"You know they're going to be waiting for us…” Jenkins warned.
"I'm counting on it. I may not be the smartest man out there, but I'm a quick learner," Cisco bragged. He shot a quick glance at Jenkins, who smirked from the passenger seat. "Next time we come back, we’re going to make more than a couple unarmed families pay for the trouble that neighborhood has caused us. They're all gonna pay."
Cisco dropped the hammer, and the truck roared down the road, heedless of the rain and wind. He would make them all pay.
Chapter 38
Charleston, South Carolina
Reese wiped the sweat from his face and looked up. It'd been hours since they'd felt a raindrop, and the wind, though breezy and gusty, was nowhere near the knock-you-down strength it had been for the past 24 hours. The clouds above had scurried on, chasing the coattails of the hurricane as it moved inland and invariably met its demise over the Appalachian Mountains. In another day or two, it would be nothing more than a collection of strong thunderstorms as it worked its way up the Shenandoah Valley toward New England.
Overhead, the sun crept toward the horizon, and the blue sky visible through patchy clouds had already shifted toward a beautiful orange-pink color, only visible in the southern states. “You see that?" he asked over his shoulder to Jo.
Jo slogged through the muck and debris that littered the ground and stood next to him, huffing and puffing. "Yeah…looks like a sunset."
Reese put his good arm around her and squeezed her shoulder. "Yeah,” he said quietly. “But it's a South Carolina sunset. We made it."
She smiled up at him and wiped the sweat from her own face with a filthy handkerchief. "Don't be smoking any cigars yet…we ain’t made it to your house.”
Reese nodded. "I wasn't sure before, but I know where we are now." He pointed northwest. “See those masts sticking up over there?"
Jo squinted and shielded her eyes from the shafts of sunlight that penetrated the clouds above. "What's a bunch of sailboats doing this far inland? Feels like we already walked a couple miles from the ocean since the storm left.”
"Used to be a lot further inland than that…” Reese said. The tsunami had done quite a number on Charleston. Only a handful of skeletal buildings remained standing, and the entire city had been leveled when the waves rushed ashore a few weeks earlier. He estimated the coastline had moved almost half a mile inland, but the devastation stretched mile after mile after unending mile.
"That's the Ashley Marina, where my buddy Gary works. We’re on the right track. There used to be a bridge over here somewhere…” Reese muttered, looking at piles of debris, garbage, and rotting vegetation 20 feet high in some spots. It was like walking down a canyon of rubble. In a few areas they found stretches of roadway or pavement clear in spots. The rest of the time they had to climb their way over mountains of busted boards and collapsed walls, the wreckage of an entire town.
And that didn’t even take into account the bodies. There were people everywhere. Most were so decomposed and bloated that Reese could tell they’d been killed by the tsunami and left to rot until the storm churned everything up. He’d lost track of the number of times he’d thrown up since they climbed out of the lifeboat.
It'd been slow going. As soon as the hurricane began to let up, Reese dragged Jo out of their shelter and they picked their way across Charleston's corpse. That had been hours ago. And yet they were still half a mile or more—judging distance in the alien landscape was difficult—from the marina.
"How far is it from the marina to your house?" Jo asked as she took a moment to catch her breath.
Reese wiped his face again. "Only like 10 miles or so. Twenty minutes by car, maybe more with traffic."
"So that's what, two more days of hiking at this rate?”
Reese sighed. "At this rate, yeah,” he admitted as he looked around at the mountains of debris. He didn't have too hard a time climbing up over piles of still damp two-by-fours, bricks, and siding. It was the broken glass you had to be careful of, and the smell.
The smell was a physical presence all around them. He could taste the sickly-sweet smell of death and decay every time he opened his mouth to breathe. Jo had fashioned crude bandannas from strips of cloth they'd found—Reese figured they were curtains in a former life—which helped, but then instead of smelling the decay all around them, he smelled his own breath and stale body odor. And it had been a while since he’d been able to brush his teeth.
"Point is, we’re on the right track…that way," he said, pointing northwest. “That's where my home is."
"Hard to believe we made it all the way from Maine…” Jo marveled as she picked her way up the side of another wall of debris.
Reese grunted and hauled himself up over a particularly steep patch. A board shifted underneath his feet. The entire hill they climbed up shivered for a moment, and Reese tensed, waiting for the whole thing to collapse down around them, but it held. He exhaled, like he’d done dozens of times before in the past few exhausting hours, and continued the climb up the side of the trash pile.
"It's only been a couple weeks…” he observed as they crested the top and peered down a long stretch of open street, washed clean by the waves and left littered with seaweed and a few dead fish.
"Thank God…” Jo exhaled.
"Is it me,” Reese began as they clambered down the far side of the hill toward the street, “or do these piles seem to be getting smaller and smaller?"
"I was thinking the same thing,” Jo admitted, “but I was afraid to say it—didn't want to jinx us.”
Reese laughed. "After everything we've been through, I'm not sure there's much left to jinx us…"
Jo slapped him in the back of the head and the sound echoed off the piles of rubble around them. "That's the last thing you want to be talking about right now, boy!"
Reese laughed and rubbed the back of his head. "Okay, Boomer…”
“I’m fixin’ to teach you some manners…” Jo muttered.
Reese laughed, then fell silent. Somewhere off to the south, a low rumble vibrated through the ground and sent a huge flock of seagulls up into the air. They scattered and wheeled about, white pinpricks against the orange-pink sky, and raucously called to each other in their indignation.
A column of brown smoke and dust roiled up into the air over the top of the neighboring pile of debris. "Another building collapsed," Reese observed quietly.
"Long as it don’t collapse on me, I'm okay with that. Ain't nobody but us worrying about what happens in Charleston, anyhow.”
Reese help Jo hop down the last three feet, and they dusted each other off and continued walking across the thankfully clear stretch of Calhoun Street. Several cars, upended and flipped backward by the storm, held back a pile of rubble about 20 feet away. Reese paused next to the abandoned cars and leaned against one of the wheels. "We’re not getting through the city tonight…”
Jo scoffed. “Great, another night spent in this hot mess you call a hometown.”
"If we can make it to the marina, we might be able to find shelter…we’re getting close to eleven, maybe twelve miles [MP20]from the coast now. The tsunami couldn't have gone too much further inland."
"Well, kind of hard to tell what the tsunami destroyed and what the hurricane destroyed, ain’t it?” Jo grumbled as she removed her campaign hat and fanned herself with the wide brim, a filthy vestige of her ranger uniform.
"True that," Reese sighed. He stood and twisted his trunk to stretch out the kinks in his lower back. "What do you say? Want to push on through to the marina tonight? Or try to hole up in one of these buildings here along Calhoun Street that still has a standing wall or two?"
"Shoot, may as well go on to the marina. Only thing I hate more’n tromping through mud and debris like this at the end of the world, is sitting around at the end of the day waiting to do it all again tomorrow. The more ground we cover today, the less we’ll have to cover tomorrow. Right?”
"Amen to that," Reese sa
id. "If you would do me the honor?" he asked in a British accent as he dramatically offered his good arm to her.
Jo narrowed one eye at him, then smiled. "Where'd you learn to talk all fancy like that?" she said in an extra-thick drawl as she slipped her sweaty arm into the crook of his elbow.
Reese laughed. "Didn't you know? Every southern man is a gentleman," he said, affecting an air of propriety. They walked arm in arm down the canyon of debris as shadows lengthened and the sun dropped closer to the horizon. "Maybe by this time tomorrow I'll be able to introduce you to my wife and show you some good ol’ Southern hospitality."
"That’d be mighty nice," Jo said softly.
Reese looked up at the sky as they walked and listened to their boots crunch on broken glass and ruined dreams. Wherever you are Cami, I'm almost home, baby. One more day[MP21]…
BROKEN TIDE Book 6
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* * *
[MP1]Wouldn’t that squish her arms under the chair?
[MP2]Awesome!
[MP3]Man! Awesome chapter! So tense!
[MP4]Is it even reasonable to think Cisco’s men are out in the storm looking for her? How would they even find her? The wind and rain would wipe away the trail she’d left, and it’d be impossible to see her in the darkness, through the pelting rain.
[MP5]I have just one question with all of this – with the wind of the hurricane, would she be able to hear the crack of a branch and all that?
[MP6]Hopefully, this is a set up for something that happens further along in the story. In that case, it’d be better if he did this, even once, back at the camp where he was holding Cami hostage, as early in the story as possible. Starting it here makes it seem a bit obvious. But, if you start it very early and nothing happens, when it’s mentioned here, it’ll just be part of the backdrop.
[MP7]I totally have no idea what this means or what he did. You should probably clarify it a bit.
[MP8]You’re going to have to be careful here and double-check that everything lines up, time and distance-wise. Cami was by the beaverpond when she bandaged her leg. Now, she’s gone, Cisco and company found a piece of her sleeve there and have moved forward since then. Gary and John Douglass have gone after Cami even before the eye of the storm came. Cami said the beaverpond was a brisk one-hour walk from the house – which makes it only a maximum of 3.5 miles away.
With Gary and John Douglass heading toward the beaverpond, Cami heading toward them (away from the beaverpond) and Cisco and company bringing up the rear and building their shelters 5 minutes away from the house (that’s only about 500 yards), they’re all pretty close together. With the silence that accompanies the eye, they’ll probably all be able to hear each other – especially the pounding of the stakes.
Just want to be sure that the time and distances you’ve put into the story add up.
[MP9]Nice!
[MP10]Would it take several hours? Could they get to James Island? The tip of it only looks like it’s about half a mile away. Or would they be fighting the current too much? Are they going to go northwest? Is that why it would take so long? That’s with the current, isn’t it? Wouldn’t that be faster?
[MP11]Awesome! You’ve got the tension here cranked up really good! BTW, loved all the pineapple stuff!
[MP12]Chilling, man. Totally chilling.
[MP13]Okay, so they’re across the street in Flynt’s girlfriend’s house? And the house that just blew was Marty’s? Until just now, I wasn’t sure which house they were in. Probably should make the run there a bit more explicit.
[MP14]Really? From what? Or, do you mean he’s all cut up from the glass bursting and peppering his face with little fragments?
[MP15]Didn’t they put the plywood on the inside of the windows? There shouldn’t be any glass on the floor for him to crunch on, then. It’d all be outside.
Sorry, it just occurred to me – was that what cut Mitch? Might need to rework that.
[MP16]Is this the whole chapter or is something missing?
[MP17]Would they be talking? That’s a good way to give away their position.
[MP18]He’d have to be a helluva shot to hit that guy with all that wind out there.
[MP19]Just double-check your count on the guys that were with Jenkins. I’m not sure they’re all accounted for.
[MP20]I could be wrong, but I seem to recall that Reese’s house is only twelve miles inland, isn’t it?
[MP21]Nice. Really looking forward to the family reunion.
Broken Tide | Book 5 | Storm Surge Page 23
