Deborah’s team had done a good job organizing, especially considering the limited time and resources that were available. She had authorized her team to break into a clothing store on Second Street and “borrow” some obnoxiously bright orange T-shirts that were on the discount rack. It made them easier to recognize. Her orange-clad crew lined both sides of the street, and they did their best to keep order, keep everyone in the street, and when the window of opportunity opened, they would usher everyone across the water.
“Stay in the middle of the street and away from the sidewalks,” Deborah said through her vehicle’s P-A. “The men and women in orange along the perimeter of the street are here to assist you with anything you need. Please be patient and organized.”
They had also thought ahead. Her crew had rounded up some rafts and surfboards and piled them close to where Deborah stopped her car. These were for the elderly and the wounded or those who couldn’t swim. I was amazed to see how many flotation devices Deborah’s team had rounded up in so short a time. Her team had also advised as many people as possible to line up along the periphery, to gather along the docks, so that when the signal was given as many people as possible could get in the water and begin their trek without getting bottlenecked in the street.
But although I hated to admit it to myself, the sheer number of people I saw filling Second Street made me realize the virtual impossibility of what we were attempting. Only a ten-minute window? Was it even possible to get so many people across the water in so short a time? Would we even be able to get half of these people across?
Another thing troubled me as well. I’ve never been one for triathlons, but an old friend in college used to do them all the time. I remember how he talked about the swimming portion and how it was important to keep your space, because if you didn’t, you’d get virtually beaten by the swimmers next to you. I was willing to bet this would be far worse than that.
Deborah was also worried about something. She got out of the car, despite the onslaught of rain, to assess the situation. She was thinking the same thing that I was. When she looked upon the sea of terrified, shivering, citizens waiting like the Israelites to cross the Red Sea, I recognized the doubt in her eyes.
“There are lots of kids out there!” she yelled because of the volume of thunder. “They should come up front!”
“I thought the same thing,” I cried. “Lots of women and children! They should all be up front!”
Just then, the clouds threw down a volley of lightning. Several lightning bolts struck light poles along the street, spraying sparks and glass over the crowd. It was difficult to hear their screams over the sounds of the storm, but I could see many of their frightened faces beneath their umbrellas and the hoods of their raincoats. I wondered if anyone should even be holding umbrellas; would they attract the lightning?
Other bolts of lightning struck buildings along the street, and even though bits of debris and sparks flew into the sky overhead, I didn’t see one person in the crowd turn around and flee. They were holding their ground.
Strangely enough, when I looked up at the dark, swirling clouds overhead, I thought I could see a small break in them; there was a tiny hole, and I thought I could see a very small, clear patch of sky beyond it. I had barely time to consider what this meant before I saw those weird lightning balls return.
Little orbs of sizzling electricity descended from the clouds overhead. Each of them looked to be the size of grapefruit, but they grew larger as they fell closer to the earth. They spread out over the entire street, and I noticed Hot-rodder scream when he saw them. He threw down his bike and crawled under the police car.
Suddenly, one of the lightning balls shot toward us like a wasp. I was momentarily blinded and heard a loud humming sound that drowned out the sounds of thunder.
When my vision cleared, I saw that Toby had been enveloped in an electrical cocoon, and even though he was kicking and screaming and clawing at the inside of the sizzling orb, he couldn’t break free.
He wasn’t alone. All of the other balls of lightning had done the same. Nearly fifty or so people screamed and clawed in their spherical cages just above everyone’s heads. They began to slowly ascend back toward the swirling mass of destruction overhead.
The storm was taking them.
I hardly had time to think. Not knowing if it would electrocute me or kill me, I grabbed onto Toby. Amazingly, I was able to take hold of his hand. My hand passed through the outer shell of electricity easily, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t be the same in the other direction. A strange, tingling sensation ran up my arm, and I was sure my hand was now stuck inside the orb. Where it went, I went.
“Dad!” Toby screamed.
“I won’t let go, Toby!” I cried back. “I’ll never let go!”
I’m in this place again, I thought. Why? Why am I here again? Why with my own son?
I pulled back with all of my weight, and I slowed him down for a moment, but I could tell that I was going to lose this fight. I couldn’t stop it. I just wasn’t strong enough.
Then Owen grabbed one of Toby’s legs. Jesse took hold of his other arm. Deborah Blazer and Madison grabbed his pant legs. Marsha and a couple strangers in the front of the crowd raced toward my son and reached through the lightning to take hold of him. It was a miraculous sight to see—more miraculous, perhaps, than the supernatural ball of electricity that enveloped Toby.
And we weren’t alone. All throughout the crowd, people grabbed onto and held back those who had been caught up by the lightning balls. Not one of them was allowed to ascend back to the clouds overheard─not one!
With so many hands on Toby and so much strength pulling him down, I felt him slowly slip out of the sizzling cocoon. There was a weird popping noise as he slipped out of the bubble and onto the wet asphalt by our feet, and the lightning ball, which now scintillated weakly, drifted away.
As I looked around the crowd, I saw the other empty lightning balls doing the same, and like the one Toby had been trapped in, they levitated toward the clouds like dying Chinese lanterns in the darkness. The rain poured down upon my face, and in an instant, Toby was in my arms and crying into my shoulder.
There was barely time to rejoice. The crowd began to part, and I saw why; Klutch rode down the length of Second Street on his Harley directly toward us.
This wasn’t over yet, not by a long shot.
But I remembered what Dominic had said about the change in the static crashes, and when I looked back up at the dark clouds, I thought I could see just a little more of that hole in the storm. All the pieces came together.
I looked up defiantly as the rain poured down on my face.
The storm had been trying to destroy us. It had been trying to rip us apart. It was devouring our fear, our anger, our paranoia, and feeding from the lesser angels of our nature. That’s why it had grown strong, but that was also why I saw it weakening. It was fractured.
Dominic was right.
I looked around and wondered. If we could show this cloud—this demon—that we are more than what it thought us to be, it would go away.
That’s what we needed. To cut off of its food supply. To starve it.
“I know what you’re doing, you monster,” I said. “I know what you’re doing.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
As the crowd parted, Klutch drove his Harley through the rain. He was alone, which was a good sign at least.
I reached down to pick up the shotgun I had dropped when I pulled Toby from the lightning ball. I think everyone else was equally concerned. Klutch rode through the crowd, water spraying from under his tires in a V. He drove right past us and closer to the water’s edge. I was surprised, considering how the lightning had been taking out people close to the water. It was closer than I would have felt comfortable going.
He stopped his Harley and slowly got off his bike, and I thought I saw him stagger drunkenly in the rain. I remembered that Owen had told me Klutch had been drinking, and I wondered if
he’d tanked up again before this. He stood beside his bike and looked up at the clouds as the rain poured down on him and incessant streams of lightning filled the sky overhead in a freakish display of power. I think he was most fascinated, however, by the lightning balls still levitating in the sky.
I looked down at my watch: 7:58. This wasn’t good. Klutch was standing in our way, and the window was going to open in a mere five minutes. He pulled a handgun out of his jacket. He didn’t point it at us, just held it at his side so we could get a long, hard look at it. Officer Blazer immediately ushered our group behind the vehicle for protection, but Jesse and I remained standing with our hands on our weapons.
Owen didn’t take cover either but remained standing beside me, and I’m pretty sure his hand was on his gun as well. I thought about ordering him down behind the car with his mom and brother, but I knew not to. The storm had changed things. It had changed all of us.
He looked at me for some gesture of approval, and I nodded. He knew what that meant.
“You all need to keep your sticky hands to yourselves!” Klutch yelled. Now that he was closer, I was convinced he’d been drinking. The lightning flashed across his angry, drunken face, and he staggered forward a couple steps. “You went and took my arsenal because you wanted to stop me, didn’t you?”
“We didn’t take anything of yours!” Jesse yelled.
Klutch, who recognized Jesse, only grew angrier. He focused on him alone and seemed unaware of anything else around him. To my amazement, Jesse walked around the police car to approach Klutch. He wanted to calm him down and talk him out of what he was doing. In a weird way, they looked like two gunslingers about to have a duel on the storm-filled street of a Western town.
Jesse’s position made it difficult for me. I would never be able to use my shotgun with Jesse in the path, and Owen wouldn’t risk a shot either. Even Officer Blazer, who was crouched behind the vehicle with her gun drawn, would probably find it too risky to fire her weapon.
Jesse had slowly taken his firearm out of his pocket and held it at his side. He stood right in front of Klutch, mere feet away.
I looked at my watch: 8:00.
The lightning was lessening. It was shutting down. This had to end quickly. Very, very quickly.
“I’m afraid I’m not gonna be able to allow your friends to pass,” Klutch said. “First you steal my knife, then you steal my weapons, and now you wanna put this whole island in danger. This is weaponized weather, my friend. Even if you make it to the other side, you’re gonna let ‘em know that we’re all alive here. There’s a reason I never lost a man in my convoy. And you’re gonna have to kill me if you wanna pass.”
“We don’t want to hurt you, Klutch,” Jesse said with a surprising amount of calm. “I’m going to nicely ask you to step aside.”
“You must not be listening. I already told you I’m not moving.”
“Where are all your followers now, Klutch?”
“They’re not warriors,” he said. “They’re civilians. It takes a warrior to do what I’m doing. But you need me! All of you need me! You’re making a huge mistake!”
“You’re the only one making a mistake here, Klutch,” Jesse said, “and if you don’t step aside right now, I’m going to have to─”
What happened next was a blur.
Impatient and angry, Klutch raised his weapon and shot twice. Jesse took two bullets to the chest, but not before unloading a shot at Klutch himself.
Jesse hit the ground first, and Klutch staggered back and looked down at the bleeding wound in his gut. With Jesse on the ground, Officer Blazer took full opportunity and unloaded four more bullets into the berserk biker. Three ripped into his chest, and the fourth got him right between the eyes. He stood there for a moment, bewildered, his eyes rolling upward in their sockets.
He collapsed on the ground, and I found myself running toward my fallen friend.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“It’s stopped!” Samantha said. “I think it stopped!”
She was referring to the storm and how the lightning had completely ceased. While everyone else was rushing to make sure Jesse was alright, Samantha couldn’t stop thinking about getting across the water. She was ecstatic in her impatience and self-interest.
“We need to go now! We need to go now!” she kept saying, and in hindsight, it is even clearer how concerned she was with herself rather than Jesse. Yet even amongst the chaos of the moment, I remember how it angered me.
“Wait until Dominic confirms!” Officer Blazer said. “It might not be open yet, we need to─”
“But it stopped! It stopped!” Samantha screamed and then, without any warning, she bolted toward the water’s edge.
“No!” I screamed, but she never looked back.
For a brief moment, I wondered if she would make it, but that question was answered soon enough.
Just as she approached the water and the crumbled parts of the bridge along the edge, three lightning bolts tore down through the sky, joined paths, and struck her down in one bright and blinding flash of white light. I saw her body, still in running motion, lift from the ground and convulse as her body filled with who-knows-how-many volts of electricity. When the lightning stopped, her body dropped to the ground, and smoke rose from it.
Nobody said a word, because we all knew she was dead, and we also knew that the portal hadn’t opened yet─if it was going to open to all.
When I approached Jesse, he lay on the ground, coughing blood. He had two holes in his chest. Mickey jumped out of the police car and began to tend to Jesse’s wounds.
“You okay there, big guy?” I said.
“I’m alright.” He didn’t look good, but at least he was conscious and able to talk. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
“Good,” I said. “You hang in there. We’ll figure something out. We’ll get you a ride over on one of those surfboards or something, okay?”
“It just went dead,” Dominic said, getting out of the car with the radio in his hand.
Now the storm was completely thunderless and black, and if the window had just opened, that meant Samantha had been only a moment too early.
The crowd of residents waited anxiously behind us. Some had fled to the sidelines because of the shooting, but many waited, knowing that to run away would certainly forfeit any hope of escape.
Blazer opened the back door of the vehicle and pulled out Drake. He was still handcuffed behind his back. Her plan was pretty simple, I think. She was going to send him ahead into the water and threaten to shoot him if he didn’t comply. If he made it in waist-deep without getting struck down, she’d consider the gate open and get on her P-A to order everyone to move ahead.
Just as she moved him to the front of the vehicle, raised her weapon at him, and ordered him to get to the water immediately, Darrel, who had been hunkered down behind the vehicle and taking shelter with the others, raced toward Drake, grabbed him around the neck, and put a gun to his head. It was the same gun he’d taken out of the duffel bag in the garage from the previous night, and my heart sank as I watched all of this unfold.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I said.
We didn’t have time for this. This would jeopardize everything. The clock was ticking, and this would make the possibility of getting everyone across the water even more unlikely, and if something wasn’t done quickly, none of us would get across.
I was still kneeling beside Jesse, but I saw the enraged look on Darrel’s face. I hardly recognized him as my friend and neighbor. He had been planning this and waiting for this moment. In a bizarre reversal of roles, Darrel now looked like the madman, and Drake, his neck caught in the other’s grip, was the terrified hostage. It was quite ironic, really. One of the guns he’d stashed in order to terrorize our neighborhood was now pointed at his own head. It may have been sweet justice had it not been for the current circumstances.
“Darrel, what are you doing?” I cried, standing up.
“You killed
my wife,” Darrel said. He held the barrel of the gun to Drake’s temple. “You took Jenna from me! You took her from me! You took her!”
“Darrel, you’re killing us!” I cried. “We don’t have time for this!”
“Didn’t you see what just happened to Samantha? Don’t you realize your plan isn’t going to work?” Darrel told me.
“It hadn’t stopped yet!” I cried again.
“I want all of you to see this guy get what he deserves, you understand?” Darrel said. “I want all of you to witness it!”
He turned Drake around so that Drake was facing us and Darrel stood right behind him. I wondered if Deborah was going to take the shot. Drake’s life was hardly worth saving, and it would be far better to shoot both of them and save those who were waiting to cross over.
“Shoot them both,” Jesse said, below me. He yelled at Blazer, Owen, and me. “Shoot him!”
But none of us had to.
I started to scream something again, and Darrel fired his weapon. I saw half of Drake’s brains blow out of his skull like confetti. I closed my eyes and looked away momentarily, but I felt blood and chunks of something spray over me.
When I looked back, I saw Darrel standing there, shaking. In one quick movement, he placed his gun in his mouth and fired.
Blood flew out of the back of his head, his knees gave way, and he crumpled to the ground beside the man he had just killed.
Chapter Thirty-Four
I raced toward Deborah. My watch read 8:06. We’d lost three minutes, and that meant many lives. And now, to make matters worse, we didn’t have a guinea pig to send across the water. Maybe Darrel was right; perhaps everything had been in vain, and the first line of people crossing the water would meet the same fate as Samantha.
Storm Taken: A Supernatural Thriller Page 22
