The Resurrected Compendium (6 page)

What the…?

Automatically, Marnie reached for the weather radio and clicked it on. The robotic, modulated voice spoke at regular intervals, telling her the time and temperature, the projected forecast for the the rest of the evening and the next day. She watched from the window as the wind picked up again, kicking at some trash that had come free of the pails at the end of the driveway. No word of a storm. No hint, no warning, no watch.

Here in Oklahoma, tornado watches were a simple part of life. Her grandparents had built the storm cellar for just that reason. As a kid, she and her cousins had played in that cellar, even though they weren’t supposed to. They’d snuck inside the dark, cool concrete walls and let the heavy doors settle down over them, making everything dark. They’d lit flashlights and told ghost stories, scaring each other into paroxysms of terrified giggles. When she was a little older, she’d taken her boyfriends in there to make out for hours on the hard cots covered with scratchy, olive-green Army blankets. She’d lost her virginity in that storm shelter.

She’d never actually had to use it to protect herself from a tornado.

The swirling breeze dissipated, but Marnie’d been so taken up with watching it that she hadn’t noticed she’d gone out onto the back porch to get a closer look. She strained her eyes into the night, listening for sirens or the rushing roar of an oncoming storm. Again, nothing.

But she smelled something. Something sweet crept into her nostrils from under the still-cloying stink of pork-n-beans and the faint odor of Tony’s cigars — the ones she didn’t truly mind but had relegated to the barn as one more way to make him tired of her. She paused, one hand on the porch railing, and lifted her face to the night air.

Of all the changes she’d noticed during this pregnancy, her sense of smell was the most enhanced. She’d become super sensitive not only to different smells, but differing gradations of odor. She could determine by smell alone not only if the milk had spoiled, but if it was going to go sour within the next day or so.
 
Strangers passed her and she could tell not only what kind of laundry detergent they’d used, but how long ago they’d washed their clothes. Their perfumes and soaps and deodorants…and how long ago they’d applied them. She’d been living in a hell of stenches, and even good smells had become so overpowering they turned her stomach.

Now…this.

She didn’t know what it was, only that the light fragrance reminded her something of flowers, something like perfume, a little bit like the tanning oil she’d worn as a kid back in the days before she worried about skin cancer. Marnie breathed in deep. Then again. The scent, whatever it was, filled her up inside, all the way, in every nook and cranny, every crevice. Every nerve. She breathed it in, and for the first time in months, didn’t feel sick to her stomach or infuriated. She didn’t feel the simple and bone-deep disappointment her choices had brought her.
 

The smell faded and disappeared.
 

Her fury was never sudden any more. It was always there, barely below the surface, ready to boil up and out of her for any reason. That ceaseless, simmering anger was the reason why she had a mess on her kitchen floor and why she flung open the back door now and took two thumping steps onto the back porch.
 

Everything had gone still. Dead silence. Not even the puff of a breeze. Marnie went out into the yard, her feet whispering in the grass, face tipped to the sky as she tried to find more of that delicious scent. Suddenly it was all she could think about.
 

It was gone. She concentrated, moving slowly because the great, vast bulk of her body wouldn’t let her move faster than that. She didn’t know what she was looking for, only that she had to find it…had to figure out what it was…

And then the storm came. First with the spang of hail clattering onto the house and barn roofs and clanging off Tony’s pickup truck. A few small hailstones hit her bare arms, stinging, and Marnie muttered another string of curses as she covered her head instinctively. Bigger hail followed a moment after that, and a pang of real fear shot through her. Hail that could dent metal would have no trouble also doing worse to her skull.

The wind came next, no soft breeze this time but the force of a pushing hand, so hard it made her stumble. She went to her hands and knees in the grass, her nightgown tangling around her legs. Her fingers fisted in the dirt for a moment. The skies opened, pouring rain. Lightning flared with thunder so close on the flash it was like they happened at the same time — shit, maybe it was simultaneous. The storm was so close over her the lightning might even be striking the rod settled on the barn roof.

She had to get inside. With nothing to grab to help herself up, the best she could do was roll herself onto her feet and push. Her belly was in the way. Her sodden nightgown clung to her and her hair had fallen in her face, making it even harder to see, much less move. Still, Marnie got to her feet with the roar of the wind in her ears so loud she couldn’t even hear herself scream.

Another crack of lightning connected the sky to the earth and lit the yard. It hit so close the metal fillings in her teeth twanged — for an instant she swore she heard the rise and fall of that preacher’s voice, the one who was set up in his tent a few miles from here, the one who did that radio program Tony found so fascinating. Then it was gone, replaced by a sound that wasn’t so much the noise of a chuffing train but more like a furious scream.

Another flash painted everything in a blue-white glare, and she saw the snake in the sky.

Somehow, she got herself moving. Not to the house, not to the barn, but toward the side yard where the metal doors lay snug against the ground with a few stakes tied with orange ribbons surrounding them to remind Tony not to run them over with the mower. Cyclone cellar, just like the one in the Wizard of Oz, the place she’d snuck into with her cousins and her boyfriends, the one she’d never needed before.

She needed it now, Marnie thought as she pushed her unwieldy body to run on rain-slippery grass and prayed to whatever God would have her that she wouldn’t fall. She’d never get back up. Her bare foot hit something sharp that sliced, the pain instant and huge. When she screamed, her mouth filled up with rain. She spat it out and refused to fall.

Her fingers scrabbled against the metal. She broke a nail. No time to curse now, though the pain of ruining her manicure was worse than the discomfort in her finger. She didn’t remember the doors being so heavy. She’d imagined flinging them open, but could barely lift even one. Bracing her feet against the concrete rim around the doors, Marnie pulled, hard. Harder. Her hands slipped, and for one endless moment she knew she was going to go flying onto her back. At the last second, another nail broke as her fingertips caught and the door eased open.
 

She was smart enough not to shove her fingers into the wedge of space between the doors, even as she wasn’t convinced she’d be able to keep it open. Another hard tug, this one wrenching her back. Then one more, and the door finally heaved open far enough that the weight of it started tipping it all the way open.
 

No, no, not that, she’d never be able to close it again. “C’mon, you bastard.” The words gritted out, unheard over the storm.
 

Somehow Marnie got herself inside the doorway and down the first few concrete steps, twisting as she did to keep the door from coming down and hitting her in the head. That wouldn’t just knock her down the stairs, it would probably kill her…and no matter how many times she’d thought anything would be better than the life she’d made for herself, she didn’t want to die.

Grunting, her arms trembling, she managed to lower the door a few inches over her head before she ducked out of the way and let it close. The silence wasn’t deep, but it was immediate. The doors muffled the sounds outside, but the noise of her breathing and the pounding of her heart had become very loud in her ears. For the second time that night, she felt like she might pass out. Her legs wouldn’t hold her, and she sank onto the cold, damp stairs with her arms wrapped around her knees and her face pressed to the soaked cotton of her nightgown.

Inside her, the baby moved, kicking hard enough to force a groan from her throat. It shifted, tiny hands and feet finding something to grab and pound and hurt; Marnie arched her back and lifted her hips, palms flat on the steps, to ease the pain and give the kid some room. The baby quieted, but her breath had gone harsh and panting. She thought her heart might just beat right out of her chest. She swallowed the taste of metal.

She must’ve fainted then, at least for a minute or so. The world grayed out and disappeared. There was no pain, and she wasn’t angry. It was the best she’d felt in almost a year.

Then the door above her creaked open, letting in the wind and rain and noise. Letting in Tony. And Marnie didn’t think twice, she just pushed upward with both hands above her head, her injured foot protesting the sudden pressure. She pushed up and out. She pushed him. She pushed Tony out the door, into the storm, and then stopped pushing. The door slammed closed on the hand he’d shoved inside to keep the door from closing.

If he screamed, she didn’t hear him. If he bled, the spatter of it didn’t feel any different than the rain had. Marnie eased her foot down one step in the darkness. Then another, and a few more until she was at the bottom and remembered to feel along the wall at her right-hand side for the small alcove. In her grandparents’ day, there’d been a heavy duty flashlight along with candles and waterproof matches in that niche, but some time ago she’d replaced those things with glow-sticks. She fumbled for one now, cracked the slim plastic tube and held it up to light her way into the depths of the shelter. She made a spot for herself on one of the uncomfortable cots and pulled a blanket over herself.

Marnie went to sleep.

5

Tony’d lived through a tornado before. A bad one had devastated the trailer park he and his mother had been living in while his dad was chasing his dreams all around the country. He’d been just a little kid, six or seven years old, and he’d pissed himself when the trailer walls started shaking. His mom had dragged them both outside and shoved him underneath the trailer, past the lattice and beyond the tangle of pipes and wires. His mom had always said they lost everything that day, but all Tony remembered was the warm and embarrassing trickle of pee down his leg, and the smell beneath the trailer where things had died.

He didn’t remember the noise. He didn’t remember pain. Both were consuming him now.
 

His hand was broken, he knew it the way he’d known the time he broke his leg when he got a little drunk and jumped off the cliff into the river but hit the bank instead. The wind had taken the door out of his hands and slammed it closed on his fingers, but not before he’d caught a glimpse of Marnie inside. Thank Jesus, she was okay.

Tony sagged against the metal as the wind whipped at him. He pounded with his other hand and couldn’t even hear the sound of it over the storm. He wanted to shout Marnie’s name, tell her it was going to be okay, but the pain in his hand had stolen his voice. If the metal door had simply severed his fingers he could have at least tried to stanch the blood and stop the pain, but stuck this way, each movement sent agony through the broken bones and shredded flesh. All he could do was crouch by the door and try not to pull too hard on his trapped hand.

 
And then…incredibly…the wind was lifting him.
 

The last time, the trailer had twisted and shattered, but the wind had left him and his mom alone. Now there was nothing to protect him. The storm took him. Tony floated and flew, connected to the storm cellar by the four fingers of his left hand. His shoes came off. His flesh tore further.

Three fingers.

Two.

The storm passed, and Tony fell.

6

It was the best night’s sleep Marnie’d had in as long as she could remember. Even so, she woke stiff, muscles creaking, her back a twisted spasm. Her foot ached, crusted with blood. Still, she was smiling when she stretched in the last faint light from the glow-stick.
 

She heard nothing from outside. No wind. No pelt of rain. No shouts from Tony.

Oh, God. Oh, God.
The night before came back to her like a giant hand, shoving her back onto the cot.
 

She’d left him out there. No. She’d forced him to stay out there. She’d kept him out of the shelter and left him to the mercies of nature.

Marnie got to her feet with more grace and speed than she’d managed in a long time. She pushed her way up the steps. Opening the door was easier from below than it had been from above. She shoved it with her shoulder, earning a few more bruises, and it clattered open.
 

“Babe.” Tony lifted a limp, bloody hand. “You’re okay.”

She gasped out loud, a hand going to her mouth to cover the sound. Her stomach lurched. The smell was back, that sweet and somehow lilting smell that made her want to sing.
 

She saw the source of it now. A patch of blue and purple flowers, green viney leaves and stringy red roots. Tony’d crushed a bunch of them, his white t-shirt stained with the juice from the petals. Some of the flowers had covered him.

Some of them had grown…into…him.

Something settled over him, a cloud of small dark things that came up and out of the flowers. Gnats or flies? No. Just seeds from the flowers themselves. Tony breathed them in. He coughed them out.

“You’re alive,” Marnie said.

His smile had been the first thing that had attracted her to him. White, even teeth, full lips. His teeth were lined with dirt now. Maybe it was blood. Marnie recoiled from that smile, though there was nothing threatening in it. Nothing meant to scare her.

Tony pushed himself up on one elbow with a grunt. He cradled his left arm, the hand a mangled mess in his lap. He’d gone pale, brow creased. He looked at her with those same damned puppy eyes he always gave her. The look always made her want to punch him in the face.