by Megan Hart
Many thanks must go to those who offered to read this story --
Jen Bates
Kimberly Mara
Joe Alfano
#
Megan Hart
Chaos Edition
Published by Megan Hart at Smashwords.com
Copyright 2011 Megan Hart
Chaos Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
#
That man walked like he'd never been afraid of anything.
That's what Abbie Monroe thought when she looked at her own reflection in the mirror behind the bar at the Hole in the Wall and saw him passing behind her without so much as a second glance. That man walked like he'd never been afraid of anything and would never have to be. She turned to look at him in the real world, not in the mirror, thinking maybe it was the shadows or flashing lights from the tiny dance floor, or maybe simply the backwards, through-the-looking-glass reversal of everything that had made him stand out to her so clearly.
Nope.
It was still all him.
Her grandfather had been a sailor in the Navy during World War II and for most of his life, and he'd never lost that sort of rolling lope of a man for whom the ground beneath him was never still. The man heading toward the pool table at the back of the bar didn't walk quite that way, but there was something familiar in the stride, in the shift of his hips. In the way he looked neither to right nor left unless he was focusing his gaze on someone reaching out to shake his hand, and even then, he shifted his entire body so briefly, so intently, that it was clear very little could ever take him by surprise.
And, Abbie reasoned as she signaled the bartender for another beer, she was probably full of seven different kinds of shit.
Maybe she just wanted him to not be afraid of anything, she thought as she sipped cold, foamy beer and twisted in her stool to watch the man nod at the couple playing pool. Was he going to play? She watched him tip his cap with some sort of letter logo on it, a big OU. It looked like a giant Kosher symbol to her, which was so unlikely it had to be wrong. Out here in the middle-of-nowhere, Oklahoma, it was all boots and hats and worn denim jeans with big belt buckles, shirts with the mother-of-pearl snap-front buttons and sleeves rolled up to elbows. Even on the women. She looked down at her skinny jeans and ballet flats, her fitted t-shirt and cardigan sweater. Maybe if she wore a hat like his, a pair of shit-kicking boots, she'd never be afraid either.
The bartender slid a basket of onion rings toward her along with a small plastic cup of some kind of spicy dip. It smelled so strongly of horseradish she had to blink and turn her head to hold back a sneeze, but her mouth watered in anticipation of the burn. She dipped a ring, thick with batter and grease and the size of her fist, into the dip and took a bite.
Damn, she thought with a sigh of ecstasy. That is some good dip.
"You like it?" The bartender laughed and rapped the top of the bar with his knuckles. "It'll grow hair on your chest."
"It just about seared my sinuses, that's for sure." Abbie gulped some beer and wiped her lips with a napkin. Gave the guy a grin that felt a little too big, a little too bright but was nevertheless genuine and didn't seem to scare him too much. "Not sure if I need any hair on my chest, though."
"Can I get you anything else?"
She shook her head. "I'm good for now."
Behind him, above the mirror, a flat-screen TV flickered and danced with pictures of products and services she'd never used or bought but could easily be convinced she needed. She couldn't remember the last time she'd watched television -- cable had been one of the first things to go when she took her own place, and though she'd taken her share of the DVD collection, she'd never gotten around to getting a DVD player. Even in hotels she rarely turned on the television, having grown out of the habit of needing mindless background noise. When she'd still been paying for her smart phone, Twitter had provided her news, and if her tweet stream filled up too much with chatter about some subjects that had become incomprehensible to her because she wasn't up on pop culture she simply tuned out for a few days. It had been months since she'd had a smart phone.
Television, the great hypnotist. When her children were smaller, Abbie had often needed to physically stand between them and the set in order to break the force it had on their attention. Ryan had been the same way, gaze ensnared by infomercials and cartoons with the same sticky strength. Now Abbie found herself understanding, sort of, the allure. Watching the TV meant she didn't have to think much about anything but the steady stream of images, the sound turned down so it became a game for her to match the Closed-Captioning with the action on the screen.
"Can you believe that?" Beside her, the man she'd noticed earlier had sidled up to the bar, unnoticed while she'd allowed herself to be numbed by the TV. He tipped a glass rattling with ice cubes but otherwise empty, toward the screen. "Fella's been on the news all day long."
She gave her stool a half-turn, feeling rather than hearing the squeak of metal on metal. "What for?"
"Bud, turn it up, will you?" With a nod for the bartender, the man turned to her. "Says he's had a sign from God the world's gonna end."
"Oh." Abbie's mouth twisted. She looked at the screen, noticing the captions were a couple seconds behind the actual words, which was disorienting. Especially when they were misspelled. "Ice cream suit."
The man laughed. "Huh?"
She pointed. The guy on the screen wore a white suit, white shirt, white tie. She'd bet he wore white shoes, too, but she hadn't yet caught sight of his feet even though he was walking up and down on a small stage, shouting his proclamations to a rapt audience of a couple hundred moon-eyed faces.
"Ice cream suit," she said. "Um, it was a story by Ray Bradbury. The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit. Whenever I see a suit like that, that's what I think of. Also, it makes me suspect the guy wearing it is full of shit."
The man laughed again, louder this time, and turned to rest his elbow on the bar while he looked at her. "Is that so?"
Abbie smiled, just a little. "Well. What do you think?"
The man kept his body angled toward her but tilted his head to look up at the TV. He watched for a second or two, smiling though his eyes were narrowed. Assessing. He noticed things, she thought, and her throat gave a small, dry click when she swallowed. He noticed everything.
He looked at her. "I think you're right. Overflowing with shit."
Her smile hadn't faded while he studied the d-bag in the ice cream suit. Now it slanted just a little wider -- not as freakishly broad as the one she'd given the bartender earlier, and this one sat more naturally on her face. "A veritable river of it."
"An ocean," the man agreed and gestured at her drink. "Buy you another?"
She hadn't planned on drinking another beer, but then...when did she ever plan to drink another one? They usually just followed one after the other like stepping stones set into a stream, and she hopped along them one at a time until she lost her balance and fell into the drink. She nodded and pushed her empty glass toward the bartender. "Sure. Thanks."
"Cal," the man told her, and held out a hand for her to shake.
"Abbie."
His palm was callused, his fingers strong and warm. He held her hand for a second or two longer than was absolutely necessary, and that's how she knew she'd be taking him back to her place.
But not right away.
First, they drank. He was sipping at something strong, Jack Daniel's on the rocks, no water. Abbie stuck to beer, because it meant she could drink more before she got sloppy. Also, she liked the taste, which never failed to make her think of summers at the lake, floating on a raft. Getting sunburned. Flirting with boys.
He was a law man, she could tell that by the way his hand fell naturally to the bare spot on his belt as though his fingers sought the comfort of a badge or a gun that weren't there. She really ought to have stopped letting him buy her drinks when she figured it out, but hell. Some women had a thing for doctors or lawyers, some liked men with brown hair, others liked beards. Abbie liked cops. When she asked him what he did for a living though, his gaze shifted from hers and he buried himself in his drink long enough for her to guess he didn't mean to tell her the truth.
"Not much," came his answer finally.
Abbie laughed. "Aside from seducing women in bars?"
"Is that what I'm doing?"
She leaned closer, tongue loose, face flushed. Not caring. He smiled when she did. Her lips brushed the edge of his ear when she said, "like it's your damn job."
He didn't move away, and though he could've turned his face to kiss her, he didn't do that either. They stayed like that for a few seconds, and the smell of him -- clean skin, smoke, liquor -- made her dizzy. Or maybe it was the beer. Or lack of sleep. It didn't matter, because when she blinked, sitting back a little, he was still smiling, and he took her hand as the bartender announced last call.
"Can I walk you home?"
He surely could, there was no question about that.
"How did you know I was staying here?" She pointed across the road to the low-slung Sentinel Motel offering "free breakfast" that was half a lie, since it meant coffee and stale doughnuts, as she'd already learned.
Cal laughed, dipping his head so his hat brim obscured everything but his mouth. "Where else would you be staying?"
At the door, the lock fought the key even when she did her best to keep her fingers still. Cal's hand covered hers, and he guided it carefully until the key slid smoothly inside. He turned it too, and the door swung open to reveal the shitty little motel room Abbie'd been calling home for the past week and a half.
That's when he kissed her.
Long and slow and sweet and hard, up against the doorframe, his hands anchoring her hips so all she had to do was let him hold her up. His crotch pressed her belly, that big belt buckle cool on the sliver of her skin exposed where the edge of her shirt had ridden up. His tongue stroked hers. Her fingers linked behind his neck.
The kiss didn't break so much as their mouths slipped apart, still close enough to touch when he spoke. "Are you going to invite me inside?"
Abbie licked her lips, tasting him on her skin. "Are you a vampire?"
Cal laughed and shook his head.
"Just a gentleman, then."
His laughter faded into a smile, and he looked at her with bright eyes. He swallowed, and she wanted to press her lips to his throat as it worked. "Sometimes."
"Does that mean you'll take your hat off when you fuck me?" Abbie tweaked the brim.
Had she surprised him? Surely he wasn't...blushing? Not that she could see any sort of flush of color on his cheeks in this dim light, but the way he cut his gaze from hers and ducked his head, he looked like a man who'd been taken aback. Totally charming. Utterly hot.
Then he pulled her close again. "I could leave it on if you want," Cal said into her ear. "If that's how you like it."
His voice made her shiver-shuddery so that she pushed onto her tiptoes to get her mouth close to his ear too. She laughed as she clung to him. It felt good, that laughter. Free and easy and sexy too. "Let's take it one step at a time, see how it goes."
"Fair enough." He stepped back to let her go through the door first.
Inside, the room boasted two sagging double beds, a wobbly desk and an equally shabby chair. She had a small fridge and a coffee pot. A bathroom with a surprisingly decent shower, plenty of hot water and a fancy shower head with a bunch of different settings. It was far from the best room she'd ever stayed in, but it was also not the worst.
"I'm going to drink some water. You want some?" She bent to the tiny fridge and pulled out two bottles.
Cal shook his head. "Nah, I'm good for now. Thanks."
"I'd offer you something stronger," Abbie said as she cracked open the cap, "but I'm afraid I'm all out."
She didn't say it was because she never bought booze anyplace other than a bar. She could buy a case of beer or a bottle of liquor for way less than she'd spend in a bar, but then...it would always be there. At least until she drank it, which would be right away. If she had to go to a bar, there was always the possibility she'd be able to limit herself, even if it was only because she'd made a rule with herself to pay only with cash, and only ever allowed herself to take two twenty dollar bills.
The water slipped down the back of her throat and gave her something to do with her mouth while Cal took a slow walk around her room. She'd cleaned up after herself; at least she'd done that much. Living out of a suitcase had atrophied her domestic skills a little bit, and with it just being herself...well. Sometimes she simply didn't feel like bothering. She was glad now that she'd tucked away the bras and panties she'd washed in the sink and hung to dry on the shower in lieu of finding a laundromat. It would've been better if she'd had the maid come in to replace the towels and make the beds, both of them, since she'd slept in each of them before deciding she liked the one closest to the bathroom the best.
Did he notice the contents of her purse, scattered on the other bed? Her lipstick, compact, keys, sunglasses. She thought he did. Abbie thought Cal noticed her wallet, flipped open to show her New York State driver's license. He wouldn't be able to tell by looking at it that it was invalid, that if she ever got pulled over it would take only a minute or two for any cop to figure out she was driving illegally. But he could see her face, smiling, several years younger than she was now. Her face without a scar.
He turned with a half a smile tilting his lips. "Just passing through."
He didn't make it a question. That's why she didn't feel bad about not giving him an answer. When she put herself back in his arms, pressed up tight against that buckle again, all Abbie gave him was her mouth.
Two, three steps and the backs of her knees pressed against the bed. Instead of pushing her down on it, Cal slipped his big hands under her ass and lifted her as he turned to sit. She ended up on his lap, straddling him, her hands gripping his shoulders and his shirt twisted in her fingers. She'd let out a little gasp when he picked her up, and it slid into a groan when he settled her against his crotch.
He laughed into her mouth. She looked at him. He had nice eyes. A hard gaze that noticed everything, true, but nice eyes just the same. Light brown. Lines in the corners. The hat shadowed them, so she tipped it back with her finger. Without another word, Cal took the hat off and tossed it onto the next bed. He was already kissing her again before she could make a joke about him leaving it on...and she decided it was much, much better with it off.
They kissed for a long time, so long she thought maybe he intended only to kiss her and nothing else. The thought of that, making out like this for hours without him even touching her anywhere else, excited her unbearably even as it disappointed.
Abbie could no longer count the number of men she'd fucked on two hands, but she could still remember their faces, if not their names. She could remember how each one sounded when he moved inside her. None of them had been meant as a notch on the bedpost, but quite a few of them had been just a way to pass the time. Lackluster sex and shamed faces in the morning, never hers because she always figured if she was going to do something she would at least own the consequences.
But Cal...Cal's mouth, tongue, hands, the press of his erection, nothing about this felt boring or shameful, and Abbie rocked herself on his lap until he gave her what she'd been craving. A moan. It slipped from his lips on a breath in between kisses, and it made her laugh a little. Then he laughed, and in another moment the two of them were giggling and guffawing even as he rolled her onto her back and slid between her legs with that long, lean body.
That's when he touched her. All over. Big hands slid up her legs, undid her jeans and peeled them down her thighs and past her ankles. The buttons of her shirt and the shirt itself. In her bra and panties, Abbie tensed as she always did, hands wanting to cover the scars but forcing herself not to.
She had to own the consequences.
Cal ran a fingertip along the longest scar, the ugliest one. The others had faded into silver marks no more intrusive than the stretch marks from pregnancy, visible only in certain light. But the one that curved from over her right breast and along her ribs, down to her abdomen, was cross-hatched from the stitches. The surgeon who'd saved her life hadn't cared much for making things pretty, and she'd chosen never to have plastic surgery to fix it.
Most men asked her what had happened. Cal didn't. He bent to press his mouth to the slope of her breasts, then over the soft cotton of her bra, down her ribs. His lips traced the scar, and his touch should've tickled but as always she felt nothing but the heat of his touch and that just barely.
Abbie closed her eyes when he got to the end of it. Her hands fisted in the comforter. When he pulled her panties off, her mouth opened but nothing came out but a hiss of breath. Not even the "yes" she was thinking managed to escape.
Then, nothing.
She opened her eyes to look down at him studying her. Those nice eyes with that hard gaze. Noticing things. What had he noticed about her?
Whatever it was, he didn't say anything about it. He sat back and unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged out of it before moving over her again to kiss her. Together they worked at the button and zipper on his jeans, the dark boxers underneath. Mouths working, hands roaming, at last they were both naked and he was touching her in all the places she wanted him to. Needed him to.
Abbie never faked her pleasure, and few of the men she'd been with ever even noticed if she wasn't getting off. Probably hadn't cared. There was no faking it this time. Cal moved in every right way.
He was looking in her eyes when she came. Abbie almost always looked away at the moment she broke, but this time she was looking into his eyes too. He shuddered and murmured something that could've been endearment or curse as he came too.
When he rolled off onto the pillow next to her, one long arm thrown up behind his head, Cal let out a sigh. Then a chuckle. Abbie rolled to face him, a hand tucked under her cheek. Their legs tangled. Sweat cooled. She rubbed her toes along his calf.
Cal looked at her. "How long are you staying here?"
She had no timeline. No place to be. She could go wherever and whenever she wanted, at least until the money ran out. But that meant she could also stay the same way.
"I was going to leave tomorrow," she said after a couple seconds' thought. "But...I don't have to."
She thought perhaps she'd misjudged him. Maybe she shouldn't have made herself an offering. Then he turned toward her and brushed the hair away from her face without saying anything, and she didn't worry about that any more.
#
Abbie dreamed, as she often did, in full color and stereo surround sound. At first her dreamscape was a jumbled mess of faces and places she hadn't seen for a long time. And then, as in the way of dreams, it all changed.
She was on a train. Going fast. Too fast. She looked out her window at the scenery passing outside, trees and farms and small towns lit up in the night. The train clattered on the rails, too high above everything to be a real train, she knew that even in the dream, but even as she got to her feet and gripped the back of the seat to keep herself steady, she was unable to force herself to wake. And she wanted to, because though this wasn't yet a nightmare, it felt well on its way to becoming one.
The chug-chugging got louder. The train hissed and steamed. She was riding in a dragon.
The train lurched, and Abbie stumbled forward. Strong hands caught her, kept her from falling, but when she looked up to see who it was she could find nothing but darkness. Something reeked, the stench thick in her nostrils. Choking. It smelled of blood and shit and puke; it was the stink of lying in a ditch on the side of the road in your upside-down car while you waited to die.
The EMTs would load her on a stretcher and take her to the hospital. It would be her first ride in an ambulance. They would not bother with a siren, because she was already gone. There was no white light, no tunnel, no chorus of angels or parade of loved ones waiting for her. She'd left everyone she loved behind her in that ditch, long ago.
"Abbie." Someone shook her, then again. "Abbie, wake up. Now!"
Not the voice of God. Not a doctor. Abbie clawed her way up and out of the dreams to find Cal bent over her, his hair so shaggy and in such disarray she moved without thinking to push it off his face. He captured her hand, his grip too tight. Mouth a frown. Expression urgent.
"Get up," Cal said. "We need to get into the bathroom."
"What?" Blinking, the taste of beer and sex furry on her tongue, she couldn't focus. He was shouting, she realized. He had to shout over the sound of the train.
Not a train.
The wind.
Cal pulled her out of bed. He was naked. She was naked. Together, they stumbled across the grotty carpet. She stubbed her toe on the leg of the bed, but there wasn't time even to yelp. She wouldn't have been able to hear herself over the roar of the wind if she had.
In the bathroom, Cal didn't even pull back the curtain. He pushed her into the tub. Abbie's knees hit the cold, slick porcelain, and this time it was hard enough to shove a cry out of her.
Then he was there with her, his body covering hers. Warm. Slick with sweat. She remembered how they'd moved against each other and how he'd touched her with those strong hands, but there was nothing sensual about the way he grabbed her now. Cal pushed her down, down, down, her cheek against the bottom of the tub. Her teeth cut into her skin. She tasted blood.
He might've been shouting something, but she couldn't make out words, just rough, hoarse shouts. Her own screams bit at the inside of her throat, but her clamped-tight teeth wouldn't let out a single sound. Cal pushed her down harder, harder, even though this tub was barely big enough for one, not big enough to hold two even if they were in an intimate embrace as they were now, intimate but graceless, nothing kind or generous about it.
The tub rocked.
The floor creaked. The walls strained, rattling the light fixtures so fiercely the glass globes covering the bulbs fell onto the linoleum floor and shattered. Abbie could see nothing, but the song of shattering glass was a noise she knew well enough to understand.
This was...something. Her brain wanted her to understand what was going on, it wanted to clear itself of the haze of alcohol she'd once again been so cruel to subject it to, but though fear could always give the appearance of sobriety, nothing but time would clear her bloodstream of her favorite sweet poison. She was drunk. She was a drunk.
Silence didn't drop over them like a blanket or a hammer. The sound of the walls shaking in their foundation eased and the hoarse chuffing cacophony of the runaway dragon train faded and left behind the equally hoarse sound of Cal's breath in her ear. It warmed her cheek, just like his bare flesh warmed hers. It seemed wrong for her to be so chilled, but then Abbie realized she was also soaking wet.
As Cal pulled himself off of her, Abbie looked up. Blinking into the frigid spray, she saw the shower head had come completely unhooked from the wall. Water gushed out in fits and spurts, soaking the wall and the place where the ceiling ought to have been but now showed only the first blush of morning sky.
Cal sat back, legs drawn up, and rubbed at his eyes. "Holy shit. Holy shit."
Abbie sat too, her joints creaking and scars singing the way they did even when she slept in the softest of beds -- she could only imagine how she'd feel in a few hours. Water pattered down all around them, but though it was cold enough to force her teeth to chatter, she couldn't muster the energy or coordination to get herself out of the tub.
She did find some words. "What...was that?"
"Cyclone."
"You're fucking with me, right?" Laughter bubbled up and out of her, incongruous and painful as it shook her aching back and shoulders. "A tornado? At night?"
Cal pushed up with one hand on the side of the tub, stepped over, slipped on the wet floor but caught himself against the edge of the sink. He fumbled for a towel, and she had time to be embarrassed that she hadn't had the maid service come in to change them. Not that it mattered, they were on their way to being soaked. Besides, he'd had his mouth between her legs, would he really care if he wiped his face with a towel that had been in the same place?
The sound of a car horn drifted to her over the patter of water and her own delirious chuckles. Abbie took Cal's outstretched hand and let him pull her upright. He wrapped a damp towel, not as wet as she'd thought, around her and shoved her through the doorway into the bedroom...or at least what was left of it.
The windows had blown inward, scattering glass across the carpet. Hail the impossible size of her fist gleamed on the dresser, the floor and the beds, which had been stripped of sheets and comforters but otherwise incongruously left untouched. It melted even as she watched. One wall of the room had buckled, showing glimpses of the parking lot outside. Wet pavement. Downed trees. She could see a red pickup truck tilted on its side. The blaring horn died as she listened.
Abbie clutched the doorframe as Cal stepped around the glass to stand in front of the windows. He didn't seem to care that he was naked -- but she suddenly did. Blinking, she sought any sight of her suitcase, which had been left open in the corner of the room now exposed to the daylight. It seemed unlikely the storm had taken the sheets and comforters and left her underpants, but she took a step or two in that direction anyway.
"Watch it." Cal grabbed her elbow to keep her from stepping on a jagged shard of glass. "Jesus, Abbie. Stay put."
"I want my clothes." She sounded petulant and pouting and hadn't meant to, but tears were suddenly thick in her throat. She covered her breasts with one arm, but it wasn't enough. The world had forced its way inside this shelter, and not even a suit of armor could protect her from that.
"I'll get your clothes." He swiveled carefully on the rug and took both her upper arms. "Look at me."
She did. Cal didn't smile, but his gaze pinned her. He made sure she was looking into his eyes before he spoke again.
"This is going to be all right."
The world tipped a little. Too much drink. Not enough sleep. Oh, yeah, and a tornado that had torn apart her motel room.
"Almost everything I owned was in my suitcase." Some of it had been in the dresser drawers, but those looked like they'd been emptied too. Some of her belongings were in her car, but she didn't dare hope it had escaped the red pickup's fate.
"We'll find your suitcase. Your things. It'll be okay." Cal rubbed her arms with his fingertips.
She shivered and sucked in a breath, feeling at least a little more sober. A little less tipsy-topsy, as she'd always said to her boys when they were out of sorts and she was trying to humor them into happiness. Let's be a little less tipsy-topsy. They always laughed when she said it, but she couldn't manage even a chuckle now. Abbie dug her toes into the carpet and closed her eyes, concentrating on the air she pulled with so much effort into her lungs. Held it in. Let it back out. When she opened her eyes again, he was still looking at her.
Abbie straightened her shoulders. "We both need clothes."
He smiled, just a little. "Shoes first. If we can find them."
She nodded and squinted, searching for the ballet flats she'd worn the night before and his boots. Her memory was hazy, but she thought both pairs had ended up under the bed...and there they were. She pointed, and Cal took one long step, then another, setting his feet carefully between the shards of broken glass, to pick them up. He tossed her shoes at her, and wonder of wonders, she caught them.
She put them on, the world already settling under her now that her feet, at least, were protected. Cal shoved his feet into the boots and crunched across the rug, bending to look under the beds for his jeans, which he found still turned inside-out -- though that was how he'd left them, not something the wind had done. Abbie found a t-shirt -- the one Cal had been wearing under his long-sleeved shirt. Also a pair of shorts that were too big and hung too low on her hips, but were better than nothing. Cal, in jeans and boots but shirtless, pushed aside the desk chair and looked around the room with single-minded determination, but couldn't find his hat.
Still, they both managed to get dressed in a reasonable amount of time. Incredibly, Abbie's stomach growled, and she sent up a prayer to the patron saint of alcoholics, whoever that was, for giving her an appetite instead of a hangover. This was not the right sort of morning to be hunched over and heaving into a toilet. She found an unopened bottle of water on the nightstand and cracked off the top, drinking half before offering it to Cal.
He waved it aside. "I'm going outside, see if anyone needs help."
"I don't hear any sirens or anything." Abbie paused. "Maybe...maybe we're the only ones who made it?"
Cal slanted her a grim look. "I don't think so. Depending on the path of the storm, we might not even be the worst hit."
She nodded and took another sip from the bottle. She was far from clear-headed, but at least she felt sober. "I'll go with you."
She thought he'd say no, but Cal nodded and held out his hand for her to take as she stepped across the broken glass. The door was not only still locked, but shut so tight into the warped doorframe it wouldn't budge no matter how hard Cal yanked on it. He looked over his shoulder at her, then shrugged and moved a few inches to the side to kick out what remained of the window. He climbed through, then leaned in to help her out.
Outside, everything was still. No wind. No birds, no revving engines, no muffled laughter from the motel restaurant or from across the street at The Hole in the Wall. The reason was clear enough. Both the restaurant and the bar were simply...gone.
The motel had been sheared neatly in half from the room next to Abbie's to the road. A few sparking wires still attached to the phone pole were still there, but the rest of it was gone. Abbie blinked and blinked again, eyes searching the empty space so she could convince her brain the building was still there, but not even her vivid imagination could put back wood and metal and glass in place of the shredded earth.
"Jesus." Cal wiped a hand over his mouth, and Abbie couldn't be sure if he were cursing or praying. "Jesus Christ."
She'd taken a few unsteady steps toward the empty space when Cal grabbed her. She pulled against his grip, her hands out, her fingers already feeling the dirt. She needed to feel it, to sweep her palms against the empty space. She needed to touch the nothing.
"Abbie, stop. There's live wires over there." Cal pulled her firmly back against his chest. "It's not safe."
His mama had raised him right, as her grandma would've said. A gentleman. That's when she realized she was crying.
Silent sobs wracked her. Cal turned her toward him, and she buried her face against his chest while his hand cupped the back of her head. She gasped in a breath, then another, but couldn't seem to fill her lungs. That's what happened when she got too upset -- not all of her scars were on the surface. Her lungs had suffered in the accident more than anything else. That's what having a steering column puncture your chest would do.
"Breathe, Abbie. Breathe!" Cal shook her. "Focus on me."
She couldn't tell him it wasn't just a breakdown. She wasn't succumbing to womanly vapors. She really couldn't breathe.
The world had dimmed and faded by the time she managed to get out of his grip and sink to the ground to put her head between her knees. She closed her eyes. She counted slowly, forcing her muscles to relax and ease, to let her diaphragm expand. She pictured her lungs as balloons slowly filling with air, though she knew the truth was more like they were sponges in which too many holes had been cut. Someday, she'd need to be on an oxygen tank. She'd never smoked a cigarette in her life.
"I'm okay. Just give me a minute." She glanced up. He looked concerned. She wanted to cry all over again. She straightened. "I'm okay. Really."
Cal shaded his eyes. The day had dawned bright and bold, the sun harsh enough to sear unwary eyeballs. When she closed her own eyes, red spots still danced in her vision. But she no longer felt like she was going to fall over, and the pressure had eased in her lungs. She was far from fine, but she was going to be okay.
"There's nobody. How many rooms were occupied, do you know?"
"No. The Vacancy sign was on, I remember that. So maybe not all of them. But...some of them. And the people from the office..." She swallowed, hard. "Maybe they got out all right."
And maybe they had, but there was no sign of it now. There was nothing but the two of them in the demanding sunlight and breezeless air, and finally, the far-off sound of sirens. Cal looked out across the stripped-bare fields, toward the highway.
"I need to go find my wife."
#
It probably wasn't the first time she'd slept with a married man, but that didn't make the news any more palatable. Abbie shrugged. "Not my business."
"My ex-wife," Cal amended. "She lives between here and Ada. I should make sure she's okay."
Ada was a town, not a person. She remembered that much. Cal turned without waiting for her to answer, still shading his eyes. Last night's journey across the street was hazy, but she did remember that they'd walked. He must've left his vehicle in the bar parking lot, and now there was little there but buckled asphalt.
Abbie wasn't accustomed to the protection of a hat the way Cal probably was, but this morning's sun was so vehemently brutal she also shaded her eyes to search for her car. A battered, dusty Volvo held together with spit and hope, it had seen her halfway across the country. It had brought her here. Once, its complicated system of airbags and seat-belts and reinforced steel had saved her life.
She hated that car, but she loved it, too.
She'd left it parked in front of her room, but it wasn't there now. She found it on the other side of the lot, skewed across three parking spaces but not on its side. She ran for it, heedless of broken glass, live wires, whatever dangers were in her way. Behind her, Cal shouted, but Abbie ignored him until her hands were flat on the Volvo's hood. The metal was hot even this early in the morning. She pressed her face to it, hugging the vehicle like a crazy woman.
This was the car in which she'd lost everything, and it was all she had left. She didn't care about the stuff in her demolished motel room -- she could replace underpants and her toothbrush; she could buy a new pair of shoes. But this car was irreplaceable and precious for that.
"I guess this is yours?"
The fact he could manage to sound amused even amongst all this destruction gave her the strength to lift her head. Her cheek felt welted. Abbie found a smile. "Yeah."
"Don't suppose you have the keys."
She held up one finger before ducking to run her hand along the back bumper. She pulled out a small black container backed with a heavy duty magnet. Inside, a key.
She held it up, triumphant. "I do."
Cal shook his head, tilting it to look at her with one squinted eye. "Lose your keys a lot, do you?"
"Have had them taken away enough times, that's all." She straightened, looking him in the eye. This wasn't the time to share her personal history, but it wasn't the time for lies either. She turned the key over and over in her fingers. It opened the trunk. She had clothes in there, she realized, some things she'd been meaning to take to the laundromat when she found one. She could really get dressed. "Give me a few minutes, okay? I want to put on something a little more...substantial."
In the light of day after a night of drinking and fucking, soaked from an icy shower, hair uncombed, teeth unbrushed, there was no way she should have earned the sort of appraising look he gave her now, but that's what Cal gave her. "If you have to."
Abbie laughed. The short, sharp bark of it startled her at first, but then she dissolved into giggles so fierce she had to put out a hand against the car to keep herself upright. She looked up at him through the fringes of her tangled hair. Somehow, no matter what destruction had swept through here, she had the feeling everything was going to be okay.
Too much laughter could be as bad for her as too many tears, so she held herself back. She swiped the back of her hand across her mouth. Then, impulsively, she pushed up onto her tiptoes to kiss him. Hard.
"Thank you," she told him.
He didn't ask her for what, and that was just fine, since she couldn't have said what she meant. Abbie pulled open the trunk, sifted through the duffle of her dirty clothes. She pulled out a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, plus a sweatshirt that didn't smell too bad. There wasn't much she could do about panties or socks, but at least she'd be more covered up. She stripped down quickly with no more than a glance from side to side to see if anyone was there. Nobody was.
"Christ, it's like something out of the Twilight Zone." She yanked the jeans up over her hips and buttoned them. The t-shirt over her head. "Like...we're the only ones left."
Cal looked into the distance. "I hope not."
Abbie, on the other hand, kind of did. Only for a moment, though, because if they were truly the only ones left in the entire world, that would mean Ryan and the boys were gone too. And that, she thought, would be an unbearable knowledge.
She gave Cal the key. "You drive. But I'm coming with you."
She thought he might balk, taking a one-nighter to visit his ex, but Cal nodded and unlocked the doors. If the interior of her car disgusted him he didn't show it, though it was obvious he noticed the layers of fast-food wrappers and and other garbage the way he'd noticed everything else. Truth was, the trash repulsed her too.
Maybe, she thought as Cal turned the key and the Volvo's faithful, loyal, unfaltering engine started up with a sputter instead of a roar, she would clean out the car.
Abbie had no idea where Ada was, but no more than five minutes after they'd left the Sentinel Motel parking lot, they had to take a detour. "At least we know we're not the only ones," she said as the uniformed cop waved them to the left from his place next to his car, lights flashing.
Cal pulled up beside him. "Gotta get to Dogleg Lane, Eddie."
"Checking on Marnie?" Eddie nodded and stood straight to look past the detour. Then bent back to Cal. "Everything's tore up that way, Cal, maybe if you had a four-wheel drive..."
"The Volvo has all-wheel drive," Abbie offered, not sure why she did. It made no-nevermind to her if they had to take the long way around.
Cal glanced at her, then at Eddie. "How tore up?"
"Trees down. A tractor trailer's on its side. I can't officially let you go this way, Cal..."
Cal nodded. "Gotcha."
Then he pulled around the cop car and kept going. Another two miles down the rural highway, they saw where the tornado had torn through. Trees had been uprooted and tossed like toothpicks. The tractor trailer looked like a metal pretzel, on its side and blocking most of the road. Cal eased the car around it, tires crunching on the shattered contents of whatever had been in the trailer.
Abbie looked out the window, saw the ditch. She wondered somewhat idly if they were going to make it, or if the Volvo was simply going to go two wheels deep into the mud. Would the car tip? Would it topple?
She'd braced herself without thinking, and Cal noticed. Of course. He didn't let go of the wheel, didn't even glance at her. He kept his eyes on the thin sliver of road between the truck and the ditch. But he noticed.
"C'mon, now," he murmured to the car like it was a woman. "C'mon baby. Just a little more. A little more."
The car inched along, tires so close to the edge Abbie couldn't see anything of the road when she looked out her window. She kept her eyes ahead after that.
It would be okay. Even if he rolls this car into the ditch, we're going so slow it will be okay. The car can take it. It made it through worse than this.
It wasn't until all four tires were fully on the pavement again that she realized she'd been holding her breath and gripping her fists so tight she cut her palms. Cal noticed, and he reached a hand to take hers, smearing the tiny half-moons of crimson. Fingers linked. He pulled her hand to his mouth and brushed the knuckles with his lips.
"Okay," he said, not a question. "You're okay."
In another life, a man like this would've made her heart sing, but all Abbie could think was -- why now? Why here? But she didn't let go of his hand until it became apparent he needed both on the wheel in order to navigate the debris on the road.
They'd gone only another mile or so, creeping along at ten or fifteen miles an hour, when they reached another spot where the storm had obviously come through. Cal stopped the car and left it idling, but got out to stare out at the devastation. Abbie got out too, her steps wobbly and uncertain on the buckled concrete.
She didn't know much about tornados other than what she'd seen in the movies, but this looked...bad. Horrific, as a matter of fact. Her stomach tumbled.
She'd thought there was nothing left back at the motel, but here, truly, the storm had come and taken everything. What must've been green fields were now nothing but torn and muddy spaces littered with debris. Dead spaces had taken the place of living.
"Jesus," Cal said.
"What was here before?" She was almost afraid to ask, afraid he'd say it was his ex's house or something.
Cal just shook his head and spread his fingers. "Everything. I mean...there were some houses. A convenience store."
They stared in silence for some long moments. The far off sound of sirens came, lifted on a breeze that sent a shudder all through her. Abbie wondered if she'd ever feel the wind again without remembering how its caress could become a punch.
Back in the car, they drove no more than another five minutes when they found out what had happened to all the buildings.
The tornado had lifted them, torn them to pieces, and dropped them all over the road. And not just buildings -- cars, trees...people.
Oh, the people.
The bodies of the injured, dying and dead littered the ground. Abbie saw a mangled corpse draped over a peaked roof, separated from the rest of the house. More lay in the fields and among the wreckage, piled like the dolls of some giant child who'd grown tired of her game and tossed them all aside.
"Everyone?" Cal said in a low voice. "Oh. God."
She became aware of motion between two house-sized piles of rubbish. A figure in white, stumbling. No, not stumbling. Lurching. A man in a white suit lurched toward them, getting closer, and it wasn't a siren she was hearing, but his high-pitched keen.
Cal stepped up next to her, one arm out in front in a position she recognized from many years of crossing streets with her boys. Warmth trickled through her, a reminder he was a gentleman, even as she wanted to shrug off his concern.
"You okay?" Cal shouted to the weaving, moaning figure.
The man in the white suit went to his knees in the mud, then buckled alarmingly and pitched forward. His voice rose, making words instead of that awful moaning.
He was laughing, Abbie realized with a surge of distaste so violent she could actually taste the bitterness. She recoiled a full step. "What the fuck?"
"Mister? You okay?" Cal stepped forward, hands out, sounding calm. It was the voice you'd use to keep someone from jumping off a bridge, all smooth and gentle.
The problem was, this guy'd already jumped. Abbie could see that clearly enough, and when Cal made as though to move closer, she snagged his sleeve. "Wait."
He looked over his shoulder at her, eyebrows lifted, mouth curved into a frown. "What?"
"Be careful." Her fingers slipped away. She didn't have the right to tell him to do anything. He owed her nothing. But he bent close to kiss her forehead like they were long-time lovers instead of just a hookup. She cleared her throat. "You don't have your gun."
Something shifted in his gaze, furtive and a little cold. "What makes you think I'm used to carrying a gun?"
I could almost smell it on you, lawman, she almost said aloud, but tempered her reply with a small smile and a half shrug. "Just a guess."
Cal gave her a long, hard look. Maybe he was used to noticing, but not so used to being noticed. He glanced at the man on the ground. Back at her. He gave her a short, sharp nod she thought cost him more than he'd have been willing to admit, but made her feel inexplicably better.
Until, of course, Cal crossed the ruined, mud-strewn road to the man laughing and wailing, and bent to touch him. That's when the man leaped up like he was on springs, gripping Cal tight around the neck and letting his bulk drag Cal down. She shouldn't have worried. Cal extricated himself without much trouble from the man's hands, twisting and turning until he could keep a grip on him without being held himself. He shot her an easy grin that said he could handle this. That he'd handled worse. He got on one knee beside the guy, a hand on his shoulder.
"Hey, buddy. Slow down. It's going to be okay."
"The voice. Didn't. Tell me."
Abbie recoiled again with a sneer. The edge of the road had gone soft from erosion, and her heel caught the crumbling, mud-caked concrete. She slipped a little off the side, arms pinwheeling before catching herself. She took a few reluctant steps closer.
That's when she saw what the man was kneeling over.
Powder blue pajamas decorated with yellow ducks. Her boys had worn pajamas like that. Summer-weight and soft, sometimes damp from bath time or little boy sweat. Benji had been the worst for that. So many nights she'd crept into his room to check on him and found him drenched, hair plastered to his forehead, jammies and sheets soaked.
The sight of those pajamas stopped her. There was no way she could move even an inch closer. She looked at the sky, brilliant and impossibly blue and cloudless. The torn and ravaged ground. She looked everywhere but at the body of the dead child over which the man in the white was praying.
"What's your name, fella?"
"You don't know me?" The guy turned a wet face toward Cal, then pinned his gaze on Abbie. It swept her, up and down, and his eyes narrowed. "You should know me."
"Sorry, buddy. But if you tell me your name --"
"God speaks to me. Always to me. I knew it would come, that the fist of our father would hit this earth with thunder, but I didn't think it would be like this. I knew it, but I didn't think it would feel like this." The man trailed off, rocking, head bent.
She did know him, Abbie realized. "Ice Cream Suit."
Cal looked up sharply. Then back at the man. "Oh. Shit."
If the derisive nickname or profanity offended him, he didn't show it. Instead, the TV preacher fought off Cal's grip and bent over the child's body again. He looked younger than he had on the bar TV's tiny, grimy screen. His hair a little longer. His mouth more lush. He was almost pretty in that sort of androgynous way Abbie had never found attractive.
"Did you know...was he...yours?" Cal asked quietly.
Ice Cream Suit looked at him and shook his head. Then, he spoke to the sky. His muttered prayers had no sense to them, syllables that didn't make words. At least not ones Abbie understood. Maybe he was speaking another language. Or in tongues, shit, didn't they do that sometimes too?
"Where's the help?" Cal asked, though his lowered voice made it sound like he didn't expect an answer. His shoulders bowed for a moment. "Where's the fucking...I don't know. Red Cross. Fire department. Hell, the army."
"All gone, gone, everywhere, everything is gone." Ice Cream Suit peered at them through the fringes of his hair Abbie remembered as being slicked back from his forehead. "I was in my church, praying, when the voice of my fathergod came and told me there'd be another sign, something to prove everything I've been saying is right. I had to go to the left, go to the right, I had to move up and down and figure it out, and I did. I made the choice. But I didn't know it would be like this. The voice. Didn't. Say."
"C'mon buddy. Get up. You can't help him now. We need to see if anyone else needs help. If anyone's left alive." Cal said this matter-of-factly, but Abbie still winced.
It got Ice Cream Suit to his feet though. Too late, she didn't turn away fast enough. She got a full view of the child in the ducky pajamas. As Cal kept speaking to the other man, pulling him away, Abbie's feet took her closer and closer until she was close enough to go to her knees beside the body. Not abruptly like the preacher had, instead Abbie sunk slowly to the ground, her hands already outstretched to touch the soft flannel hem close to the small foot.
The child's face was obscured by filth and a shock of thick dark hair, and with trembling fingers she moved to brush it away before stopping herself. This was not her son. But this was some other woman's child, and she bent her head and wept for the mother who might be unable to do it for herself.
Her hands dug into the mud, fingers curling as she tried to hold onto something that would keep her feeling solid. Something brushed against her, and she looked through the blur of her tears to see a patch of small blue and purple blossoms sprouting from all around the small body in front of her. She stopped weeping, stunned. It was like watching one of those old Disney movies that had so enthralled her as a child, the nature flicks with the time-lapse photography, only this was in real time.
These flowers were blooming all around her, more pushing their blue and purple heads up through the stinking mud and unfurling small crimson tendrils that grew long and longer until they drooped into the ground and then...like...what were they called? Runner beans? Maybe like bamboo shoots. The red threads dug into the ground and travelled underneath to shoot up a few inches beyond and sprout another set of blue and purple flowers, another bright red string.
She looked up, and half the distance she could see, earth that had been freshly turned by whatever had ripped through here in the night, ground that had been nothing but mud and destruction...all of it was covered in a carpet of flowers.
They covered the child.
"The voice of my fathergod came last night in howls and shrieks, the voice came out of the darkness and the force of it made the world tremble! People need to listen to me now. They'll have to listen to me now. They'll all have to learn how to listen." Ice Cream Suit lifted his shaking hands to the sky, face upturned and alight with an ecstasy that made Abbie more uncomfortable even than the prayers had. This guy was fucking crazy.
Cal looked upward too, though of course there was nothing there. "What's your name, buddy?"
"Renton. Renton Foster. The voice of my fathergod --"
"Yeah, we heard it too. Sounded like a freight train," Abbie interrupted. She got to her feet, unsteady, her hands black with dirt, decorated with the blossoms.
The smell was...incredible.
Sweet, light, haunting. Delicious. It was like every good thing she'd ever smelled.
Foster's delirious gaze spun to snag her face for a second or two before he looked at her feet. His mouth opened. "There. Is. The. Sign."
It was a sign of something, that was true. A sign of some kind of fuckery, which was typical for religion, as far as she was concerned.
"A sign!" Foster lurched forward again, toward the edge of the road. He tripped off the mangled concrete and into the mud. Went sprawling. He gathered handfuls of the flower buds and swept them toward him, covering himself. He looked at Abbie, gaze rapt. "The voice told me there'd be a sign. And that people would have to listen to me now."
He pointed to a tattered construction of canvas and poles that had been turned inside out. A tent of the sort she'd heard about but had never seen. Foster's arms swept wide open before he brought his hands together, fingertip to fingertip.
"What the hell?" Cal bent to look at the ground.
Something moved, something inside the flowers covering the child. No...the child itself. Horrified, Abbie back away, mouth open. The flowers were consuming the body, another time-lapse site but this time in reverse. Not creating, not blooming. Breaking down. Destroying.
"Cal. Get away." Her voice sounded steadier than she'd expected it to, but Cal didn't move. Abbie said his name louder.
Download this book for your ebook reader.
(Pages 1-31 show above.)