“No bars,” he said.
I had only been flipping through the stations for a minute when I heard the largest explosion of that night. Much later, I learned that another gigantic lightning bolt took out a transformer at a sub-station on the far west end of Naples Island and this explosion, larger than the others, shook our house. Through the window, we could see a plume of fire, and it reminded me of the stories of the Old Testament I had learned about at church as a kid. I wondered if the pillar of fire the Israelites followed into the Promised Land looked something like that.
The television flickered off, and so did the lights in my house. All houselights that I could see out the window went out instantly. Now, in between bursts of lightning, our house and the neighborhood were covered in total darkness.
Only the light of Jesse’s cell phone illuminated my living room.
“He killed my wife, he killed my wife,” Darrel blabbered, pounding his fists on the floor. I wondered if he was completely unaware of what was happening; maybe all reality had come to a halt the moment he saw his wife’s head blown off.
“Mommy!” Toby screamed. My wife held onto him. Upstairs, I heard the little girl wailing.
“Go get that bat,” Jesse said in a surprisingly calm, collected voice.
I nodded and left the room. There was so much lightning, the room was brighter than it was dark. I knew why Jesse wanted me to get a bat. There might be more Drakes out there. A whole platoon of them. They had taken out the bridges, had taken out the electricity, and now they were going to sweep through the neighborhoods and take us out one by one. Maybe they’d keep us prisoner. Maybe they’d kill us on the spot. Who knew?
I got as far as my office door before my stomach cramped up. All of the images from that evening hit me at once. I saw Jenna’s face, blood and brain matter rolling down her nose and into her crooked mouth. I saw the bodies of those poor people lying on the grass beneath the lightning, bloodied and lifeless.
Then I remembered. I hadn’t had time to fully process it before; maybe a part of my brain didn’t want to. I had seen a pregnant woman shot. Hadn’t I? The last thing I saw her do was fall to her knees and take hold of her belly just before bullets ripped through her back. She fell onto her side, holding her belly as the maroon puddle she lay in enveloped her completely. A little boy had been shot too. I remembered his face. Would I ever be able to forget it? I wondered how many years of my life those images would haunt me.
And, of course, there was Hot-rodder. Drake had taken him. And now he was somewhere on this island, keeping him hostage. Or maybe it was worse. If he’d worked his way through a crowd like that and killed indiscriminately, maybe Hot-rodder was already dead.
As I thought of Hot-rodder, I remembered my brother. I remembered the last time I saw him.
“Don’t let go,” he’d said to me, and I’d promised him. “Don’t let go.”
The bat would be upstairs. I remembered my son’s bravery that night and knew that I had to muster the same within myself. My wife needed me. My kids needed me. Maybe others would too. Whatever tragedy had struck had not yet fully played out. I had to be brave for my family.
I began to go up the stairs to get the bat, but my stomach twisted again. It almost took me down. I found the office bathroom and fell to my knees. I grabbed onto both sides of the porcelain toilet, leaned forward, and vomited three times as flashes of lightning filled the room. I hadn’t spent that much time vomiting in front of the toilet since I was in college.
“Be brave,” I told myself, and my voice echoed into the toilet bowl. “Be very brave.”
When I felt ready, I left the bathroom and headed up the stairs again, and my son was coming down. He held the toddler in one arm and the bat in his other hand.
“Got the bat, Dad. Everything’s locked.”
“Good, take it to the living room.”
He left, and I went back into the bathroom, fell on my knees, and began to dry heave the little that was left in my system.
Bravery, it seemed, would have to wait.
Chapter Eighteen
I suppose everyone handles storms differently, whether it is an actual storm like the one that hit us that summer on Naples Island, or a storm of an entirely different nature. One man may wake up to find his car stolen and very quietly return inside, calmly call the police, and chalk it up to the fact that bad things happen in this world. Another might go ballistic and have a complete breakdown right there in the street. One woman might sit across the desk from a doctor and take the unwanted news in stoic silence and genuine confidence that she has a winnable battle before her. Another woman might collapse into tears right there in the doctor’s office as her entire world is ripped out from under her.
There’s a famous quote about this. Something like, Most of life is about the way you respond to the things that happen to you, not about what actually happens. I suppose if you’ve lived long enough, you recognize that to be true. It seems that the older I get, the more I realize it. Whether you’re living in the ritzy neighborhoods of Naples Island or grinding out a living and spending your nights in a rundown apartment on the wrong side of the tracks, most functional people are, in the end, dealing with the same kinds of things. Whether it’s keeping our kids from making the same idiot mistakes we’ve made, dealing with family drama, or keeping our marriages and significant relationships afloat amongst the turbulent waves of an ADHD society, the stages may change but the scripts sure stay the same.
The big difference maker, it seems, is all in the response. I haven’t met a successful man that didn’t experience as much failure as the most unsuccessful people I’ve known in my life. But there’s a big difference. Those who ended up successful had the ability to get back on their feet, dust themselves off, and endure more of the same setbacks for a longer time than the other guys. Sometimes it seems maybe that’s the real difference for those who have “made it” in this world. They can take defeat. They don’t see it as the end. I think there are people out there who just see it as one step closer to reaching their ultimate goal.
I can’t say that I’m like them, and maybe that’s because I’m somewhat of an anomaly. It didn’t take me long to sell my first novel, and it didn’t take long for it to become a bestseller. Whenever I’m speaking to other writers about the patience it takes to be an author and the longsuffering the industry requires, I have to admit that I often feel like a phony. Sure, I received twenty-two rejection letters from agents for my first novel, but that’s pretty lightweight in this field. I have to remind myself that I’m talking to people who may have written several novels and received hundreds of rejections for each of them. Comparing my situation to theirs is like a kindergartner comparing his playground booboos to a Vietnam vet’s battle scars.
And it does make me feel a little disingenuous. I sometimes wonder if I had written several books and nobody had shown any interest in any of them, would I have stayed the course? I think the answers is no. I’ve learned to take the bad reviews—and they come in droves—but to painstakingly endure at something for years on end without any financial reward or acknowledgement would be difficult, to say the least. Would I still write? Most certainly. I can’t help that. After my brother died, that became second nature to me. But after years of writing without any publishing victories, I’m pretty sure I would have given up my aspirations for financial success and reserved it solely for my private closet rather than the public forum.
They say that about writers. We can’t help but write, and I agree with that. It’s a form of self-therapy. A lot of people think writers are intellectual people compelled to communicate their ideas about life and humanity because they’ve been given a double serving of imagination and insight, and I suppose there’s some truth in that. But my experience has taught me it’s usually something far simpler. Most of us are just people sitting at a desk in the early hours of morning trying to deal with the junk in our heads. We work out our issues through our monsters and our villains and,
if we do it well enough, we get paid for it. Not a bad gig.
I think that storm brought out everyone’s inner villains and demons, and it was all in the way people responded to it. Lots of people held it together and remained indoors as the police had asked. I found out later that there were only three active officers on Naples at the time of the mass killing: two bicycle cops who were patrolling up and down Second Street and one Senior Lead Officer (SLO), Deborah Blazer, who was a long-standing officer with community affairs on Naples. There had been one other officer in Naples just before the shooting, but he had been called to a domestic dispute in Belmont Shore only minutes before the lightning trapped us on the island.
Late on that first evening of our entrapment, when the lightning and thunder had settled down, we heard Deborah Blazer’s voice on the P-A of her squad car as she drove up and down Second Street. I didn’t know who she was then, but her instructions were simple: “Please remain indoors until advised otherwise. All residents of Naples Island, please be advised. Remain indoors until advised otherwise. The lightning is killing anybody who sets foot in the water. All three bridges have been destroyed. Please remain indoors.”
It didn’t take much to convince me. Stepping outdoors into the freakish storm with a berserk gunman running around didn’t sound very enticing, and I think most of the residents in Naples Island felt the same as I did.
I was able to put the following records together of some of the early tragedies that befell some residents. These are just a couple of examples. Undoubtedly, there are many more.
---
Ben and Julie had rented a kayak on Bayshore Drive and paddled over to Naples Island for a leisurely voyage through the canals. As the island was only a couple hundred yards across the water of the bay, they were one of many to spend their Fourth of July holiday this way. They had paddled through the canals a couple times, gawking at the luxurious waterfront homes they one day wished to own, when they decided it was about time to head back and turn in their rental. The storm clouds had rolled in with freakish haste, and they worried they’d get caught in rain.
“One day!” Ben said, pointing at one of the great manors. “Just think, Julie, one day we’ll live in one!”
“You better make sure you pass that bar exam then, big boy.”
They were young. Ben was in his last year of law school at UCLA, and Julie, his fiancée, had finished her teaching certification and was only a couple months away from officially beginning her career as a first grade teacher. To them, the future was full of rainbows and possibilities.
One witness, Jose Rivas, who saw them from the top of his condo building on Naples Island, said they were kissing each other when the lightning bolt struck them. It came out of nowhere, just as the others had, as the sounds of automatic gunfire erupted on the island. Jose Rivas, who happened to be eyeing them through his binoculars, watched as the lightning hit them. After it struck, they slid lifelessly off the kayak and into the water.
They weren’t alone. Jose watched as bolts of lightning purposefully took out two other kayaks, three boats, and even a swimmer who had been about halfway between the bay and Naples Island. One thing was clear, and even Jose, a guy using binoculars to scope out the bikini-clad women along the bay from the private confines of his condo, had enough sense to understand it. The lightning went for anyone or anything that seemed to be leaving or going to the island.
It put a whole new meaning to the term electrical fence, but as it became clear to anyone watching, that was exactly what it was. He even saw lightning take out the Second Street Bridge that led into Belmont Shore. People and cars went down with it, and not long after, police cars, paramedics, and fire trucks waited on the other side of the water.
Jose even thought he saw some of the first responders try to make their way across via swimming and rafts, but they, too, ran into that electric fence. As bits of wreckage and bodies floated lifelessly in the center of the bay, it became clear that nobody was going to get onto Naples Island anytime soon.
And nobody was going to get out.
---
One man’s death was terribly tragic. He kept a journal, and, after his uncle allowed me the opportunity to read through it, I was able to put the pieces together. They were neighbors of ours, just one block over.
Robert Pierson was a high-functioning forty-eight-year-old paranoid schizophrenic who lived with his uncle . He worked as an actuary for a small vitamin company in Carson, and when taking his medication, Olanzapine, and attending his weekly therapy, the voices were kept at bay. They were never completely gone, but they were manageable.
People who knew Robert and worked with him said he seemed fairly normal, but if you held a long enough conversation with him, there was something slightly “off.” Most said it had to do with his unawareness of personal space. He leaned in a bit too close, stood a little too close, and many felt like they had to slightly move back when engaged in a discussion with him. But by and large, most people chalked up Robert Pierson as being just a bit quirky and never would have guessed that he had long ago been diagnosed as a schizophrenic.
If they had seen him off his meds, it would have been another story entirely.
Robert had front row seats in the park when the mass killing took place. I remember seeing him there. Like others, he ran away when the crazy guy tore through the crowd with his AK-47. Robert ran back to his home as the sky turned dark and weird lightning started to fork down from the swirling clouds overhead. Once inside, I imagine that he bolted all of the doors, closed all of the windows, and decided to wait it out. Something bizarre was going on outside.
Based on the journal, he had been off his meds for days; they kept disappearing. It didn’t make any sense, because he knew they should have been there in his bathroom. He had gone a couple days without his meds a few times over the years and usually things were just fine until day three, when the voices became a little louder and began to break through. He was angry when he realized he was trapped inside his house and cursed himself for not replenishing his supply when the last batch went missing.
He even thought of breaking into the pharmacy a couple blocks away. He was pretty sure everyone else on the island was hiding out in their homes to escape the crazy gunman and the bizarre storm. It would probably be locked. He could break into the store, get his meds, and come back to the house.
But by July 6th, two days later, Robert had a different idea. The voices had come back with a vengeance, and they were telling him one thing: You don’t need the meds. They’re trying to control you, Robert. The storm is trying to control you. You must fight it.
It made perfect sense. He was convinced of it. They were all trying to control him, and the crazy gunman may have been a rebel, resisting the control. He was doing a good thing. He was cleansing the island of those who were trying to keep everyone under control. Maybe the gunman or someone working with him had been sneaking into his house and stealing the meds in an effort to release him from the control, so he could be truly free, and so he could join them.
He tried to resist the voices for a while. He even put on his headphones and walked around his house, listening to loud music, in an effort to drown them out, but they just made too much sense.
The voices assaulted him: You never needed any meds. It was all a lie. All a way to control you, just like this storm. They want you quiet and sedated, and you need to fight back. They have a chip in your brain, Robert. They’re controlling you with it. You must take it out. Take it out and you’ll be free. When you take it out, you’ll see what these people really are. They’re monsters, Robert. That’s what that gunman—that rebel—was able to really see. They’re all monsters.
“I must take it out,” he said the evening of July 6th. He tore off his earphones and took in the voices.
He knew what he had to do. He ran all five blocks through the lightning. The rain was only a slight drizzle, but the lightning was still flashing up in the clouds. It wasn’t striking things on th
e island as frequently as it did at first; for now, most of the lightning was confined to the clouds themselves. Cloud-to-cloud lightning, it was called. Robert could still remember learning that back in high school, right around the time the voices started.
When he reached the park, it looked like the aftermath of a small battlefield. The wet, recumbent bodies lay on the ground like forgotten soldiers. Someone had ventured out into the storm to cover them with blankets, but the winds had blown all but two of them off.
Robert stopped beside the body of the fallen officer and looked for his gun. He had seen him fall while reaching for it, but after searching the grass around his body, Robert was sure someone else must have claimed it. Maybe another officer had come back to take it, or maybe it was whatever Good Samaritan had come out to cover the corpses with the blankets.
His plan had been to find the officer’s gun and use it to open his brain and take out the microchip they had planted. The voices were getting louder, more vehement, and time was of the essence. He wouldn’t have it anymore.
He raced back to his home and thought he saw a couple people wandering through the streets. Maybe they were the Controllers; maybe they were the ones who controlled the storm and were keeping him trapped.
If there’s no guns, there’s other things you can use, the voices suggested. Yes, they were trying to help. They wanted him to be free.
I didn’t need to read the journal to figure out the ending. Unfortunately, it was all to clear.
Robert went straight into the garage and lit a candle, which he placed on one of the workbenches; then he found the Craftsman nail gun. It would have to do.
He loaded it, clicked in the charged battery, and cradled it in his lap while contemplating the freedom he would soon feel. He would open his skull with the nail gun and destroy the microchip. Then they would no longer control him.
The voices oppressed him: Now is the time, Robert. Now is the time. Take out the microchip, and they won’t control you . . .
Storm Taken: A Supernatural Thriller Page 12
