Creatures of the Storm (33 page)

“I’ve written the Steinberg data onto two of
my hard drives, Ken,” Maggie said, “and burned DVDs in one of the
laptops upstairs. If you …”

She paused. It was like she drifted off.

“If we
what
?” Lucy said
impatiently.

“Sorry,” Maggie said. “There’s a lot going on
at once. Something on the porch.”

“Oh,
shit
,” Rose said.

“And the wind is spiking.
Barometer falling fast.
Really
fast. It’s a …” another pause, as the glass in
every window began to rattle. “…cyclonic effect.”

“Maggie,” Rose said.
“Please, Maggie,
what’s
outside?”

Without warning, without asking permission,
Maggie opened the drapes that covered the floor-to-ceiling patio
doors.

“Maggie, wait—”

The security lights on the
patio
popped
on,
and everyone froze in place.

Candle-eyes, the small, broad-footed lumps
with eye-stalks like fingers, completely covered the level ground
in a churning, sludgy sea. Rising above them, taller than the
windows themselves, was a single creature with no torso at all, but
a latticework of talons and needle-sharp claws, twisting and
twining, glinting in the light as it opened its wings like an
enormous, skeletal dragonfly.

It turned to face them,
half transparent, bone white. The wings
twitched
back at the sight of them.
It
tensed
, a
scorpion about to strike.

“
RUN!”
Rose screamed, entirely unnecessarily. The three
of them fled through the door to the hallway as the huge
wing-creature struck the doors and shattered them with a single
blow. Maggie slammed the interior door behind them, barely in time.
They heard fragments of glass
thunk
against the other side.

The study was lost.

“Why the
hell
did you open those
curtains, Maggie?” Ken shouted.

“I don’t know,” Maggie
said, and Lucy could have sworn she actually sounded
puzzled
. “I
didn’t…think…”

“You didn’t
think
?” he echoed
acidly. “You’re supposed to
anticipate
this shit, Maggie! That’s
the whole point—”

“Dad,” Rose said severely.
“Never mind. Just tell us where to go
now
.”

He pulled himself up short. Lucy was
impressed at his self-control “Upstairs,” Ken said after a moment.
“We can barricade—”

“No,” Maggie said. “Not upstairs.”

“What, are you
kidding?
” Lucy said,
astonished. “They can tear that door off like tissue paper! We
can’t–”

“The wind,” Maggie said.
“It will kill you.” The doors to the far end of the hall, the ones
to the large rooms at the center of the house, slammed shut. An
instant later, the doors to all the rooms that faced the driveway
slammed as well. They all heard the rhythmic
click-click-click
of doors locking
down the hall.

“Stay away from the
windows,” Maggie said. “It’s coming.
Now
.”

The loudest scream Lucy had ever heard, a
scream that came from the Valle itself, not from any human throat,
began to build around them, growing higher…and higher...

And the wind hit them like the fist of God
Himself.

When Donald
Peck parked his police cruiser directly in front of the Conference
Center, he left every light on it pulsing and flickering in the
storm – a beacon for the last stragglers. It was already twenty
minutes to six, and he had hoped some of the VIPs he had met with
the night before would arrive early. Instead, he found a few
hundred waterlogged and desperate citizens and Karen Kramer, the
manager of the Center, still wearing the same furiously pink pants
suit she’d been wearing the night before. She greeted him hoarsely
as he entered.

Peck didn’t like the way she looked. She was
rumpled, slightly stained, and her anxiety showed through her
makeup like a painted skull as she offered him some mangled donuts
and lukewarm coffee. He passed.

Stu Axminster of the DHW&P arrived a few
moments later. “Goddamnit, Donald,” he said, “Richie Riegel just
called me and said he ain’t bringin’ the Orange Monster back.”

Peck sighed. “Not surprising,” he said
shortly.

“He’s stealing, goddamn it! Stealing goddamn
public property! Your people need to pick him up! He—”

“Stu,” he said, “my people
are
gone
. So are
yours. Besides, The Monster’s a two-seater, right?”

“Yeah?” Stu said, sticking his chin out.
“So?”

“So it’s not going to help us with getting
people out of town, is it?”

Stu blinked a couple of
times. “Well…
no
,
but–”

“And you still have all the
other city vehicles? The ones with
lots
of seats?”

“Well, yeah. They’re all parked right next
door in the holding lot. Under the tower.” His stony expression was
obvious. Stu didn’t like the way this conversation was going.

“Do you have drivers for
all those vehicles, Stu? The ones we’re actually going to
use
?”

Stu’s eyes shifted away. “Well... probably. I
mean, I called. I left a lot of messages, I …I need to check on
that.”

“You do that,” Peck said.
He could barely stand to look at the man as he skittered
away.
I can’t take much more of this. I
really can’t.

He moved towards the stage, weaving past
clumps of dripping, miserable citizens, to check on the microphones
and the podium. As he bent to read the levels on the amplifier, he
heard a voice behind him, a thick, wet, phlegmy, familiar
voice.

“You’re a liar, is what you are.”

He straightened and turned, though he already
knew what he was going to see.

Karen Kramer, her tightly bound body swaying
inside the violent pink pantsuit was standing a little too close to
him. Her bird-arms were wrapped tight around her. She was
shivering, less from the cold than from…something else. Tension.
Fear. He could smell it on her. She clearly hadn't showered or
changed clothes in at least a couple of days.

“You’re not looking for those little girls,”
she said. “You never were.”

Peck noticed that a few of the arrivals were
watching them, wondering what the ever-cheerful, ever-helpful Miss
Karen’s problem might be.

I can’t have this happen
here,
he thought. “Come with me,” he said
–
telling
,
not
asking
– and
took her by the elbow. He led her out of sight, into the wings, to
a place right inside a security door that read DO NOT OPEN ALARM
WILL SOUND, though he knew damn well that wasn’t the case and never
had been.

“Karen,” he said testily,
“we’re doing the best we can.”
As if
there’s any ‘we’ left
.

She sneered at him. “Like
hell you are, Donald. Even before this mess outside, you didn’t
look for them. I
know
you.”

“I–”

“You’re bullshit. You’ve always been
bullshit, and everybody knows it. We put up with it because nobody
else wants your stinking job!” she said, her voice rising.

“Karen, come on, we—”

“You just want me to shut
up!” she was hysterical now. What little color was left in her
face, under the hideous makeup, was high in her cheeks and bright
as bruises. “You always want everybody to shut up! You lied about
the kids and you’re lying about the storm because you want all
those
difficult
people with all their
difficult
problems to just
go away
!”

He clenched his teeth and tried not to make
his fingers into fists. “If you will calm the fuck down, maybe
we—”

“You wish
I
would go away, too!
Don’t you? You wish –”

He did it without really
thinking. He threw up one leg and
kicked
her as hard as he could,
right in the middle of her narrow, lumpy chest. Karen went
oog!
and flew straight
back, colliding with the security door’s pushbar and throwing it
open. She fell into the roaring darkness and disappeared
like
that
, all in
an instant. In an instant more the door bounced off the outer wall
and slammed shut.

Just like that, she was gone.

Peck stared at the door for a moment, pleased
at how his heart rate had barely risen. He started to turn away,
already forgetting her, when the door erupted with loud, metallic
pounding and Karen called out. He could barely hear her through the
metal, over the sound insulation and the gurgling thunder of the
rain.

“Let me in!” she bellowed. “Let me in, damn
you!”

He didn’t.

“
LET ME IN!”
She sounded outraged –
beyond
outraged. “I’ll GET you, you
son of a bitch! I’ll tell EVERYbody you–”

There was a pause. Peck cocked his head like
a curious dog, wondering what had stopped her.

“Sheriff? Sheriff, there’s something out
here.”

Oh, my
, he thought.
Whatever could it
be?

“Sheriff, there’s – SHERIFF! GOD, OPEN THE
DOOR! OPEN THE DOOR OPEN THE DOOR OHHHHH—”

Her voice cut off with a
wet
slash
unlike
anything he’d ever heard outside of a butcher shop.

The sound didn’t last for long. And when it
stopped…

“Well, then,” he said to himself. “Problem
solved.” He smoothed his immaculate khaki uniform and turned back
to enter the slowly filling auditorium.

Outside, in the heart of the storm, Michael
Steinberg was saying good bye to his ATV.

The red cowling was dented and cracked in a
dozen places; the engine was laboring and coughing as he forced it
into the storage lot behind the Conference Center. The Water Tower
loomed over him under a stone-heavy bank of clouds, and the rain
kept pouring down.

It never
stops
.
Thank God.
Thank Jesus. Thank Me
.

“There, there,” he said, stroking the hood
one final time. “That’s my baby.” He was fascinated by the hard,
screeching sound of his hand on the metal, like horn scraping on
bone. The engine coughed one final time, then the whole vehicle
shuddered and died.

He stood up on the ATV’s pins and surveyed
the vehicles arrayed before him: tow trucks, flatbeds,
mini-pick-ups, water tankers, a paddy wagon, street sweepers, a
water cannon, steam rollers, a cement mixer – even, for no
particular reason at all, an ice-cream truck. He needed something
special for his next task, he knew. Something huge and heavy, but
relatively agile. Something he could steer, and as heavy as…

Then he saw it.
Ah
.
Perfect
.

Steinberg hopped off the
loading dock and splashed into the water towards his new
vehicle.
Takin’ out the
trash
.
That’s me,
Mr. Trash Man.

He could feel the approval of the wordless
Intelligence filling his mind.

Where the hell was Herb
McCandless?
Peck wondered.
Or Marty Stein, or Tony O’Meara or Steve Chapin
or Frank Baxter, or any damn member of the Town Council? Christ,
even the Lazenbys.

As if in answer to his thoughts, the back
doors creaked open and Normal Lazenby strolled in, his wife at his
side. He was perfectly groomed and bone dry, a silver-haired angel
dressed in black who glided confidently down the center aisle and
took the same seat on the stage as he had occupied the night
before.

The Mayor didn’t have to
speak. He had
presence.
He
looked
every inch like the father of Dos Hermanos, and
right now that was all that mattered.

Dread coiled in Donald Peck’s belly. He had
never felt that particular emotion before, and he hated it. He
tapped the mic and said, “People? Let’s get started.” There was a
whine of feedback that made everybody groan. He wouldn’t have put
up with that even a few hours earlier. Now…he really couldn’t care
less.

“This is how it’s going to
work,” he said without preamble. “We’re going to take the biggest
public vehicles we can find – the flatbeds, the big trucks, the
busses – and load everybody inside. They’re all parked right next
door, in the utility lot. Then we’re going to stop by the school to
pick up your kids and the teachers, then go over to the Clinic to
pick up doctors and patients, and
then
we’re heading up 181 and out of
here. So everybody–”

“Wait a minute!” It was an
exhausted, weary man streaked with mud, standing up from his seat
and sounding very angry. “Why do we
all
have to go to the school and the
clinic? I got no kids. My wife and I just want to
go
.”