The Resurrected Compendium (4 page)

Maybe, she thought as Cal turned the key and the Volvo’s faithful, loyal, unfaltering engine started up with a sputter instead of a roar, she would clean out the car.

Abbie had no idea where Ada was, but no more than five minutes after they’d left the Sentinel Motel parking lot, they had to take a detour. “At least we know we’re not the only ones who made it out okay,” she said as the uniformed cop waved them to the left from his place next to his car, lights flashing.

Cal pulled up beside him. “Gotta get to Dogleg Lane, Eddie.”

“Checking on Marnie?” Eddie nodded and stood straight to look past the detour. Then bent back to Cal. “Everything’s tore up that way, Cal, maybe if you had a four-wheel drive…”

“The Volvo has all-wheel drive,” Abbie offered, not sure why she did. It made no-nevermind to her if they had to take the long way around.

Cal glanced at her, then at Eddie. “How tore up?”

“Trees down. A tractor trailer’s on its side. I can’t officially let you go this way, Cal…”

Cal nodded. “Gotcha.”

Then he pulled around the cop car and kept going. Another two miles down the rural highway, they saw where the tornado had torn through. Trees had been uprooted and tossed like toothpicks. The tractor trailer looked like a metal pretzel, on its side and blocking most of the road. Cal eased the car around it, tires crunching on the shattered contents of whatever had been in the trailer.

Abbie looked out the window, saw the ditch. She wondered somewhat idly if they were going to make it, or if the Volvo was simply going to go two wheels deep into the mud. Would the car tip? Would it topple?
 

She’d braced herself without thinking, and Cal noticed. Of course. He didn’t let go of the wheel, didn’t even glance at her. He kept his eyes on the thin sliver of road between the truck and the ditch. But he noticed.

“C’mon, now,” he murmured to the car like it was a woman. “C’mon baby. Just a little more. A little more.”

The car inched along, tires so close to the edge Abbie couldn’t see anything of the road when she looked out her window. She kept her eyes ahead after that.

It would be okay. Even if he rolls this car into the ditch, we’re going so slow it will be okay. The car can take it. It made it through worse than this.

It wasn’t until all four tires were fully on the pavement again that she realized she’d been holding her breath and gripping her fists so tight she cut her palms. Cal noticed, and he reached a hand to take hers, smearing the tiny half-moons of crimson. Fingers linked. He pulled her hand to his mouth and brushed the knuckles with his lips.
 

“Okay,” he said, not a question. “You’re okay.”

In another life, a man like this would’ve made her heart sing, but all Abbie could think was — why now? Why here? But she didn’t let go of his hand until it became apparent he needed both on the wheel in order to navigate the debris on the road.
 

They’d gone only another mile or so, creeping along at ten or fifteen miles an hour, when they reached another spot where the storm had obviously come through. Cal stopped the car and left it idling, but got out to stare out at the devastation. Abbie got out too, her steps wobbly and uncertain on the buckled concrete.

She didn’t know much about tornados other than what she’d seen in the movies, but this looked…bad. Horrific, as a matter of fact. Her stomach tumbled.

She’d thought there was nothing left back at the motel, but here, truly, the storm had come and taken everything. What must’ve been green fields were now nothing but torn and muddy spaces littered with debris. Dead spaces had taken the place of living.
 

“Jesus,” Cal said.

“What was here before?” She was almost afraid to ask, afraid he’d say it was his ex’s house or something.

 
Cal just shook his head and spread his fingers. “Everything. I mean…there were some houses. A convenience store.”

They stared in silence for some long moments. The far off sound of sirens came, lifted on a breeze that sent a shudder all through her. Abbie wondered if she’d ever feel the wind again without remembering how its caress could become a punch.

Back in the car, they drove no more than another five minutes when they found out what had happened to all the buildings.

The tornado had lifted them, torn them to pieces, and dropped them all over the road. And not just buildings — cars, trees…people.

Oh, the people.
 

The bodies of the injured, dying and dead littered the ground. Abbie saw a mangled corpse draped over a peaked roof, separated from the rest of the house. More lay in the fields and among the wreckage, piled like the dolls of some giant child who’d grown tired of her game and tossed them all aside.
 

“Everyone?” Cal said in a low voice. “Oh. God.”

She became aware of motion between two house-sized piles of rubbish. A figure in white, stumbling. No, not stumbling. Lurching. A man in a white suit lurched toward them, getting closer, and it wasn’t a siren she was hearing, but his high-pitched keen.

Cal stepped up next to her, one arm out in front in a position she recognized from many years of crossing streets with her boys. Warmth trickled through her, a reminder he was a gentleman, even as she wanted to shrug off his concern.

“You okay?” Cal shouted to the weaving, moaning figure.

These flowers were blooming all around her, more pushing their blue and purple heads up through the stinking mud and unfurling small crimson tendrils that grew long and longer until they drooped into the ground and then…like…what were they called? Runner beans? Maybe like bamboo shoots. The red threads dug into the ground and travelled underneath to shoot up a few inches beyond and sprout another set of blue and purple flowers, another bright red string.

She looked up, and half the distance she could see, earth that had been freshly turned by whatever had ripped through here in the night, ground that had been nothing but mud and destruction…all of it was covered in a carpet of flowers.

They covered the child.

“The voice of my fathergod came last night in howls and shrieks, the voice came out of the darkness and the force of it made the world tremble! People need to listen to me now. They’ll have to listen to me now. They’ll all have to
learn
how to listen.” Ice Cream Suit lifted his shaking hands to the sky, face upturned and alight with an ecstasy that made Abbie more uncomfortable even than the prayers had. This guy was fucking crazy.

Cal looked upward too, though of course there was nothing there. “What’s your name, buddy?”

“Renton. Renton Foster. The voice of my fathergod —”

“Yeah, we heard it too. Sounded like a freight train,” Abbie interrupted. She got to her feet, unsteady, her hands black with dirt, decorated with the blossoms.

The smell was…incredible.

Sweet, light, haunting. It was like every good thing she’d ever smelled. And yet the undertone was of something rotten. Of indulgence and gluttony and greed. It was too many pieces of birthday cake and half a bottle of really good scotch, coming up again without warning. Delicious and disgusting.

Foster’s delirious gaze spun to snag her face for a second or two before he looked at her feet. His mouth opened. “There. Is. The. Sign.”

It was a sign of something, that was true. A sign of some kind of fuckery, which was typical for anything having to do with religion, as far as she was concerned.
 

“A sign!” Foster lurched forward again, toward the edge of the road. He tripped off the mangled concrete and into the mud. Went sprawling. He gathered handfuls of the flower buds and swept them toward him, covering himself. He looked at Abbie, gaze rapt. “The voice told me there’d be a sign. And that people would have to listen to me now.”

He pointed to a tattered construction of canvas and poles that had been turned inside out. A tent of the sort she’d heard about but had never seen. Foster’s arms swept wide open before he brought his hands together, fingertip to fingertip.
 

“What the hell?” Cal bent to look at the ground.

Something moved, something inside the flowers covering the child. No…the child itself. Horrified, Abbie back away, mouth open. The flowers were consuming the body, another time-lapse site but this time in reverse. Not creating, not blooming. Breaking down. Destroying.

“Cal. Get away.” Her voice sounded steadier than she’d expected it to, but Cal didn’t move. Abbie said his name louder.
 

Both men turned to look at her.

Everything in front of her exploded.

Every blossom had opened. A cloud rose and spread. It engulfed Cal and Renton like a million tiny black flies, mosquitos. Motes of dust. No, that wasn’t right, not insects Abbie’s mind insisted even as she clapped a hand over her mouth and nose and the swirling cloud surrounded her.

Seeds?

And just like that, they were gone. The pretty blue and purple flowers had already begun to turn brown. The child’s body had vanished, nothing but a scrap or two of blue pajamas left to prove it had ever been there at all.
 

Abbie breathed in, blinking, the smell gone and the taste of something sour on her tongue so brief it was possible she’d imagined it. She coughed into her fist. Cal had doubled over, coughing, and so had Renton, but the preacher stood up first. Dark flecks speckled his face but disappeared when he swiped at them.

Cal stood too, looking like he meant to say something, but though his mouth opened all he could do was shake his head. He looked around at the destruction. His eyes closed. His shoulders drooped.
 

It was hardly her place to comfort him, but Abbie figured if she could have an orgasm or two with him, she could at the very least offer him a hand on his shoulder. Her fingers squeezed. He put his hand over hers and looked at her.

“What was that?” She asked in a low voice, though the only person who could possibly have heard them had stumbled off to keen and pray over another corpse. “I mean…I never saw anything like it.”

Cal shook his head again. “There’ve been stories, you know? Frogs raining from the sky because they’d been sucked up by a tornado and released miles away. Stones. There’ve been instances of infectious or airborne bacteria kicked up by storms. Maybe the flowers were something like that.”

She could see no sign of them now, but that bittersweet taste remained. More a memory than anything else. She rubbed her tongue over her teeth as though she could scrape it off.
 

“I need to get to my ex,” Cal said. “There’s nothing I can do here for anyone. I have to make sure she’s okay. She’s pregnant.”

He hadn’t mentioned that before, and Abbie’s hand fell from his shoulder. He gave her a small, strained smile. “Not mine. But that doesn’t mean I can’t make sure they’re all okay.”

Abbie thought of her own two boys. Ryan had a girlfriend angling to become a stepmother. He had a new life. They all did, without her. She’d always been the bad that happened to them, yet…wouldn’t she have gone through anything to get to them, to make sure they were all right, if she knew something like this had happened to them?

Of course she would.
 

“You can still come with me. I mean, I need to use your car. If we can get through here.” Cal looked again at the debris strewn over the road.

Renton turned toward them. His white suit was filthy, but he stood up straighter than he had before. He lifted his eyes again toward the place he believed held heaven. Then he toppled over.

“Oh, shit.” Cal sighed and took off at a trot. “Now what?”

Renton’s face had gone white except for dark circles under his eyes and his lips, which were as purple as though he’d painted them with lipstick. He clutched his head as his back arched and his feet drummed a pattern into the mud. Then he went still.

Abbie watched them, frozen, as Cal knelt next to him and listened first with an ear pressed to his chest. Then he tipped the man’s head back, put his hands on his chest. Began to push. Abbie’s hand pressed over her heart, the other to her stomach. Those were just two of the scars. Once, someone had worked over her this way. They’d saved her life. But it didn’t look like there’d be any saving of Renton, the Ice Cream Suit preacher, no matter what they did.

Cal panted and sat back. If he was annoyed or angry she hadn’t jumped in to help, he didn’t show it. He swiped his hand over his forehead. “Shit. He’s not breathing. Shit. I don’t know. Maybe he had a heart attack. Or a stroke. We need to get him to a hospital.”

She winced and pointed all around her. “Cal. They’re all dead. There must be a dozen bodies here. Just…maybe you should leave him.”

He looked at her, and she looked back. Steady. But his gaze broke her down, and she sighed.
 

“He’s dead,” she said softly.

“Maybe…maybe someone can save him,” Cal said. “Since I can’t.”

This was important to him, she saw that much. Somehow, some some way, Cal wanted to be able to save this guy. So she nodded and bent to help lift the weight of him. Together they put him in the backseat.
 

She didn’t want to turn around and see a corpse in the backseat of her car. Cal wove through the wreckage, easing the Volvo through to the other side of the road, where he picked up speed. He hit a bump going too fast, and Renton rolled. He hit the back of her seat. He hit the floor.

“Keep going,” Abbie said through a thick throat when it looked as though Cal meant to slow down. “He’s not going to mind. The sooner you get him to the hospital, the sooner you can get him help.”

The sooner you could admit he’s dead, she thought but kept to herself.

The closest hospital was still standing, as was most of the town when they got there. Emergency personnel, all of whom seemed to know Cal by sight, rushed out to meet them. They took Renton away and left Abbie and Cal to wait.

There was paperwork. There always is. The ER was overflowing with refugees from the destruction. Many of them knew Cal too. More than one, mostly the women, gave Abbie the sort of half-curious, half-hostile looks she’d come to expect from other females, especially when there was an attractive man involved.