Secrets of the Storm Page 4

  Little Jennifer had been the first – mewling, fat, stupid, cruel Little Jennifer. They hadn’t started looking for her for two days, because everyone was glad her yawping cream-pie face was finally gone. SHE was the one who had started it. SHE was the one who needed instruction the most.

  Then had come Terri. So pretty, so nice. That had not gone well at all. At all.

  Then came drippy, weepy, whiney, know-nothing Megan, who sat in the middle of the class and never answered a question, never raised a hand, never even squeezed out a fart for fear of being noticed. “I dunno,” she would always say when asked – asked ANYthing, asked her NAME: “I dunno. I dunno. I DUNNO.” She had been a drag on the class, TEACHER knew. A drag on the WORLD who would NEVER amount to anything unless she was absolutely FORCED to.

  Well, TEACHER was willing to take on the challenge. That was the job, after all, wasn’t it? To mold young minds, no matter how difficult. No matter how worthless and wasted and repellent and SICK …

  And it had already begun to work. Now, the minute TEACHER entered the classroom, Little Jennifer and Megan Katz straightened right up. They did their very best to be proper and obedient, because NOW they understood, NOW they knew: it mattered.

  “Hello, TEACHER,” they said together.

  TEACHER smiled, huge and radiant. “Well! That sounded much better this time! I see you’re finally learning.”

  And there was Katie, sitting in the front row, right where she had been chained into place. Her eyes were huge, her cheeks wet with tears. She needs a little extra attention, TEACHER realized. Poor thing. This was all so new to her. But she would come to understand. She would get it, soon enough.

  So: another HUGE smile from TEACHER, with lots and lots of teeth. “You see, Katie? You’re already a good influence.”

  Katie chose to speak. “Please Mi–”

  TEACHER’s hand came up like a snake and pinched deep into the pretty little girl’s cheeks, holding her tight, tight, tight.

  “You did not ask to speak, Katie.”

  The little girl’s eyes grew even larger and started to leak fat, slow tears

  “In this class,” TEACHER told her very very quietly, “you must always ask first. Do you understand?”

  Katie was obviously too frightened to move, so TEACHER asked her again, and shook the little girl’s head HARD with every word:

  “DO? YOU? UNDERSTAND?”

  “Stop it,” Katie pleaded. Her voice sounded all mushy, trapped between TEACHER’s fingers. “Please. Please. Stop it.”

  TEACHER held her in place for one moment longer … then released her as quickly as she had been taken. TEACHER took a step back and looked down at Katie, the great-huge smile back in place.

  “I'm sorry, girls,” TEACHER said to the other ones. “We need to do a little backtracking here for our new arrival.”

  TEACHER turned, seized a thick, cigar-shaped fragment of chalk, and began to write on the slightly warped and cracked blackboard. It had been salvaged from a store room where all the broken tools of education were waiting for disposal. “Let's all remember what happened to the other student …”

  The chalk went screeee, and the words appeared slowly, carefully, emphatically.

  TERRI

  “It seemed like such a good idea at the time,” TEACHER said. “She would have grown so much from supplemental instruction.”

  MULLICAN

  “But she just wasn't interested, was she? She just wouldn't join in. So what happened?”

  The children didn't dare answer. TEACHER's head snapped around. “What happened?”

  Megan whispered it, so softly it was barely audible. “She … left,” she said.

  “No,” TEACHER said, with an almost violent shake of the head. “No, no, no. She did not 'leave.' She did not 'disappear.' Let's be perfectly clear.”

  A thick line was drawn through the missing girl's name:

  TERRI MULLICAN

  “I killed her. Your Teacher KILLED her because she wouldn't LEARN. Because that's what happens to unruly, disobedient, ugly little girls. Is that clear? Is that crystal clear?” TEACHER drew another line through the name. And another. And another.

  The two girls who had been there a while answered very quickly. “Yes, TEACHER!” they said immediately.

  “Perfectly clear?”

  “YES, TEACHER!”

  That seemed to satisfy their captor. The chalk came down and fell back into its slot. TEACHER turned towards them, smile even more forced and flat than usual, and focused on their new arrival.

  “I’m not worried about you, though, Katie. You’re not like the others.” A hand, stippled with chalk dust, crept out to stroke the little girl’s hair. “That’s why I brought you here.” So very soft. So very kind. “We need to make these other girls see what’s right and wrong, don’t we? You need to help me. I know you will. I know.”

  TEACHER’s fingers tightened in Katie’s pretty brown hair and pulled – just a little, just enough to hurt. It was important to drive this point home. It was important to make an impression.

  “You like to help, don’t you, Katie?” Teacher's smile was genuine, affectionate, persuasive. “I know you like to help.”

  She wouldn't stop petting her. She wouldn't stop.

  “You’ve always liked being teacher’s pet.”

  Five

  The off ramp was a lot farther down Highway 161 than Tyler Briggs had expected. At least it felt that way. Every step had been a struggle. Between the wind punching him like a heavyweight contender and the constant, buzzing sting of the scratches – bites? – all over his body, it was a slow, painful trudge.

  Eventually a sign staggered out of the roiling gray mist. It seemed to shudder as it approached and told him what was coming: El Grande Avenue East-West. Three chaotic minutes later, the right side of the road eased away and the street faded into view.

  “About fucking time,” Ty muttered to himself. He could barely hear his own voice under the whining roar of the storm.

  The downslope wasn’t steep, but it was treacherous. He nearly slipped half a dozen times as he lumbered forward, more on his heels than his toes, until he made it to the bottom of the ramp. El Grande Avenue, two paved lanes, was a straight ninety-degree “T” not fifty feet in front of him, and off to one side, to his right, was exactly what he had been hoping for: the first gas station in Dos Hermanos.

  The pedestal sign at the corner read EL GRANDE GAS & AUTO. It was a crappy little place, a medium-big box covered in flaking white paint that badly needed a touch-up. Two ugly yellow no-name gas pumps, tech that was old in the ‘60s, split the driveway. The left-hand side of the station was the repair bay, punctured by a single rolling steel door that was already closed and locked against the storm. An oil-stained tow-truck – grimy even in the rain – was hunched in front of it. The right-hand side of the slightly saggy building was a run-down mini-mart with flickering neon logos in the windows and nothing whatever to recommend it.

  At that moment, it was the most beautiful thing Tyler Briggs had ever seen.

  He pushed through one side of the swinging glass doors into the mini-mart. As the doors fell shut the constant roar of the storm suddenly cut off, sharp as a knife-stroke. For an instant he sincerely thought he’d gone deaf … then he heard it in the background, almost distant now, still howling and pounding to get in.

  The blue-white fluorescent lights made him wince. The smell of stale chips and three-day-old burritos under the heat lamps made him gag. And still: it was all good.

  For the longest time he thought he was alone in the shop. Nothing moved. No one spoke. He let his eyes slide past the Doritos and the Slim Jims and the Val-Vo-Line to fall, finally, on the wide, flat, deeply creased face of a man hunched behind the counter.

  He was well past sixty years old, with a nose as big as a potato and tiny eyes that would have looked small on a pig. His hair was short but somehow still greasy. The top of his head had a hump in it, like he was wearing a hairy s
ea slug for a hat.

  “Hey,” Ty said. He gave him the standard man-to-man chin-lift. No threat here, he was telling him. We’re all friends.

  The man didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

  “Hell of a storm,” Ty said and stepped deeper into the store. He stopped at a rack of chips and dip, a more-than-safe distance from the ancient proprietor, and raised an eyebrow at the numbers stamped on each bag. This is one expensive hole in the wall, he told himself.

  The man still didn’t move or speak.

  Ty turned to him, hands at his side, fingers spread, palms out, clearly unarmed and uninterested in a fight. “Had a problem up there on the highway. Something came out of the rain. Ran me off the road.”

  Finally the man blinked. Very slowly. “Didn’t hear nothin’,” he said, his voice all gristle and phlegm.

  How could you? Ty thought. Storm’s screaming like an angry nun. “Still,” he said, shrugging carefully, “I was hoping I could get a tow. Maybe a change of clothes.” He picked at the ragged remains of his shirt. “These are kind of shot.”

  The man quirked his lips – not quite a smirk, not quite a frown. He said, “Some work shirts there at the back,” and began to rise off his stool. “$14.49 in XL.” Ty caught a glimpse of a name tag sewn onto the right breast of the man’s own dull blue work shirt: LEONARD. His wide, lumpy chest, ample belly, and too-tight khakis told Ty very little that surprised him about this old hick working the night shift at the First Chance Gas Station in this crappy little town. He had a feeling he already knew all he would ever need to know about the guy.

  Ty turned away and walked slowly towards the back of the store, letting his eyes wander from shelf to shelf. Thunder rumbled right above his head, so close and loud it made the ceiling shiver.

  “We don’t get a lotta niggers around here,” Leonard said to his retreating back.

  It didn’t even slow Ty down. “At these prices, I’m not surprised,” he said, just loud enough for the old shit to hear. He found the clothing on a shelf with other random tool-and-repair items, one level above some knock-off denim pants in something like his size. $29.99.

  He refocused on Leonard as he moved carefully back towards the counters, keeping a close eye on where the old man’s hands were. No reaching under the counter, dude, he thought. No goin’ for your Louisville Slugger or your sawed-off. Nothin’ here. No reason.

  “Tell you what,” he said, and a sudden, almost horizontal wave of rain rattled across the glass front windows like pellets shot from a BB gun. “Why don’t you ring this up and then we’ll talk about the tow.” He dropped the clothes on the counter with a plop and fished his wallet out of his half-shredded back pocket. He was more than a little glad he had managed to hang onto it during the crash, and twice as pissed he’d lost his phone at the same time. But it didn’t matter; he’d work something out.

  Leonard took the American Express Gold card with two fingers and examined it like it was a heretofore undiscovered alien artifact. He grunted, looking almost disappointed that it seemed real, and slipped it through the reader. Ty waited patiently.

  The machine went deet – a low, bad buzz instead of a high, happy beep. Ty suppressed a sigh.

  “Didn’t go through,” Leonard said, with a tone that said, Exactly as I expected.

  “There’s plenty in the account,” Ty said. “Try again?”

  Leonard leveled one rheumy eye at him and slid the card again. It took longer this time, but it gave the same answer: deet. “No good,” Leonard grunted. “Says the system’s down.”

  Ty straightened. “Okay, then. It didn’t decline, right? Storm must have knocked the lines down or something.”

  “Either way,” Leonard said, a hint of emotion creeping into his voice for the first time, “It didn’t go through. Can’t help you.”

  But if I was one of your butthole buddies from down by the tracks, Ty thought, or, hell, even just any white guy in a Budweiser Tee-shirt, buddy or not, you wouldn't have an issue, would you?

  “If I had my phone, I could show you money in the account,” he said. He’d done well on his last job, had at least six months of easy living in cash right now – it was one of the reasons he’d finally made the trip to Dos Hermanos, to get this thing done. He’d even be willing to show what was in his checking account to this ugly old hick. “I don’t suppose you’d let me use your …”

  The tilt-headed look from Leonard told him all that he needed to know and way too much more.

  “Yeah,” Ty said. “Didn’t think so.” He thought about it for a moment and then told himself, All right then. What the fuck.

  “Look,” he said, his voice low and measured. Lightning scattered across the clouds, close enough to dazzle, and thunder pushed at him not two seconds later. It didn’t seem to move Leonard at all, like violent rain storms were part for the course in ol’ Dos Hermanos, where it never, ever rained.

  He cleared his throat and tried again. “Look,” he said. “I need these clothes and I need to get my car towed out of a ditch.” He extended one arm, careful to do it to the side, still watching Leonard’s hands, and showed him the black-banded watch on his right wrist. “See this?” he said. He turned his arm to show him the face. Half of it was pale blue, like the sky; half was darker blue with stars. “This is an Itay Noy. Five thousand bucks if you can find one. You can look it up.”

  “Internet ain’t workin’.”

  “I’m telling you, man. Five thousand bucks. All I’m saying is, sell me the clothes, give me the tow, hold this as security. When the storm clears I’ll pay for it all and you can give it back. Okay?”

  Leonard just stared. His eyes flickered to the watch and back again. It was pretty cool.

  Ty saw the opening. He popped the buckle on the band with two fingers and laid it on the counter, its pretty face up and looking right at the greedy old man. The fat man huffed and pushed the clothes back across the counter. “Get dressed in the bathroom,” he said, motioning with his head towards a dirty, narrow door off to the left. “Then we’ll go get your car.”

  Yes.

  It took him five minutes to change out of his filthy, ruined clothes, wash the muck off his hands and face, and rejoin the old bigot in the main part of the store. He was sorry to let that watch go; he’d won it fair and square back in a Long Beach strip club three years ago, and hadn’t been tempted to part with it since, but now …

  I’ll get it back, he told himself. Storm’ll be over in a few hours, the internet will be back up. We’ll get this fixed. ‘Cause that’s what he did, right? He fixed things. That was his job.

  He found Leonard waiting for him at the double doors, wearing an Angels baseball cap and a frayed parka that was clearly meant for cold desert nights, not rain storms. No surprise, Ty thought. Who the hell would have a raincoat handy in this town? He held out a dirty canvas coat, the kind that highway workers had to wear in foul weather. Ty took it with a nod of thanks and shrugged it on over his scratchy new shirt.

  Leonard turned to eye the downpour, then lowered one shoulder to shove his way through the entrance. As he cracked open the door, a gust of wind threw a tidal wave of water against him, a giant tossing a fifty-gallon bucket out of the mist.

  “Fuck!” he said.

  Couldn’t have said it better myself, Ty agreed, and they both pushed their way into the storm.

  The tow truck was no more than fifty feet from the entrance, but it might as well have been a mile. Tyler was six-two and broad-chested; he’d made a living with his sheer size and strength for a lot of years before he got smart, but he still had to stay in shape, and none of it mattered when the first storm in Dos Hermanos in a hundred years hit him square in the face.

  It staggered him, and it literally drove Leonard the Bigot to his knees. Ty had to hunch his shoulders against the brutal force of it and brace himself just to stay upright, while raindrops hit what few inches of skin were still exposed with the stinging power of needles shot from a gun.

  He got one
hand under Leonard’s shoulder and helped him stand. The old man staggered under the pounding gale, but the instant he had his balance he jerked his arm out of Tyler’s grasp. Ty wondered if that was the first time he'd ever actually been touched by a black man.

  They forced their way forward together, almost shoulder to shoulder, and paused on the lee side of a stout old eucalyptus tree that offered very little real protection. Its branches, twenty feet overhead, were gesturing madly in the wind as if calling down the storm.

  The tow truck was glowing a dull gray, illuminated by the lights from the store and the single working fluorescent over the gas pumps. Ty tried not to look at the pumps: they were swaying and shuddering under the wind, and he didn’t want to think what could happen if one of them decided to pull loose and start spraying gas in every direction.

  The thick chain dangling off the back of the truck was swaying and twitching in the wind, the comically huge hook at its end dragging across the ground like a monster’s clawed tail. Leonard swayed his head towards Ty and bellowed, “GOTTA SECURE THAT! WAIT HERE!” then pushed himself through the storm to the back of his truck.

  Many times later, Tyler Briggs thought about that moment. What would have happened – or not happened – if he had said, “I’ll do it,” or if he’d simply joined the old man as he staggered to the back of the truck. But he didn’t. He let him go. He watched the scuffed navy blue back of the mechanic as he swayed through the storm, threw out a hand and snagged the chain and started to pull …

  … and then the thornwheels flew in.

  He didn’t know the name then; it didn’t come to him until sometime the next day. At that moment he barely recognized them as real.

  They spun out of the grayness, wheeling through the air. Some were no bigger than salad plates, others as large as a family-sized pizza platter. They were turning so quickly their surfaces were little more than a pebbly gray blur, and they came in a swarm, driven by the wind, wickering and sizzling as they flew.

  The first one thwacked into the side of the tow truck and shattered like glass. Their odd fragility made Ty think they were harmless; for an instant he thought they were just weird Frisbee-shaped tumbleweeds that could annoy you and nothing more. Then the next one soared in, a flying dinner plate that hit the trunk of the eucalyptus two feet above Ty's head and stuck there, bit into it, quivering with the power of its flight and the thrashing wind.