Stormbreak (The Serenity Strain Book 1) Read online

  Parker let him finish, but nothing got his back up like being talked down to by a pussy with a piece of paper after his name. “Listen to you,” breathed the warden. His feet came down off the desk and he leaned forward. Instinctively, Stavros leaned back in his chair. “It’s all data and dollars to you, isn’t it? You sit there playing God and think you’re all that. And the minute someone sneezes red instead of green snot, you’ll just shrug and write it off as a failed experiment.”

  Now, Stavros admitted to himself, he was feeling uncomfortable. A lot like he’d felt with Marsten, but more so. It pained him to acknowledge the way this particular caveman scared him. Made him feel geeky, small, and flaccid. A punching bag waiting to be hit. Maybe Parker could use a dose of Serenity, he joked in his head to make himself feel better. But he kept the attitude there. In fact, he had no idea how to respond verbally. Parker saved him the trouble of figuring it out.

  “I can tell you’re in a hurry to get somewhere,” said the warden, nodding at Stavros’ wristwatch. Then thunder boomed and the lights flickered. Parker looked around, prepared to lock down the prison immediately should the power grid fail. But the lights came back up. “Why don’t you just go on then, Doctor Stavros. We’ll see you next week. Same bat time, same bat channel.” Parker made a show of moving files around on his desk, clearly dismissing Stavros.

  The scientist rose. He wanted to reclaim the bit of manhood he knew he’d just lost, but settled for assuaging his wounded pride with the clear and present knowledge that he’d make millions more in his lifetime than the glorified prison guard sitting in front of him, shuffling his papers.

  “You have a safe night, now,” called Parker to his back as Stavros donned his still-soaked raincoat and walked out.

  * * *

  Thursday wasn’t a good day at TranStar. Mark stared at the bank of television screens showing Houston’s major roadways. Two of the cameras were knocked out. The rest showed a similar image, as if they were all pointed at the same patch of road. Blowing wind, standstill traffic, loose debris occasionally whipping by.

  Rain blew horizontally against the TranStar building, peppering the glass. It sounded like thousands of boys were slinging marbles in a furious attempt to breach the facility’s windows. Half his crew were gone, released to care for their families. Baines, Alvarez, and Iris remained with him, along with a handful of techs should the lights go out. And they would. It was only a matter of time.

  “What’s the story on 610?” he asked Alvarez.

  She reviewed her data one more time, then pushed her glasses up on her nose. “Like everything else. People are trying to shelter in their cars now. Ride it out. Nothing’s moving.”

  He could see that for himself, despite the rain blowing against the cameras that were still working.

  The mayor had finally ordered the city to evacuate mid-day yesterday. As well intentioned as it was, her order threw Greater Houston into chaos. Hurricane Glenn had been eighteen hours off shore at the time and aiming at a final directional heading of north-northwest, straight for the Houston Ship Channel. The unexpected jog toward Houston was last-minute, as if someone suddenly jerked Glenn’s steering wheel to the left. New Orleans might’ve breathed a sigh of relief, but its evening-news anxiety had simply migrated west to Texas.

  With the mayor’s order, protocols kicked into high gear. While no one was forced from their homes, Houstonians were strongly urged to either shelter in place or evacuate along the major arteries out of the city heading north and northwest. Houston maintained a zoned plan of evacuation, organized by zip code. The coastal areas were prioritized for evacuation first, followed by the lowland areas and, finally, the rest of southeast Houston.

  When the mayor declared the state of emergency at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, law enforcement focused on moving those on the coast out first. Amid rising tides and gusts blowing in from Galveston, traffic streamed into the city, clogging roadways already filling up with residents from higher areas of Houston who were unwilling to stay. I-45 going north and I-10 heading west became massively wide, one-way streets as incoming lanes were contraflowed to accommodate outgoing traffic. They became parking lots on both sides of the median, bumper to bumper with cars stacked high with pillows and clothes and laptop computers. Gasoline ran dry at stations as commuters waited in line to join the freeway parking lots. For those who stayed, bottled water and batteries flew off the shelves, not all of it paid for. Tempers grew short. All in the space of about six hours.

  Then, night came. Glenn grew in strength. By the time his eye passed over the Houston Ship Channel early Thursday morning, winds were clocked at 142 miles per hour in the eye wall, making it a Category Four hurricane. If you hadn’t taken the initiative yourself and gotten out of the city before Wednesday, you weren’t getting out now. Waiting on the mayor, as most citizens had done, ensured they’d either have to shelter in place in their homes or be trapped in their cars on the major arteries leading from the city.

  Mark knew it was every man, woman, and child for themselves out there at the moment. But once the storm passed, once roads were drivable again, TranStar would be key in getting traffic moving again. More importantly, in getting emergency personnel to wherever they were needed most. So Mark and his skeleton crew remained. At the moment, all they could do was watch in wonder as Mother Nature showed them all just how impermanent manmade structures really were.

  At least Megan and Lauryn are up north, thought Mark. He was a bit surprised at his own relief that Lauryn was out of harm’s way, relatively speaking, especially after that last counseling session. Sure, the suburb of Spring would get high winds and a ton of rain, but the torrent that had pummeled the Port of Houston would at least be lessened by the time it hit the northern part of the city, where Spring was located. And, he knew, she would put Megan’s safety first. Always.

  “Oh, man,” said Baines, ripping a page from the printer.

  Mark brushed his hand through his hair and turned an expression of weariness on the meteorologist. “What now?”

  “It’s Helen.” Baines was doing that thing again. Reading the paper over and over, making sure it wasn’t the object of a magician’s trick that might change on him suddenly and say something else.

  Mark closed his eyes. “What about Helen? The last report from the Service projected it heading for the Florida Panhandle.”

  Baines’ eyes darted back and forth.

  “Frank, for Chrissake, what?”

  Baines looked up. “It’s heading west.”

  “West? West as in Mexico west? As in Yucatan Peninsula west?”

  Baines shook his head. “Sorry. I should’ve said west-northwest. Current projections have it hitting Galveston in forty-eight hours.”

  Alvarez moaned.

  Mark sat slowly down in his chair. He thought he heard Alvarez mumbling one of those Catholic prayers. A Hail Mary or something. Scripted straight out of a disaster movie moment.

  “There’s some good news,” Baines said.

  “Oh?” Mark waved his hand in a gesture that said, by all means, tell us the good news.

  “Helen’s speeding up.”

  “That’s the good news?”

  The weatherman shrugged. “She’ll gain less in strength moving faster.”

  “Oh. Oh yeah. Well, that is good news.”

  Mark stared at the wall of screens, able to do little else.

  Chapter 4. Thursday, evening.

  “But the Internet’s been down all day!”

  “Okay, you’re starting to get on my nerves,” said Lauryn.

  Tree limbs knocked against the back bedroom windows of their small apartment. Horizontal rain whipped in sheets, ringing against the balcony’s railing. The water battered the metal with a great whoosh!, then fell away as the wind quickly changed direction.

  “There’s nothing to do,” said Megan. And she’d been saying it all day as the rains fell, her boredom mounting. “If I can’t go out and see my friends, I at least want to tal
k to them!”

  Lauryn gave her an exasperated look. “What do you want me to do, Megan? Rig up two cups and a string? Come to think of it, that wouldn’t work either in all this wind!”

  Megan’s face seemed fierce and miserable at the same time. Two opposite expressions impossibly captured in one face. It could’ve been a mold for the face of every thirteen-year-old girl who’d ever existed.

  “I hate you!” shouted the teen. “If we were at Dad’s and not in this cheap-ass apartment, we’d have Internet!”

  They were going down that road, Lauryn realized. The back-and-forth rut of mother-daughter argument. But this wasn’t the time for that. She glanced at the windows fronting their second floor balcony. They rattled in their frames. She hoped the tiny X’s of masking tape across the panes would hold the glass together until Glenn’s assault ran its course.

  “You really want to play the Dad card this early? Cuz it’s apt to be a long damned night,” groused Lauryn. “And watch your language.”

  Megan thrust her fists down to her side, her severe expression melting into pure misery. At that moment, the lights winked out.

  “Oh great,” breathed Megan. “Now my laptop doesn’t even have power.”

  Lauryn felt a momentary pang of perverse satisfaction. No Internet’s not such a big deal now, is it? But she took the high road. “It’s all right. The power’s just out. It’ll be back on in a bit.”

  The wind whipped up suddenly. It sounded like God’s hand was grasping at the roof of their complex. Should it take hold, the cheaply constructed roof would peel back like the lid of a sardine can.

  Jasper got up from his pallet and padded over to them. He sat down next to Megan and looked up at her, whining. She instinctively reached down to scratch the blond retriever’s furry head, saying, “It’s okay, boy.”

  Mother and daughter stood there expectantly in the middle of their apartment’s tiny living room. Each found the other’s eyes when the lightning returned. Megan looked frightened. Swallowing her anger from a moment before, Lauryn walked over to her, ran into an end table, and cursed. When she finally reached her daughter, she gathered Megan into her arms and the teen let herself be held.

  “Wait, what am I thinking?” said the teen.

  The storm crashed against the roof. A wave of water pellets machine-gunned the windows. The boom and relentless downpour caused Lauryn to squeeze Megan tighter.

  “What, baby? What’s wrong?”

  “My laptop has a battery! If the stupid Internet would just come back!”

  Lauryn sighed against her. God, I wish I had her ignorance. She put Megan at arm’s length and locked eyes with her again as the lightning flashed. “I think you should just accept that the Internet’s out for a while. At least until they get the lights back on. No power, no wifi, right?”

  Surprisingly, Megan didn’t explode again. She seemed to accept the inevitable with the typical shoulder shrug and distracted acquiescence of her age group. “Should we light some candles or something?”

  “Sure. If we can find them.” Lauryn smiled and Megan rolled her eyes, unwilling to admit her mother could be funny.

  As they moved off to feel around for candles and matches, Jasper remained where he was, watching them go. He looked up at the ceiling and growled. Lightning burned silver through the living room, hammers crashed in the clouds, and the rain redoubled its attack on the windowpanes. Jasper ducked his head and laid down flat on the floor, whimpering and prostrate before the power he could smell in the air.

  * * *

  The noise woke Lauryn. Or maybe it was the lack of noise that shook her from sleep. Rain still fell steadily, but the violence of Glenn was already headed northeast into Louisiana. An update from the radio around midnight had told them that. Shortly after, they’d fallen asleep in uncomfortable positions on the living room sofa, reassured by the broadcaster’s commanding voice that the worst was over.

  She lay back on the couch and stared past the X’s of masking tape on the windows. The sun was just beginning to light the underbellies of Glenn’s storm clouds as they crossed the sky. The clouds looked bruised and blackened from carrying so much water for so long. Lauryn glanced down at daughter curled up on the other end of the couch. Jasper was on the floor. His sleepy eyes tracked her lazily as she carefully removed Megan’s foot from her lap and stretched, joints popping.

  Something groaned.

  Lauryn glanced down at Jasper. He fixed her with the same look she gave him.

  “I don’t know either,” she whispered, and the dog woofed back.

  There it was again. The sound of a ship slowly listing at sea, its bulkheads warping with pressure. But they weren’t at sea. And they weren’t on a ship.

  She heard something else, a faucet

  drip … drip … dripping.

  A slow, maddening leak somewhere in the darkness.

  Plumbing maintenance by Stephen King, Lauryn thought.

  She got up, careful not to wake Megan, and grabbed a half-spent candle. She made her way into the apartment’s tiny kitchen and flicked the light switch.

  Nothing. Power was still out.

  The candle sputtering in her hand, Lauryn briefly allowed herself to hate this place again. She looked around the extended pantry that passed for a kitchen. She’d only unloaded a few of the boxes they’d stored here. Enough dishes, utensils, and cooking pots for a week at a time before they’d need washing. The rest stood stacked in corners, under the table and on the tops of cabinets. She hadn’t wanted this new place to feel like home, and all the stacked boxes certainly helped with that.

  When she and Mark split, their respective lawyers advised them to move out of the house, sell it, and divide the proceeds as community property. So Lauryn found this small apartment that would allow Megan to attend the same high school she would have if they hadn’t moved. A little stability amidst the chaos that was teenagerhood. That—at least Lauryn hoped—would make the transition to having two parents in two places a little easier for Megan. For now, the two of them were living month-to-month in this rat farm until the house was sold and she could afford a down payment on something more permanent.

  Drip … drip … drip.

  She held the candle up and checked the sink. Twisted both faucets just to be sure her eyes weren’t deceiving her. Tight as a drum. Jasper padded in behind her, his nails clicking on the yellowed linoleum.

  “Shhh!”

  The dog stopped and looked up at her.

  Drip … drip … drip.

  Like the inside of a kettle drum, the tiny sound reverberating all the louder in the quiet hours of dawn following the storm’s pandemonium. But there was nothing obviously leaking in the kitchen.

  “Where the hell is that coming from?” Had the storm made the toilet explode or something?

  Drip … drip … drip.

  Lauryn sidled past Jasper and entered the bathroom she shared with Megan. She was grateful she couldn’t see for once how much it looked like a bathroom shared by two women. So, there was that.

  She checked the sink first, then the tub. She lifted the lid on the toilet reservoir, then replaced it.

  What the hell?

  Drip … drip … drip.

  It was definitely coming from inside the bathroom, though. From the tub, it sounded like. She passed the candle over the bathtub again. Lauryn ran her eyes over the fiberglass as Jasper padded in behind her, wanting to be close in the dark. She checked the ring beneath the faucet again for dampness.

  Nothing.

  Drip … drip …

  There. There it was. Large, flat water drops spattering at the foot of the tub.

  She looked up, tracking the candle’s flicker as high as she could stretch her arm upward.

  Oh, shit.

  The ceiling strained overhead, pregnant with rain. It looked like someone was sitting in the attic with their butt sinking though. The drywall bowed down, dark and thick.

  Drip … drip …

  The apa
rtment moaned again. Lauryn was sure this sound was coming from the other room. And she could tell now, the dripping wasn’t coming from a single source. It was happening all over the apartment.

  Shit, shit, she thought, wondering if she’d somehow be liable to the landlord for the water damage.

  She stumbled over Jasper, who yelped as she smashed a paw beneath her foot.

  “Damn it, dog, move!” she yelled with a fierceness not really meant for him. Lauryn pushed past him into the living room. She moved so fast the candle almost flickered out, so she cupped her hand around it, saving the flame.

  “Megan! Megan, wake up!”

  The teen didn’t budge. Lauryn stood over her, thrusting the candle overhead but unsure what exactly she intended to do should the roof cave in on top of them at that very moment.

  Over the couch, the ceiling appeared normal. Now that she knew what she was looking for, Lauryn quickly tracked down the straining bulkhead noise to the area just over the front door. As she approached it, her foot almost went through the laminate flooring. It had been soaking for hours, it seemed, and the cracks in the cheap laminate had allowed the water to soak into the underlayment. She gingerly removed her foot and examined the ceiling over the door from a distance. Like in the bathroom, the plaster here looked obese to the point of bursting. But worse than that, the damage was widespread. And spreading. The entire ceiling was crawling with moisture. The roof above them could collapse at any moment.

  “Megan! Goddamnit, wake up!” she yelled, racing back to the couch and shaking her daughter. Jasper joined in, barking excitedly.

  “What’s happening?” grunted the girl, batting at her mother’s hands. “What?”

  “We have to get out of here, honey. The ceiling’s collapsing.”

  “What?”

  “The ceiling!”

  “You’re crazy. Ceilings don’t collapse,” Megan muttered sleepily, turning over.