Creatures of the Storm (6 page)

“I know that. She won't take any money
from—”

“
Of
course
she won't
,
and you know why!
You. Left.
Us.”

Ken pressed his lips together to keep the
truth from pouring out. “Rosie, it's more complicated than—”

“Sure it is, Dad,” she snapped, and glared at
her meal, not at him. “Sure it is.”

Neither of them said anything for a long
time. Ken listened to the roaring hiss of the storm and let it fold
around him.

“You know,” she finally
said, “I’m actually glad you’re not trying to apologize.” Her voice
was very calm, very reasonable. She didn’t sound hurt; she wasn’t
holding back tears or anger. She was
discussing
it, the way she might
discuss a character in a movie or the problems of a distant friend.
It was that distance that hurt him the most. “It wouldn’t really
mean anything if you did. It wouldn’t matter.”

A man in a black pea coat, shoulders hunched
and head buried in a shapeless hat, trudged past them, outside the
glass. He was so close it startled Ken when he slogged past, almost
ankle-deep in water, sending up heavy sprays of brown water that
nearly reached his knees. For a moment, Ken wondered if it was the
same man they’d passed on the way to the restaurant, the one that
Rose had screamed about. What the devil was that poor man doing out
there?

He moved relentlessly north against the
current, and an old pick-up truck passed him in the middle lane,
going the other way. The water boiled around its slowly turning
tires, the wavelets already touching the top of the hubcaps.

“I don’t know what to say, Rose.” It was the
only honest thing he could come up with.

“Uh-huh.”

“There was a lot going on. A lot you don’t
understand.”

She gave him a bland and meaningless smile
and put out her hands as if she was weighing something in each one.
She let the left hand dip down. “Explaining yourself,” she said,
then let the right one dip, “Making excuses.” Then she spread them
into a shrug. “I’ve never been real good at telling those
apart.”

“I know,” he said, and
heard the anger in his own voice. “I
know
. It’s just–”

There was a
tremendous
thwack
on the glass above Rose’s head. She said “Shit!” and flinched
away, ducking down and covering her head. Ken jumped up and reared
back, almost overturning his chair. He looked up to see a dirty
white mass the size of a human head smashed against the glass. It
held there for a moment, then slid down the entire length of the
window and plunged into the brown water on the sidewalk with a
thick, ugly splash.

“A bird,” said a gruff voice. Ken spun around
to see the scientist woman standing right behind him, frowning
deeply at the streak of blood and mud on the window. “It was a
bird.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I see that.”

Genelle was hovering. “That’s been happening
all day,” she fretted. “This rain is screwing up the poor things.
Or maybe it’s just the wind, I don’t know.”

“I’m not that hungry,” Rose said. She pushed
away the salad she had barely touched. “Can we go?”

Ken nodded, glanced at the
check, and peeled a set of bills from his modest roll. “Same here,”
he said, with a glance at the scientist-woman. What as her name?
Armstrong? Armitage? Arm…
something
. Why did she keep
staring
at him like
that? “Let’s go home.”

Rose froze half out of her chair. “Uh,” she
said, and stood up much more slowly. “About that…”

“About what?”

“Home,” she said, and
grimaced. “At least,
your
home.” She looked at him, then at their
observers, and pitched her voice very low. There was more challenge
and less certainty in it this time. “I really,
really
don’t want to go up there
with… with that…”

“Maggie,” he said stonily. “You mean
Maggie.”

“Yeah. It’s …it’s
weird,
Dad. This whole
thing creeps me out. So I was thinking I could just get a hotel
room down here somewhere, in a nice part of town and everything, so
you wouldn’t have to worry. Nothing scummy, but –”

“That wasn’t the deal.” he said firmly. He
felt as if he had swallowed a stone.

“I know,” she said hastily. “I know.” They
were standing at the table now, but not moving toward the door.
Genelle tried to give him change but he shook his head.

“Keep it,” he said.

She thanked him and moved away fast. Rose was
back to staring at the storm.

“You talk about me walking
out on you,” he said. “Abandoning
you.” He
didn’t care if the others were listening now or not. “Here’s a
chance to change that. But you won’t even stay in the same house
with me.”

“It’s not
you
,” she said, but he
didn’t believe one word of it. “It’s that – JESUS!
What the
hell
is
that?” She
stepped to the window and put a hand against the glass.

A roughly cylindrical mass, as long as a man
is tall, was rolling down the middle of the street, pushed along by
the rising water. It looked like a bolt of tangled black cloth, or
a log wrapped in fabric, or–

–or a human body, overwhelmed by the rush of
water, rolling over and over in the surging current.

It was the same size, the same color, as the
man in the pea coat who had walked past them a few minutes
earlier.

“Is… is that a
person
?” Ken said,
squinting through the rain.

“Oh my God. Oh my
God
.” It was Genelle,
standing behind them again. Ken turned to her and saw Tony O’Meara
behind the waitress, and the scientist even farther back. He looked
grim.

“We been seein’ all kind of
shi–ah,
stuff
all
day,” he said. “Maybe that’s nothin’.”

Rose pressed her hand flat
against the glass. “Help him,” she said. She turned to her father,
outraged and desperate. “
Help
him!”

Ken moved towards the main entrance with Tony
close behind.

“It’s just somethin’ got washed up in the
rain,” Tony said. “Come on, Ken, don’t bring that crap in my
place.”

Ken didn’t take his eyes off the turning
black thing in the water. It was still rolling south. He was barely
pacing it as he reached the door and tried to push it open.

The door didn’t move. He looked away from the
turning thing long enough to see that the wide glass door wasn’t
locked, so he pushed harder.

“
Wait
a second, for Christ’s sake!”
Tony said. He put a strong hand on Ken’s arm. “Look at that water!
You open that door, you’ll flood the place!”

Ken looked down. At least eight inches of
water was flowing past the door, holding it shut, and it would roll
into the restaurant like a miniature tidal wave if the seal was
broken.

“He’s right,” the scientist-woman said.
“Maybe there’s something else…we can…”

The turning thing had
stopped for a moment, snagged on something under the water. Foam
and mud was boiling around its trailing edge as it shifted, twenty
feet away, right in front of them. There was a sudden flash of
white –
What was that,
Ken thought.
A hand?
– that disappeared in an instant, then the thing
came loose and started flowing south again, rolling and
rolling.

“I’ll help you clean it
up,” Ken said, and started to
shove
at the door as hard as he could.

Tony ripped him away from
the glass, turned him around, and
slammed
his back against the
opposite wall. “You leave that fuckin’ thing alone,” he said under
his breath, holding him in place. His square face was bright red
under his tan, sweating and slightly swollen. “
Leave
it. I don’t want that shit in
here.”

The scientist didn’t move
to help. He didn’t expect her to. “Tony. Come on. They could be
hurt. Hell, it could be somebody you
know
.”

Tony didn’t let him go.
“This is
my
place,” he said. “
Mine
. And
that
is not my problem. I don’t want
it in here.”

“But –”

“
I
don’t want it in here!”

Ken tried to push him away
and Tony
shoved
him back again, tight against the wall. “Don’t,” he said, and
this time it wasn’t a joke. “Just…
don’t
.”

They stood together, tight and motionless for
a long beat… and one more. Then Ken nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Your
place.”

Tony looked at him hard to make sure he
wasn’t bluffing. Then he let him loose.

Ken straightened up and looked into the
street. The turning black thing was gone, swept south now, out of
sight. Rose was standing at the edge of the waiting area, her hand
on her mouth, her beautiful eyes huge and unblinking.

“I’m sorry,” Ken said to her. He felt small
and stupid and angry as hell.

“It’s okay,” she said. Her voice was almost
trembling.

“I tried, I –”

“It’s
okay.
”

Tony picked up their ridiculous tablecloth,
neatly folded and ready to go. “We got the back entrance
sand-bagged already,” he said gruffly. “It’s up a little higher
back in the alley there. We’ll help you to your car.” He looked at
the scientist with a mixture of rage and shame. “You, too, Doctor
Armbruster.”

That was the
name
, Ken thought distantly.
Armbruster.

“Time to close,” Tony told them.

Ken didn’t say anything. He took the cloth
and turned toward the kitchen. “Come on,” he said to Rose.

Rose whispered “’Bye,” as they plunged into
the alley. The Range Rover was parked at the curb a few feet before
the end of the block. They managed to get inside with only their
shoes and cuffs soaked through.

Ken was still burning. “No
motels,” he said as the doors slammed shut and locked. “None of
that shit. I know you’re weirded out. I get that. But you’re coming
to stay at the
hacienda
, at least until your mother is out of the clinic, and
that’s
it
.” He
started the car without waiting for an answer.

Rose looked at her lap and nodded. “Okay,”
she said. The motel thing had been a bad idea all along, she knew
that. And even though she hated that huge, stupid house on the West
Ridge and the thought of everything that waited for her there, she
was grateful that he had made the decision for her.

After all that had happened, after the wreck
and the hospital and the restaurant, she didn’t really want to be
alone.

Not now. Maybe not ever again.

I should just keep going
, Lucy Armbruster told herself as the Civic grumbled north on
Highway 181.
Just stay on the freeway,
keep my head down and don’t stop ‘till I hit Barstow or Vegas or
the friggin’ Canadian border
.

She knew what was waiting if she stayed here.
The satellite data at the station would confirm it, but the drive
across town and a good, hard look at the clouds convinced her: it
was a hundred-year event. Maybe a five hundred-year event. The old
Dos Hermanos was as good as gone already, and if it didn’t stop
raining soon – by morning at the latest, there wouldn’t be enough
dry land left inside the crater valley to rebuild the town. Not
ever.

A green and white highway sign passed on her
right, whipping and trembling in the gusting wind like a living
thing trying to pull itself free of the mud:

NORTH RIDGE EXIT 1 MI.

SCENIC VIEW

UC RIVERSIDE

AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH
STATION

“Scenic view my ass,” she muttered. The Civic
plowed through the sheeting rain. On a good day there was a flat
spot right near the off-ramp where you could see the entire Valle
de Los Hermanos laid out like a piece of dirty burlap. This was
most decidedly, most indisputably, most sure as shittedly not a
good day.

Lucy was half-serious about the escape. She
really could cruise right by and to hell with the consequences. Use
the cell phone to call Cindy and Rebecca at the Station and tell
them to go north, young women, go north. Hell, she would even leave
a message for that cretin Steinberg to hit the road, not that he
deserved it.

She sighed and wished
Frannie would speak to her in some kind of soft-focus romance-movie
moment, a scene where that wonderful alto of hers, smooth as single
malt scotch, would echo out of nowhere and say something
like
Nothing important is easy, my
love
, or
The
greatest good for greatest number, this is your shining moment,
make the world your own
, blah blah blah.
Or even
Shut up and get to the Station,
you twit
. But there was nothing like that.
In fact, it was getting harder and harder to remember what Frannie
sounded like at all. Lucy had to concentrate now to remember that
wonderful voice. It was
drifting away,
like everything did.
Drifting
, she thought
bitterly.