by Angela White
Outside, the storm showed no signs of letting up, and they were awake until well after midnight. Marc set his watch and checked on the water every half hour, and each time his footsteps faded into the darkness, Dog at his side, Angela knew it.
Around two o’clock, Marc and Dog went to check the markers again. He was relieved to find the water already going down.
Angela snuggled deeper into the thick blankets, trying to ignore the heart crying for her to slide into his spot. She sighed sadly, feeling guilty that hairy legs and maybe bad breath were the only things stopping her from sleeping in Marc’s big arms. Being attacked and then not only surviving, but also killing the person responsible, had unlocked the last of her chains. It had freed the young girl who feared nothing and slowly, Kenny’s timid mouse was disappearing.
How was she ever going to face her Marine after being with Marc again? Kenny would use her up quickly in this new world, and she would die young. With Marc, though, the witch said there was a chance for the future that had been stolen from them. She wanted to talk about it, to ask and tell, but didn’t. It didn’t matter that she was falling–
Angela stopped herself and tried to imagine telling him how she was feeling. “I can’t stop thinking about you, about us and how good we were together, and… I may want another chance with you once I get my boy back and find a way to ditch my other man.”
Never in a million years. Even if Kenny were out of the picture–and he wasn’t, not by a long shot–there were other walls between them. Still, the young girl who had believed in the dreams continued to whisper, and it was hard to ignore as sleep refused to come. They were a great match, and she still cared, still wanted the life he had promised her so long ago. Soon, Marc would figure that out and do something about it. Then they would all be doomed.
Marc returned to his side of their bed, thinking they were getting closer despite her trying not to let it happen. She was so strong! She not only recovered quickly, she grew more confident from each encounter. She wasn’t afraid to meet his eyes anymore, or to walk by him, and he could feel her thinking about him and the past. She felt it too. He could read it. She felt the... What? Love? Maybe. Lust?
You bet that sweet ass, he thought, slipping his belt and buckle loose. He had never lit up around a woman the way he did with Angie. He had no doubts about his feelings. He now had roughly four weeks left to convince her that giving into her man’s will wasn’t her only choice.
2
Waking with a feeling of revulsion, Angela brushed at her arms as she sat up. Her skin prickled with tiny irritations in the damp morning air, and her hair seemed to be moving on its own. She was so tired!
“What the hell?”
It was the sound of Marc’s voice that brought her awake, and Angela couldn’t stop the yelp of disgust that echoed off the concrete.
“Spiders or crickets, trying to get out of the water. I’m not sure which. Come over here and let me brush you off.”
His tone was soothing, and Angela stood still while Marc rid her of the nickel-sized spiders with legs twice as long as their bodies and bent over like grasshoppers.
“They’re under my clothes!” she moaned, horrified.
Marc immediately grabbed the edges of her shirt and yanked it up and off her. He shook it out and gave it back, watching Dog avoid the mutations, instead of snapping at them as he did with normal insects.
“Do under your pants, and I’ll get our stuff loaded. The water’s down enough to roll through if we’re careful.”
“It’ll all have spiders in it.”
Marc listened to the storm still rumbling, sure they should stay, but the water was rising again and they couldn’t share their shelter with spiders. He needed to get her out of here. “Yeah. When you put those on, tuck the cuffs into your socks and come get what you want. We’ll leave the rest.”
As he stepped past her with the heater and their duffle bags, it occurred to Marc that she hadn’t jumped when he’d reached for her shirt. His heart stirred. Things were changing.
Half an hour later, they were passing through Matenea, Missouri, and Angela listened to the voices as the wind pushed them along.
“I think we should take cover.”
Little black balls of hail were pinging off their roofs and hoods.
“What’s...? Oh, shit! Stay on my ass!”
Angela spotted the funnel cloud by following his line of sight and for a second, she couldn’t move. The twister wasn’t very wide, but it was moving incredibly fast and closing in, as if it had sensed the presence of humans and dropped out of the sky just for them.
“Come on!”
His shout startled her, Dog’s piercing bark through the radio broke her daze, and Angela hit the gas. It was a real tornado!
“Thought this only happened in the movies,” she whispered. She was scared as she caught up to Marc’s bumper, but the raw fury of something they had no chance of controlling was beautiful too, and Angela knew she would never forget it if they got away.
Marc turned them into a large, mostly empty parking lot, speeding up. When he sent his Blazer crashing through the front glass windows of the theater, plastic and glass flying, she followed.
Behind them, the tornado churned across the small city, smashing through anything in its way as it zeroed in on the enemy: man.
“Get as far in as you can!”
Angela swerved in next to him, lobby props tumbling, and they both ducked down as the tornado hit the theater.
The building shuddered, and both Blazers lunged forward with the wind, bashing into the concession stand’s high wall. Glass sprayed as the display shelves caved in, large chunks of debris banging off them as the roar grew louder.
A blast of straight-line winds swept through the cinema on the twister’s heels, grabbing and spinning Angela’s Blazer in dizzying circles before shoving it into a line of heavy arcade machines. Marc watched helplessly as the big games were sent flying into the air and each other from the hard impact, glass and coins erupting like tiny, silver volcanoes.
Bouncing back with a jarring thud, her muddy Blazer slid the length of the lobby before coming to a tire-squealing halt inches from his front bumper.
A second later, it was over except for the rain, and Marc scrambled over wet debris to open her door and help her out. “Are you hurt? Are you all right?”
“I don’t remember asking for the tour,” she joked breathlessly.
He laughed. “Me either. You’re okay?”
Angela trembled, a bit shook up, and didn’t tense when he surrounded her with his arms. She rested against his hard, comforting body and held on.
Marc rubbed her arms to warm her, knowing it was the shock of being woken so abruptly and being forced to deal with the fury of their environment before she’d even had a cup of coffee that had shaken her, made her vulnerable.
“Dog, up. Sshhh... It’s okay, honey.”
Angela kept her arms locked around his waist as the wolf leapt to the roof of his car. Marc held her, watching the drumming rain continue as his body tried hard to ignore hers. It was still a perfect fit.
“Are we safe here?”
Marc recognized the moment. If she could ask him that and be prepared to believe it, things had changed.
“I think so. I need to do a quick check.”
Angela shivered when he stepped back, immediately feeling colder as he disappeared into the dim shadows. The wind blew her hair around, and her witch whispered this storm was traveling northwest, toward her boy. She had to warn Kenny again. She gathered herself quickly, doing it before the fear could make her change her mind.
Marc could feel the energy humming through the cinema. Without knowing he could or that he was going to try, Marc slid directly in front of her, concentrating.
At first, he was blocked by a wall of crumbling mental bricks, but he sent his want ahead of him and it fell easily enough.
Angela’s lashes fluttered, but she didn’t protest, and then Marc was
in her mind and angry.
Where are you?
The man’s voice was loud, intimidating, and familiar somehow.
You have to take cover. Bad storms are coming your way.
One more time, bitch! Where are you?
It was a struggle for Marc to remain silent.
A lot closer. How’s my boy?
Happy with me. How close?
The barely-controlled anger was clear, and Angela forced herself to stand, emboldened by Marc’s presence. I’m coming for my son as fast as I can.
You’ll never get him back unless you do what I say.
Searing rage filled Marc, but it was nothing compared to the fury coming off Angela. It came in clouds of heat that he could actually feel.
You won’t keep me from my boy, Kenny! That was the old world. Things have changed, and you’re the one who should be careful!
She sucked in a breath as he screamed obscenities, and then overpowered him with her anger. The words blasted out in a furious snarl. If anything happens to my son, there won’t be a place on this fucking planet where you can hide!
She slammed the door before Kenny could respond in kind.
“He’s in a good mood,” Angela tried to joke.
Marc was pissed. “I won’t let him hurt you or the boy. I’ll protect you both. My word on it.”
Angela turned away. That was the first time in over a decade that she had stood up to Kenny so openly. There would be a payment for it.
“You can’t promise that. You think you know what you’re up against, but you don’t. He’s a violent, trained killer, and in the end, someone’s blood will spill.”
“His, not yours,” Marc stated flatly.
Angela hated it that he was thinking of murder. “Please don’t. It’s on my hands if you kill him, and it would destroy me as sure as losing my son would. My freedom is not worth a life. I need you to swear to me that you won’t.”
“I can’t. You don’t deserve to be treated that way, and I won’t sit by and watch.”
“I’ll figure something out. For now, you think we can stay here until the storm’s gone?”
Marc sighed at her obvious distraction technique, running a hand over his neck-length hair in frustration. Wasn’t he getting to her at all?
“Sometimes, too much.”
Marc flinched guiltily, and she insisted, “Well?”
“I don’t know. Let’s have a look around, and we’ll decide.” Marc let it go, not telling her that he could make it appear like an accident and not feel any guilt. He was also a violent, trained killer.
“Dog, in.”
Marc shut the door behind the big animal, not wanting him to get distracted by things blowing in the heavy wind and run off into the storm.
“Guns and light. Move out,” he ordered, thinking if he decided to handle her man that way, Angie would never know. He’d lock it up so tight that even he wouldn’t be able to access the memory.
3
A few minutes later, they were on the upper balcony. The ghostly smell of popcorn and butter that still haunted the stale air was almost covered by the fishy rot blowing in with the rain through the broken doors.
“Wanna watch a movie while we wait?”
Angela smiled sadly. She hadn’t been to a movie since Charlie was a baby, and she kept herself from saying it only by looking at the poster for A Miracle on 34th Street, trading one pain for another.
“You know how?”
Marc listened harder, fighting the urge to find a room with a window. “Just have to find the generators and add some gas.”
Angela read the fading movie posters, ignoring the unease of her stomach. After the morning they’d had, that was to be expected.
“Okay. How about The Shadows of Fate? I loved The Chronicles of Riddick.”
Marc grinned, feeling unworthy of her with his long hair and unshaven face. “You just like Vin Diesel.”
Angela laughed at his joking accusation, admiring his sexy goatee. It added to his image of an old west gunfighter.
My own John Wayne, she thought, and said, “It was a good story.”
“It was crap with a lot of eye candy.”
She turned away, joking, “Not just for the eyes.”
Marc stilled suddenly, scanning the destroyed lobby and dark, shadowy hallways where he thought bodies should be but weren’t. This would have made a good place to hole up, but until they’d hit it (literally), there hadn’t been anyone here. “Did you hear that?”
Angela listened for a moment, hearing only the storm and things moving with the wind, and then responded, “No. What?”
“Sounded like someone clearing snow with a metal shovel.”
The image made her grimace, and Angela pushed at the door in her mind as her stomach dropped. They had made over a hundred miles in the last week, and she was tired. The door hadn’t opened on its own. Something was happening.
“Up, I think. We should go up,” she whispered.
BOHICA, Marc thought. Bend over. Here it comes again. “But Dog and the Blaz–”
“No time.”
The noise came again and they listened intently. It was a headache-causing sound of metal and stone meeting, but instead of a distant echo, it was loud and close. The vibrations rattled the walls and pounded through the floor under them.
Angela ran for the employee door to the right of the upstairs concession area. “We have to–”
The grinding noise was suddenly deafening, and Marc grabbed her arm. He shoved them both into the dark stairwell as the building around them shifted, knocked forward on its foundation.
A twenty-foot wall of mud and debris slammed into the rear of the movie theater like a bomb, blowing out walls and windows. The sound of it was like a tanker truck jackknifing, and the space immediately began filling with sliding ooze. The entire back wall of the cinema crumbled under the onslaught, filling the rows of seats with thick, dark mud. The side walls held against the mud, which slowed and then was finally stopped by something bigger–the strip mall around the theater, which was more than a mile wide.
Sludge continued to invade, flooding the theater and parking lot around it with ten feet of thick, lumpy glop. It gushed over counters and ticket booths, shoving the two vehicles against the glassless front doors and then out of them.
Angela and Marc flipped on their penlights to view the dim stairwell and bowed-in door below them.
“Is that mud?”
Marc shined his beam on the bottom of the door, where thick, blackish silt was gushing underneath.
“Yeah. A slide.” He motioned her upward. “That door’s not gonna ho-”
CCrraack! Sswwwooosh!
The door gave way, buckling under the weight of the sopping mud that began to flow into the dark hall. The soggy dirt was almost up to the ceiling, and pale worms the size of pencils squirmed all over each other and the debris, trying to rebury themselves. It horrified Angela. It was normal that the smallest and fastest breeding animals would begin to change first–snakes, rats, worms–but the sight was enough to wake that steel in her spine.
“Those are wrong. They shouldn’t be that big yet,” Angela stated with an odd tone to her voice, feet rooted to the spot as the desire to kill them flooded her. They were a future danger, an abomination. They needed to be handled.
“Not by us, honey,” Marc nudged her further up the steep, twisted stairs. “Keep going. It’ll take a full day to go that way.”
She turned reluctantly, and they climbed to the roof’s exit door, both listening for Dog.
Marc pulled her back before she could go out. “Wait. Always check it out first.”
“Teach me how to do this.”
He nodded. She really would have made a good Marine, a strong fighter.
“Stay no more than two feet away and put your feet where I do mine. If I fall, you should come back here and dig your way out with boards or whatever you can find.”
Angela kept her head down at the thought of lo
sing him, and her mind flew to her gifts. She’d do what she had to, no matter how forbidden it was.
“The whole hillside’s gone!”
They stood outside the doorway, the rest of the roof cracked, crumbled, missing in places. The Show Me state gave them an awful view of missing homes, businesses, and roads that had been between the hill and the theater. Even the reeking turkey farm and rye field beside them was now a twenty-foot high pile of uneven, treacherous mud and debris for miles to the east. Small puffs of smoke and dust rose eerily in the early morning chill.
“Look.” Angela pointed to a black corner, where thick, sloppy mud was still spilling around the front of the theater. “Is that your Blazer?”
Marc sounded relieved. “Mud must have pushed them out. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
Angela smiled. “Think we already did. I hear Dog.”
“Come on. Let’s get down from here before the whole mall collapses.”
“We need rope.”
“It’s in the Blazer with my kit.”
Marc was reprimanding himself for leaving his kit when she pointed to the dead telephone wires.
“Can we use those?”
“It’s the grip that’s hard,” he explained. “The poles and wires are sprayed with a flame retardant chemical that makes it slippery. We’ll have to braid a rope together.”
He began fishing in his pockets. “We’ll hope the pole wasn’t loosened by the slide.”
He cut the phone, cable, and electric wires and quickly wove them together.
“Will this work?”
“We’re gonna find out. If it breaks, try to go limp.”
Angela watched as he stood up, studying a dark patch of brackish mud now covering a deer that had been impaled by the thin branch of a walnut tree. “What?”
Marc wrapped the braided cord around his fist and then his waist.
Angela scowled fearfully. “This is the best we–”
“Hang on!”
