Eye of the Sh*t Storm by Jackson Ford (most romantic novels .txt) 📕

Nic puffs out his cheeks. “Then this whole place is underwater, bud.”

“But… but what about the people? At the place where everyone was? The camp place?”

“They know it’s coming,” Nic tells him, “so they’re already getting out of the way.” He points to the groups of people streaming past us. “See?”

“But where are they gonna go?”

I’m thinking the same thing. Staring at the group of kids Annie spoke to, at the other people around us. Maybe I can help them. Maybe I can use my PK, bust down one of the flood barriers, clear a path or—

“Hey.” Annie grabs me by the shoulder, makes me look her in the eyes. “They are not our problem right now. Reggie is our problem. There’s not a thing you can do about no damn flash flood, and it looks like everybody got the message anyway.”

“But the bridge. Annie, it was us who—”

“Nope. You didn’t crash us, and you didn’t make the bridge collapse. That’s not on you.”

I’m about to argue with her, but she’s got a point. The flood will be bad… but it doesn’t look like it’s going to hurt anybody. It’ll wreck the camp under the freeway interchange, cause some damage, but that’s all.

Reggie’s in danger. As long as the people in the camp hustle, they’re not. Stopping to help… it won’t make any real difference.

“All right,” I say. “We double back. Find the first gap in the flood barriers, then—”

“Nah.” Annie points upriver. “We’re going that way.”

“You literally just told us there’s a giant flash flood coming from that direction.”

“I think…” She bites her lip. “No, I’m sure. The nearest flood exit to us is actually past the camp. I’m positive.”

“Then why is everybody else heading away from it?”

“Beats me. Maybe it’s bottlenecked – too many people trying to get out at once, so folks’re looking for alternatives. Doesn’t make a difference for us though. We go through the camp, pop out the river first chance we get. OK?”

It sounds crazy. It is crazy. But if Annie’s right, then it gives us more of what we need: time. Time to plan, to maybe scope out the park where the Zigzag Man wants to meet, plan… something better than the shitshow of a strategy we have now. If we double back, who knows how much time we’ll lose?

“You still want to do this?” Nic says to Leo.

Leo bites his lip, then nods. “I think so.”

“All right.” Annie starts walking. Fast. “It’s not far. Let’s move.”

FORTY-FIVEReggie

When Reggie opens her eyes, she’s back in Nemila.

She is sitting in a wooden chair, jagged splinters digging into her legs. Plastic zip ties bind her wrists to the arms of the chair, digging into her skin. Two more at her ankles. There is no other furniture in the room – just a single bulb, hanging from the roof. The room is deep in the basement of the farmhouse, the air stale and still.

No. It’s not real. It can’t be. We got out.

But she can taste the air, feel the splinters, the rigid hardness of the chair back digging into her spine.

I was going to the LA River. I was chasing Teagan. I wasn’t—

But she’s already turning her head to the right. She doesn’t want to, but she has no choice. And on the wall, just visible beneath the grime: the drawings. Ancient crayon, flowers and boats and castles, something that might be a bird floating free.

A scream begins to claw its way up Reggie’s throat, moving far too slowly, as if it knows it has all the time in the world. And oh, there are the footsteps outside the door, the heavy boots, the door creaking open, the men bringing jumper cables and fists as heavy as anchors, and the scream is in her mouth now and this time there will be no Moira Tanner coming to save her, not this time, she’s going to die here, she—

A woman’s voice, calm, speaking almost right next to her. “Clarify.”

Reggie snaps her head towards the sound, her breath coming in horrified gasps. The door is still opening, slowly, slowly.

“Rhetoric. Parallel. Window. Prospect.”

The colours in the drawing are starting to run together, the light from the ceiling bulb flickering and flaring.

“Triangle. Altitude. Zigzag. Zigzag. Zigzag.”

For the second time, Reggie gasps, choking awake, her eyes flying open.

She’s in an open space under a dark night sky, absent of stars. There’s the sense of clouds hanging low, and a very gentle drizzle is falling, the drops almost kissing her skin. Oh God, her head – it aches, throbbing with a sick, horrible pain. And she’s cold, too, her skin prickling and sensitive.

Grass underneath her. Dry, crackly. She’s desperate to roll over, get her bearings, but her body won’t cooperate. Where’s her chair? Where the hell is she? And what happened to Nemila? She was there, back in that room, the terror as fresh and clean as a scalpel cut.

“I’m sorry about that,” the woman says. “Sometimes, I don’t even know he’s doing it.”

Reggie snaps her head to the side. She can’t see the speaker from where she is. Instead there’s a man, sitting cross-legged a few feet away from her. He’s dressed in black, his face almost hidden underneath a gigantic mane of scraggly grey hair. Underneath his beard, his mouth is moving silently. Eyes closed, his head bowed, as if in prayer. His left hand rests on his knee, but the other slumps in the grass at his side.

The voice comes again, from somewhere behind her head. “I can sit you up, if you’d be more comfortable.”

The speaker is a woman – the woman who offered to help her, and who (the memory comes reluctantly, as if it doesn’t want to be pulled into the light) stuck something in her neck as they were approaching the slope.

Comfortable? Reggie has to bite down on the urge to yell at her, to scream. It won’t get anything done – and if she’s sitting up, if she could