Creatures of the Storm (38 page)

Maggie didn’t respond.

The creature kept coming.
Rose could hear the skirl of its claws knifing against each other
and chunking
into the wood.

“MAGGIE!”

“YES,” she said. “I UNDERSTAND.”

“I hope to fuck you
do
,” Lucy said under her
breath. She braced herself and spread her arms even wider. “One!”
she shouted.

She crossed her arms and caught the creature
between the two cords. They looked ridiculously thin, like trapping
a bear inside a loop of kite string. “Two!” she shouted.

Lucy twisted the ends together with one
massive wrenching movement and threw the knot into the wind even as
the creature lunged forward. The wind took them, just as she
planned. They wires whipped even more tightly around the crawling,
clawing, dagger-tipped creature.

“THREE!”

The lights in the house
dulled to nothing as a deep, ugly
THRUMMMM
flowed down the line. The
creature exploded into sparks, twitched up, and landed heavily on
the board, writhing in every direction at once. Smoke curled from
its edges and crevices. It jumped again. And again. The board
itself began to smoke as the spotlights faded...and
faded...

“OKAY, MAGGIE!” Lucy called, suddenly
concerned.

The power kept flowing into the motionless
corpse of the creature. The BUZZZZ got louder, harsher. The wires
started to melt. The spotlights flickered out.

“MAGGIE!” Ken bellowed. “MAGGIE, STOP!”

The electricity didn’t stop. Not for the
longest time. It went on and on, and finally, after what seemed
like ten minutes, the horrible sound cycled down, and the smoking
remains of the creature, flash-fried and crackling, shifted to the
side and tipped off the plank. It glided off into the relentless
wind, light as a dandelion thistle, and the board slipped off with
it, teetering off the stumpy stone tower and splashing thickly into
the mud lake.

The spotlights had gone completely dark.
There were no lights left on in the house. None at all.

Ken stood and stared at the house for the
longest time. Lucy let him until she could catch her breath. Then
she turned around, still on her hands and knees, and glared at the
eucalyptus on the far side of the yard—the one with the rock
outcroppings at its base.

It was very tall and very bushy. The wind was
tearing it back and forth, making it whip in the gray morning light
like an overactive cat-o-nine-tails.

“We can jump into that tree!” she shouted
over the wind. “Lots of branches and foliage to grab onto, and I’m
sure it can take our weight!”

“You’re
sure
?” Rose said. “What, like you
did a
study
?”

“You got a better idea?” she shouted
back.

“
No,
but I don’t have to
fucking
like
it!”

Lucy glared at her one second longer…then
burst into laughter. It sounded so odd, and so wonderful, in the
howling, gurgling anger of the storm.

She tugged at Ken’s sleeve.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s jump.”

He tore his eyes away from the house. He
nodded tightly. “Okay,” he said. “Me first. Let’s see if this
works.”

He turned his back on
the
hacienda
and
took a deep breath. Then, with barely a glance at his daughter, he
ran the all-too-short length of the rock table and threw himself
into the air.

The tree really wasn’t that far away. Three
yards, maybe five, the width of the driveway far below, and not
much more. It looked like a mile. Ken spread his arms as he flew,
and the instant he collided with the branches he wrapped them
tightly around whatever he’d hit. Sure enough, it welcomed him,
pulled him inside, into a knot of leaves and twigs.

Rose saw the branches bend under his weight,
but they held him. She grinned as her father’s natural-born
clumsiness reasserted itself; he barely managed to scurry down a
few feet and find a stable spot where two branches met without
twisting off a foot.

“Son of a bitch,” Lucy said
again. “It actually
worked
.”

Rose was shocked. “You mean you weren’t—”

“Oh, hell, girl, it was
a
guess
. Who do I
look like, Indiana fucking Jones? Now
jump
!”

Rose looked at her, looked
at the tree, looked at the rock floor, and
ran
. The rain slapped her in the
face, stinging like angry bees as she launched herself up and up
and up …

The leaves were stiff and surprisingly sharp
when they crashed into her chest. She wrapped her arms around the
same tangle of twigs and branches that had cushioned her father. A
moment later her feet found purchase. It took only a second to
clamber down to a branch right below his, her heart racing, her
blood high.

Lucy was a few feet away, grinning like an
idiot. She backed up to the very edge of the platform, put her head
down like a bull about to charge, and ran at them, hard as she
could.

She jumped well. Not much elevation, but
right on target. She was heading in a straight line for the
welcoming branches of the eucalyptus, arms out in front, like some
great huge out-of-shape super-heroine –

– when a single huge spike, as thick as a
tree trunk, thrust up out of the muck and impaled her.

Straight through the chest.

Rose was low in the tree. She saw the exact
place it penetrated Lucy’s sodden Pendleton shirt. She saw it
emerge from the other side so quickly and cleanly there wasn’t even
a drop of blood.

For the one long beat that she was suspended
there, Lucy Armbruster looked like an insect skewered on a pin.
Then the three-sided spike that had found her teetered like a
falling tree trunk and slammed lengthwise back into the lake of
mud, taking Lucy Armbruster with it.

She was gone. Just like
that.
G
one.

Rose looked up at her father, who looked down
at her with a blank, stunned expression. Without a word, they
climbed down to the rocks at the base of the tree and paused,
momentarily sheltered from the storm by the low-hanging branches
and formidable trunk of the eucalyptus.

Neither of them spoke for a long time.
Then:

“What do we do now?” Rose asked him.

“Honey, I don’t–”

She stopped him with one
dripping hand. “Don’t. Don’t say that. You
have
to know. There’s no one else to
ask. Maggie is fried and Lucy is dead and I’m too… I’m too… there’s
just no one
else
,
Dad. So…?”

She was looking at him with huge, terrified
eyes. He hated seeing her like this.

“So what do we
do
?”

Ken Mackie stood with one hand on the trunk
of the eucalyptus, the wind tearing at him, the rain stinging him,
and looked into the face of his only daughter.

They could head north right now. Travel along
the ridge line as much as possible, run and dodge the monsters of
the storm. With a little luck and a lot of determination, they
could make it on foot to the Notch and escape the crater valley
forever. All they had to do was turn north.

Or they could turn south.
Revisit the ruins of VeriSil and what lay beyond. Climb the nearly
vertical slopes of The Two Brothers and confront the
thing,
the Intelligence
that was working so hard to slaughter them all. All they had to do
was turn south.

He had no idea which way to go.

It would have been nice if revenge alone was
good enough. Lucy Armbruster was a fine woman, even if she had been
a pain in the ass. She had given him the secret of the creatures of
the storm, she had put his daughter’s life before her own. Avenging
her death should have been reason enough to risk his life and
murder the murderer.

However, it wasn’t enough. Not really. She
wasn’t really a friend, was she? He barely knew her. It wasn’t like
he owed her anything.

It would be nice if simply
Doing the Right Thing was enough. The push was coming to the shove
here, the rubber was meeting the road. This was when the hidden
hero was supposed to rise up in Ken Mackie and make him something
special, so he could turn to the south, courageous and supremely
powerful. All the fear would burn away, and he would fight, he
would
win,
because fighting this creature was just plain
Right.

But Wrong won all the time,
didn’t it? Bravery, foolishness, denial – they were simply
different names for the same thing, and he was far too smart to
swallow that shit. Besides, who would ever know? He could slink
away and save his ass – and his daughter, yes, save her as well! –
and no one would say, “Why didn’t you kill it? Why didn’t
you
win
?” Because
no one would ever know he
could
have.
No one would ever
know.

He didn’t feel any swelling
heroic impulse. He was no comic book superman whose hour had come
around at last. What he felt was
terror
. Paralyzing fear.

I’m like everybody
else,
Ken realized.
I don’t want to die, ever. For any reason. Not even to save
the world.

No, being the hero simply wasn’t enough.

He looked north again and saw nothing but
darkness and rain. He looked south, through the twisted “V” of the
groaning eucalyptus, and saw lightning rip the sky. No hints. No
signs from God about which way to go.

Then he looked at Rose.

His daughter. His beautiful
daughter with the violet eyes. And she looked at
him
,
as if she was expecting something,
needing
something, and not for the
first time.

I’ve done so many things
wrong
.
I have
made so many bad decisions.

That was the central truth for Ken at that
moment; that was what moved his feet.

He simply couldn’t face making another
mistake. Not when she was watching.

Standing there in the driving rain, shivering
and terrified, ready to quit, Ken Mackie decided to save the world,
or at least to try. Not for vengeance. Not for humanity. Not
because it was The Right Thing to Do.

Simply because he didn’t want to disappoint
his daughter again.

“We go south,” he told her. “And we kill this
motherfucker.”

The front door of Rex and Diana's
mini-mansion blew inwards and flew across the entry alcove, turning
in midair to crash corner-first into the decorative mirror at the
far end of the corridor. A moment later Ken Mackie stumbled in.
Rose was a step behind and far more cautious.

“Hell of a noise,” she said as they moved
completely out of the rain.

“I knocked first,” Ken said, surveying the
alcove with grim efficiency. He sounded a little defensive.

So maybe I kicked it a
little too hard
, he thought
grudgingly,
but desperate times and all
that
.

They strained to hear any alarm, any call for
help inside the house, but the rising roar of the storm raging
right outside the broken doorway made that all but impossible. They
made their way deeper into house, exploring the endless shadowy
rooms of the over-large mansion, calling and waving the flashlight
as they moved. They had no intention of being blasted by the
nervous impulse of Denise Tartaglione because they'd been too
polite when they entered.

They needn't have bothered. After eight
minutes of careful investigation, they found her lying on the
still-made California King in the master bedroom.

Rose was the first one into the room. “Is she
dead?” her father asked.

“No,” Rose said. “Look, you can see her
breathing. Not even that slow.” She noted the overturned, empty
bottle of a decent Cabernet on the deep-pile carpet and a
half-empty bottle of fat little pills next to the reading lamp.
Rose could identify the prescription from across the room.

“Suicide attempt?”

She snorted. “Not even close. All she wanted
was a good night's sleep, even if her hubby was still out in the
rain. And that's what she's getting.” Rose sighed bitterly and
turned her back on the woman. “If she’s lucky, she’ll miss the
whole end-of-the-world thing completely.” There was a momentary
pause in the catastrophe unfolding outside the window. In that tiny
lull Ken could hear the soft sound of Denise snoring.

They didn't bother staying quiet as they
ransacked the rest of the house. They picked up a backpack, towels,
kitchen knives, some bottled water, even an umbrella. After a
quarter hour they ended their looting in the attached garage, in
search of the item they’d broken in to find. It was a waste of
time.

After Lucy’s death in the
driveway, it didn't take Ken and Rose very long to work their way
down from the eucalyptus tree to the river stone gate. Once they
found themselves standing in the shallow river that had been the
East Ridge Road, they realized how completely unprepared they were
for the trip south. They had fled the
hacienda
with nothing but the
soaked-through clothes on their backs. No food, no decent clothing,
no weapons of any kind, and a four-hour walk in front of them at
the very least.