The Deluge, page 97
Behind the church are the storm doors with a combination padlock. You quickly twist and alight on the numbers of the code, snapping it open. You ease one of the doors open. It squeaks slightly as you lift it, and you wince, setting it down in the grass. You use the screen of the burner phone to find your way down the steps and through the darkness of the basement. When you get up the stairs to the door that leads into the reverend’s office, you wait and listen. Nothing. You put your ear to it. There are voices, but not from the office, you’re sure. Easing the door open, you can see the room is empty. You also see Ginna’s scarf draped over one of the chairs and a mug of tea on the reverend’s desk, the string and little square of paper hanging out. The office door is ajar and through it, filtering down the hallway from the main part of the church, you can hear voices. You listen for the reverend or Ginna, but these are all men chuckling to themselves and one talking loudly—something about a car running poorly. You close your eyes and breathe. Maybe the Andrades heard the cars coming up the driveway and knew well enough to run. As quietly as you can, you creep to the office door and down the hallway that leads through the changing room to the pulpit. The lights in the hallway are all off, as well as the array of LEDs that light up the pulpit, which means you can peak your head around the corner of the doorway and remain shrouded in darkness. You hope. Centimeter by centimeter, you slide your skull past the door’s frame until you expose one eye to the scene beyond.
A sallow light bulb beams down on the pews. There are seven men milling around the sanctuary, three sitting and four standing. One is Morgan Schembari, who’s on the phone. One is Dick Underwood, wearing fatigues and black boots, an American flag patch on one shoulder, rifle slung around the other. Another man is taking pictures with his phone, and what they’re taking pictures of—your mind can’t quite wrap around it at first.
Ginna Andrade is naked and sitting up in the front pew, her breasts drooping, her legs splayed. There is an ugly wound on the front of her head and blood draining into her bullet-scrambled eyes. Two of the men pose with her, grinning. Some of the blood has trickled down her neck and chest. Her clothes lie piled near the pulpit but her socks are still on. They are gray and bunched around her ankles. And yet Ginna made it free of this life well enough compared to her husband. Reverend Andrade sways upside down, dripping. A rope, strung up over one of the ceiling’s joists, has him by the ankles, so that his arms dangle a few feet off the ground. You gag at the sight, hold in the vomit that hurtles to the top of your throat, and continue staring because, again, it’s taking you so long to make sense of what has happened here. He too is naked, but not just naked of his clothes. His skin has been stripped off, cut away with knives, one of which someone has stabbed into the meat of his thigh muscle and another which protrudes from the top of a pew. There are chunks of knotty flesh everywhere and blood pooling beneath the reverend’s wet black hair. Like Raquel’s dogs, his skinless body has a pearlescent sheen. His face is no longer recognizable because they’ve cut off his nose. There’s a hole between his legs where they did the same to his genitals, all these pieces of him stomped by boots and dragged across the same aisle you walk down with your son and wife to pray each week.
Underwood is pacing with his assault rifle. Schembari is talking solemnly into his phone. You recognize another man because he’s wearing a shirt with the sleeves cut off, and you can see the dragon tattoo on his shoulder.
“Now, I was trying to be decent about it, I really was,” says Schembari, rubbing his baldness in exasperation, “but that car still isn’t running right, and we had to send Tyler back home with it.” He waits for a reply. “All right, but just let me know that you’re getting it taken care of, that’s all I’m asking. And make sure he knows that these mechanics, some of them straight up just aren’t worth a single solitary fuck.”
The men finish taking their pictures with Ginna Andrade and crowd around the cameraman to judge the results. No one appears much interested in the body suspended by a rope from the crossbeam. Underwood steps around it like it’s a low-hanging decoration. The man who took the picture, you realize, is a police officer. He once manned a checkpoint and nearly caught you for driving drunk.
“Even if it was a timing belt,” Schembari goes on, “we really needed that other vehicle tonight.”
You realize you haven’t exhaled in nearly a minute and slowly peel your head away from the light. You stand with your back to the wall for a moment, your eyes closed, just breathing. Then carefully and quietly, you make your way back through the hall, the reverend’s office, and the basement. Out into the night, you take a wide berth through the woods until you’re sure you’re clear of the man in the balaclava sitting in the car.
Then you run. As hard and fast as you’ve ever run in your life.
* * *
A vortex has opened, and at its entrance, at the end of all possible things, there is a constellation of all the souls that ever were or will be. Every spirit must travel this path and into this dark wound. You try to take solace in that. As you drive through the night, your son asleep, your wife peeling her nails apart in silent terror, you try to remind yourself that what you saw in the church, a version of such a fate, the fear, the unknowing, the violence, awaits everybody. It is all too normal.
The highway is empty at this hour, but you sweat every pair of headlights in your rearview and white-knuckle the wheel until the vehicle passes. You try to keep it under ninety in case there are any state troopers not yet laid off still looking to write a ticket. You didn’t need to do any begging to get Casey to lend you the truck. Simply took him out of the diner and told him what you saw. You just needed to get your family safe and told him exactly where he could pick it up.
Bombing through the darkness, the truck shuddering with speed, it’s two and a half hours to Dayton. You do see one bizarre thing, this billboard, awash in light. Its panels are slightly skewed as if pasted up hastily before the rogue artists fled. Blue lettering on a black background, and all it says is:
KATE MORRIS IS ALIVE AND WILD
It’s another fifty minutes to Trotwood. Your mom’s place is the same lawn well kept, same flower boxes beneath the windows, same American flag above the porch, same junked neighborhood. She’s of course surprised to see you and the family.
“What’s going on, Johnny?” she asks as Raquel takes Toby back to your old bedroom to put him to sleep, reassuring him that things are not as scary as they seem right now.
“Too much to explain. Things got bad in Coshocton. We had to leave.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“Yeah, Mom, in the middle of the night.” You check the time on the microwave: 4:25 a.m. It’s got to be at least three hours to the plaza at the tiptop of the state. “And I gotta get going.”
“What are you talking about?” Raquel has come back into the room. Her eyes are bloodshot, her hair a starchy mess. “Where you going?” she asks. “Middle of the night, and where the hell you gotta be?”
“It’s that job, I told you.”
“Now?”
“It’s gotta be now.”
“No.” She shakes her head furiously. “No. You need to stay here with me and your son—”
You take her hand. Into it, you slip the scrap of paper with the account number and the password.
“Don’t lose this. It’s only fifty dollars now, but soon it’s gonna be nine grand. Then it’ll keep going up until it reaches fifty thousand. Whatever you do, do not lose this.”
Instead of looking happy, she starts crying. “Keeper, please. Baby, you’re scaring the hell out of me.” She puts her palms on the back of your head to cradle your skull. You kiss the hot brown skin beneath her eyes and hate yourself for being unable to protect her. “Please tell me what’s happening.”
“Just in case. I want you to have it just in case.”
“In case of what?” she demands.
“And no matter what, do not go back home. You can’t ever go back there. Promise me.”
“This is really not normal, Johnny. This is all very strange,” says your mother.
Then Toby is standing in the hallway in just his underwear and a T-shirt. He’s signing too fast for you to understand but you catch a few words: Dad. Stay. Please. Dad.
“Okay, little man, okay.” You go to him and pick him up. His thin arms wrap around your neck and he buries his head against your chest. Like he’s been dreading this moment ever since you came home from prison, like he knew at some point you’d go away again. And for whatever reason he loves you. Even though you are angry and full of hate and anxiety and fear, he loves you. You stroke his hair.
“It’s okay, buddy. We’re okay.” You feel his tears on your palm, and you try to sign to him as best you can, but you’re so elementary. “I’m just going to do a job, Toby. I’m going to do some work and get paid, so we can finally go someplace nice, you know? Nothing to be afraid of. We’re just having a weird day.”
He pulls away to sign Very weird.
“Yeah.” You snort back tears and laugh. “Too weird. Be good for Mommy. Listen to her and Grandma. Okay?”
He nods, not done crying, and you hug him again, kiss the top of his dirty head.
“You’re such an amazing kid, you know? You’re my whole life, little man.”
Your voice cracks, holding your boy. Your mom looks confused. Raquel joins the two of you in the embrace. You kiss her and thank her for never giving up on you. The feeling you’ve had your whole life, that no one gives a shit whether you’re alive or dead, hurt or healthy, in danger or safe, hungry or fed, Raquel’s the only one who’s made it recede for any length of time. It makes you insane, if Casey hadn’t warned you, to think of what could’ve happened. When you close your eyes to kiss her, you see Ginna naked with a black hole in her forehead and the reverend upside down, dripping. They wanted you, you understand, not because you’re important but because of how easily you can be squashed.
“I’ve gotta go.” And you pull away from your family. You take the truck’s keys from your pocket, wipe snot on your sleeve. Soon you are back on the road, telling yourself you can turn around anytime you want. You can always call it off. You can always go back.
* * *
You haul ass north, hitting traffic outside Dayton. No jobs to be had, but everyone still has a reason to be somewhere in this exhausted hour of the morning. When you realize you’ll be late, you begin to sweat. If you miss this opportunity, you have no idea what you’ll do. Your mom lives on pennies. You and Raquel have nothing but the clothes on your back. You have no friends, no network, no place left to run.
You make it to the Commodore Perry Service Plaza by 8:30 a.m., desperately scanning the parking lot, unsure of who you’re supposed to be looking for. You leave the key under the seat for Casey and step into the heat of the morning. It’s already in the eighties and the sky is a hazy white. A storm on the way. You can tell by the way the wind is flipping the leaves. You walk across the parking lot, looking for what you’re not sure. It’s relatively busy at this hour; early-morning travelers buying coffee and snacks. Everyone looks tired or on edge. Maybe that’s just you. You’re headed inside when a woman’s voice calls to you from behind.
“John.”
This is not who you expected. She’s middle-aged and pretty in a wealthy kind of way. Pert, angular features with fashionable ARs hovering over severe gray eyes. She wears a loose pink top, and her hands are tucked into black-and-white checkered pants. Overdressed for this hot Ohio rest stop.
“We’re over here,” she says, gesturing with her head to a plain white cargo van, the kind without windows in the back.
You hesitate. You see a driver behind the wheel, a Black guy craning his neck to get a look at you.
“I need to know more.”
“Sure, we can talk in the van.”
“No. Out here.”
She looks around. “Hard to tell who’s listening out here.”
“I want the first nine grand up front.”
She pouts her lower lip. Removes a phone from her back pocket. “No problem. It’s done.” She punches a few keys and then holds the phone up to show you. A transfer to the bank with your account. The number now a satisfactory four figures. “You don’t have to worry about the money. If you do the work, you’ll be fairly compensated. Exactly as you were told.”
“I want something else,” you say, and though you hadn’t planned to ask for this, here it comes all the same. “I want the same deal for a woman named Claire Ann Chickering. Last I heard she was living in Hamilton, Ohio. I want the same deal for her. An account. Fifty K. The whole thing.”
The woman regards you. “That wasn’t the deal.”
“It’s the deal now. Or I walk away.”
“Who is she?”
“Don’t matter fuck-all who she is. She gets the fifty K too. Not split. Fifty K for her, fifty K for Raquel and Toby.”
“Now we’re negotiating?”
“Call it what you want, lady.”
Her eyes wander the parking lot. This might be nervousness, but she’s so icy it’s hard to tell.
“Tell you what: You get in the van, we set up another account. You do what we ask of you, without hesitation and without question, Claire Ann’s in. If not, no baby mamas get anything, and we put a bullet in your head. Fair enough?”
You hock back snot. “Figured that part anyway.” And you brush past her, the door of the van opening for you as you approach.
* * *
On the road, these folks make their introductions. The blond woman is Quinn. The driver is Kai. And there is another guy, a little white kid named Henry. He’s even shorter than you, dressed in an Abercrombie T-shirt and tan cargo shorts exposing pale, twig shins. He has crooked yellow teeth, acne on his neck, and says hi nervously, eagerly. He’s very pleased to make your acquaintance, he says. The van is hollowed out with bucket seats attached to one side. When Kai pulls back out on the highway, you look past Henry’s head through the little mesh window and spot the signs for Cleveland. Quinn makes a call, which essentially boils down to “We’re on our way.”
“Are you going to tell us what we’re doing?” Henry asks. Only now do you realize he’s like you. He doesn’t know any of these people you’re dealing with.
“We have to meet up with some friends,” says Quinn. “It’s better if we go over the plan then.”
“All I’m trying to do is fight the man and get paid! Know what I’m saying!” Henry laughs far too hard, far too loud, and for far too long. He’s painfully young, maybe not even old enough to buy a drink. You ride on in a lot of silence. After a while you realize Kai is skirting Cleveland, heading downstate on one of the north-south highways. Irrationally, you wonder if they’re taking you back to the church, if this was all a complex ruse to hang you by your ankles while hungry men scrape your skin off with KA-BAR knives. This passes, and you’re so exhausted you finally doze.
When you wake, it’s because the van has stopped. The door is open, and you hear Kai and Quinn talking. Henry is outside as well, all three of them staring at something. The wind blows outrageously, watering your eyes. The sky is as green as the summer leaves.
“How long to get around this?” Quinn asks.
“Two hours, maybe more,” says Kai.
And as you hop out, you can’t believe they’re talking about it so calmly. The van is stopped on a bridge spanning a deep, green valley. There is a traffic jam ahead and then—nothing but air. The bridge has collapsed, the road simply vanishing over the brim, and across the rift is the scar of concrete and rebar on the other side, still held aloft by massive cement pillars as tall and thick as buildings. There is forty feet of empty space where the highway used to be with cars and trucks stopped on either side of the void. Some folks are turning around. Others are waiting, as if the road will magically stitch itself back together. While Kai and Quinn debate, you walk up to peer over. Hundreds of feet below, huge chunks of concrete rubble lie at the bottom of the valley. The fender of a truck is poking out. You stumble back, dizzy.
“What do you think happened?” Henry asks.
“Bombs,” says Kai. “They were hitting bridges in the South too.”
“Who was?”
Kai shakes his head. “APL, The Pastor’s freelancers. Who knows at this point.”
There are more vehicles at the bottom of the valley buried under the wreckage, leaking fluid, people possibly alive praying for EMTs or at least Prion search and rescue. Maybe they’d been caught in the blast or maybe they’d driven right over the edge. No one had come along to so much as put up an orange cone.
“C’mon,” said Quinn. “We’re going to be way behind now.
She ushers you into the van, so you can head back the way you came.
* * *
The detour takes over an hour, and while navigating crumbling county roads, the storm finally breaks. You’ve seen hail maybe a handful of times in your life, but never like this. It begins crackling across the roof, the big white stones thwacking the windshield, some the size of golf balls. Traffic has slowed, red taillights stretching ahead and the oncoming white blurred by the storm. Many have pulled over under the safety of overpasses.
“Got a tornado warning too,” says Kai. “Severe weather from here down to Georgia.”
Quinn flares her nostrils. “Goddamnit,” she hisses. Then with a strange, begrudging smile admits, “There is some humor in this, I guess.”
Kai takes the next exit and pulls into the first charge station, where you’ll wait until the supercell passes. You bum a cigarette off Quinn and stand under the station’s vast awning watching the hail slam. A few of the bigger crystals are leaving small dents in the metal of the cars, the sound somewhere between a waterfall and a war. You almost tell her about Reverend Andrade and his wife, but something stops you. You want to trust her, you realize, because you’ve put your family and your future in her hands. But this is not an actual reason to trust her. Instead, you ask, “Why’d you want me? For whatever this is? Would’ve thought I’d be toxic to you.”
