by Garton, Ray
The wind tore at it like a thousand talons, ripping and scratching and pounding, clawing at shingles and slats and eaves and ornate pieces of carved wood, slashing pieces from the extravagant old house and sending them flying into the storm like pieces of old dead skin sloughing off. Finally, a segment of the roof lifted up like a great mouth opening until the top part was sheared away by the wind and tumbled into the night.
While the wind assaulted the old house, the ocean surged into the bay, attacking the marina, sending docked boats slamming into piers and each other. Water rushed up over the land and flooded First Street, then covered the green grounds around the mansion, gushing through the bars of the wrought-iron fence and washing away the sign that identified the mansion as the headquarters of the Ingomar Club, before rushing the house itself and splashing against its green walls.
Andy had insisted that Donny put on his seat belt because Ram was driving much too fast for the weather, which rapidly grew worse. He watched Ram carefully through the Plexiglas divider and tried to determine where they were going. It would be a mistake, he thought, to assume Ram was taking them home. He had no idea where they were going, and he was afraid to ask, afraid to do anything that might divert Ram’s attention from driving.
Every time a voice crackled over Ram’s radio, he tipped his head toward it and listened, and when the voice stopped, he held his head upright again. He did not appear to be a man who had just killed a room full of people. He seemed to be in thought as he drove, sometimes frowning, but relaxed and calm.
Donny whispered nervously, “Dad, where we going?”
Andy touched a vertical finger to his lips. He especially didn’t want Donny to get Ram’s attention.
Outside, the storm was on a rampage. As they drove through the residential neighborhood, Andy saw shingles and pieces of siding flying off of houses on both sides of the street while trees were bent and twisted by the storm
Ram slammed on the brakes when a mailbox, still attached to its post, tumbled into the street and clattered and banged to the opposite sidewalk, crashing into a house.
Andy was afraid they were in more danger from Ram’s driving than from Ram himself. He didn’t want to speak to him, but he feared Ram was so lost in thought that he wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing.
“Uh, Ram, I think the hurricane has arrived,” he said. Ram glanced at Andy in the rearview mirror and barked a single laugh. “Yeah, sure looks like it, huh?” He was friendly, jovial, and relaxed, with a smile Andy could see in his reflected eyes.
“Where, uh, where are we going, Ram?”
“Well, I was thinking. Maybe you and your boy oughtta come to my house. I got a basement, you know. We can go down there and sit it out. I got a TV down there, too. And a generator, of course.”
Andy was painfully aware that Ram’s references to the house made it sound like he lived alone now. And after what he’d said about his wife earlier, Andy thought he might. But he found himself wondering if Ram’s wife was still in the house somewhere, and what had happened to his children.
“Well, Ram, that sounds great, and I really appreciate the offer, but I need to get home. I, uh, have to take some medication. It’s a nightly thing.”
Ram frowned in the mirror. “You sick?”
“No, I’m not sick. But I will be if I don’t take the medication.”
“Oh, I see. Well . . . yeah, sure. I can take you—”
There was a burst of chatter from the radio and Ram stopped talking, inclined his head, and listened.
Andy caught a word here, a number there, but other than that, he couldn’t understand what the dispatcher was saying.
The radio fell silent and a moment later, Ram barked that single laugh again and said, “Well, hot damn, that’s the Clancy place! Sounds like maybe Giff’s having some problems tonight. And we’re really close.”
Ram suddenly took a sharp left turn and increased his speed. He hit a button and red and blue light began to dance in the darkness in a swirling pattern around the car as it drove through the night.
“You two just sit tight,” Ram said. “I gotta take this call. You two stay in the car and you’ll be fine, okay?”
Andy turned to Donny, who looked afraid. Andy knew exactly how he felt. He could not believe Ram was taking them on a call. He really had lost his mind. But Andy said nothing.
When he got no response, Ram shouted at the top of his lungs, “Okay?” It was a sharp, piercing sound in the small space and it made Andy’s ears ring.
“Sure, Ram, sure, okay,” Andy said quickly, because there was nothing else he could say, nothing else he could do. Like it or not, he and Donny were in Ram’s hands.
Simon Granger stood on a fat, sturdy branch and hugged the trunk of the oak tree he was in to keep from falling as it tossed and swayed in the raging wind. He wore night-vision goggles over his ski mask and his Remington 700, equipped with a suppressor, was strapped to his shoulder. He’d been soaked to the skin for so long now, it was almost easy to forget he was wet.
Upon entering the hospital’s fenced-in grounds with the others earlier, he and three other men had climbed the enormous oak trees that stood like great sentries around the hospital. Simon stood in the tree on the western side. The trunk split into two fat arms that spread apart, as if it were going to hug the building, its tentaclelike branches extended in all directions.
As Ollie’s men had headed for the back of the building to get in, Simon had watched the Vendon Labs security team as they were caught completely off guard. They’d come from the guardhouse at the gate, from the building’s rear entrance, and some had materialized out of the darkness that had concealed them. They were fast and silent and Ollie’s men did not hesitate to shoot them. Now their bodies lay scattered around the grounds. The guardhouse stood dark and empty and the chain-link gate was twisted and broken and standing open.
Earlier, he’d watched someone crash a Jeep through the gate and speed away down the gravel road. He should have called Ollie and told him about it, but he’d been too busy hanging on to the oak’s trunk to keep from falling out of the tree. His only job was to cover the others as they went into and came out of the building.
The storm had intensified in the last several minutes and now the tree in which Simon stood was flailing in the powerful wind, creaking and groaning, threatening to throw him to the ground. A sound came up from beneath him, one he could not identify at first—a cracking, popping sound. It came in bursts and reminded him of the sound of popcorn popping in a microwave oven.
The wind attacked the hospital like an angry beast. The windows on the ground floor had been boarded up, but apparently not well enough. The boards over some of the windows in the rear began to come loose. One of them flapped noisily in the wind for a while, then tore away with a crunching sound and flew into the darkness. Others began to follow.
Simon was afraid that Hurricane Quentin had arrived early and was ready to party while he was still in this tree, waiting to cover the others when they came out. But when would that be? He didn’t think it would be a good idea to stay in the tree to wait and find out. Even if there were any security guards left to protect them from, Simon knew he would be useless in that tree. He had to get down. But he didn’t feel right climbing down without calling Ollie first.
As he reached down to take his phone from its sheath on his belt, the crackling sound continued below and suddenly grew louder. Simon did not grasp what was happening until the tree was already falling toward the building.
The hospital’s western wall rapidly grew larger until it swallowed up Simon’s field of vision. He made no sound before his skull was crushed in an avalanche of plaster and wood and glass and metal and oak. Simon died inside the building.
PINNACLE E-BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2014 Ray Garton
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ISBN: 978-0-7860-3402-4
First electronic edition: January 2014
