by K.M. Weiland
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chris opened his eyes to darkness. His head throbbed. He tried to roll over, but the confines of a nylon sleeping bag trapped him. Cold air slapped him in the face. His mouth tasted hot and stale, and the room’s smell of dog hair and corn chips wasn’t much of an improvement.
Wherever he was, it wasn’t Lael. His stomach cramped. It was over. Lael was gone. Allara was gone. He closed his eyes again and eased his breath through his lips.
“Finally. Thank heavens.” The voice was Brooke’s.
“Sheez, bro.” Mike’s big hand groped for his arm. “You had me about ready to call the morgue. You’ve been out almost twenty-four hours.”
Chris worked a hand free and scraped it over his face. “Where are we?”
“My basement. Just be glad you’re not back at the nuthouse. And be even gladder those cops never figured out I lied about you tripping and knocking yourself out. If I’d had to spend the night in jail, waiting until you woke up to come bail me out, this boy would not have been happy.”
“The power’s still out?”
“Not a bad observation for a man with a concussion. Of course it’s still out. You think I always huddle in my basement with the lights out and the heat off?”
“Oh, stop.” Brooke sat next to Chris and laid the back of her hand against his forehead. “He’s probably still woozy.” She, at least, seemed back to normal.
He clawed at the sleeping bag’s zipper. Pain swirled through his head, and he caught himself on his elbow. “What happened to the storm?”
“Just rest.” Brooke took hold of his shoulder. “Everything’s going to be all right.” Only the faintest note of fear touched the end of her sentence.
He struggled upright. Somewhere in the darkness, Pluto growled.
“You should be in the hospital,” Brooke scolded.
“I drove you by there as soon as the cops got off my back,” Mike said. “But you wanna talk about a madhouse.”
“I have to know what happened to the storm.” If the storm was still raging, then everything he’d done had been in vain.
“It’s even worse than yesterday,” Mike said. “I don’t want to think about how much of my house got spun off to Kansas during the night.”
Chris pulled free of Brooke’s hand and braced himself on his hands and knees on the concrete floor. Silence, not wind, blared in his ears.
“Just lie back down.” She tugged at his arm. “We’re not going anywhere.”
“Yeah,” Mike said. “The whole stinking world’s coming to an end, for all I can tell. We just need to keep warm, conserve our bodily energy, that kind of stuff.” An aluminum bag crackled. “I emptied the fridge and all the cupboards, so at least we don’t have to go up in the cold to get food. Want some chips?”
“The storm has to have stopped.” Chris fumbled in the dark, caught hold of the corner of a desk, and toppled a stack of CDs as he heaved himself to his feet. “It’s over.”
“I don’t think so. I had to climb up the stairs just ten minutes ago to stuff a towel under the door ’cause the cold was pouring in.”
He tripped across the basement and slammed into a wall. The blue glare of a flashlight cut across the room in time to show him the stairwell.
“Where are you going?” Brooke asked.
“Will you sit down already?” Mike stood, and the chip bag crinkled to the floor. “Every time you make a move these days, you start a national emergency.”
Chris grabbed the handrails on either side of the narrow stairwell and dragged himself up.
“C’mon. Why is it I listen to you, but you don’t even hear me?” Mike’s voice swung away from Chris. “Sic him, why don’t you?”
Pluto only growled.
“Now, now.” Brooke and the flashlight worked their way toward him. “Maybe it’s best to let him see for himself.”
He found the towel beneath the door and wrenched it free.
Behind him, the stairs creaked and the flashlight swung up to glint off the brass doorknob.
“You’re going to let all kinds of freezing air down here,” Mike groused.
He opened the door, and a wall of cold smacked against his face. Slits of gray highlighted the window in the kitchen. Snow had drifted in the sink, and an icy trickle of air rattled the blinds. He lifted his foot over the final step, and broken glass cracked against the linoleum. Glass and hail, table and chairs, dishes and trash littered the floor.
“Satisfied?” Mike called.
“It’s over. It has to be.”
“Since when are you a meteorologist?” Mike tromped up the stairs after Brooke.
Chris pushed a chair out of the way and stumbled into the living room.
“What a mess.” The beam of Brooke’s flashlight glanced across the front door. “I hope your new storm windows came with a warranty.” The blue light filled the detritus-strewn living room. “Chris, now what are you doing?”
He snapped the deadbolt clear on the front door, then stopped. If the storm hadn’t ended . . . if he’d been too late . . . He dropped his forehead against the wood for a second, then opened the door.
Framed in the ripped screen door, the street lay in silence.
He rattled the screen. It refused to budge against the snow piled on the step. He slammed his shoulder into the frame and snapped it off its hinges.
“Hey!” Mike said. “I don’t have a warranty on that!”
He climbed over the fallen door and sank up to his knees in the snow. Shingles and shutters and tree limbs cluttered the street and the yards. The green of the remaining leaves dazzled against the snow. A single snowflake twirled in front of him, and he reached out to catch it in his palm. A breeze, soft like the caress of silk, brushed his cheek. The storm was over.
“I don’t believe it.” Mike scrambled over the fallen screen door.
Brooke’s suddenly superfluous flashlight swung around and hit Chris in the face. Her mouth hung open. “How’d you know?”
The snowflake glinted against his hand, then melted into nothing. He looked back up. Faraway, a rim of sunlight gleamed against the clouds’ edge. A tiny warm spot touched the core of his body. It didn’t grow or spread, but it flickered, strong and bright.
If Chicago was safe, so was Lael. So was his family. So was Allara. He hadn’t been too late.
“I didn’t know,” he said. “I just hoped.”
“No, you knew.” Brooke floundered through the snow until she could grab his shoulder and pull herself the rest of the way.
Mike followed, scowling. “When I knocked you out yesterday, and you fell into that hole, all that stuff down there disappeared.”
Chris looked at him. “What stuff?” Now that it was over, there was no reason to explain it all. What was done was done, and no one had to believe him if they didn’t want to.
Mike flung up his arms. “What do you mean what stuff? I mean whatever that old man had under that tarp. It all disappeared.”
Chris slogged through the snow. “We should check if people are okay.”
“That dream thing.” Brooke struggled to keep up. “It wasn’t true, was it?”
“No way,” Mike said. “All this crazy stuff going on, it’s just coincidence. It has to be.”
“That’s it,” Chris said.
Brooke huffed. “That’s the best job of convincing you can come up with? Because I can’t tell you how much I’d love to be convinced. Even coincidences that end with me buying a new car are better than what you’ve been trying to tell us.”
He leaned against the mailbox and squinted through the pain in his head. “No, it isn’t better.”
On the horizon, the rim of light spread. The breeze swirled through what was left of the trees, and all along the street, people began easing their heads outside their front doors.
It really was over. The battle was won. And Lael was gone forever.
