Maelstrom

by Susanna Strom

  I craned my neck and scanned the road, searching for the jeep, but it was nowhere in sight. Where was it? Had they drowned?

  Ripper pointed to a sign for Hood River, twenty miles away. A scenic highway threaded south through the Cascade Mountains and away from floodwaters at Hood River.

  The freeway’s elevation rose and fell, and its course wandered back and forth from the water’s edge. One moment we rode safely above the floodwaters and the next I held my breath, certain that the river was about to inundate the road. Just past the tiny town of Rowena, tall, sheer cliffs loomed over the road on our left. Bright-green graffiti defaced the rocky surface. In huge letters, somebody had sprayed Back 2 Eden, the same slogan that had been popping up around Portland during the past month. Close to Hood River, the freeway hugged the Columbia, and water lapped onto the roadway.

  Ripper slowed down as we approached the exit to Hood River. Instead of turning onto the off-ramp, he pulled onto the shoulder of the overpass just past the exit. He turned the bike around to face oncoming traffic and cut the engine. I hopped off the bike, removed my helmet, and whirled around to face him.

  “What the hell?” I sputtered, my heart pounding in my throat.

  Ripper regarded me calmly, his unruffled expression totally at odds with my indignant agitation.

  “Why didn’t we go back? We just rode away and left them to die. Kyle. Sahdev. Hector.”

  “You done?” he demanded.

  I wasn’t even close to being done. “You were a Ranger, for crissake. A Janissary. I thought you guys had a code, that you never left a man behind.”

  That accusation hit home. Ripper released the strap on his helmet, tugged it off his head, then swung off the bike. He folded his arms over his chest and glowered at me. “Never left a brother trapped behind lines, Mac. Never left a fallen comrade to fall into enemy hands.” He pointed at the river. “This ain’t war.”

  “You’re right. This isn’t war, but doesn’t the same principle apply? You don’t cut and run. You don’t save your own skin by abandoning your friends.”

  “Tell me how it would’ve worked out if we went back,” he said, his stoical mask cracking and exasperation leaking through. “Either the jeep recovered from the slide—in which case it should be coming along any minute. Or it flipped over onto the freeway and they got caught in the rising water. Even if we went back, if we got everybody out of the jeep before the freeway flooded, then what? You think I can carry four adults and a German shepherd on my Harley? You think Kyle and Sahdev would thank me for bringing you along on a fool’s mission? Risking your life when it wouldn’t make a goddamned bit of difference to the outcome, because there’s no way I could carry everybody out?”

  “Risking my life?” I demanded. Really? What kind of outdated sexist bullshit is that? “We’re a team. I’m not some helpless child who needs to be protected.”

  Ripper wrapped his large hands around my upper arms. “You’re not a helpless child, Mac. You’re a capable woman, but you’re also mine to protect. If you don’t like that—if you want to call it outdated sexist bullshit—tough.”

  My anger was a shallow thing—skin deep at best—and his words scoured my indignation away, leaving behind only fear and concern for our missing friends. “I’m safe now,” I said, squeezing his forearms. “We’re twenty miles downstream from the dam. On an elevated road. I don’t want you to do anything stupid, to take any unreasonable risks, but couldn’t you leave me here, then turn around and ride back on the shoulder as far as it’s safe? Look for the jeep?”

  Ripper sighed and leaned forward, pressing his forehead against mine. “And leave you alone on the side of the road? No fucking way. You remember those men who almost grabbed you back in Portland? And it’s not just strangers I’m thinking about. What if the dam gives way completely? We’re not out of danger yet. We get separated again, odds are we’ll never find our way back to each other. Come hell or high water—” He shook his head over what was obviously an unintended play on words. “I’m not leaving your side.”

  Ripper by my side. For the past two weeks—when he was missing and presumed dead—that’s all I’d wanted. I’d told myself that if he just came back, I could face anything. Jesus. The old world was dying a slow and painful death. Layer by layer, everything familiar was peeling away. Ripper might be the center of my universe, but I guess I must be greedy. I needed Kyle and Sahdev and Hector, too. I needed my friends and the family we were building.

  “I can’t stand to lose them, Ripper,” I confessed. “I think it’d break me.”

  “Nah.” He hauled me against his chest. “You’re tougher than you think. Nothing this world can throw at you will break you. I promise you that, Mac.”

  In spite of everything—even as a rush of tears filled my eyes—a small smile curved my lips. A lost voice sifted up through my memory.

  And Ripper always keeps his promises.

  Miles used to repeat that phrase like a mantra, taking comfort from his unshakable conviction that he could count on Ripper to keep his word. I’d loved my cousin and losing him had broken my heart, but it hadn’t broken me. Maybe Ripper was right. Maybe I was tougher than I thought.

  I tilted my face up to his. “What do we do?”

  “We wait. Figure staying on the freeway gives us our best shot for connecting up with the others. River starts to rise higher we’ll head into the hills, but for now, we wait.”

  “Okay.”

  I turned around, so I faced oncoming traffic. Ripper wrapped his arms around my waist and held me tight, our bodies joined from knee to chest. I shivered, despite the warmth. There are no atheists in foxholes, according to the old adage. I’m not sure I believe that. Religion played no part in my life when I was growing up, and praying wasn’t second nature to me. Still, as I stared into the distance, my lips moved in a silent prayer.

  Please, God. Please let them be all right.

  TWO

  Ripper

  Never claimed to be a good man—shit, you want testimonials to that effect, I could provide you with a list as long as my arm—but I prided myself on being a man of integrity, a man who lived by a set of principles.

  I thought you guys had a code, that you never left a man behind.

  Yeah.

  You don’t cut and run. You don’t save your own skin by abandoning your friends.

  Mac had piled on, her accusations a bitter reproach.

  Not so long ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated; I would’ve rushed back to try to save them. Not anymore. I would still risk my life to save an ally, but I wouldn’t risk hers. It was that simple. And nowadays, sacrifice had to make sense. Dying in defense of a principle—when my death wouldn’t change a damned thing—was a luxury I could no longer afford. I wouldn’t leave Mac alone to face the post-pandemic world.

  Mac’s eyes spat fire when she confronted me, her expression tight and her jaw clenched. She listened to reason, thank fuck. Her anger evaporated. Breathless, she dug her nails into my arms, her worry for our friends palpable. I pulled her against my chest, holding her close. She pressed against me, even when she turned around to face the oncoming traffic.

  Bending forward, I inhaled the scent of her hair. Her body trembled beneath my fingers. Damn. To touch her, to hear her voice. After two gut-wrenching weeks apart, I craved this sensory proof that we were together again.

  Mac clutched the arms I had wrapped around her waist. She twisted her head to meet my eyes. Shock and fear had bleached all the color from her face. “Do you think they’re okay?”

  “Don’t know.” Wished like hell I could offer the reassurance she obviously sought. “Depends on a lot of things. How fast the water’s moving. If the jeep went over the guardrail. If Sahdev knows what he’s doing—if he goes slow and doesn’t get water inside the air intake—the jeep could ford a couple of feet of water.”

  Mac nodded and turned her gaze to the road again.

  “I can’t believe that somebody blew up the dam,” she said.
“I mean, what could they possibly hope to achieve? To kill people? The flu is doing a fine job of that already.”

  “No fucking clue,” I said. “Could be somebody who likes to blow shit up taking advantage of the opportunity. Could be somebody with an agenda. Who knows?”

  “When Portland started to burn, I figured it was probably Caleb,” Mac said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Thought we’d scared the little shit straight, but maybe not.”

  “Now I’m wondering. Do you think the fire and the explosions could be connected?”

  I jerked. That hadn’t occurred to me, and the prospect chilled me to the bone. Bad enough to think that an unsupervised, preteen pyromaniac might burn a major city to the ground. Worse yet to consider that somebody might be deliberately attacking cities and public works.

  “Dunno. I suppose there might be some nutjob attacking the infrastructure. Power grid’s already down. Water and sewage, too. Internet and phones. All that could come back someday. But it’d be a helluva lot harder to bring ’em back if somebody starts burning cities and blowing up dams and roads, and bridges.”

  She fell silent again, and the seconds slowly ticked by. From our perch on top of the overpass, I kept one eye on the small peninsula of land below us that protruded into the Columbia River. Water had flooded a motel, a gas station and a fast-food restaurant. The governor had shut down all businesses almost two months ago, so it was unlikely that anybody drowned down there when the river suddenly overflowed its banks. A small mercy. We were safe for now above the water, but if it started to rise, we’d hop onto the bike and turn onto the highway south.

  “Did you see the graffiti painted on the cliffs near Rowena?” Mac asked. “It said Back 2 Eden. That’s the same graffiti I saw back in Portland.”

  “Didn’t notice it.”

  “I wonder—” Mac stopped abruptly, pointing at the sparse oncoming traffic. “Is that the jeep?”

  In the distance, sunlight glinted off the windshield of a familiar green jeep.

  Relief surged through me. “Thank fuck.”

  Mac whirled in my arms, her face animated, her eyes dancing. Grabbing my head, she pulled my face down for a quick, celebratory kiss before turning back to the traffic and waving frantically at the jeep. I couldn’t suppress a grin at the exuberant and unnecessary gesture. Not like they’d miss us standing on the side of the road, but Mac couldn’t contain herself. When the jeep rolled to a stop on the shoulder and the doors opened, she rushed forward to hug both Kyle and Sahdev, then sat down on the asphalt and hauled Hector onto her lap. She threw her arms around the dog’s neck and buried her face in his fur.

  Kyle and Sahdev walked over to me. “What the hell is going on? Who would want to blow up a dam?” Kyle clutched at his head, wide eyed with shock.

  “Not a clue, man. That’s a question for another day.”

  “What do we do now?” Sahdev asked, glancing down at the water.

  I looked away from Mac and turned my eyes back to the men. “We gotta get away from the river, take the highway south into the Mt. Hood National Forest. Before it gets dark, I wanna find a place along the road to stop for the night. Been a long, crazy day. Mac needs to catch her breath—fuck, we all need to catch our breath.”

  “Yeah. Sounds good,” Kyle agreed. Sahdev nodded.

  “You want to ride with Hector or stay with me?” I called to Mac.

  She stood and brushed grit from her pants. “Trying to get rid of me already?” She offered the dog one last pat before walking over to me and slipping her arms around my waist. “You’re stuck with me, big guy.”

  I dropped a kiss on the top of her head and held her close for a moment. “Let’s go.”

  We backed up onto the exit ramp and followed the signs to the Mt. Hood Scenic Highway, leaving the floodwaters behind us. The road wound through the hills, past orchards, vineyards, and fruit stands.

  Glancing back over my shoulder, I spied Mt. St. Helens on the northern horizon. It was an odd-looking mountain. It looked like somebody had lopped off its pointy top, giving it a flat, squashed appearance. Somebody had—if you consider a volcanic eruption an act of God. The big explosion was before my time, but my parents had told stories of the day in 1980 when the mountain blew, sending plumes of ash and debris into the sky. Mom kept a jar of ash she’d swept up from the driveway of our Portland home. She’d shown it to me, the fine particles like gray baby powder. I shook my head. Now I had my own story of a landscape-changing explosion to share with my children. If I ever had kids, that is.

  “Cherry Blossom Bed & Breakfast, one mile ahead,” a small painted sign proclaimed. I pointed to it. Sahdev flashed the jeep’s lights, then followed me up a long, curving driveway past fruit orchards to a sprawling Victorian-style house.

  It was early evening, still plenty of daylight left in late July, but the sun was waning in the sky. I paused, examining the house for any signs of life, for a face to appear in a window or a curtain to be pulled aside. Worse, for somebody to burst from the front door brandishing a weapon as we pulled up. I cut the engine and waited a minute in front of the still and silent house. Intuition told me the house was empty, but I always confirmed my hunches.

  Swinging off the bike, I handed Mac my helmet. “You got your Sig?”

  She nodded. “In my bag in the back of the jeep.”

  “Don’t expect trouble, but better safe than sorry. Get out the Sig and wait in the jeep until I check the property. If Kyle brought a shotgun, he should have it ready, too.”

  Mac wrinkled her brow, like she wanted to argue, but her common sense carried the day. “All right.”

  “You hear gunfire, you take off. Wait on the road for me to find you, but keep your eyes open.”

  Kyle rolled down the passenger window. “What’s happening?”

  “Ripper’s going to check the place out,” Mac answered. “We’ll wait here.”

  I watched her fetch her weapon from the rear compartment, then climb onto the back seat next to Hector. Good. Shit hit the fan, they’d be able to peel out fast. I pulled my Colt from my shoulder holster and climbed the stairs onto the covered front porch.

  A framed placard hung by the front door. “Frank and Evelyn Blossom, your proprietors, welcome you to the Cherry Blossom B & B.”

  “Hello? Frank? Evelyn?” I pounded my fist on the front door, waited, heard nothing, then did it again. “Don’t want trouble,” I called. “Anybody home, we’ll be on our way.” Again, only silence met my words. I peered through one of the windowpanes in the door, able to see only the shadowy outlines of a staircase and table beyond the gauzy curtain. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound.

  I stalked around to the back of the house and banged on the kitchen door. Wasn’t surprised when nobody responded. Glancing around, I saw a generator next to the back porch. Good. In one corner of the yard, a wide pipe topped with a blue-painted well cap protruded from the ground. Better. If we got the generator running, we could pump water from the well and heat it for baths. Mac would love that. I imagined Mac, naked, wet, her skin slick with bubbles. Yeah, I was gonna make that happen. Not for my sake, of course, for hers. I’m an altruistic horny bastard.

  My gaze traveled to the other corner of the yard, pausing on a mound of freshly turned earth. I walked over to check it out. Like I suspected, it was a grave.

  “Evelyn Blossom, My Beloved Wife, My Best Friend, My Soul Mate.” Somebody—no doubt Frank—had painted the words in black letters on a wooden board. And underneath, “Wait for me, darling. I’ll be along soon.” He’d tacked a photograph of the two of them lounging on a sunny beach, a pretty, blonde woman of about sixty and a smiling, gray-haired man. From a nail driven into the board hung two gold-and-diamond wedding bands, tied together with a red ribbon.

  I’ll be along soon.

  Had Frank already been sick when he buried his wife?

  Returning to the house, I entered through the unlocked back door and did a room-to-room search for Frank’s body. Kitche
n, dining room, living room, basement, all empty. The master bedroom on the ground floor stood vacant, although the rancid smell, the sweat-stained sheets, and the glasses of water and bottles of aspirin on the nightstand indicated that this had been Evelyn’s sickroom. A rocking chair had been pulled close to the bed, and a book lay facedown on its seat. The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats. Frank had read poetry to Evelyn while she lay dying. Jesus. Never considered myself a sentimental man, but that image was an unexpected punch to the gut. Before Mac, I would have shrugged it off. Now, I closed the door quietly when I left the room, leaving behind whatever ghosts or memories haunted the space.

  Upstairs, the six guest rooms were immaculate, beds neatly made, thick white towels piled high in the en suite bathrooms, logs stacked in the marble fireplaces, ready for someone to strike a match and set them ablaze. Bowls of individually wrapped fancy chocolates sat on the nightstands. The rooms were ready and waiting for guests who would never sign in, but there was no sign of Frank.

  Where was he?

  I pondered the question, then on a hunch, stepped out the back door and strode across the lawn to the detached garage. The rolling garage door was down, so I entered by way of a side door. I recoiled when a putrid stink accosted my nostrils, and I buried my nose in the crook of my arm. Took just seconds to figure out what happened here. A dead man hunched over the steering wheel of a classic Mercedes 450SL roadster. A glance into the car confirmed that the key was turned in the ignition, although the vehicle had long since burned through all its fuel.

  I’ll be along soon.

  Frank had taken matters into his own hands. Carbon monoxide, rather than the flu, hastened his reunion with his wife.

  Moldering corpses didn’t faze me. No. That was a lie. In the past month, stumbling upon the bodies of women and children had touched even my jaded soul. Still, I wasn’t squeamish, and finding Frank’s corpse troubled me less than discovering the book of poetry he’d read to his wife. Death was inevitable, and its aftermath often messy. Signs of genuine human caring and connection were rare. Later, after everybody was asleep, I’d bury Frank next to Evelyn.