Stormbreak (The Serenity Strain Book 1) Page 5

  Lauryn grabbed her by the shoulder and dragged her onto the floor. Megan screeched her disapproval.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Before her mother could answer, the groans from over the front door became louder. Less like pregnant plaster. More like wood splintering.

  “Oh crap,” said Megan. “The ceiling’s collapsing?”

  “Hello! Welcome to reality, Megan!”

  The teen looked left and right. “I have to get my laptop,” she said, already formulating a rescue plan in her head.

  “The hell with the laptop! We have to get out of here!”

  Jasper barked approval.

  “And go where?”

  Lauryn stopped in place. The downpour was lighter despite the dark and roiling clouds in the sky. The tail end of Glenn was merely a steady rain falling on their complex now.

  “Anywhere but here. Your dad’s place is only a couple of miles up I-45.”

  “You think we can drive there?”

  “Probably not. But we can walk.”

  “In this weather?”

  “Goddamnit, quit arguing with me!” She dragged Megan to her feet. Lauryn tiptoed to the front door, as if doing so might prevent the avalanche of grout and drywall from coming down on their heads. She was so focused on the straining ceiling that she forgot the spongy laminate, and her foot went through. She snatched it out quickly and stepped over the patch. Unlatching the locks and chain carefully, she motioned to Megan to keep clear of the floor near the door and its overhead water trap.

  “Stay there! Hold Jasper.”

  She cracked the door open. The winds were still blowing, maybe twenty-five or thirty miles per hour, Lauryn estimated. But it seemed like a pleasant breeze compared to the previous night. She stepped outside and held the apartment door open, motioning Megan to bring Jasper. Seeing an escape from their haunted house at last, the dog bounded outside ahead of the girl, pulling her off balance. Megan went down hard on all fours in front of the door, her hands and knees sinking into the laminate quicksand.

  Lauryn heard a sharp crack.

  Fearing the worst and holding out a hand to her daughter, she looked up. Then Megan screamed as the floor caved in beneath her.

  Jesus!

  The laminate was actually disintegrating, and once the supports beneath had splintered, the soupy pressboard had simply sunk under Megan’s weight. Her knees started to press through the ceiling of the apartment beneath them.

  “It hurts!” she cried.

  “Hang on, baby!”

  Megan tried to lever herself up on either side of the deepening hole, but the more she struggled, the deeper she sank into the particle board. Jasper barked incessantly. The wind battered the door against the apartment’s outer wall as Lauryn tried to hold it open with one hand while extending the other to her daughter.

  “Mom!”

  “Take my hand!”

  The girl grasped her mother’s forearm. Lauryn pulled, but Megan wouldn’t budge. She seemed to settle deeper into the hole. Lauryn thought of the urban legend of the distraught mother finding the strength to lift a car off her baby. She’d scoffed at the story before, knowing it was just plain impossible, the physics and all. But she thought of it anyway and flexed and strained, and Megan screamed again as jagged flooring and splintered two-by-fours tore at her clothes. Slowly, she began to move forward.

  Jasper barked his encouragement into the wind.

  Lauryn braced her back against the door, grabbed her daughter’s arm with her other hand, and leaned backward. Megan shot forward to fall on her stomach in the doorway, her feet still sticking through the hole. Lauryn landed hard on her tailbone but never felt it thanks to the adrenalin. She assessed her daughter for a moment, made sure she was in one piece, then let herself collapse against the door and catch her breath. The light rain sprinkling her face actually felt refreshing.

  Megan was groaning and trying to keep her weight off her hands. Lauryn swallowed once. She totally believed mothers could lift cars off their babies now. To hell with physics.

  Jasper wandered over, blond fur waving in the wet wind, and nuzzled her hand.

  “It’s okay, boy,” she said. Lauryn sat up and suddenly found Megan in her arms, hugging her tight with her wrists, raw hands raised.

  “You okay?”

  “My hands,” Megan said into her neck. “Splinters.”

  Despite herself, Lauryn laughed.

  Megan drew away. “You’re laughing?” she asked quietly. Then, raising her voice over the wind, she demanded, “What’s so funny?”

  “Remember the time we tried to build that birdhouse from plans we found on the Internet?”

  Megan’s incredulous face melted into memory. She half-grinned at her mother’s rain-soaked expression. “Yeah, and Dad didn’t hold the board right and when you hammered the nail in, the board shifted and I got—”

  “Splinters. Right. You were eight years old.” Lauryn looked at her daughter and, just for a second or two, the world seemed to calm itself around them. “It’s funny the things you remember at the oddest times.”

  After a moment, Megan looked uncomfortable. She quickly re-donned her teenage mask of angst and defiance. “I guess we won’t ever do that with Dad again,” she said, wiping water from her face.

  Lauryn returned her daughter’s anger with sadness. “No, I guess not.” She stood and helped Megan up, careful to avoid grabbing her hands. But it didn’t look like Megan had splinters after all. Just scrapes from all the scrabbling to escape the hole in the floor. The teen wandered over to the railing overlooking the complex’s parking lot.

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Language.”

  But as Lauryn joined her daughter, she forgot the transgression. The rain was a steady spritzing now. During the storm, they’d stayed insulated and away from the windows. But now, they could see, the dim gray light of the rising sun shone on disaster. The entire complex was trashed. Water was three feet high in the parking lot. Cars were half-submerged in it. The apartments downstairs were no doubt entirely flooded. They could hear car alarms over the breeze as it calmed itself, then picked up again. The sign for the complex hung on one metal rod, squeaking its surrender as it swayed in Glenn’s wake. The only things moving were blown by the wind.

  “Oh shit,” said Lauryn.

  Chapter 5. Friday, morning.

  “I shouldn’t have come home,” said Mark.

  Static and intermittent speech on the other end.

  “I said, I shouldn’t have come home!” As if talking louder could somehow overcome the spotty reception.

  “You needed to sleep sometime,” said Frank. The meteorologist sounded tired too.

  “I could’ve done that there. You did.”

  “There’s only one cot,” said Frank, trying to lighten the moment. That was hard to do with the heavy clouds covering the city like a shroud. Light rain pattered on the roof. If not for the bedlam of the night before, it would’ve felt like a good morning to sleep in. “Have you looked outside?”

  Mark grunted, wandering back to his apartment window. He separated the Venetian blinds with his fingers.

  “Yeah. Everyone looks hunkered down. At least the worst of it seems to have passed.”

  “That’s the good news,” said Frank heavily.

  Mark closed his eyes. “Where’s Helen?”

  “The leading edge is a hundred and eighty miles south-southeast of Galveston.”

  Crap.

  The second punch of Poseidon’s one-two combination would hit the seawall of Galveston by mid-afternoon.

  “Estimated time when the eye will be over downtown?” Mark asked.

  “Sometime tonight. At least we can still talk to the National Weather Service without interruption,” said Frank.

  Thank goodness, thought Mark sarcastically. He opened his eyes. If Helen stayed on course and on schedule, they’d have two hurricanes in two days. Now that was unprecedented. Even the Katrina-Rita tag team
of 2005 had struck a month apart.

  “All right, look, I’m going to shower and shave and—”

  “Don’t even think about it. Between the stalled traffic outflow and the water on the arterial streets, you’ll never get here. Unless you plan to hike it like a Boy Scout. Ten miles is like ten days at the moment. Just shelter in place. Alvarez and I and the handful that’re still here can handle it. It’s not like anything’s moving anyway.”

  No, but it will be, before long, thought Mark. Soon TranStar would be the focal point directing police, fire, and other first-responders around a maze made up of the few streets not choked with stalled vehicles. He could hear the fear in Frank’s voice, the weight of what was coming on his shoulders. The regret that, like Mark, he hadn’t gone home for a few hours’ rest. Hadn’t had a chance to see his family.

  Mark could almost hear the half-hearted grin on the other end. “Yeah, she and Todd are fine. Limbs on the roof and stuff. But they’re okay.”

  “Good to hear.”

  “What? You broke up again.”

  “I said, good to hear!”

  “Thanks man. Hey …” Frank hesitated and Mark wondered if he were simply waiting for the line to clear. “You, um, you want to talk to Iris?”

  Mark’s gut reaction was a defensive one. The rehearsed line, Um, why would I want to do that? came into his head. But then he realized something about recent events had stripped away the need to deny what everyone already knew. And he snapped to that too—that everyone else did, in fact, know. And he didn’t care. Disaster had a way of putting things into perspective.

  “Sure, man. And, Frank … thanks.”

  “Sure.” In one word, understanding. An unwillingness to pass judgment.

  There was a muffled passing off of the phone, followed by a little static, then, “Hey, babe.”

  “Hey,” Mark said. Hearing her voice immediately relaxed the muscles in his neck. “How are things at the office?” he quipped. Say anything, he thought. Let me hear your voice. Let me know you’re okay.

  “Rank,” she joked back. “I tried … Frank stand out in the rain … night, but he refused.”

  Mark laughed lightly. “Numbers geeks are like that. It’s why they never have girlfriends. Don’t tell Frank I said that.”

  The line buzzed and he heard Iris’ voice say, “What, babe?”

  He sighed. “Never mind.”

  “What?”

  “I said, never mind!”

  There was a long silence. The line even lost its white noise. Mark pulled the phone away from his ear and glanced at the signal strength. Two bars only. Very low for this area, he thought. “Honey? You still there?”

  He heard Iris’ voice sputter and pop.

  “Iris?”

  “Yeah … here. But Frank … better go. He forgot … his charger … thinks we … ration battery life until the power’s … on.”

  “Right.”

  TranStar was equipped with a redundant, self-sustaining generator system for emergencies just like this. But once that system kicked in, protocol dictated that only essential functions like monitoring key traffic corridors and coordinating routes for emergency management services were priority. That ensured the gasoline-powered generators would last until the city’s main power grid was back online. In theory.

  “I love you, Mark.”

  He closed his eyes again. “I love you too, Iris. Stay dry.”

  He heard her giggle quietly on the other end of the line. It was a tired sound, and fearful. But she managed to make her voice playful when she whispered, “That’s hard … when I’m talking to you.”

  Mark smiled. He knew the double entendre wasn’t appropriate with all the destruction, the devastation, the uncounted but assured loss of life. But with that moment of normality—what would have been, just yesterday, a shared but passing thrill—staking its claim among so much that was abnormal, he didn’t really care. Today, her hunger comforted him.

  “See you soon,” he promised.

  * * *

  Jasper tugged at his leash the entire time they were walking. Though Lauryn switched arms as one or the other grew tired again, both were sore now. Megan lugged both the backpacks her mother had braved their apartment to find and stuff with plastic bags full of chips, granola bars, and bottled water. When Megan had asked about her laptop, Lauryn hadn’t even bothered to answer. At least the rain had stopped.

  They’d left their dump of an apartment shortly before 7 a.m., careful to lock the front door. The roof had continued its moaning strain against the slowly draining water, but at least it’d still been in one piece. They’d passed a few other people wandering around the complex and looking shell-shocked. They’d waved to Mrs. Billings from downstairs, the elderly woman who sometimes baked cookies for First Friday resident parties. She never went out without perfect hair, but now it hung in stringy ringlets. She’d simply looked through them and turned away.

  Finding a path that wasn’t running like a river wasn’t easy. Sewer drains were like voracious maws, sucking down rainwater, though many of them were flash-flooded full. Beer cans, tree limbs, and even drowned rats gathered like dams, forcing the runoff back onto the streets. The manicured lawns they passed along the way were soaked and pitted with debris, and the sidewalks were hidden beneath standing water. The streets were traversable by foot, though automobiles were parked at odd angles, allowing no room for traffic to pass.

  Every once in a while, they’d hear a car radio playing updates about the extent of the damage or maybe a song from an artist Lauryn was too old to recognize. Most of the vehicles were abandoned, though some owners still slept in them. A few of those occupants began to stir with the early morning light. A few others, like them, were wandering the streets, seemingly aimless, still in shock.

  Whenever they passed people in their vehicles, moving and groaning like the undead, Lauryn would put her hand on Megan’s back and hurry them along. She knew perfectly well they were probably ordinary people—just like her—scared and thrown for a loop by Glenn. But despite what her brain told her, more than once she’d loosened the lead on Jasper’s leash, especially when they passed men staggering by on the street. She’d pull Megan to the other side of her, away from wherever the perceived threat was. Lauryn’s actions were instinctive, without conscious thought; there was nothing educated, refined, or civilized about them. Something had flipped her survival switch.

  Sometimes it felt like they were walking on glass—afraid to take the next step but terrified to stand still. Megan walked blissfully ignorant through it all, grousing about hiking through the flooding streets like they were homeless people or something. Lauryn didn’t respond with the obvious.

  Occasionally someone would glance out a car window at them. Some would nod amiably, acknowledging this shared experience of shit for what it was. A few looked away, maybe more frightened than she was, Lauryn thought. No one made an aggressive move toward them. Most, like Mrs. Billings, hardly noticed them at all.

  Making their way along Spring’s suburban streets to get to I-45, they’d seen every form of destruction rain and wind could inflict on houses. Heavy tree limbs stretched across roofs that were partly caved in. They saw homes with no roofs at all. Windows crashed in at odd angles by flying debris, the masking tape meant to reinforce them torn loose and flitting in the breeze like sad streamers. Homeowners stood in their front yards, staring at the devastation. Some wept openly.

  There were no birds singing. No squirrels playing in the mangled treetops. No neighborhood cats mewing for attention as they stalked their territory, though they’d seen one cat high in a tree. Perhaps it’d taken shelter there, trying to get higher, to outdistance its own terror by climbing. It hung limp on a limb by its collar, dead and swaying in the after-storm wind. Megan moaned when she saw it. Lauryn had hurried them on.

  As they walked, the sound of water rushing down the streets remained a constant companion. And the car alarms. The exasperating, useless sound of a dozen
different types of car alarms, an uncoordinated, discordant symphony of whoops and beeps and clangs. At times Jasper couldn’t help himself and joined in the noisemaking.

  “How much farther, Mom?” Megan whined.

  “Not much,” Lauryn said. They were less than a quarter mile from Mark’s apartment, but at this pace, it’d be nearly noon before they got there. She considered taking one of the packs from her daughter, then decided it was a load Megan would just have to bear. Wrangling Jasper was a job all by itself.

  “Can you take him for a minute?”

  Megan blew out a breath.

  “Please, Megan. Please. Just take him?”

  Megan threw out her hand and Lauryn handed her Jasper’s leash.

  “Hold on to him tight. I don’t want to have to chase him down on top of everything else.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  Lauryn ignored the sass and dialed Mark’s cell phone again. They were close enough now, and she wanted to make sure that woman was out of the apartment. She didn’t care if it was no longer her place to tell Iris to get out. These were extraordinary circumstances. And she didn’t want Megan around her. Not on the rare occasions when she could control that.

  Mark’s line rang twice, but then she heard a strange hum. Lauryn pulled the phone away and looked at it. The battery was almost dead. She’d forgotten to put it on the charger before the lights went out. Lauryn put the unit back to her ear. A quick blip sounded and then she heard it power down.

  Damn it.

  Jasper started barking again.

  Aren’t the friggin’ car alarms bad enough? Lauryn thought. Everything was an irritant now. Everything threatened to set her off on a loud, long rant of frustration.

  “Mom—”

  “Just a minute, Megan. Can’t you see I’m—”

  A man was angling in their direction. Staggering, really. He was soaked. His wrinkled business suit was plastered to him, shirttail hanging out, his tie flapping in the wind like a severed hangman’s noose.

  “Can you help me, please?” he asked as he moved toward them. “My car is stalled.” He motioned vaguely behind him. He looked drunk.