Storm Surge (16 page)

Sharon stopped
wiping the blood away. “What do you mean, you don’t have one?”

“I mean I
don’t have one. Not officially.”

“Who do you think
you are, Clint Eastwood?”

“Who?”
Glory said.

He shook his
head. “My parents died, right after I was born.”

“Both
of them?”

“Both
of them.”

“What was it,
a car wreck?” Glory said.

“No.” The
silence hung in the air,
then
he sighed. “Somebody
shot them.”

“My god,”
Glory said.

“But how does
that…” Sharon said, “I mean, why
couldn’t they
…”

“It happened
in a little rural hospital in Eastern Tennessee,” he said. “This guy and his
wife, or girlfriend, or whatever, walked in in the middle of the night. She was
in labor. He refused to give any details about who they were or what they were
doing there. But she was so far along, they had to do something. They took her
in the back and delivered the baby. Me. Twenty minutes after that, two men
walked into the front of the hospital, shot the man dead at the front desk,
then went into the back and shot the woman in her bed in the delivery room.
They also killed the doctor and one nurse, and wounded another nurse so badly
she spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair. Then they walked out.”

“Holy fuck,”
Glory said.

“Yeah.”

“Who were
they?” Sharon asked. She started cleaning the wound site again.

“No one knows.
The shooters walked out and disappeared. The man and woman didn’t have any I.D.
on them, or maybe the shooters took it. They found a car outside. It had been
stolen from a lot in Chicago.”

She had
finished wiping the blood away. The exit wound was a ragged red hole in the
hollow of his shoulder. Blood still flowed sluggishly from it. She picked up a
tube of antibiotic ointment and rubbed it onto her fingers. “Hold tight,” she
said, “this is going to hurt. Glory, cut me some strips off that tape.” Glory
picked up the blue and white metal roll and began unrolling the white adhesive
tape from it. Sharon began tenderly began rubbing the ointment into the area of
the wound. He sucked in his breath with a hiss. “Sorry. Sorry,” she whispered.

“It’s okay,”
he said.

Glory was
cutting off a long strip of tape. She stuck it to the table and began unrolling
another. “So what happened after? Why didn’t anyone ever name you? That’s
fucked up.”

“Yeah.
That’s one word for it,” Max said.
Sharon picked up a large gauze pad and began fastening it over the wound with
the strips of tape.

“When the cops
got there, they turned me over to Social Services. They never could locate any
relatives, so I grew up in foster care. Some families called me one thing. Some
decided they liked other names better.”

“Turn around,”
Sharon said. “Let me get the hole in your back.” She had finished bandaging the
front wound, but she was also grateful she didn’t have to see his face for a
few minutes. The detached, emotionless way he told the horror story of his life
was tearing at her heart.

He got up and
straddled the chair backwards, facing out into the darkness of the room, facing
to where the storm rattled and wailed and thundered and rattled the building.
“Years later,” he went on after a pause, “Somebody got around to telling me
where I came from. I headed down there to try and find out whatever I could.
The only birth certificate that was ever recorded for that date was in the name
of ‘Baby Boy Doe.”

“Fuck,” Glory
said.

“Honey,”
Sharon said, “I really wish you’d stop using that word.”

“For
chrissakes
, Mom,” Glory said. She turned to Max. “Why?”

“Why
what?”

“Why did your
parents get shot? What did they ever do?”

“Who knows?
Maybe they stole from the wrong people. Maybe they saw something they shouldn’t
have. Maybe they cut the wrong guy off at an intersection getting to the
hospital.”

He picked up
his shirt. One side was crusted with blood that looked black in the candle
light.

“You can’t
wear that,” Sharon said. “Let me check the break room. Maybe somebody has a
spare.” She got up and went in the back, carrying a candle for illumination.

The tiny break
room was right off the main kitchen. It was in more than the usual disarray,
with empty cups and glasses stacked in the sink and snack food wrappers on the
beat up table. She quickly located a spare shirt of Sonny’s hanging on the back
of the door. Max was stockier than Sonny, but it would have to do.

As she got
back to the door of the dining room, she head Glory’s voice. Something in her
tone made Sharon slow down and
listen
.

“That story
you told,” she was saying. “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”

Quietly, she
opened the door. Her daughter was standing next to Max, her hand on his
shoulder. Her eyes were glistening with tears.

“Yeah?
Well, you’re still young,” Max said.
“Stick around. You’ll hear worse.”

“Glory,”
Sharon
said,
her voice sharp with apprehension. “Go in
the kitchen and see if they left anything we can eat.”

Glory looked
up, startled. She picked up the flashlight.
“Yeah.
Okay.” She brushed past Sharon on her way into the kitchen. Sharon walked over
and handed the shirt to Max.

“Thanks,” he
said. He tried to pull it on. It wouldn’t close in the front. He grimaced.
“Guess this’ll have to do,” he said.

“Max,” Sharon
said. “She’s only fourteen.”

He looked
startled. “What?”

“Glory.
She’s a child, Max. Let her alone.”

Realization
dawned on his face. “You think
I
…” he stood up, his
mouth tight with anger. “That’s what you think of me.” It was a statement, not
a question.

“I saw the way
she was looking at you.”

“Maybe that’s
something you need to talk to her about.” He turned away. “Jesus.”

“Okay,” she
said. “I’m sorry.”

He turned back
to her. “I’m not what you or anyone would call a good man, Sharon. I’ve done
some things I don’t think you’d come anywhere near approving of. Hell, I can
tell right now you didn’t approve of what I did to that animal
who
was getting ready to rape and murder you.”

“It wasn’t
that you stopped him,” she said, her voice trembling. “It was…the way you did
it. And the way you looked afterward.
Like it didn’t bother
you.”

“It didn’t.
Not one bit. He needed killing.”

“And the way
you say that. It scares me.”

“Good,” he
said. “It ought to. I’m a scary guy, Sharon. I know that. I come out of a place
you should never have to even know about. But those people out there…” he
gestured towards the storm outside. “They come from the same place, or some
place a lot like it. And
there’s
more of them, and
they’re better armed. About the best chance you and your daughter have of
surviving this, assuming that storm out there doesn’t kill us, is to trust me.”

“Why should I
trust you?” she demanded. “You won’t even tell us your name!”

“I already
told you…”

“Well, you
have to call yourself something!”

He shook his
head. “Okay,” he said.
“If that’s all you want to know…my
name’s Kyle Mercer.
I used to live in Chicago.”

“How do I know
that’s even true?” she whispered.

“You don’t. So
what does it matter?”

She shook her
head. “It’s just that…you wear so many faces. You change so much. One minute
you’re this nice guy that works at the marina and rescues cats, the next,
you’re this guy who kills someone with no more emotion than swatting a fly.
It’s like you’ve got some kind of split personality.”

“I’m not that
much different from you, Sharon.”

“Oh,
yeah.
Right.”

“Think about
it. When you’re here, waiting on customers.
When you were at
that school.
When you’re with your daughter.
Don’t you wear different faces? Don’t you show everyone different sides of
yourself?”

“None of my
sides ever buried a meat cleaver in a man’s head.”

“You never
needed a side like that. But now might be a good time to start developing one.”

“No,” she
said, “I can’t be like you.”

“You already
pointed a shotgun at a man’s face and pulled the trigger.”

“I did what I
had to.”

He gave her a
smile that sent something that felt very much like a rivulet of ice water down
her back. “That’s how it starts.”

The kitchen
door opened. Glory was standing with a platter in her hand. It was piled high
with sandwiches. She stopped when she saw the two of them standing there. “I
found some leftover roast beef,” she said. “I think it’s still good.”

“Just set it
on the table, honey,” Sharon said, trying hard to keep her voice normal.

“I’ll be back
in a minute,” Mercer said. “I’m going to check the front.”

“Do you think
they’ll find us here?” Sharon said.

“Not right
away. I don’t think they’ll move again on us in this storm. I think they’ll
wait for the eye to pass over before they head out.” He held out his hand for
the flashlight. “But I’m not taking any chances.” Glory handed the flashlight
to him, looking uncertain. He walked off into the darkness.

“What’s the
matter?” Glory said. “He seemed kind of upset. What’s wrong with him?”

“More than
either of us
know
, I think. In fact, I think he’s got
some serious issues.”

“He saved our
lives, Mom,” Glory said. “He’s a total bad-ass.” She grinned. “And so were you.
You really unloaded on that guy.”

“Glory,”
Sharon said. “This isn’t a game. There are some really dangerous people here.”

“And you’re
one of them, Mom.”

“Eat your
sandwich, honey,” Sharon sighed.

The sandwiches
were dry; Glory had wisely decided not to trust the mayonnaise she’d found in
one of the coolers. They washed them down with warm tap water. Mercer was back
when they were half finished. His face was grim.

“We’ve got a
problem,” he said.

CHAPTER FORTY

They had
filled the bathtub with seawater brought up in buckets from the beach. The
lights were on in the rest of the house, but the bathroom was lit only by the
harsh beams of their flashlights that always seemed to be shining painfully
into his eyes.
Bohler
hadn’t gotten a good look at
any of their faces, but he had heard them conversing in low, worried voices as
they discussed the advancing tide. He knew what they were talking about. He and
his evacuation team had been briefed about it by a professor from Duke
University whose calm, matter of fact delivery had made what he was describing
even more terrifying. But the advancing tides, he thought, were nothing
compared to what was going to happen when the surge hit. The storm surge, a
ridge of water blown by the wind and sucked up by the low air pressure at the
heart of the hurricane, would push the ocean up and over the island. And they
wouldn’t have time to sit around and talk about it when it happened.

But as he sat
on the bathroom floor, his arms bound behind him with a pair of plastic flex
cuffs,
Bohler
figured he wouldn’t be around to see
that happen. He didn’t think they were filling the tub to give him a relaxing
bath.
Damn shame though
, he thought with a slight edge of hysterical
laughter. It was the nicest bathroom he’d ever seen. Huge raised tub, gold
fittings…

“Okay,” the
man who seemed to be the leader spoke up as one of his captors dumped a bucket
of water in the tub. “That should be enough.” He put down the machine gun he’d
been holding on
Bohler
and walked over to where he
sat. He grabbed
Bohler
by the collar of his flight
suit and hauled him up to his knees next to the tub.

“It’s
possible,” the leader said, “that you’ll answer my questions without me having
to do this.” He thrust
Bohler’s
head and shoulders up
and over the edge of the big porcelain tub and plunged his head beneath the
water.

Bolher
barely had time to take and hold a
deep breath before the sting of the salt water was up his nose and in his eyes.
He tried to stay calm, tried to make the oxygen in his lungs last as long as he
could. But eventually, he felt the building panic, the increasing urgency, the
desire to take a deep breath. It built and built until it was an overwhelming
ache in his chest. Still he held on, knowing that to give in, to cave to that
yearning to just inhale, would be to suck the harsh salt water into him. And
that would be the end. He felt his focus narrowing, all other thoughts shutting
down, until there was only the all-encompassing impulse to breathe. Bright
lights began flashing at the edge of his consciousness. Finally, he gave up.
His last coherent thought before the final surrender was the phrase he’d heard
so often in Sunday school as he grew up, the last words of Christ: “Father into
your hands I commend my spirit…” He hoped it was all true. Before he could find
out, however, his head was yanked back.