Creatures of the Storm (34 page)

“Then go,” he said bluntly, hard into the
mike. “Don’t let me stop you.”

“We got no
car
, damn it! It got
washed away last night!”

“Then you go the way we say
to go,” Donald snapped. “And you…” He wanted to say
“
and you shut the fuck
up
,” but he stopped himself at the last
moment. “…and you try and make the best of it. Um…Chuck.” He
remembered the man’s name now, Chuck Emerson, air conditioning
contractor.

The Greenaways were sitting
right behind him. Now
they
stood up. “What about our daughter?”

Oh,
Christ
, he thought. Sharon Greenaway was
the last person he wanted to see right now, the mother of one of
the missing girls. The last missing girl had disappeared barely two
days ago. Mommy had been a meek little victim until now, but he
could see the change in her. She had shed her soft, trembling
Grieving-Mom-In-Trouble look. She was an instrument of vengeance
now, eyes blazing and fists clenched white. “You said you were
looking. Just
yesterday
, you said so. And now you want to
run
?”

“Sharon,” he said in as
measured a tone as he could manage. He couldn’t stand the look in
her eyes, so he shifted to her sad sack husband. “Jim, I… I don’t
know what to say. There are men
out there
right now, l
ooking…”

He couldn’t help it. He looked into her face
again and saw the rage there, and the righteousness. He saw how
immovable she was…and how right.

Oh, fuck
this
, he told himself. He leaned on the
podium.

“Sharon…Jim…let me level with you. All of
you. We’re not looking for your daughter right now. We don’t have
the men or the time. I hope somebody found her and took her out of
town. I really do hope that. Right now, though…we have to go.”

“The hell we do!” Sharon
said, standing up so fast she knocked her chair over. “We
are
not
leaving
Dos Hermanos without Katie!”

“Then you’re probably going to die,” Peck
said flatly.

The Greenaways stared at him for one moment
longer, then turned and left the room. Half a dozen others joined
them, casting poisonous looks as they stalked through the double
doors. Lightning blasted the walls to white, and there was a
tremendous, metallic CLANGGG! of thunder that rattled the
windows.

“Good luck to you all,” he said as they
left.

It was coming from the
north. Steinberg could feel it himself now, exactly as the
Intelligence muttering inside him had predicted. It was
building,
growing
. It would be here any moment.

Time to get ready.

Steinberg found himself, yet again, thinking
of his golden girl, his perfect Jennie. He had a moment of sheer
panic, thinking she might be inside, that he might hurt her by
accident. Then his tangled, wandering mind recalled: No. She was at
the Clinic, still trapped inside, not here. It was okay. Really, it
was okay.

He settled himself in the seat of the massive
garbage truck. He had found the keys clipped to the sun visor as if
they’d been left for him, and they slipped into place without a
snag. The engine started with the first try, and without a pause he
popped the clutch and jammed on the accelerator.

The truck roared straight forward, water
flying everywhere.

He didn’t stop. He didn’t
even test the brakes. He just aimed it carefully, punched
it hard, and rammed the garbage truck directly
into the huge, cylindrical southwest leg of the Water
Tower.

Lightning flared as he connected, exactly on
cue. The tremendous sound of the impact, metal on screaming metal,
was all but lost in the deafening crash of the thunder.

The collision threw the
steering column into Steinberg’s chest. He heard his sternum
pop
as it broke, heard
the wet snap
of at least three ribs. But
he didn’t lose his breath. He didn’t really
need to
breathe anymore.

As he lay hunched over the steering wheel, he
heard the tiny chewing crunches of his bones rebuilding. He
straightened up, put the truck in reverse, and pulled away for
another hit.

Maybe this time we’ll try backing into
it…

“Why didn’t you tell us all
this last night?” It was another outraged citizen with a soggy pile
of suitcases next to him. Peck had seen him hustling his three
hungry children off to the school for safekeeping a few minutes
earlier, obviously glad to be rid of them. “You told us this was
going to be over soon! You told us everything was going to
be
fine!
”

“I was wrong,” Peck said, too weary to
fight.

“We could have left
then
! We could’ve packed
up everything and been
safe
!”

“I was working from faulty information,” he
said. “I was–”

“That lady scientist!”
another woman said. “
She
knew about it!
She
said this would happen and you
cut her off!”

“I was trying to restore order,” he said. “I
was doing what I thought was right.”

“How can that be?” Lu Anne
Schreiber said. The keening voice made Peck want to drive a
jackknife in her ear, but he didn’t flinch. He wouldn’t let himself
do that. “How can putting us all in harm’s way be
right
?”

A fat old man Peck barely
recognized hauled his ass up. “Goddamn it, I lost my house! It
just
floated away,
not two hours ago and
you
—”

“You, too?” said another
guy. “Shit, I thought I was the
only
one.”

“And those
things
out there!
Those
things
!”

“My brother didn’t come home last night. I
don’t know what–”

“My dad—”

“Jimmy and Dooley and Wyatt, they–”

Lightning cut through the
room again. Thunder exploded – that same strange double-thump of
sound and shockwave. The audience kept talking, kept
pushing
at
him.

Peck closed his eyes. He tried to breathe
steadily.

This has got to
stop
.
This has
got to fucking STOP.

Steinberg’s new senses
helped him time it just right. He pulled away, revved the engine,
and waited until the
tang
of ozone rose…and rose…and
peaked
. Then he popped the clutch
and lurched backwards.

Lightning struck and thunder pounded out of
the sky as the massive garbage truck slammed into the Tower’s leg
one more time. The two impossibly loud sounds blended into one.

The Water Tower’s leg was buckling. Steinberg
could see cracks in the paint, the metal folding like cardboard
right where the truck had hit it twice.

This is going to
work,
he told himself, utterly
amazed.
This is actually going to
…

He sensed it. He looked up to the north, even
as he forced the truck into forward gear and lurched away from the
tower again.

Only time for one
more
.
One
more…

They were shouting at each other now,
terrified and angry. Peck tried to override it.

“
Let’s get to the trucks
!” he said,
booming it into the microphone on purpose. He waved at Stu
Axminster to get his ass up to the podium. “Let’s line up at the
doors—”

“Why should we do what you say?” one man
shouted. “This is your fault, YOUR fault!”

“Let’s ride it out here! It’s still
safe!”

“My gran is still at the house! We gotta go
get her–”

“I don’t want to, I–”

“–can’t, I –”

“– don’t—”

Donald Peck
slammed
his fist into
the wooden podium right in front of the mic, hard and fast and loud
as a gunshot.

“JUST DO WHAT I FUCKING TELL YOU!” he
bellowed.

The people stopped shouting. Even the rain
itself seemed to stop, and the wind held its breath.

Everyone was staring at him.

“That’s what you want,
isn’t it?” he said. “You want me to
save
you, to be your
daddy,
like
always
!
God
, you worthless,
fucking,
stupid
bunch of…of…”

Peck was suddenly aware
that it
was
quiet
–
silent
, in
fact. Absolutely silent.

Everything had
stopped.
Everything.
The wind. The rain. Even…

What was that distant roar? Growing louder
and louder?

He looked up and to the
right, to the north. He felt a strange, invisible
pulse
that pushed his
entire body, like the leading shockwave of a massive
explosion.

A wall of wind, as solid as stone, slammed
broadside into the north wall of the Conference Center and blew it
to pieces.

It took thirty seconds for everyone to
die.

Steinberg saw
it coming with all his new senses, sweeping down
from the Notch at more than seventy miles an hour. The Water
Tower’s tank, a flattened sphere of blue-painted steel, hovered
high above him, lit from below. The glittering, billowing curtain
of force careening southwards was even taller than the Tower. And
was more than just wind and water. It was like the fist of God
Himself, and he could
feel
it in his bony hide, rushing headlong towards
them.

He popped the clutch and
lurched forward, full-speed. He raised his arms and
screamed
in
to it, calling it down as he
slammed the truck into the buckling leg of the Tower at the same
instant the wind-wall arrived. In that last moment of awareness he
saw the support crumple completely. The Tower groaned like a living
thing as it twisted to the side.

He saw it fall. It drifted down at first,
descending at an angle, going right where he’d planned.

First the walls of the
Conference Center disappeared in a single
poof.
Then the tank hit the roof
dead center and exploded. The truck around Steinberg blew to
pieces, and he went with it. Vehicles scattered like thrown toys,
walls disintegrated, buildings flew away. His own body cracked like
china and the pieces scattered.

It was the happiest moment of Michael
Steinberg’s life.

Donald Peck saw it all. The
entire north wall of the building blew out in an instant, and all
the people and chairs and soggy luggage flew into the air in a
single pressurized wave and slammed through the south wall.
T
hat
fast, in a
heartbeat.

The roof of the Center didn’t blow off, not
right away. The massive, rust-colored beams in the four corners
stood firm, and Peck, on the stage, was lifted straight up and
plastered against the curved ceiling, pinned there like a bug by
the air pressure, but still very much alive – and conscious.

For one mad moment, he found himself looking
down on the meeting room, viewing it from on high. He could see
only a few bodies. Most had flown away, into the storm, but a
handful were still there, clogged in the corners, like ants left
after a blast from a garden hose.

Some of them were moving. One or two were
actually trying to stand, even though the gale-force winds, strong
enough to suspend Donald Peck forty feet in the air, still howled
through the wreckage.

“Ants…” he wheezed.

Then he heard the high screaming music of
metal tearing itself apart. He turned his head a bit, to look at
the curve of the Conference Center’s ceiling, and saw it flex down,
pushed from above, as the cool blue curve of the Water Tower’s tank
fell through the roof, collapsed it, burst like a second bomb.

It was the last thing he ever saw.

The wind pushed him under. The water embraced
him. The brittle limbs of what had once been Michael Steinberg
broke off like toothpicks and swirled away, scattered by the
pressure wave.

For you, Jennie,
he told himself as he spread.
All for you.

The last of his human consciousness still
heard the stern voice of the Intelligence enfolding him, pulling
him in. It was pleased with his work. Very pleased. And yet it did
not take him completely. He was still distantly, wonderfully aware
of the spark of Jennie Sommerfield, drowning in the storm-surge he
had created.

I’ll come for you,
he thought, not sure if he could do it.
I’ll come for…
.

And that was all that mattered.

The windows of Ken Mackie’s atrium exploded into a thousand
pieces when the wind-wall hit the ridge. The doors of the locked
hallway where Maggie had trapped them
thumped
as if ghosts were pounding
on them, but they held, even through the horrible wooden
rip-and-tear sound from farther down the hall. It wasn’t monsters
this time. It was the wind that was ripping away parts of the
kitchen.