Stormworld

by Brian Herbert

  Peggy castled her king, a defensive move. “I feel guilty for bringing Rosie into such a bleak world, but I can’t abort her.”

  “You Republicans are all alike,” Belinda said. Quickly, she moved her queen across the board diagonally, an attack that paralleled the aggressiveness of her political arguments.

  “I remember when snow was a beautiful thing,” Peggy said, ignoring the attempt to draw her into more debate. “I would have liked to have taken Rosie out to build a snowman, like in the old days … seeing her laugh at falling snowflakes and sled down a hill. Then in the spring, with the thawing of ice and snow, I would have shown her how to put seeds into the earth, all the wonder and magic of making young flower shoots come up from the ground.”

  “The old days are gone forever.”

  “At least we agree on that.”

  “I can’t remember the last time I saw the sun,” Belinda said.

  Peggy heard two raps at the door, and it swung open. Jimmy Hansik stood there holding two large bottles of wine, one in each hand. Abe Tojiko was right behind him.

  “We were rifling through some lockers and there was this dirty lab coat on the bottom of one and it looked bulkier than it should have been and lifting it up, we found these bottles of champagne.”

  Belinda took one of them from him, and studied the label. “A reserve Piper Heidsieck,” she said. “Expensive stuff, imported from France. Which locker?” She frowned, looking suddenly suspicious.

  “One of them by the front stairway.”

  “No name on the locker?” Belinda asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Hey, Peggy,” Abe said. He kneeled by her, examining the chess board. “Who’s winning?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “No name on the lab coat?” Belinda asked.

  Jimmy shrugged. “If there was, I sure didn’t see it. Besides, the locker was unlocked.”

  Belinda frowned again. “Well, a lot of us never lock our lockers, and no one takes anything.”

  “Until now,” Jimmy said. “Think of it this way. Whoever hid this stuff has been holding out on us.”

  “He has a point,” Abe said. “The way this world is, who knows how long we have left, and we don’t want good champagne going to waste. Pop one open, Jimmy.”

  Jimmy looked with utter glee at the bottle he still held, as if it was a big game trophy. He checked the door of the room, made sure it was closed. Putting the bottle between his knees, he removed the stopper with a loud “pop!” that startled Peggy, a noise that caused her baby to kick.

  Foam gushed out of the bottle. “Whoa!” Jimmy said, putting his mouth around the opening. Then, lowering the bottle after the foam subsided, “Good stuff. Maybe I’ll keep this one for myself.”

  “Hand it over,” Abe said. He glanced around. “Any glasses or cups in here?”

  “No,” Belinda said. “Let’s just pass it around.” She set the unopened bottle on a table. “I suspect we’re going to get into this one, too.”

  Abe took a long sip. “Mmmm.” He extended it toward Peggy.

  “No thanks,” she said. “I have the baby to think about.”

  “Oh, right. Probably not a good idea, because your nutritional status is already compromised.”

  Abe handed the bottle over to Belinda, who swigged it like a wino on a park bench.

  “You’re all drinking too fast,” Peggy said. “Slow down, or you’ll make yourselves sick.”

  “She’s right,” Belinda said. She took a small sip and appeared to savor it, holding it in her mouth for a long time.

  As Peggy watched her three friends share the first bottle and open the second, the drinkers began to relax and chat as if they had no troubles in the world. She felt good for them; this was an unexpected luxury, a chance for them to escape from all of the pressures. She began to take part in the banter, laughing with them and beginning to calm down herself, just a little.

  “In vino veritas,” Peggy said, as she watched them share the second bottle. “In wine there is truth.”

  “Don’t get serious on us,” Abe said. He was holding his wine pretty well, but Belinda was becoming quite giddy, and giggling more than talking.

  After awhile, Abe said, looking wistfully at one of the wine bottles as he passed it to Belinda. “Maybe we should have shared this with the rest of the staff.”

  “A little late for that,” Jimmy said. “Besides, how do we know who owns the stuff? If we’d gone public with it, who knows who would have said what?”

  As Belinda drank more, her cheerful mood didn’t hold. She started to express anger toward Jimmy for his behavior, what she called his “attitude of entitlement,” in which he claimed to deserve the breaks, while no one else did. Peggy wasn’t sure what she meant by that or what had set her off. Jimmy continued to drink and ignored her.

  “I can’t believe I slept with you,” Belinda finally said. “You self-centered maggot.”

  That got his attention, and he hurled the nearly empty first bottle of champagne against a concrete wall, smashing the glass.

  “I’m not used to this much alcohol,” Belinda said. She pushed the remaining champagne bottle away when Abe tried to hand it to her. “It’s been so long since I drank like this. I think I just need to be by myself for the rest of the evening.”

  “Izzat an apology?” Jimmy asked, slurring his words.

  “Not quite, maggot,” she said.

  “Well, I don’ wanna be by myself,” Jimmy said. “As a matter of fact …” He reached around and tried to grope her chest, but she gave him a hard cuff on the cheek.

  Undaunted, he leaned over and pressed his mouth against her neck in a sloppy kiss.

  Again, she pushed him away, “No—” She got up and opened the door, unconsciously brushing her hair back.

  Rising to her feet, Peggy said, “This party’s over.” She met Abe’s inquisitive gaze, saw the desire in his eyes. Seeing her look of disapproval, Abe broke his gaze with her.

  In apparent disbelief, Jimmy looked at Belinda for a long minute, his eyes trying to focus on her, seemingly unaware of just how much the champagne was affecting him, too. At length, he got up, grabbed the unfinished bottle, and walked to the door, with Peggy and Abe following him into the corridor.

  Jimmy tried to take a swig while he was walking, but stumbled and fell against a rack of laboratory glass that had not yet been put away. Flasks, beakers, and Petri dishes cascaded, breaking on the floor.

  The champagne bottle went flying out of his hands and smashed into pieces—at Benitar Jackson’s feet.

  CHAPTER 11

  Showdown

  Benitar Jackson stared in disbelief at the scene before him: at Jimmy, sprawled in the middle of broken glassware, at Belinda, clutching the door frame of the room … and at Abe and Peggy behind her. After hesitating for a long moment, the Director reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the handgun.

  “Oh, my God,” whispered Belinda, “Benitar, don’t!”

  “Damn you to hell, Hansik,” Jackson said, waving the gun at him. “You kill the seeds, you stomp around here like a god damned entitled know it all, you steal my champagne and you probably don’t even know that the blast door is malfunctioning. Did you know I had to shut it with manual override? Where in the hell are your priorities?”

  Stupidly, Hansik looked up Benitar. His mouth worked, and after a struggle the slurred words came, “An assi-den’ Benitar, we g-got to t-toastin’ the-the seeds and you, and …” Finally, the obvious lies failed and his mouth worked soundlessly, as if a puppet master was pulling the string.

  “What’s wrong with the blast door, you idiot? Is it another electrical problem that you can’t figure out?” In Benitar’s own ears, his voice sounded low and mean, and for a moment he was struck by the irony of it, since that was how his father used to sound whenever he drank too much and got nasty. But the awareness did not diminish his rage. “You’ve been the bane of my life since I was foolish enough to hire you. You never gave a
damn about the seeds. This has never been more than a job to you, has it?”

  “Ish losh more ta me. Your sheeds are criddigal ta me.”

  “They are not my seeds, you fool! They belong to the people of the United States, and to the world. I am merely the custodian.”

  “I’m sh-shorry. Of c-course, I meant that.”

  Tilting his head in disdain and staring down the bridge of his nose, Benitar said, “You are totally without honor.”

  “I’ll clean this mesh up,” Hansik said, rising to his feet.

  “I’ll make my father proud of me yet,” Benitar vowed, “and you won’t get in my way.” He pointed the gun at Hansik, then looked around, at the others.

  “Le’ me make it up,” Hansik said, picking up some of the larger pieces of broken glass and forming a pile on one side.

  “I’ve had it with all of you,” Benitar said, “and I’m starting with you first, Jimmy, you little weasel. The more of you I kill, the more food there will be for me, so I can make sure the seeds are saved.”

  Bravely, Belinda inched out into the hallway, closer to the Director. “I know you’re upset sir, and rightfully so, but please don’t hurt anybody. It’s not worth it, solves nothing …”

  As if in a dream, Benitar heard the delicate clinking of the glass shards as Jimmy moved on the floor and noticed the cuts on his hands, now oozing with blood. It was an odd sensation, making Benitar feel he was somehow apart from the scene, watching it all, seeing the gun in his own hand and all he had to do was pull the trigger, getting rid of a mouth to feed that belonged to this worthless Jimmy Hansik.

  And slowly, he became aware of someone else.

  “No, Director Jackson,” Belinda said. “Please put the gun down. It was just an accident. Jimmy and Abe had no way of knowing the champagne was yours. The locker was open, with no name on it. They didn’t know it belonged to you.”

  “It belonged to somebody, didn’t it?” His gazed flickered over to Abe Tojiko, a hard glare that reflected the portion of the blame he was assigning to each of them.

  “They didn’t know that,” Belinda said. “They must have thought it was abandoned by some former employee.”

  With an abrupt jerking movement, Benitar pointed the weapon at her, and now he cocked it. “You’re in on this too, and the champagne was mine, saved for a special occasion. The bottles were wrapped in a lab coat, with my name on the lapel.”

  “Didn’ shee that,” said Jimmy, still making clinking noises with the glass. “Didn’ know it was yours an’ we’re sh-shorry Benitar, didn’ see your name onna lab coat. Abe and I’ll go out and buy you shum more as shoon azza weather clears.”

  Benitar watched Jimmy as he tried to keep from falling down again. His balance was precarious, and he had to hold onto the wall. The cuts were deep on his forearms, and blood dripped on the floor, a further violation. Benitar always insisted on clean floors in the Cascade Seed Repository.

  The barrel of the gun moved again, and this time it pointed directly at Hansik’s heart, as if the weapon had a brain of its own and would decide whom to kill, and when.

  “P-please,” Hansik said. His skin had gone pale, and his eyes were open wide, causing Benitar to smile. He could stand there forever and enjoy this incompetent employee’s fear, such a minuscule payment for all the grief he had caused.

  Slowly, he became aware of Belinda again, as she said, “It’s OK, Director. When we’re out of this we’ll buy you a whole case of French champagne, but you have to put the gun down …”

  “I’m so glad you’re going to replace the champagne,” Benitar said. “As soon as the weather gets nice and warm and everything is the way it used to be, everyone in the world can have French champagne again. Will this weather ever get any better?” he asked, plaintively. “Will it ever get any better?”

  “Of course it will,” a woman said. He saw her through glazed eyes. Strangely, it looked like Peggy Atkins. How did she dare talk to him? The gun barrel found her, emerging into the corridor from the room, with her oversized harlot-belly. Abe was with her, getting in front of her, as if he could stop a bullet intended for her. But Benitar could shoot both of them, maybe even with one shot that went through both of them. Three of them at once, actually, including the bastard child.

  Peggy had been watching the scene in horror, afraid for herself and for her child, afraid this madman would cut loose and kill all of them. Finally, she could bear it no more. She had to make her own attempt to get through to him, because Belinda wasn’t getting anywhere, and their boyfriends were paralyzed, impotent with their own fear. Now Abe, impressing her, was moving to intervene. It all seemed like a dream to her, a horrible nightmare.

  Moving closer, after pushing Abe aside insistently, Peggy extended a hand to the distraught Director, and said, “We all admire your dedication to duty, but you’re tired, and you need our help, if you’ll let us. Let me help you.” She stood right next to him now, and looking up, Peggy saw the glazed, confused look on his face. “Give me the gun, sir.”

  “I never realized how pretty your hair is,” Benitar said with a soft smile, “and how deep blue your eyes are. Funny how you can see someone day after day but not really see them.” His gun wavered.

  Then he lurched, and jammed the gun barrel against Jimmy Hansik’s head, right between the eyes. “Thought I forgot about you, didn’t you?”

  “No, Benitar,” Hansik pleaded, sounding suddenly sober, “No, please no! I’ll do whatever you say. Just give me a chance.”

  “Oh, I so love it when you plead, little Jimmy scum.” His finger tightened on the trigger….

  CHAPTER 12

  The Beginning of the End

  Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!

  Silence. Followed by a loud crash.

  Anxiously, Benitar looked up a stairway toward the blast door that led outside. Incomprehensibly, the huge door shook.

  Peggy grabbed Benitar’s gun hand.

  He cursed at her and pulled away.

  Crash! Crash!

  The door to the repository slammed open. A haggard figure appeared in the doorway, with shadowy shapes beyond, on the moonlit snow. Someone yelled, “Food! Get the food inside!”

  Benitar aimed and fired three times.

  Two of the intruders fell, and tumbled partway down the stairs. A panicky voice yelled from outside, “Run, they’ve got guns!”

  Benitar, Belinda, and Jimmy ran up to the heavy door, stepping over and around the bodies that bled in the snow drift, amidst freezing sleet on a night wind. Shivering, the Director saw a dozen people outside, slogging through the snow in the moonlight, trying desperately to get away.

  He fired until his clip was empty, and dropped four more of them on the snow, not paying any attention to Belinda or Peggy behind him, who tried to get him to stop. The other figures disappeared into the shadowy woods before he could snap in the second clip. The moon, seen as rarely at night as the sun was in the daytime, shone through a thinning cloud cover.

  Abe and Jimmy secured the door, reinforcing it from the inside with planks and nails that Benitar brought out.

  Peggy Atkins shook her head as she crouched by the bodies, examining them. “Boys,” she said bitterly, “—just boys.”

  Belinda, Jimmy, and Abe stared, while Peggy wept softly.

  Benitar Jackson sighed. “The ones that got away will be back, with more. They’ll keep battering us, but they have to get through that narrow entrance, and I’ll fight them with everything I’ve got.” He paused. “I have more guns, you know.”

  Abe nodded slowly. Then he gave the Director a long, beseeching stare. “What if they bring their own guns next time, Benitar? What if men come, not just boys? Some of them may be seeking revenge.”

  To Benitar, the tone had a dull, leaden chill to it. The questions made the situation bluntly clear to him, and crystallized the challenge he faced here, and the enemies he had to overcome.

  Benitar looked at the bodies on the stairs, then at Abe, Belinda
, and Peggy. Finally, he glared at Jimmy Hansik, who had bloodied hands and glass shards on his clothing.

  Abe said again, slowly, deliberately, “Well what about it, Benitar? What happens next?” Now he spoke in a condescending, scolding tone, as if addressing a child who had misbehaved.

  Feeling oddly detached, Benitar snapped a new clip full of bullets into his gun. The hand that held the weapon seemed to take on a life of its own, and he realized that he could only follow it, doing its sacred bidding. For several moments the hand pointed the barrel randomly—up, down, back, forth, and to the side as if the hand was acting independent of Benitar’s consciousness and whatever it did was not the Director’s fault.

  To him, it seemed that one direction was as good as another, and one was as useless as another. He walked down the stairs to the main floor of the seed repository, stepping past the bodies, then continued down the hallway and into his own room, where he quietly closed the door behind him.

  In shock and dismay, Peggy and her companions stared after him. Finally Peggy, with a hand on her pregnant belly, said in a soft, plaintive tone, “Boys. They were just boys—.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Dreams and Responsibilities

  It was the far side of midnight when Abe, Jimmy, Peggy, and Belinda wrapped up the bodies in orange plastic bags and put them in the freezer section of a cavernous cooling chamber that was used for food storage and the preservation of certain seeds, as well as tubers, roots, and bulbs. As they completed the grim task, no one spoke, but Peggy thought of the others who had fallen outside, and wished she could go out and check on them. But she was pregnant and couldn’t take such a risk. Besides, it would endanger the seed bank, making it even more vulnerable to attack. She hated thinking like Benitar Jackson, a man who would do anything to advance his cause, a man whose ethics were laced with violence.