Chaotic Be Jack

by Robert Tarrant

  Suddenly, one creature thrust his scale-laden head into my hiding spot. His head swung from side to side with his forked tongue lashing about. I had the sense that he could smell me but not see me. His movements were dislodging dirt from the rootball and I was concealed behind the cascading soil. He started to back from the opening but stopped suddenly when a loud crashing sound momentarily drowned out the other noise. The crash was immediately followed by a scream like nothing I’d ever heard. It was an uncontrolled screech of pain and fury from the creature. His thrashing was now born of agony. I realized that a huge tree had fallen across his back, pinning him in place.

  The thrashing slowed and finally ended with the creature resting his head on the moist earth five feet in front of me. His tongue stopped snapping like a bullwhip, but laid a couple of feet outside his tooth-lined mouth like a snare waiting for its prey. His nostrils flared with his heavy breathing. The falling soil that had concealed me abated to a trickle. In the darkness I could see the glow of two eyes like windows into the roaring fire of aggression that had propelled him. I believed that in his present situation, pinned as he was, he couldn’t reach me with his head, but feared he could snatch me like a fly into his mouth with that forked tongue. I remained motionless, frozen by the belief that I was going to die at this very location. The only control I had was how soon that death would come.

  Even though I was enveloped in the hot breath of my predator, I was getting colder and colder. I wanted to wrap my arms around me in a self-hug to hold in my body heat but was afraid to move for fear that the motion would give me away. Suddenly, I was jostled by an unseen force. It was then that I awoke to the relief that I was not facing consumption by a Jurassic Period creature, but merely trapped in the jaws of a category 4 or 5 hurricane.

  I twisted my head from side to side to stretch the kinks out of my neck. Justin remained asleep across the table from me. Moe was snoring with his head propped against the wall and his mouth wide open. I rubbed my eyes as I considered how comforting it was to merely be trapped by a hurricane and not a prehistoric creature. As I regained full consciousness, I glanced around our bunker. It was then that I noticed that Julia was no longer lying on the shelf in the back. I looked around the small room in bewilderment. Where could she be? Then it hit me. It must have been her jostling me on her way out that woke me. She was gone. Damn it, Julia.

  I grabbed a flashlight and bolted out the door of the cooler. The kitchen floor had at least two inches of water on it. I splashed along as quickly as I could without losing my footing. I called her name as I forged ahead but knew she could never hear me over the roar of the storm. I was shocked as I exited the kitchen into the bar area. Water was lapping across the floor as if it was a beach. Most of the tables and chairs were caught in a jumble in one corner of the room, the wind and water having driven them there. Even in the dim illumination of my flashlight, I could see that on the far side of the room rain was falling in steady sheets. Rain was falling inside the building.

  I took a couple more tentative steps into the room and shined my light up. The black I saw in the front of the building was the black of a storm sky. The roof and a large part of the front wall were gone. Suddenly, the ceiling in the front of the bar collapsed. I realized that without the support of the front wall, the floor to the second story was starting to sag downward. I scanned the room the best I could with the flashlight and called out to Julia at the top of my lungs. The only reply was the roar and crashing of the storm.

  Thinking that she must be again attempting to flee into the storm, to join Owen, I started toward the back door. That was the only place I could think she would go. I didn’t believe she would ever have been able to push the door open in the wind, so she had to be here somewhere. I slipped and fell, landing hard on both knees but catching myself with both hands to avoid going face first into the water. Unfortunately, my flashlight went skittering across the floor and winked out.

  In the dark room I could only see a few feet. I slowly rose to standing and started back in the direction I believed to be toward the kitchen door. I needed to get another flashlight if I had any hope of finding Julia. The wind was whipping around the room like a dust devil looking for a way out. Something, I believed it was a menu in its vinyl protective cover, smacked me on the side of the head. Small items were flying around on the currents of the wind trapped in the building. I tripped again, this time over an overturned chair that hadn’t yet found its way across the room and into the pile.

  As I went down, I tucked my shoulder and attempted to land in a roll. I was only moderately successful and consequently landed hard on my back again. The blow knocked the wind out of me, and I came up to a sitting position gasping for air and spitting out water at the same time. For just an instant, a wave of defeat swept over me. Somehow, I refused to let the thought take root in my mind and forced myself back up onto my feet. Two more flying objects, I had no idea what, struck me in the back. I decided that it would be safer to cross the remainder of the distance to the kitchen on my hands and knees. I would be a lower profile for flying objects and less likely to fall again.

  The kitchen door had swung closed in the whipping wind and I used my head to push it open as I crawled through the doorway. Suddenly, a light hit me in the face and I heard Justin yell, “Jack, where the hell have you been? What do you think you’re doing?”

  I reached up and he helped me to a standing position. I yelled back, “I went to look for Julia, she’s gone somewhere, but I can’t find her. You’ve got to help me find her. She’ll die out there.”

  He grabbed the front of my wet shirt with one hand while shining the light in my face with the other. “What the hell are you talking about? Julia’s in the bunker. She’s the one who woke me and told me you had gone out into the bar. Come on, let’s get back inside.” With that Justin half led and half dragged me back into the cooler.

  When we got back inside the cooler, Julia was sitting on the shelf she had been sleeping on earlier. Moe was still sitting in the same chair, although he was now awake. As Justin pulled the door closed, Julia exclaimed, “Jack, you’re all right. I was so afraid you’d be killed out there. Stuff is flying everywhere. Why did you go out there anyway?”

  She wasn’t telling me anything I hadn’t seen firsthand, but I refrained from that comeback. I slumped into a chair and said, “I thought you had gone out there. I was looking for you. Where were you? You weren’t in here when I woke up.”

  Julia looked down at the floor and replied, but I couldn’t hear what she said over the din of the storm. Justin, who was still standing, put his hand on my shoulder and said, “She got scared when she awoke in this small space. She went into the kitchen and crawled onto the shelf under one of the steel counters. Under the counter she was protected from the stuff falling and flying around. She saw you go by and called out to you, but you didn’t hear her over the storm. When you went out into the bar, she came in here and woke me.”

  Julia had been watching Justin talk to me and she mouthed the words, “Sorry, Jack.”

  It was the relief of knowing Julia was safe, the relief of knowing I was safe, another adrenalin crash, fatigue, or likely a combination of all of them, but I laughed out loud. In fact I starting laughing almost uncontrollably. Everyone was looking at me as if I had lost my mind. Probably a fair assessment. I looked around at the three of them and said, “Don’t you see the humor of it, I rush out into the storm while Julia naps on a shelf in the kitchen.”

  Julia shouted, “I wasn’t napping, Jack. No way anyone could nap out there in that noise.”

  I nodded and said, “I’m only kidding, Julia. I think the humor is in me rushing out into the bar without looking for you in the kitchen, but it’s not the first time I’ve done something stupid like that. It wasn’t your fault, it was mine.”

  Justin said, “No one’s at fault, but it does point out that we need a buddy system. From now on, none of us leaves here without at least one other person being aware
.” Justin’s tone left no room for debate. We all nodded in agreement.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  We had no idea what time it was, Julia’s watch had come off her wrist during her struggle with Ty. Not only did we not know what time of the day or night it was, we didn’t know how much time was elapsing as we sat in our little bunker and listened to the muffled roar of the storm around us. After what seemed like only a few minutes, but may have been an hour or even longer, I noticed Julia rocking back and forth on her perch on the shelf. In spite of the fact that it was still very chilly in the cooler, a couple of beads of perspiration were trickling down her forehead. I stood, walked around Moe’s outstretched legs, and sat down next to her on the shelf, asking, “Are you all right, Julia?”

  “Yeah, . . . yeah, well no. I feel like I’m going to suffocate. Could we open the door? At least a little.”

  I looked over at Justin. He stood, saying, “I think we can open it partway. Probably a good idea to get some fresh air in here anyway.” He opened the door about a foot and a gust of air rushed inside, setting a stack of paper placemats on one of the shelves flying around like confetti. Justin slammed the door closed again. The flying placemats fluttered to resting places. As Justin grabbed up a handful of the placemats from the floor and table, he asked, “Why in the hell do you keep placemats in the cooler?”

  I shrugged and said, “Beats me.” Moe just shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. With everything we were facing, it just didn’t seem like a significant enough mystery to care.

  Justin stuffed the placemats under a case of butter as Julia asked, “Can’t we have the door open a little longer?” There was the ring of a plea in her voice.

  Justin replied, “Yeah, we can. I just need to come up with something to hold it open, but keep it from blowing all the way open.”

  I got up to help him. We found a couple of aprons that we tied together to fashion a makeshift rope we could utilize to keep the door from blowing completely open. Justin jammed a box of chicken wings into the space between the door and the sill and we secured the door to one of the shelving units with our apron rope. Air currents were gusting into the cooler, but once we secured down the things that tended to take flight, it was actually somewhat refreshing. The only downside was the fact that the noise of Cap’s Place steadily disintegrating was less muffled.

  As we finished, Julia gave us a weak smile and said, “Thank you. Thank you so much.” I noticed her shoulders seemed to relax a little and perspiration was no longer dripping down her forehead.

  Moe stood and stretched his arms over his head with a guttural groan. He could nearly touch the ceiling of our little abode. He arched his back in a sort of reverse feline stretch and sat back down on his chair. “My head isn’t pounding as bad, but I swear every joint in my body aches.” He cocked his head as if listening and added, “From the sounds of things out there, we’re gunna be here for a while.”

  With the noise of the storm, it was difficult to carry on conversation without nearly yelling, so we all fell into a quiet stupor. I started replaying the past few days in my mind, attempting to identify exactly where I had gone down the wrong path, allowing us to become trapped in this mess. I knew it wasn’t healthy to spend my mental energy on the past while we were still in the midst of the battle, but my mind seemed to be trapped in some type of replay mode. The only solace I could find was when I realized that if we had left a day earlier, Justin would have been caught here alone. He’d come back to tie down things at the marina and he would have been trapped alone when Johnny wasn’t able to get back to pick him up. Of course, if Justin was alone, he would probably have been long gone by now. He would have figured out an escape, one way or another. I had to admit that I was glad that if we had to be trapped that he was trapped with us, even as I realized how selfish that was.

  Without warning, the door began vibrating back and forth several times as increasingly violent gusts of air alternately attempted to slam it shut or yank it completely open. Just as Justin rose to again secure the door in its partially open position, a sudden strong gust knocked the lantern off of the table, plunging us into darkness. Julia screamed, “Oh God, what’s happening?”

  Justin said, “Just a second, let me find a flashlight.” In the pitch-black darkness I could make out a form moving on the other side of the table, but certainly couldn’t see what he was doing as he searched for a flashlight.

  In a whimper, Julia was saying, “Hurry, please hurry.”

  The growl that I have come to know as Moe said, “Here, Justin, I’ve got a light.” A flashlight snapped on and Moe handed it to Justin.

  Justin turned toward the door, but before he reached it another powerful gust of air jerked the door completely open, shredding our makeshift tie, and then slammed it closed. The vibration of the door back and forth must have dislodged the box that Justin used to keep it open. Even with the door closed it was obvious that the intensity of the storm had significantly increased. It sounded as if we were inside a tunnel and a freight train was barreling down the tracks right at us, getting louder with each passing minute. Just as Justin reached out for the door handle, a crashing sound, louder that anything previously, reverberated through the cooler. The light from the flashlight Justin carried was dim, but it looked like the door actually vibrated in its frame.

  Over the roar of the storm, Julia screamed, “What was that?”

  I’d been fumbling around in the dark to find the second lantern. I got it switched on and turned it up to the highest setting. We’d been running the other lantern on the lowest setting in order to extend the battery life as much as possible. I felt that added light, at least for a short period, would help to settle Julia’s nerves. Maybe mine, too. I stood and took a couple of steps to the door to help Justin. I was surprised to see him pushing on the door with all of his strength. In a low groan he said, “It’s stuck.”

  I put my shoulder against the door and added my strength to the force Justin was applying. The door didn’t budge. After several seconds of exerting our combined efforts, we both stepped back and stared at the door, catching our breath. Behind us we could hear Julia calling out, asking what was going on, but we both ignored her. I knelt down and worked the door handle. I thought that maybe the latching mechanism was jammed. I could see the bolt retract and clear the strike plate every time I pushed the handle. That was not the problem. Something else was holding the door closed.

  Justin was methodically scanning the door with his flashlight. He stopped on a spot near the center of the door, about six feet from the floor. It looked as if the inside skin of the heavy insulated metal door was bulging inward just a little. Like looking at a small dent in a car from the inside. I asked, “What do you think caused that?” I spoke loud enough for him to hear me, but attempted to keep the question between the two of us.

  He shook his head and replied, “Don’t know, but I think that’s what’s holding the door closed. Something is jammed against the door.”

  “Shit. What are we going to do now?” I took a step back and tried to visualize the area of the kitchen outside the door to the cooler. I added, “It’s pretty open outside the door. I can’t think of anything large enough to do something like that to an insulated steel door.”

  Justin said, “Hard to know. Could be something from the building structure. Hell, it could be one of the boats from the marina driven through the back wall of the kitchen and against the door.”

  “Damn, Justin. That doesn’t sound good. Let’s think of another explanation.”

  “Yeah, I hear ya.” Neither of us laughed.

  By now Julia was nearly hysterical. She was calling out, “What’s going on? Can’t you open the door? Tell me what’s going on.”

  I walked over to her and again sat down on the shelf. I said, as calmly as I could in the midst of the noise of the storm and her pleading, “It looks like something has fallen against the door. Try to calm yourself, Julia. We’ll figure something out, but we nee
d for you to be calm. Can you do that for us?”

  She reached out and grabbed me with both hands and cried, “Jack, I can’t stay in here. I’ll go crazy if I’m trapped in here.”

  Now I was firmer. “No, you won’t. You won’t go crazy, and we aren’t going to be trapped in here. Take a few deep breaths and please calm down.” I reached down and picked up the lantern that had blown off of the table earlier. Handing it to her, I said, “See if you can get this lantern going again. It’s likely a broken bulb and there is probably another bulb in a storage compartment somewhere on the lantern. See what you can do to get it going again.” I didn’t wait for a response, but rose and walked back to the area of the door where Moe had joined Justin.

  Moe was saying to Justin, “I don’t know if the walls are reinforced poured concrete or cement block, but when I secured the shelves to the back wall, I had to use a hammer drill and cement anchors after I got through the drywall.”

  Justin replied, “Yeah, Jack said that they’re reinforced concrete. Not something we’re going to pound through with anything in here.” There was no desperation in his voice, merely objectivity.

  Just then a muffled crashing sound could be heard through the back wall near where Julia was sitting. She jumped up from her seat on the shelf and stood next to the table looking back as if she thought the wall might collapse on her. I had to give her credit, she didn’t scream. Soon she returned to attempting to repair the lantern, but seated at the table.