Voices of the Storm Read online

  Donald Peck didn’t even flinch. He really couldn’t care less.

  Nine

  Lucy wanted to snap the cell phone in half, fling the pieces against the wall, then stomp on the shattered remnants with her thickest boots, over and over –

  “Lucy?”

  – and over and –

  “Dr. Armbruster?”

  She looked up, still half-blind with rage. Rebecca Falmouth-Hanson was regarding her with an odd mixture of concern, caution, and the sort of wariness reserved for street people who talk to themselves.

  “That idiot,” Lucy said.

  “Sheriff Peck,” Rebecca filled in.

  “That two-bit, tin-horn, fuck-brained, stiff-necked, strutting, arrogant asshole!”

  Rebecca knit beautifully sculpted brows. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “What can I do?”

  “Kill him!” Lucy raved. “Get a big ugly gun and shoot his ass, because I swear to Christ, Rebecca, that is exactly what he’s doing to the people in this town. Putting a gun right to their temples and pow, just like that.”

  Those lovely dark eyes grew even bigger. “Is it that bad?”

  “YES! It’s WORSE! It’s – it’s –”

  Shut up, said a voice in her head. Frannie’s voice, firm and absolutely solid. Lucy heard it so clearly she stopped in mid-rant, and realized that she was terrifying the poor girl in front of her.

  “I—I’m sorry,” she said. She touched Rebecca’s slim upper arm. “Really, Rebecca. I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t be yelling at you…”

  Rebecca looked down at her shoes and blushed deeply. It gave her mocha skin a flawless rose under-color that was positively charming, even to Lucy “It’s okay,” Rebecca said, and chanced an upward glance. “You’re upset, I can see that.”

  “Yeah, but still…” She shook it off. “Look, you know as well as I do what’s going to happen here.” She tapped an unmanicured fingernail at one of the satellite photos of the Valle. The crater ridge looked like a pale gray oval drawn on a deeper gray background. “This place is like a poorly made bowl with one little tiny crack. It slopes down naturally, north to south, about five hundred feet over two miles, until you get to the VeriSil campus at the lowest point, right under The Two Brothers. They built there on purpose; it’s also the coolest, least arid spot in the crater.” She moved her finger a bit to the right, to a black scratch in the ridge wall near the blurred squares that represented VeriSil’s structures. “There’s only one break in the wall, right here, the Arroyo del Roja, But it’s tiny, Rebecca. Not more than ten feet across at its widest point. And that’s the only natural drainage channel in the southern half of the Valle. There’s never been enough water here to erode a larger canyon. There’s no way it can act as a drain for a flood this size. It can’t possibly accommodate this volume of water, assuming it isn’t already blocked by debris or mudslides. And the soil can only absorb so much liquid before it locks up. That happened, what, an hour after the rain started? Tops. Now it’s building up. And up. And up.” Lucy shook her head and pressed her lips together in disgust. “We’re done here.”

  “Done?” Rebecca echoed.

  “Time for everybody to pack up and go,” she said grimly, “and don’t plan on coming back.”

  She saw the expression of pure horror on the lovely girl’s face and cursed herself all over again. As always, Lucy, the perfect words at the perfect time. You’re an idiot. “I’m sorry. That was crude. I could be completely wrong about this, I could—”

  “No, you’re not wrong,” Rebecca said. “And you know it.” Then she did the most amazing thing, at least as far as Lucy was concerned. She smiled.

  “Thank you, Lucy,” she said, looking deeply into her eyes. “Really. I know this is hard for you. Thank you for being honest with me.”

  Lucy cleared her throat and looked away, embarrassed and alarmed at the sudden upwelling of emotion. “Uh…look,” she said. “It’s going to keep raining, but you have a little time. Will you do me a favor? I need to pull stuff together for this dumb-ass meeting at the Conference Center. Would you walk across the road here and check on Fender before you go home?”

  “Is he okay?” Rebecca still had hold of Lucy’s hand. Lucy didn’t know how to get it back without making things worse, so she let it stay where it was.

  “Yeah, he …he cut himself when we were going into his trailer. I got him all patched up, but, you know, good neighbor policy and all. I only want to be sure that his Airstream hasn’t been picked up by a tornado and taken to Oz or anything.”

  Rebecca finally, finally let her hand go and gave her a dazzling smile. “I’d be glad to,” she said. “I’ll just pay him a quick visit, then go home to do a little packing. I should be back here by the time you finish that town meeting.”

  Lucy found herself hugely relieved and suddenly apprehensive all over again. She was glad Rebecca was taking herself out of harm’s way, but the prospect of spending the night at the Ag Station with her – even fully clothed, even with Cindy and that nutbar Steinberg around – stirred up a surprising and not entirely unpleasant range of emotions.

  She shoved them aside yet again. Later, she told herself. Later. Right now there was plenty to deal with that had nothing to do with her loins.

  “Good,” she said, trying to sound businesslike again. “I know you’ll make Fender feel like somebody actually cares. You’re good at that.”

  Rebecca positively beamed. Lucy had a sudden realization of what she’d said, what it meant, and felt a new rush of heat to her face. She hid it by turning away. “Thanks,” she said gruffly. “Cindy? Cindy, I need to talk to you!”

  She saw Rebecca out of the corner of her eye, moving to the coat closet, pulling on a forest-green parka, cinching the hood. She felt the blast of wet air and heard the rush of the water behind her as Rebecca opened the front door and slipped out into the gathering gloom. She didn’t turn around to look at her. She was too embarrassed and confused.

  That last look – that last not-look, really – bothered Lucy Armbruster until the day she died. She liked that young woman; she actually cared for her, more than she was willing to admit. That moment in the hall, that glimpse out of the corner of her eye, was the last time she would ever see Rebecca Falmouth-Hansen.

  * * *

  Lucy found the receptionist, Cindy Bergstrom, making herself a late afternoon snack in the break room. Normally that would have made her angry all by itself. It was already well past 4:00, and the woman would usually be going home in a matter of minutes. She really didn’t need to dawdle away half an hour microwaving a Cup O’ Soup. Today, however, it didn’t bother Lucy at all. Knock yourself out, she thought bitterly. That might be your last decent meal for a few days. Not that Cindy’s muffin shape couldn’t stand a few missed meals.

  “Hey there,” she said, acutely aware of the acid conversation they’d had earlier in the day. Cindy turned and gave her the sunniest smile she could muster, as if nothing had happened.

  “Well, hey there!” she said. “Ready to start building that ark?”

  Lucy sketched out a laugh. It didn’t sound very convincing. “Heh. Um…look, I’ve been checking the figures and all,” she said. “I really think – no, actually, I’m sure – that there’s going to be some serious flood damage in the southern parts of town, maybe as far north as your neighborhood.”

  Maybe my ass. By noon tomorrow, you won’t be able to get into your bedroom without scuba gear.

  Cindy made big eyes. “Really?” she said.

  “Truly,” Lucy told her. “I told Rebecca the same thing. You might want to go home, pack up a few bags of clothes and stuff you want to be sure to keep – family heirlooms and the like– and bring them back here. Kind of camp out here for the duration of the storm.”

  Cindy grinned at her and her eyebrows hopped up and down. “Well! As it happens, I was already thinking that!”

  Lucy was surprised all over again. “Really?”

  “Sure. I’
ve been talking to Mindy, my sister? At the Sheriff’s Station?”

  Like you don’t talk to her ten times a day anyway. On my dime, too. “Yes?” Lucy said aloud.

  “…and she tells me things are really bad out there and getting worse, and ol’ Deputy Duck – excuse me, Sheriff Peck – isn’t dealing with it at all.”

  “So…you’re getting out of town?” Lucy felt as if Cindy Bergstrom – Cindy Bergstrom, of all people – was two steps ahead of her, and she didn’t like the feeling very much.

  “What,” Cindy said, almost chuckling, “and miss all this? Heck no. Mindy is going to go by the house, pick up a few things, and store them at the Sheriff’s Station. I think I might spend the night here, if you can stand me.”

  She was joshing, of course, at least in her own mind. As far as Cindy was concerned, everybody loved her and her antic sensibility. Who wouldn’t want to be stranded in a research facility for a long weekend with the life of the party?

  Lucy started to get queasy all over again. She was almost welcoming the long, wet, dangerous trip down to the Conference Center. With any luck, Cindy would be pooped out and fast asleep by the time she returned.

  “Okay then,” she said, hating the sound of her own forced cheer. “Glad you’re thinking ahead. I have to go pull together some information for the town meeting, so carry on. I guess.” She backed out, thinking about how to mention this all to that idiot Michael Steinberg when a thought suddenly struck her.

  Don’t bother.

  She stopped abruptly in the hallway outside the break room and thought that through. What did she owe Steinberg, anyway? He’d ignored and insulted her; he had made it clear he didn’t need any help or support from the rest of them. So if his studio apartment with its well-worn collection of Jugs and a refrigerator full of Hungry Man Dinners was underwater, what did she care?

  She made a quick turn away from his office corridor and started off in the opposite direction, towards her own office, then stopped herself again.

  She caught Cindy coming out of the break room with an over-hot microwaved plate and a can of Diet Dr. Pepper in one hand and a week-old copy of US Weekly in the other.

  “One more thing,” she said.

  “Surely,” Cindy said.

  Lucy dug into the pocket of her lab coat and handed the receptionist the one-and-only set of keys to the candy-apple-red ATV. “Our friend Dr. Steinberg no longer has permission to drive the Station’s all-terrain vehicle,” she said with mock solemnity. “This, however, may not stop him from trying. So I am putting you in charge of the keys. Understand?”

  Cindy took the key ring, tucked it into the breast pocket of her blouse, and patted it with the flat of her hand. “I’ll guard them with my life,” she said, playing along.

  Lucy nodded. “See that you do. Hup hup.” She nodded like a Modern Major General and turned on her heel, throwing a breezy little “Thanks” over her shoulder, and not waiting for a reply.

  It was another final meeting that would haunt her for the rest of her life.

  * * *

  Lucy’s own office was dark and oppressive. Gray metal desk, gray floors, and gray sky beyond the smoked glass. She had never seen it so dark and uninviting, and the bluish buzz of the fluorescent overheads didn’t do a thing to raise the mood.

  It didn’t matter. She’d be spending most of the next hour or two concentrating on her computer screen and her printer, and then she’d be gone for a while.

  She started to sit behind her desk when the sky beyond her window ripped in two along a wide, white, jagged crack between clouds. The flash made her look up. A heartbeat later the thunder was like a velvet fist thumping her in the chest.

  She stopped herself from sitting down and went to the window instead. This was one of the few indulgences she had allowed herself when designing and building the Tomas Rivera Agricultural Research Station. She had given her office the best view of the entire Valle de Los Hermanos, spread out before her like tangled skeins of earth-colored yarn, unraveling as it traveled south to the double peaks of The Brothers.

  At this time of day, she should be seeing the first chalky colors of sunset appearing in the western sky. The first few street lamps should be flickering on, and the light itself should be turning thick and gray, with a weight that would linger, patient as stone, until night crept up from the cracks in the earth and filled the Valle to its ridge crest.

  Tonight, there was no scattering of lighted windows, no watercolor gouache of salmon and pale blue above the mountains. There was only ink-black dark, punctuated by jolts of colorless brilliance and the instant visible/invisible scribble of power cables and telephone lines.

  She paused inside the window, so close she could feel the minute vibrations of the rain as each wind-driven drop made a tiny explosion against the glass. Her eyes widened when the lightning struck again, on the far side of the highway this time, and a little farther south, but from the same bank of dense, slow-moving clouds scudding low over the town. Five seconds passed…and another bolt struck on the near side of the highway, farther south, and then again, on the far side and farther away. Each strike was followed by another rumble of thunder; each report took a heartbeat longer to arrive than the one before as the front rolled away from her.

  “It’s like God walking,” she said entirely to herself. “If God was a spider made of lightning and thunder.”

  The last roll was almost subsonic. Lucy felt its vibration in her bones, in the soles of her feet. She knew that the same phenomenon would come again, probably within the hour. And again. And again, until the bizarre meteorological conditions that had turned Dos Hermanos into the bottom of a bucket made of mud dissipated. That was days away at best.

  She turned away from the window and looked at the clock on the far wall. 5:45.

  She set her jaw and took a deep breath. There was work to be done.

  Ten

  I should call her, he thought, staring blindly at the flatscreen embedded in the wall. See how she’s doing. Tell her we got home okay. He knew Rose had already texted her mother with that last bit of information; he’d seen her do it before she’d fled upstairs.

  It was painful and odd. He’d spent most of the last two years working very hard on not thinking about her, what she was doing, how she was getting along, especially after she had flatly refused his help, taken her name off all their joint accounts, and moved without leaving him a forwarding address. He had one e-mail address and one mobile number and that was it. She had made it clear in her terse e-mails that he didn’t deserve even that much, but there was Rose to think about.

  Now she was just a couple of miles away. Ten minutes on a regular day, an hour in this storm. And he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  “How much longer is this going to last?” he asked, pointing his chin at the curtain of rain falling beyond the patio window.

  “Three days,” Maggie said.

  “That long?”

  “At the very least,” Maggie told him. “None of the meteorological data has changed; if anything the situation’s solidified. It’s going to get very bad for the people down there, lower in the valley.”

  The news was almost cheering in one way. “Think the meeting will be canceled?”

  He could imagine her smiling. “Don’t get your hopes up. Nobody seems to know how bad this is going to get, or how fast. Tomorrow’s Friday, and it’s business as usual everywhere. School is in session, stores are open, and meetings are still scheduled. Even at VeriSil.”

  He scowled and stared out the sliding glass door at his flooding patio. “Damn,” he muttered. “For a second I thought this dark cloud might have a silver lining.”

  Maggie let him wallow for a moment, then cleared her disembodied throat. “All right, now, back to business,” she said, managing to sound brisk and affectionate at the same time. “You have roughly sixty minutes tomorrow morning to convince the Powers That Be that Everybody’s Assistant isn’t some massive boondoggle.”

&
nbsp; “More like five minutes,” he said, and put up a hand before she could disagree. “I know, I know, I’m scheduled for a full hour, but if I don’t hit them right between the eyes in the first five, I’m fish food.”

  “Indeed.”

  “That’s the problem, Maggie, the whole application is cumulative. That’s the miracle. It’s not made to hit you over the head; it’s made to fit in to your individual life.”

  “I think they call this ‘preaching to the choir,’ Ken.”

  He turned away from the black, stormy rectangle of the glass doors and picked up a tablet that was networked to the house system. “We’re way past the Turing Test here, Maggie. Charts won’t do it, infographics won’t do it. They have to get it right away, they have to understand, in the blink of an eye, and that’s hard. They’ve never even seen anything like this before.”

  “Haven’t they?”

  “No! Of course they haven’t! This isn’t some little candy-ass voice recognition program! This isn’t a fucking GPS with a plummy British accent. This…”

  He trailed off, thinking. Thinking.

  Getting it.

  There was a sudden metallic tic tic tic behind him, a completely new and different sound than the muted, rushing roar of the storm. He turned and saw a drowning man standing outside his patio door.

  “What the hell?”

  The man was Ken’s size, maybe a bit taller. He was standing inches from the glass, and he looked as if he’d climbed out of a swimming pool fully clothed. He was holding a dog leash without a dog at the other end, tapping the leash's metal tab against the glass in a rapid tattoo: tic tic tic.

  “Rex Tartaglione,” Maggie said. She pronounced it in the true Italian fashion, rolled r’s and everything: TarrrtaileeOWNay. Ken didn’t have the heart to correct her. “He’s our next door neighbor.”