Tempest

by Kenny Soward

What if—thanks to the whims of Mother Nature and the corrupt nature of man—a perfect storm formed, the likes of which would dwarf the destruction and ruin wreaked by storms like Katrina and Sandy?

  In the process, as we tried to respond and recover, our back doors would be flung open, giving our adversaries the perfect opportunity to walk in and push us past the brink of doom.

  With our resources strained past their limits, our infrastructure—quite literally—underwater and our population demoralized, such an event could spell the end of our reign as a superpower.

  In times like those, only the truly prepared will survive the coming storm.

  Chapter 1

  Jake, Boston, Massachusetts | 7:22 p.m., Thursday

  Jake staggered into the hallway as wind and rain screamed at his back. He turned to shut the door to his room, but it slammed against the frame only to bounce open again without the magnetic locks to hold it shut.

  There were others in the hallway. Most, like him, were soaked and dazed. A few had wounds that blended with the red glow of the emergency lights. Still others seemed on the verge of panic, staring around wide-eyed at the growing chaos.

  A woman who must have been staying in the room next to him sobbed in her bathrobe and slippers.

  “Are you okay?” Jake asked, stepping over to her. She didn’t reply right away, so Jake gripped her by the shoulder and gave her a shake as he repeated his question.

  The woman brushed aside a lock of dark hair and lifted her eyes to focus on him. “I think so,” she said, spitting wet hair out of her mouth. “But I can barely see. I couldn’t find my glasses. I must have lost them.”

  “We’ll find them later.” Jake’s voice was tight with tension even though he was trying to sound calm. He took the woman by the arm, not waiting for her permission, and turned her down the hall toward the elevator shaft. “We need to get to the stairs and go down where it’s safe.”

  Someone slammed their way past them, shoving Jake and the woman into the wall. Jake shifted quickly to put his hand against the wall so he didn’t crush the woman, then he turned and glared at the person who’d come barreling through. It was a man about his age, wearing a torn business shirt and slacks, using his fists to shove people aside. Jake would have gone after the man to knock some sense into him, had the woman he was helping not whimpered and clung to his neck.

  The building shook and wind whistled between the open doors in a hellish high note. People cried out and huddled against the wall, cut off from their rooms.

  “Get to the stairs!” Jake shouted it this time, hoping to be heard above the wind.

  An older woman with gray hair holding the arm of her dazed husband stared at Jake for a moment before she raised her voice in a shout that was at least twice as loud as his. “You heard the man! Grab a partner and move to the stairs, but do it in an orderly fashion, people.”

  The crowd snapped out of their panic and began to recognize the others around them. They held hands or wrapped their arms around each other as they focused on getting down the hall. Jake gave the gray-haired woman a quick nod and gestured politely for them to go ahead. The woman returned a hesitant smile before she urged her husband to walk forward.

  The civil gesture seemed counter-instinctive against the backdrop of torrential wind and slamming doors. Nevertheless, it was necessary if they were to make it out of the dangerous hallway without a stampede. Surprisingly, the crowd formed a line and shuffled along the soggy carpet as wind shook the building, and Jake followed behind the older couple, locked arm in arm with the dazed woman in the bathrobe.

  Memories of the time when Jake had stood on his porch listening to a tornado pass less than a mile from his house tapped madly at the back of his skull. He’d never forget the change in air pressure and the steadily growing winds.

  Or that sound, that nightmare sound.

  Jake winced when rain pelted him from a flung-open door, shifting his body to keep the woman protected from the worst of it. She whimpered again and leaned into him, and that was when Jake noticed she had a bad cut on her head, right above her right eye. That explained why she was so disoriented.

  “Keep your head down,” Jake shouted and pointed ahead, “and your eyes focused on the back of that lady. You understand? Eyes focused on her back.”

  The woman nodded and gained focus, shuffling her feet faster to catch up with the couple. Jake, encouraged by her confidence, shifted his body into the center of the hallway to shield her from the growing winds coming in from that side. Something shot through an open doorway and hit him in the shoulder, but any pain he might have felt was masked by adrenaline. Gravel pelted his legs, his jeans absorbing the impact.

  The wind built up to a deafening crescendo, and Jake’s shoulders cringed at what was coming next. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. He could only wrap his arms around the woman and sink to the floor, hoping the wall would protect them.

  Glass broke from somewhere to his right, followed by debris blasting through the doors just ahead. Bedding, furniture, and pieces of the building flew into the unlucky people standing in front of the doorways. They lifted their hands to protect themselves but were cut down quickly.

  The building shook again just before a gale-force wind sheared through the wall on his left and began sucking things out. With his arm thrown up to protect his head, Jake watched people claw at the carpet or try to leap into the rooms on their right. Their efforts were futile. The gray-haired woman and her husband turned and fell to the floor, the woman reaching for Jake with terror in her eyes. Jake reached to take her hand, just as the wind sucked the woman and her husband out of the huge rip without mercy, their screams cut short by the intense gale.

  The woman in the bathrobe wailed, her voice barely audible above the hungry beast of a tornado, briefly spawned from one of the lines of storms from the hurricane. Jake could only tense up, wrap his arm tightly around the woman, and wait for their turn to come. An image of Sara and the kids at the cabin came unbidden into his mind, and he clung to it like a man clinging to a life preserver. Sara, so beautiful and strong. Todd, their oldest, just coming into his own as a young man. And little Zoe. What a perfect angel.

  In his mind, he saw his family unpacking their bags while their German Shepherd, Rex, sniffed around excitedly at everything he could get his nose into.

  That was a world away from here, and Jake was about to die. And just when he thought the screaming wind would suck him up, it faded into a mere gust as the worst part of the tornado passed. Debris stopped swirling around so violently, and a relative silence fell over the place, leaving a patter of cold rain to touch his skin.

  Jake lowered his arm, at first thinking he’d passed over to the “other side.” But no, they were still cowering in the hallway, wet and miserable and small against the destruction around them. Many of the rooms on their left were simply gone, and an open space yawned where the hallway used to be. The edge was just a few feet in front of them, and Jake could see down into the floors below.

  “We’re still alive,” the woman said in a quiet, breathless voice.

  “Looks that way.” Jake rose slowly and looked around. His legs were wobbly as he stepped to the edge and looked down as wind ruffled his hair. The twister had taken a chunk out of the side of the hotel and ripped the convention center open like a can of sardines. He could see right into the upper levels of the place where he’d just been a couple of hours ago. Pieces of metal and flooring stuck out in a splintered fractal, and parts were still falling several floors to the street below.

  Debris littered the tornado’s short trail, and nothing lived in its wake as far as he could tell.

  “How are we going to get down?”

  “We can’t cross here,” Jake said. “Maybe there’s a stairwell behind us.”

  He turned to see others huddled in the hallway behind them. More lucky ones, eyes wide as they stared at everything and nothing at the same time.

  “Turn around!” Jake called, wavi
ng the crowd back. “We have to go back.”

  A few acknowledged him, stepping back, but most continued to stare in stunned silence.

  “C’mon, people!” he shouted, this time with a growl in his voice. “The building is probably unstable. It could collapse underneath us. You don’t want to be standing here when it does.”

  The wind picked up again, making a high-pitched whistling noise in the dark sky with the promise of more destruction. The others could stand there all day if they wanted, but Jake didn’t plan on being around when it came back.

  He took the woman by the hand and led her through the milling, mumbling crowd. The floor was shaky beneath their feet, so he kept to the left side of the hall where it felt more stable. They passed the woman’s room and then Jake’s. He didn’t stop to glance inside. He kept going until they reached the end of the hall and found the stairwell door.

  Jake pushed through the door and stepped onto the landing, peeking over the rail, watching the shadows of other survivors moving below. The red emergency lights were on, with no sign of daylight. The tornado must’ve spared this part of the building.

  “Okay,” Jake said pulling the woman toward the top step. “It looks stable. Let’s go down.”

  She followed without complaint, taking it slow on the stairs so she wouldn’t slip, her single slipper looking more like a soggy wafer than a piece of footwear. Each step was excruciating, and a few other people passed them on the way down. Jake wanted to go faster, too, though he wouldn’t abandon the dazed woman.

  “We’re going to hell,” the woman said in a dreamy, disoriented voice.

  “Huh?”

  “The red lights,” she said, “it looks like we’re going down into hell.”

  Jake’s jaw clenched as he peered down. She wasn’t far off in her description. The red lights cast eerie shadows up the stairwell at them, and it did look like they were descending into some hellish pit.

  It didn’t look good. They’d survived a direct hit by a hurricane and a tornado. Their luck couldn’t get any worse, could it?

  Chapter 2

  Sara, Maryville, Tennessee | 4:05 a.m., Friday

  Sara drove the van down Highway 411 into Maryville, Tennessee. The windows were down, and a pleasant breeze flowed into the van, whipping errant strands of loose hair against her neck. It was rare for her to be awake at 4:30 a.m., but she’d just caught her second wind, encouraged by the empty roads and the promise of a majestic destination.

  They were headed to Gatlinburg to hole up in their cabin for seven days of well-deserved rest with nothing save for the peace and serenity of the Smoky Mountains surrounding them. There’d be cookouts, swimming, and movies. Memories to last a lifetime and all the fun that went along with it. They’d been planning this for months, and it was nice to finally be making it happen. Her husband, Jake, was at a tech convention in Boston right now, so he’d be flying in to McGhee Tyson Airport tomorrow evening to join the family at their magical cabin in the hills.

  Yes, it was all coming together. This vacation was about to get real.

  True, there would be work, too. The van was full of food stockpiles, two handguns, and other assorted supplies, and Sara wanted to have them all put away before Jake arrived tomorrow.

  Sara raised her eyes and glanced in the rearview mirror. The kids had spent most of the long drive singing songs, playing “punch buggy,” and generally being obnoxious, though now they were fast asleep in the back seat. Their oldest, Todd, was sixteen years old and mostly a good, obedient son. Zoe, aged eight, was their little angel, strapped in tight right behind Sara. Zoe charmed everyone she met, although her bright eyes and chubby cheeks had long ago stopped fooling Todd. Sometimes, though, he pretended to be charmed, and Sara loved him for that. Their German Shepherd, Rex, slept dutifully between them, curled up on the seat.

  Smiling, Sara turned her attention back to the road, white stripes zipping by as she kept the speedometer at a relaxed sixty miles per hour. She’d forgotten how much she loved these late-night drives. It was always so peaceful and serene. The last time she’d done this was in college, driving to some beach destination with a bunch of friends for spring break. These days, Jake usually volunteered to do the late-night driving, and now she understood why.

  Ten minutes later they passed through the town of Venore and then crossed the Little Tennessee River. After that, it was nothing but farms, trucking businesses, and churches for the next ten miles. Soon, subdivisions sprang up along the highway, displacing the fields and businesses. Sara glanced over at a Rite Stop gas station coming up and wondered if she should stop for a candy bar or soda, or a piping hot cup of coffee.

  No, she’d just end up regretting it. Plus, there was no sense in waking the kids when they were sleeping so well. Soon, fast food buildings dotted both sides of the road alongside the farmers’ markets, and Sara knew she’d finally reached “civilization.”

  Not wanting to get pulled over, Sara gently eased off of the gas pedal as the white and black sign ahead indicated a drop from fifty-five to forty-five and her hair settled on her shoulders as the wind ceased its whipping. It wasn’t until she passed the Exxon gas station a couple miles later that a strange feeling pricked at her senses, causing the hairs on the back of her neck to stand up.

  Sara slowed to thirty-five and stared at the police cars sitting in the Exxon lot. Five cruisers with “Maryville Police” written on the side. Their lights spun blue and white, and their doors were flung open as if they’d just leapt out and gone in pursuit of a perpetrator.

  There was a stain on the glass door of the Exxon station. A big splatter of some dark liquid ran in rivulets down the glass, pierced in the middle by a bullet-sized hole.

  “Okay, so it was a robbery then,” she whispered to herself. “A really bad one.”

  Except the stain had been on the inside of the glass. The bullet must have been fired from inside, too, because she could see cracks in the glass under the halogen lights. If the stain had been on the outside of the door, she wouldn’t have been able to see those cracks so clearly.

  What about the foot-wide trail of the same dark substance that led from the store to the open trunk of one of the cruisers? It was almost as if someone had been shot inside the store and then dragged to the back of the cruiser. Sara wasn’t an EMT, but she knew that was not how bodies were handled. There should have been an ambulance on the scene, and a coroner, too. A detective would have been called to cordon off the place and study the evidence.

  Only one officer walked between the cars. He was a big guy with a dark buzz haircut and shoulders that strained against his tight shirt.

  The officer was about to get into his cruiser when he looked up at Sara’s passing van. His eyes changed from mild curiosity to cold intensity. Sara gave him a half smile in return and then quickly looked away. Her eyes jerked down to the speedometer, and she sighed with relief to see the red needle pointed at thirty-five on the dot.

  Sure, it was four thirty in the morning, and they were in a big, creepy, white van, but Sara wasn’t speeding or driving suspiciously.

  “You’re too jumpy,” Sara murmured to herself, certain the officer wouldn’t follow her. He was probably already sitting in his cruiser doing paperwork on whatever incident had occurred at the gas station. Whatever it was had to be more important than a family driving the last leg of their vacation journey.

  And that’s exactly why we’re going on this vacation, she thought. So you can learn how to relax. The thought didn’t do anything to shake her jitters or calm the goosebumps that were still prickling along the tops of her arms.

  A brief whoop-whoop pierced the air, jerking her from her thoughts. Her eyes lifted to the rearview mirror before she swallowed down a lump of dread at the sight of the blue and white spinning lights. Sara didn’t pull over right away, simply staring at the twirling lights, captivated by their motion.

  The whooping came again, this time more insistent, and Sara began to edge her van over to the r
ight, fighting the urge to floor it as uncertainties plagued her mind.

  Why would you do that? She thought to herself. You’re a law-abiding citizen, and you have the utmost respect for the men and women in blue. Your brother is a Kentucky State Trooper, for Pete’s sake.

  Sara brought the van to a stop and put it in park, her side mirror affording her a view of the police car as it came to a stop behind her. The car door swung open, and the officer got out. Sara looked up to see if anyone else was on the streets—there should have been at least a few cars out—noting it was as dead as a ghost town.

  “Mom, what’s up?” Todd leaned between the seats and rubbed his eyes.

  “Nothing, honey.” Sara’s voice was on the verge of quaking. “Everything’s fine. We just got pulled over.”

  “Speeding again, huh?” Todd asked with a tired grin.

  “Nope, not at all,” she replied with as much cheer as she could muster. “Quiet, hon. Here he comes.”

  The officer approached the rear of the vehicle, walking with a slow swagger. He was even bigger up close than he had appeared at a distance. His chest bulged out, pushing against the material of his shirt, and his arms had the bent look bodybuilders got after doing a million curls. His holster was tight against his hip, and she saw that the safety strap was already unsnapped and sticking up.

  “Hello,” the officer said as he placed his right arm on the side of the van and leaned in. His grin was wide and cold, though his eyes held no malice. “Can I see your papers?”

  Papers? What police officer asked for “papers?” Sara thought. And what’s up with that accent? Is that German, or Russian?

  “Uh, sure,” Sara said with a smile. “Can you tell me what I did wrong?”

  “Just get your papers.”

  “Mom, can we have pancakes?”

  Sara’s heart skipped. She glanced in the rearview mirror to see that Zoe had sat up next to her brother. Todd had his arm around his sister and was studying his mother with a pensive look. Her son was a perceptive young man, and he knew something was wrong.