Storm Surge (19 page)

Glory rolled
her eyes. “Whatever.” They had packed flashlights in their improvised
backpacks. Glory picked hers up and walked off down the hallways by the stairs,
looking for a bathroom.

“
There’s towels
in a closet at the top of the stairs,” Mercer
called out. He was rummaging in a cupboard by the door. He came out with a pack
of kitchen matches and a pair of squat round candles. As Glory came back around
and headed up the stairs, he placed the candle on a side table and lit it. He
started to hand it to Sharon,
then
stopped as he saw
the look on her face. “What?”

“So,” she
said, “you’ve been here before?”

“Yeah,” he
said. “Like I told you…”

“A
friend’s house, yeah.
People like us don’t have friends like this, Mercer. What’d you do, break in?
Rob the place?”

He gestured to
the shotgun she had leaned against the wall. “I needed a weapon.”

“You take
anything else that didn’t belong to you?”

He thought
about Kathy-with-a-K. “No,” he said, “Nothing else.” He walked over to the gun
cabinet and began taking shells out of the drawer. “Stay here,” he said. “Keep
the lights to a minimum.”

“Where are you
going?”

He picked up
the shotgun. “I’m going to go find out what the hell those people are doing.
What’s so important they’re willing to kill for
it.
”
He cracked the shotgun and loaded a pair of shells.

“And then
what?”

He snapped it
closed. “You know the answer to that.”

“You’re going
to kill them.”

“If
I can.”

“Because they
need killing,
”
 
she
said.

“Yes. You have
any objections?”

“Would it
matter,” she said, “or are you just being polite?”

“I’m just
being polite.”

“Then
no.
But what about
that flood out there?”

“This is
higher ground, so it should be okay for a while. We may have to move again.
We’ll deal with that when we come to it. In the meantime, I want to cut down
the number of threats we have to deal with.” He walked to the door. As he
turned the knob, he heard her say something. He turned back. “What?”

She was
looking away. “I said good luck.”

He nodded. “Thanks.”

He had
improvised a sling for the gun from some old strapping he’d found in a utility
closet. He slung it on his back and hefted his improvised spear as he headed
out into the storm again.
Me mighty hunter
, he thought wryly, feeling
slightly foolish. But he sobered quickly. Those were real monsters out there,
and they needed slaying.

He wouldn’t
have believed that the wind could have blown any harder, but it was. The sound
it made was an unending high pitched banshee scream, a hysterical, insane
shriek that went on and on and abraded his nerves like sandpaper on bare skin.
The blast as he stepped out from the shelter of the house knocked him sideways
and off his feet.
This is insane
, he thought as he staggered back
upright.
No one can go out in this. But
, he thought,
no one else
would be this crazy
. That trait, of being just a little crazier than anyone
suspected, had served him well through the years.

This time,
however, he was wrong. As he approached the crossroads of the main avenue, he
saw lights bobbing dimly through the rain ahead. He faded into the trees by the
side of the road and advanced slowly. Wind-whipped branches flogged him as he
slipped through the concealing brush. As he drew closer, he could make out a
strange parade staggering down the road.
First, a
ponchoed
figure, head down and straining against the wind,
a powerful flashlight trying vainly to illuminate the road ahead.
It
looked like an underwater spotlight in a swimming pool.
Then
two more figures, one in a poncho, the one behind in what looked like some kind
of flight suit.
They were carrying a coffin sized wooden crate between
them. The man behind, the one with no rain protection, looked dazed, stunned.
The final marcher in the parade was a man holding a submachine gun trained,
Mercer noticed, on the man in the flight suit. As they passed, Mercer realized
he’d seen the face before. It was the Deputy he’d seen in the days before the
storm, the one who they’d sent to make sure Pass Island was cleared of all
humanity. Mercer hadn’t ever had much use for cops, but Max hadn’t had any
problem with the guy. Now, however, it looked like the cop was a prisoner.
Sorry,
buddy
, Mercer thought,
looks like you played out of your league. Shit
happens.
Then he reconsidered. Another hand, another gun maybe, might be
useful.
If he could get the guy out of there.
He
considered the possibilities. There was only one man with a gun that he could
see. He could take the machine gunner with a quick rush.
Maybe.
Of course the other two might have
sidearms
, in which
case he’d be fucked. No, those odds were not ones Kyle Mercer was willing to
play. A little crazier than your opponent was one thing. Being a dumbass was
something else. He decided to follow and see what presented
itself
.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

They had
slapped
Bohler
awake,
the
stinging open handed blows shocking him slowly back to consciousness.

“Wake up,
Sunshine,” the obvious leader, the man who had dunked him, said. “Good for you
we’re a man short. You’ve got work to do. It’ll keep you alive a little
longer.” The man with the ruined voice had put his mask back on, and he kept
his gun trained on
Bohler
as the man who always
looked worried cut his cuffs off. The blonde woman leading, they had marched
him out into the storm and the gathering dark, up the road, to the Mayhew
construction site. Inside, the half-finished house was a shambles where wind
and water had entered, unopposed by door or window, and rampaged through. They
sloshed through inches of standing water on the lower level to an area where a
large crate rested on a crudely improvised workbench thrown together from
pressure-treated lumber and plywood. At the woman’s order,
Bohler
and the worried man hefted the crate down.
Bohler
felt like the sheer weight of the thing would pull his arms out of their
sockets. He didn’t dare complain, however. Back out into the storm they went.
Bohler
kept his head down, concentrating all his attention
on not dropping the crate. It seemed to take an eternity to make their way back
to the house. Inside, they hauled the crate awkwardly up the stairs, into the
wood-paneled room on the second floor. When they were done, the woman pushed
him away and picked up a crowbar that had been lying on the fancy mahogany
desk.
Bohler
stood dumbly and watched her begin
tearing at the lid of the crate, until he felt a tap on his shoulder. He
turned. The leader was there, holding a pistol a few inches from his head. He
held a pair of
zipcuffs
in his other hand. He was
smiling.

“You still
haven’t answered my question,” he said.

“You never
asked me any,”
Bohler
said, trying to keep his voice
steady.

“Oh yeah,” the
leader said, simulating chagrin, “I guess I forgot.” The smile vanished.
“Hands behind your back.”
Bohler
had a brief thought of trying for the gun. But the man with the funny voice was
a few feet away, water still flowing off him in tiny rivers onto the expensive
hardwood floors, the gun still pointed at
Bohler
. He
put his hands behind his back.
The leader zip-cuffed him
again, not too tight, but tight enough.
“Now,” he said, “Do we need to
go back to the tub?”

“You’re going
to kill me if I tell you,”
Bohler
said.

“Yes,” the
leader said, “I am. I’m not going to lie to you. Fact is, Barney Fife, you’re
going to die here, either way. But there are a lot of ways to die. Some of them
are quick, some, not so much. Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll make it
quick. Two in the
noggin,
and you’re on to whatever’s
next. Or you can stay here and spend the next few hours dying. And before you
do, you’ll still tell me what I want to know.
Now.
Who.
Are.
You.
Here.
For?”

Bohler’s
shoulders slumped. “Some people got
left behind.
A waitress from the club and her daughter.
We sent a Coast Guard chopper out here to pick them up.”

“We know about
them, Barney Fife,” the man said. “Tell me about the third person.
The man.”

Bohler
through for a moment.
What would be the harm in telling?
This Mercer character was a thug.
A hired gun.
He felt
a hand on his shoulder. “Okay, Barn,” the leader said. “Time to…”

“We think the
third person is a guy named Kyle Mercer,”
Bohler
blurted out.

“We?”

Bohler
swallowed. “One of the people on the
chopper with me was an FBI agent.”

“I see. And
why was the FBI interested in this Mercer?”

There was a
brief moment of distraction as the lights dimmed. A bright, harsh light filled
the room, throwing jittery shadows on the wall. There was a smell of burning
metal in the air and a crackling, hissing sound.
Bohler
turned instinctively towards the source of the light, only to have his chin
jerked back harshly by the leader’s hand.

“I probably
just saved you from burning out your eyes,” the leader said. “Whatever you do,
don’t look at that without eye protection.”

“Thanks,”
Bohler
said dryly.

“Hey,
bad enough to have to die without being blind when it happens.”
He took
Bohler
by the shoulder. “Come on in the other room.” He marched
Bohler
ahead of him. They paused at the door. “Montrose,” the leader said. That’s when
it really hit
Bohler
that he was going to die. He
realized that some foolish part of him had held out some hope of mercy. But
they wouldn’t be using names in front of someone who was going to make it out
of here alive. He felt his knees begin to shake.

“Yeah?” the
woman answered.

“You can make
the cut without damaging what’s inside, right?” the leader said.

“You want to
run the
fuckin
’ cutter, Blake?” Montrose said. Blake
didn’t answer. He guided
Bohler
out of the office and
into the master suite. The room was dimly lit by a pair of brass bedside lamps
on either side of an enormous raised bed against the wall.

“Okay,” he
said almost pleasantly, “why was the FBI after this Mercer character? Or do you
want another trip to the tub?”

“He was some
kind of contract hitter in Chicago,”
Bohler
said in a
low, defeated voice. “He killed a confidential informant working for the FBI.
They were into the Russian mob and Mercer killed one of their people. A guy
they’d flipped.”

“Ah,” Blake
said. He shook his head. “Unbelievable. One of the best soldiers I’ve ever
seen, taken out by a street thug. Guess anyone can get lucky.” He raised the
pistol. “Okay,” he said.
“Back to the tub.”

“No,”
Bohler
said, the panicked word escaping from between his
lips. He was able to stop himself from pleading “You promised.”

“Come on now,”
Blake said, like a mother trying to get a child to take his medicine. “It’ll
all be over before you know it.” He raised the gun. “Now move.”

This is it
,
Bohler
thought.
This is the end
. He was trying to be stoic, but the trembling
in his legs betrayed him and he staggered a little
as
turned and walked towards the bathroom. He tried hard to think of a prayer, but
all that his mind could grasp was the thought of going back in
their
, dying struggling, with his head held under the
water.

“I got to tell
you, Barney,” Blake said. “You’re a pretty pathetic excuse for a lawman.”

There was a
sudden darkness.

Surprisingly,
there was no pain.

Then, from the
darkness, out of the other room,
Bohler
heard a
curse. He realized he was still alive. The lights were out. He turned. A flash
of lightning outside leaked in around the shutters and dimly outlined Blake,
still standing before him, gun raised, but wavering.
Bohler
turned the rest of the way around, dropped his shoulder, and shoved forward
with his legs as hard as he could. His shoulder caught Blake in the gut and
knocked him backwards. The room was dark again as
Bohler
straightened up. “Mother FUCKER,” Blake’s voice came out of the darkness. The voice
was near the floor.
Bohler
realized he’d knocked the
man down. He advanced on where he’d heard the voice and kicked out as hard as
he could. He felt his foot connect with something hard. There was a cry more of
rage than pain, and he felt a hand brush against his foot an instant before he
pulled it back. He turned and stumbled awkwardly, his hands still bound behind
him, towards where memory told him the door must be. He crashed into the wall
face first, grunting with pain. Another flash of lightning showed him the door
a few inches to his right. He staggered sideways, heard the roar of the pistol
and the crack of splintering wood where he had been the moment before. Then he
was in the hallway. He could hear Blake roaring orders behind him.
Stairs
,
he thought.
Where are the stairs
? He put his shoulder and hip against
the wall, sliding down the hallway carefully. The wall ended abruptly and he
nearly overbalanced and went over the railing he could feel at his hip. He felt
with his feet till the railing ended and found the top riser of the stairs. He
got halfway down before his balance failed him and he crashed noisily down the
rest of the way. He landed on his face and felt his nose break with a sickening
crunch, then slid head-first the rest of the way down. He lay there for a
moment, stunned and disoriented in the darkness. Blood was pouring freely from
his shattered nose and his chest felt like someone had been pounding it with a
hammer. It was hard to get his breath. He realized dimly that there was a rectangle
of, not light, but less darkness across the room from him. The door facing the
beach was open. He could hear the wind howling through it, and some of the
windblown droplets of rain were reaching him, this far inside.
Who the hell
left the door…
.he thought, and then a flash of lightning limned a figure
standing in the doorway.
Bohler’s
heart sank. He
wasn’t going to get away. Then there was someone beside him, grabbing him by
the neck of his flight suit. “Come on,” a voice he didn’t recognize grunted as
he was hauled to his feet. “Get going.
Out the door.”
The man followed, still guiding
Bohler
by the scruff
of the neck. He felt something sawing at his cuffs,
then
they fell away. He almost wept with the relief, then the pain hit as
circulation returned to his wrists and he cried out. “Good,” the voice said.
“Make a lot of noise.” They were out the door then, and
Bohler
turned to face his rescuer. Even in the darkness, he recognized the face.
“Mercer,” he said.