard those words often enough, particularly on weekends. When the house needed cleaning or the yard needed mowing. But the way he said them now sounded alien to her ears. As he walked past her, she wanted to reach out and touch him again, but decided he might be uncomfortable with the gesture. The idea that she might not be uncomfortable with it felt alien too. And scary.

  “Come on, Mom,” said Megan, the whiny teen voice back in place, as she followed her dad out of the office.

  Lauryn brought up the rear, her mind thinking on things best left unspoken.

  * * *

  Hundreds of post-flood frogs and crickets were the only nightlife they encountered as they walked the rest of the way to Lauryn’s mother’s house. The wind was reduced to a southern five-mile-per-hour breeze, and not even light rain had bothered them for a while.

  The fog had indeed passed on, presumably to the north, leaving behind a thin mist. It reminded Mark of the heaviest nights in the heat of August. Except for the increasingly pungent smell of a carcass or corpse occasionally drifting to them from a ditch. When that happened, they simply held their breaths and steered around it.

  Lots more of that in the coming days, thought Mark. But he kept the forecast to himself.

  They walked the two miles from Capstone Church past Armstrong Elementary on Gladstell, crossed Frazier and Main, and found the pastel-painted neighborhood where Lauryn’s mother lived. Or, rather, they found where those homes should still be standing.

  In the yellow moonlight, they saw the first of the houses on her mother’s street, wrenched from its foundations. Part of it yet stood, though its walls slanted unevenly, as if one puff of wind could finish the job and flatten it to the ground.

  Lauryn choked back panic. “Mark …”

  He swallowed as together they assessed the condition of the house and what it portended. “We don’t know anything yet,” was all he could think to say.

  The second house was worse than the first. Oddly enough, the roof remained but sat on the flattened debris of the rest of the home. The house-less roof resembled a right-angled tombstone.

  “Oh, Mark.” Lauryn dropped her pack and ran past the third and fourth houses, each its own picture of desolation.

  “Mom, wait!” Megan shouted. She adjusted her own pack and chased after her mother.

  “Both of you wait!” Mark bent down and scooped up Lauryn’s backpack and jogged after them. In his peripheral vision, he noticed how each house he passed was flattened, the water levels apparently so high at one time they’d washed the two-by-fours and ruined plaster of their walls into the street. Mark tried to leap over the hopscotch of fragmented wood but went down once, cursing. He heard screaming in front of him. Dropping both packs, he grunted through the pain of getting back to his feet and ran after his family.

  He found them in the street, Lauryn on her hands and knees, sobbing. Megan kneeled beside her mother, her arms wrapped around Lauryn, her head turned away. Lauryn’s cheek rested against her daughter’s shoulder.

  Mark stared where the house had once stood. He suddenly regretted every mean mother-in-law joke he’d ever told. He unexpectedly felt guilty in that way you do when you see something bad has happened to someone you could live in the world without, then think maybe you somehow lured bad karma to their doorstep by thinking that way.

  There was no house. There was very little debris. Like a tornado had come along and lifted the whole structure from its foundati
on and dropped it somewhere else. Like Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz.

  “But we don’t know she’s dead,” said Mark, trying to catch his breath.

  “Dad.” Megan’s voice might well have been saying Don’t in the church.

  “Well, we don’t. Maybe she evacuated before—”

  “Dad.”

  Mark stared at his daughter’s anguished expression as she shook her head at him, her eyes hard. She glanced down at her mother and Mark stepped around them so he could see what Lauryn was looking at.

  A severed forearm lay on the road, blackened and bloating. On its right hand a multi-carat dinner ring of diamonds and rubies pinched a dead finger that was swollen to twice its normal size. The ring Lauryn always joked with her mother about wanting after her mother passed away. The ring Lauryn’s father had given her mother on their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

  “Oh, God,” Mark whispered. “Oh, God.”

  Chapter 17. Sunday, night.

  The fog had rolled into Conroe two hours earlier, yellow and thick, dissuading most residents from venturing out of their homes after dusk. By the middle of the evening, the whole town’s streets were deserted.

  Marsten had thrown open the doors and windows of the Montgomery County Courthouse when the mist first appeared. Simpson asked about that, wondering if it was wise to compromise security. Marsten only laughed, “There’s no one can get in here, son.”

  “But the cops’ll be coming,” said Smack, barely making eye contact. His deference pleased the Maestro. Everyone was settling nicely into their place in the chain of command. No correction needed here.

  “And we’re barely armed,” said Juggs. Marsten noticed her eyes held his, unlike Smack’s.

  Surrounded by his five caporegimes, the Maestro waited a moment. He delayed answering them to build anticipation. He was learning how to be upper management, he quipped to himself.

  “We’ll secure more weapons after she arrives,” he said. “But y’all need to understand something before then. And it’s very important that you do. We have a helluva job ahead of us. We have a holy mission. Our job is to convert. Convert folks to her holy cause.”

  The other five shared one of their group gut-check looks. The Maestro allowed them their moment of doubt. He knew doing so would only make their belief stronger once they truly understood.

  “Convert?” Juggs again. “I thought we weren’t founding no religion here. This dream-goddess of yours has addled your brain, Marsten.”

  Okay, now that required some correction. Marsten took his time doling it out. He inhaled a deep breath to expand his massive chest, then slowly walked over to stand in front of Juggs. Half of leadership was theater, he knew.

  “Now, Juggs, what did I ask you to call me?” Marsten kept his tone we’re-all-friends-here civil.

  To meet his eyes now, she had to arch her neck sharply. “Maestro.”

  “Right. And, I mean, really, is that such a large thing? I sprung you from the Walls. Is it so much to ask for a little respect for that?”

  “No … Maestro.”

  Marsten nodded, turned his back on her, and strode away. He could feel her itching to grab the nearest heavy object and brain him with it. That’s what he’d do if it were him. He heard her feet shuffling, wanting to take a step toward him.

  “You feel the worms in your brain working right now, don’t you Juggs?”

  “Wh-what?”

  He stopped moving away from her and turned his head so he could see her in his peripheral vision. But he kept his back to her. An open invitation.

  “You want to grab the nearest blunt object you can find and open my skull with it, don’t you?”

  Marsten heard her struggling to speak. Or not speak. There was an answer she wanted to give and an answer she thought she needed to give. Each vied for control of her tongue.

  “It’s okay, Juggs. Speak freely.”

  “Yes! I want to cave your arrogant head in!” The words tumbled out of her mouth as if Marsten’s giving his permission had opened the floodgates of a dam. “I want to see your ape brains painting the walls of this fucking courthouse! I want—”

  “Good.” The word, breathed into life by Marsten’s deep baritone, somehow overpowered Juggs’ rant. He turned to face her again, noting the wide-eyed stare, her mouth slack in mid-sentence. She gaped at him with a combination of hatred and awe and confusion. “You all feel this way, don’t you? It’s okay to say it.”

  Maggie protested loudly. Smack looked at Juggs and then nodded, almost imperceptibly. Simpson looked at the others and shrugged his shoulders. Franklin said nothing.

  All still in character, thought Marsten. “Let me make it easy for you. If you lie, you die,” he said.

  Smack’s nod became a “Yes, Maestro.” Simpson upgraded his response with a nod of his own. Maggie said quietly, like a mouse, “Yes.”

  Franklin still stood in silence, staring at the floor. Marsten walked over to him.

  “Frankie? I know you’re normally quiet, so I’m cutting you a little slack. But now’s your time to shine, son. Tell me you don’t want to kill me with your bare hands. Tell me you’re not feeling that urge right now, right at this very moment. The urge to plant your thumbs in my eyeballs and mash them into my brain until they can’t mash any further. Tell me that, ole prison pal o’mine.”

  Franklin was nervous and fidgety. He glanced at Smack, who looked away. No ally there.

  “Maybe he don’t want to,” said Maggie. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

  Marsten winced. “Normally, yes,” he said.

  Franklin opened his mouth to speak. But no words came out.

  Marsten sighed and placed his hands on the other man’s shoulders. “But these times are far from normal.”

  Franklin’s shoulders slumped.

  Marsten moved his hands up to rest on either side of Franklin’s face, the gesture of a Sicilian godfather greeting an old neighborhood friend newly returned from an extended trip abroad. “Open your mouth, Frankie,” his capo dei capi said.

  Franklin’s eyes came up, questioning. In them, Marsten could read the other man’s desperate need to speak the right answer. To escape the Maestro’s judgment.

  “Come on, Frankie. Like you’re at the dentist. This won’t take a second.”

  Slowly, finding comfort in one act he knew the Maestro would approve of, Franklin opened his mouth.

  Carefully, without rushing, Marsten placed his thumbs inside Franklin’s cheeks.

  “Babe, what’re you—”

  “Quiet, Maggie. Now, all of you—every one of you who’s thinking about attacking me while I’ve got my thumbs in Frankie’s mouth—I want you to pay attention now.” Returning his eyes to Franklin’s, which were wide and terrified and tearing up, Marsten said, “You ready now, Frankie?”

  Franklin nodded a nervous acknowledgment, his teeth involuntarily raking Marsten’s thumbs.

  “Good, good,” said Marsten soothingly. “Now, I’ve put my thumbs between your uppers and lowers. That’s for the benefit of the audience over there, who can’t actually see that. But that’s right, isn’t it Frankie?”

  Another nod. Marsten’s thumbs were so thick, Franklin did indeed resemble a patient at the dentist, his mouth wide and waiting for a cavity probe.

  “Good, good,” Marsten cooed again. “Now then, bite down.”

  Actively working to keep his jaws from hurting Marsten, Franklin’s eyes darted left and right. They began to water.

  “Ah, Frankie. Wrong answer.”

  The Maestro shoved both thumbs inward against the other man’s tongue, and Franklin gagged. Marsten turned them both around so the others could see them in profile, Franklin coughing and following without protest.

  “Marsten—Maestro, what are you doing?” asked Juggs.

  The Maestro moved his thumbs deeper into Franklin’s mouth, causing the gag reflex again. Now he pressed one thumb against Franklin’s soft palate, the other bearing down on the moaning m
an’s tongue. A small, gurgling whimper came from deep inside Franklin’s throat.

  “Boss, he just needs a little educatin’,” said Smack. “He just needs a little—”

  The Maestro flexed. Up with one arm. Down with the other.

  Franklin’s bleat of fear became a groan of pain filled with the certainty of what was coming.

  “Do it!” Maggie’s screech filled the courthouse. “Do it!”

  They all heard Franklin’s jaw pop as it dislocated. His scream filled the rotunda. They all watched Marsten’s face transform from a straining brute into a determined madman, reveling in the creation of a macabre masterpiece of perverse cruelty. Franklin had to inhale to scream again and sucked blood into his lungs. Marsten dug in, inserting fingers top and bottom. Franklin at last began to struggle. His survival instinct raked his fingers against Marsten’s massive hands. But too late. With one, great heave, the Maestro tore Franklin’s jaw from his skull. There was the grinding, snapping sound of ruined cartilage and bone followed by Franklin’s eyes rolling back in his head.

  Blood surged onto the marble floor of the rotunda. Tossing the grisly jawbone of his former caporegime aside, he let Franklin drop to the floor in a gurgling, jerking heap.

  “And now we are five,” said the Maestro. As in Huntsville, he looked at the others in turn so each would register his personal power. They all displayed some combination of shock and awe on their faces. Maggie looked hungry. They all stared, fascinated as Franklin’s heart pumped his life away.

  “All experiments have failures. Professor Herr Stavros taught me that,” said Marsten. “Franklin was Serenity’s failure.”

  “Not saying nothing against it.” Smack spoke through a gaping expression, his eyes unable to leave the writhing, hacking horror show on the rotunda floor. “But didja haveta—”

  “I did,” said the Maestro. Again he moved slowly, leisurely to stand in front of Smack. “And it worries me that you’re even asking the question.”

  Smack pulled his eyes away from the choking carnage that used to be Franklin to meet Marsten’s steady gaze. Then he immediately corrected himself and cast his eyes to the floor. “I didn’t mean nuthin’, Maestro. I—”