Raging Storm

by Vannetta Chapman

  Bianca returned from the Mustang with a bottle of water and offered it to Shelby when Max finally let her go.

  “We need to drive well out of the reverend’s territory.” Max pulled a map out of the glove box and unfolded it across the hood of the Dodge. “We have plenty of gas. I say we make a wide loop toward the east. We know the west is too difficult to drive through. We saw that when Shelby and I were standing on the flyover. But if we go east, then south, and circle around—”

  “No.” Bhatti rarely spoke, and he had never contradicted their plans. Sometimes Max forgot the man was riding along. But now he stepped closer and ran a finger straight from their position to the capitol. “We take the shortest route and arrive there before sunrise.”

  “How is that supposed to work?” Max asked. “We’re still in the reverend’s territory, not to mention whoever was in the flatbed would probably like to get even with you for blowing out his tires. Why he was even after us to begin with, I have no idea.”

  “The reverend was funneling people into the church,” Bhatti said. “He was working with the men in the flatbed.”

  “That makes no sense,” Max said.

  “Actually, it does.” Patrick placed both hands on his hips and stared at the ground. “It does. I doubt they expected Bhatti to be such a good shot. But it makes sense that a con like that is how the reverend acquires new converts. You think that you’re being pursued, maybe that you even killed someone. You think you have no way out, so you go in.”

  “Where you confess.” Max suddenly felt extremely tired. They were up against so much—hunger, disease, outlaws, and now this. How could a cathedral that was built for good, built to be a light in the world, hold such corruption?

  “Make your confession and receive your penance.” Bhatti shrugged.

  The comment caused Max to realize that he didn’t even know where Bhatti stood as far as Christianity. He was a good man, there was no doubt about that in Max’s mind. He seemed to have a basic understanding of Scripture, but he was quite private about his faith. Max respected that and hadn’t felt a need to push for information.

  “Maybe Reverend Hernandez doesn’t even know how people arrive on his doorstep,” Bhatti continued. “Maybe he believes what he’s preaching, but someone in his inner circle has decided it’s an effective way to convince others to take the risk and go out to procure whatever they need.”

  “And in the meantime they’re building up quite a treasure trove with the offerings,” Patrick said.

  “All right. So the flatbed and the reverend are one. We can’t go back, and we wouldn’t want to anyway. We know that the area immediately east of Shoal Creek is controlled by Diego. We have no choice but to take a wide, circular route.”

  “Wrong. We go straight in, which isn’t what most people would do. That’s why it will work.”

  Patrick folded his arms, stared at the map, and finally said, “Bhatti’s right. Think about it—any guards, like the one that Shelby and Bianca encountered, are likely to be tired, thinking about how many minutes they have left of their night shift. The morning guards won’t be on duty yet, and if they are, they won’t be alert. Either way, they’re not going to be expecting us at sunrise.”

  “And we what? Drive up to the gate, knock, and ask to come in?” Bianca sounded tired. “I don’t think it will work, and I need to…uh…find a bathroom. We sort of ran out of the cathedral dorm rooms as soon as we woke up.”

  Shelby stood, still pale and shaken, but finding her equilibrium. If there was one thing Max knew about Shelby Sparks, it was that she would somehow regain her footing. She nodded toward a gas station that looked abandoned and vandalized. “Bathroom first. Then we do what Bhatti said. Drive straight in and knock on the door.”

  Five minutes later they were back in their vehicles and headed toward downtown. They took Harris Street to Windsor and then crossed back over to the east side of the park at Enfield. There were few people up, and the ones who were kept their eyes averted, as if they could somehow avoid trouble by refusing to look. They passed an old man asleep in an office chair, a teenager sitting on a curb drinking from a soda can, a mother rocking her child on a bus stop bench.

  Glancing up, Max saw an American flag hanging from a balcony where people were sleeping. The sight of the stars and stripes caused an ache deep in his heart, but it also fortified his commitment to make it back to Abney with the medications they needed. This was America. He would not hand his land, his state, or his future over to thugs and villains and desperate men.

  They headed east on 15th Street, and from there it was a straight shot to the capitol.

  He slowed when he was within a few blocks of the capitol buildings, not because he wanted to but because people were sleeping along the sidewalk, in the median, even in deserted vehicles. The crowds were thick, the people not quite awake. They’d been driving with the windows down because of the heat, and he could smell and hear the crowds now. Babies crying, mothers comforting their children, husbands—their words short and choppy and angry.

  Now he could see the perimeter fence. He drove the wrong way down a one-way road until the front of the Dodge was inches from the fence. Patrick stopped with his front bumper practically touching the Dodge’s rear bumper. No one would get between them, but Max’s heart rate accelerated to realize how heavily they were outnumbered. There were thousands of people on this side of the fence, and they were just beginning to stir, to take their positions outside the fence, to plead and beg for entrance.

  Max turned off the engine, thinking it was best to save the gas if this didn’t work, if they were forced to retreat. But retreat to where?

  They all exited the vehicles and walked to the fence.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Guards were stationed around the perimeter, on the other side of the fence, at six-foot intervals. They held their rifles in a ready position in front of their chests, reminding Shelby of the time she’d visited the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington, Virginia. Their gazes were directed straight ahead, and they gave absolutely no indication that they heard Max.

  “We’re from Abney.” Max spent several moments trying to appeal to their compassion. When that failed, he reverted back to his legal background. “We are here at the request of Mayor Perkins, and may I remind you that by law the area you’ve cordoned off is public property owned by the citizens of Texas.”

  This earned some guffaws from the people who had begun to mill around them. Shelby again wondered how they survived living on the street in front of the capitol complex. Where did they find food or water? Where did they bathe or use the toilet? How did they care for their children? The same questions she’d wrestled with before, and as before, no answers were in sight.

  Years ago Shelby had come to Austin with Carter and their youth group to hand out bags of supplies to the homeless. They’d felt quite good about that. They’d felt as if they were being the hands of Christ in a vital way.

  Now she found herself on the same street, surrounded by newly homeless people, facing armed guards. Those two experiences clashed in her mind and tore at her soul. How did you minister to others when your own life was in danger?

  Max remained inches from the fence, but Shelby, Patrick, Bianca, and Bhatti had retreated to stand beside the cars, as if four people could protect their things should the crowd decide to take them. What would the guards do if that happened? What would she do? Shoot them? No, she couldn’t do that…not to protect her things. To protect her life? To protect her friends’ lives? Well, she’d already proven she was willing to do that.

  Max grabbed the fence with both hands and gave it a sharp rattle. “I know you hear me, and I want you to go and tell your commanding officer—”

  “Sir, I am the CO here. I need you to step back, or I will instruct my men to shoot.”

  Max stared in disbelief at the man who had walked up. To Shelby he looked the same as the other guards around him, perhaps a little older, perhaps he had some insignia on
his uniform indicating he was in charge. She couldn’t see it, but she didn’t doubt for a minute that they would shoot Max.

  Instead of being intimidated, Max was growing angry, which in her experience had never been a good thing. His anger was slow in coming, quick to burn out, but scathing for a moment or two. He’d never directed it toward her, though she’d seen him take down more than one person at a city meeting, a sporting event, or a church committee meeting. But this was none of those things. Here his anger could prove fatal.

  “Max, we’ll find another way.” She stepped forward to tug on his arm, but the CO flicked his eyes her direction and warned her to get back.

  “You’re saying that you would shoot me here on the capitol grounds.” Max shook her hand off his arm. “Land that was purchased and is maintained with my taxes to house a government that was created by the constitution of our state—”

  “Sir, this is the last time I’m going to ask you to step back.”

  “Let us in!” The words roared from Max, and then all pandemonium broke loose.

  To their right and left, people began shaking the fence, demanding to be let in. One or two tried to climb it, but the razor wire at the top stopped them. They fell back into the crowd.

  Shelby thought the guards would shoot, as the officer had promised, but instead the men stepped back five and then ten feet. She quickly saw why. Up and down the line, trucks moved forward. The large trucks had what looked like water tanks mounted on the back and deluge guns mounted on the top and front.

  She’d researched water cannons when she was writing a WWII romance set in Europe. Originally designed to fight fires, they were used for riot control in Germany as early as the 1930s. They’d been improved on since that time, or at least made more efficient. A modern water cannon could restrain a person at a distance of up to one hundred yards. They could also maim and even in some instances kill a person.

  Shelby was stunned that they would use them on a crowd containing women and children, and she couldn’t begin to wrap her mind around the fact that they would be willing to waste so much water. Or perhaps they’d been filled with gray water. That thought turned her stomach.

  Now the CO was speaking through a bullhorn, advising everyone that they had exactly one minute to back away from the fence. None of the guards looked alarmed, and it occurred to Shelby that this wasn’t the first time they had resorted to such tactics.

  “Max, we need to go.”

  “We’re not leaving.”

  “You can’t stay here. We can’t stay here.”

  Max ignored her, opting to shout at the CO instead. The trucks pulled closer, the noise of the diesel engines louder even than that of the crowd.

  Bianca had joined them and was trying to pull Shelby back, urging her into the Dodge.

  Patrick joined Max at the fence.

  The scene in front of her seemed to slow and solidify into a nightmare Shelby would never forget—the shouts of anger, cries of despair, the CO still hollering through the bullhorn, Bianca pleading with her, Max still stating his case, and Patrick’s voice now added to that.

  In the midst of it all, Bhatti stepped forward, walked up to the fence and calmly but firmly said, “Sierra, Whiskey, Oscar, Romeo, Mike.”

  The CO lowered his bullhorn, walked over to the fence, and said, “Authenticate.”

  “Zero, six, one, zero.”

  The CO turned to his right and yelled out some instructions that Shelby couldn’t understand. When he turned to the left and did the same, she heard the words, “Dispersal Units at three and six in four minutes.”

  “Dispersal units?” she asked.

  “They’re going to shoot.” Bianca’s voice was a dead, flat line.

  Bhatti hadn’t moved. He stood watching the CO, and Max stood staring at Bhatti.

  They could maybe hide in the cars, but what were the odds they could even get in them at this point? The crowd had pressed in on all sides.

  The water trucks backed up, and in their place giant supply trucks with the Red Cross emblem painted on their sides drove toward them and then divided right and left. The crowd parted like the Red Sea, people running and hollering and knocking one another down as they pushed in the direction of the trucks.

  Patrick recovered more quickly than anyone else.

  “Get in the cars. Hurry up! Get in the cars. They’re going to open the gates!”

  FORTY

  Max was as shocked as everyone else when the soldiers rolled the gates open. He ran back to the Dodge, jumped into the driver’s seat, cranked the engine, threw the transmission into drive, and darted forward. The CO directed him ahead another hundred yards.

  Patrick had followed closely behind him. The gates closed as soon as the Mustang was through, and the soldiers took up their previous positions. The tanker trucks were nowhere to be seen. Darkness was giving way to day, though the sun had yet to make an appearance.

  Bhatti had walked through the gate and was talking to the CO.

  “They…” Shelby turned to him, her eyes wide and her voice strangled. “What did they do, Max? Where did all those people go?”

  Max’s stomach was churning. He’d been expecting a gunshot to his midsection when he had argued with the guards, but something—some smoldering anger—made backing down impossible. That had been foolish, he realized in hindsight.

  “Where did they go?” Shelby was turned around in her seat, looking to the left and the right.

  “Remember the time we fed the koi at the Japanese gardens?”

  “In Fort Worth. Yeah, the year Carter’s mechanical project made it to the state stock show.” She hesitated before plopping back down in her seat. “The fish were amazing…and a little disgusting. There were so many of them and they all…they all swarmed the water when we threw out food.”

  “Same principal. Throw out some food, and the fish, or in this case the people, surge where you want them to go.”

  “Which is why they’re all here, living mere feet outside the fence.” Shelby stared at him when he shut off the engine. “They’ll never leave as long as there is a chance someone will throw a bag of rice over the fence.”

  “I’m not saying I agree with their tactics, but we have bigger questions to answer at the moment.”

  “Like who is Farhan Bhatti?”

  “Yeah. That would be a good one to start with.”

  They hurried back to where the doctor was still speaking with the officer and reached him at the same time that Patrick and Bianca did.

  Max pushed through to the middle of the small circle they’d formed, but instead of directing his questions to the CO, he went nose to nose with Bhatti. “What was that all about?”

  “It’s not something I can talk about at this moment, Max.”

  “You will talk about it.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t.” Bhatti nodded toward the CO, who had stepped away and was speaking into a radio clipped to the shoulder of his uniform.

  Patrick pushed his way in. “Who are you?”

  “That is not the question you need to be asking.” Bhatti lowered his voice. His words came out rapid fire, like the tat-a-tat of a machine gun. “You need to find a way to stay on this side of the fence. Lose the attitude. Treat this man with respect. Hope that I have enough clout to keep us all on the inside.”

  The officer returned, a frown pulling down the corners of his mouth. Two other soldiers had joined him. “Davidson will take you to the debriefing area.”

  “And my friends?”

  “They’ll be allowed to stay for now.” He turned to Max. “Follow Private Neff to a holding tent.”

  “We’re not going anywhere,” Max said.

  “You’ll go where I tell you to.” The officer stepped even closer, not flinching from Max’s glare. “You are lucky to be alive. Now I suggest you go before I regret that decision.”

  “And leave our cars?” Max asked, clearly unhappy with the idea.

  “Leave everything. If you are caugh
t with a weapon, you will be escorted to the other side. If you go anywhere but the area that Private Neff takes you, you will be escorted to the other side. Am I clear?”

  “Yeah. I’d say that’s pretty clear.” Bianca threw her backpack into the Mustang, and after a moment’s hesitation, the others did the same.

  Shelby reached into hers and snagged her notebook and pen. The CO was watching her closely. When she held up the two items, he shrugged and made a go-ahead motion.

  They were escorted in two groups down Congress Avenue.

  Bhatti and Davidson took a right between the World War I and Pearl Harbor monuments. Max’s last glimpse of the doctor was of him approaching the Supreme Court of Texas building.

  As for their group of merry men—and women—Private Neff took them left into a giant tent that had been erected on the east side of the capitol lawn, between the Texas Workforce Commission and the Texas Ethics Commission—an irony that wasn’t lost on Max. As they walked toward the tent, the sun rose above the horizon, casting long shadows behind them and forcing Max to tug his ball cap down even lower.

  They went through a processing center, where they were once again searched for weapons. Then they were directed to a first aid station, where a nurse instructed them to take a seat and said she’d look at them one at a time. She was black, middle aged, and had probably been chosen for this job because she was tough. She looked able to handle anything that came her way—both because of her size, which was large, and her attitude, which was unflappable. Her name tag said simply Brown.

  Nurse Brown checked their temperatures, looked down their throats, and took their pulses and blood pressures. All of the data was noted in a chart on an electronic tablet, which still worked, so it must have been somehow shielded from the flare.

  “Worried about us?” Max asked as she cleaned the cuts on his face.

  “Making sure you don’t have any contagious diseases.”

  “And if we did, we’d be escorted back to the other side of the fence?”