Jackson Ford - Eye of the Sh*t Storm

There are no more lightning bolts. No sound but the howling wind.

The woman straightens up, takes a shaky breath, and turns towards Reggie. The look in her eyes is pure fury. Rain plasters her hair to her forehead.

“It’s OK, baby.” The boy is beyond listening now, but Reggie doesn’t care – if she stops talking, she’ll crumble. “We’re going to fix this, don’t worry about it, you just stay with me.”

Somehow, Nic is still conscious. He reaches out for the Zigzag Man, trying to grab his ankle. The man sidesteps, barely glancing at Nic.

“Let me have them,” he says. There’s a wheedling, pleading note in the Zigzag Man’s voice that Reggie finds more horrifying than anything. Above his beard, his eyes are wild. Vicious. “Let me take them into my house. Let me hide them in the walls.”

“Program,” the woman spits. “Captain. Tournament. Disorder.”

“ Please .” It’s a growl: an insane animal noise.

The woman steps between Reggie and the Zigzag Man, her voice suddenly urgent. “Photograph. Skeleton. Zigzag. Zigzag. Zigzag.”

He subsides, his face slipping into a perfect blank. A slave once more.

Reggie meets the woman’s eyes. “You can’t have him.”

In response, the woman simply bends down, hooks a hand under the boy’s armpit.

And with every ounce of strength she has, every inch of mobility her arm will give her, Reggie swings her modified knife at the woman’s throat.

She’d taken it out her pocket the moment she realised what Leo was about to unleash, hidden it under her body. Her fingers slotted in the rings built into the handle. The blade slashes through the air, and Reggie knows, knows , that it will find its target. The woman underestimated her, and Reggie’s going to make her pay.

The woman snaps her left hand up faster than Reggie would have thought possible. She catches Reggie’s wrist, stopping the blade an inch from her throat.

“Really?” she says, contemptuous. “You thought that was going to work?”

Reggie would give anything to snap back at her: No. But this will . And then attempt something else, surprise her, knock her off balance…

But there’s nothing else. She has nothing left to try.

The woman plucks the knife from Reggie’s hand, almost tenderly slipping it off her fingers. Then she hurls it away.

Reggie tries to pull her arm back over Leo, but the woman stops her. She lifts the boy out, then stands, hefting his unconscious body. Leo’s legs are twitching badly now.

“We’ll find you,” Reggie says to the woman, knowing it’s not a good idea to provoke her, and not caring. Raindrops fall into her mouth, cold and somehow slimy. She spits them out, snarling. “Do you understand that? You are about to bring the wrath of God down on you and yours.”

The woman turns, and walks away. The Zigzag Man follows, like an obedient dog.

Reggie sucks in a deep breath. “You don’t get it. It’s like Annie said: there’s nowhere you can go.” She raises her voice, as loud as it will go. “It’s not just her contacts who’ll come after you. Every special forces squad, every investigator, every single intelligence operator employed by the US government: they are all going to be looking for you. There’ll be nowhere left to run.”

“We don’t have to run,” the woman says over her shoulder. “We won’t even have to hide for much longer.”

She lifts the bomb trigger, glances at it. Then casually, almost as an afterthought, tosses it away.

“ Teggan! ”

The voice reaches me from what feels like a very long way away. Another galaxy, maybe. Or from the afterlife.

“Teggan! Under you! ”

I don’t know how I do it, but I get my eyes open. Turn my head. Still not convinced what I’m hearing is real.

The flood is still being held at bay, although that’s going to change in maybe five seconds. The concrete slab I’m on is now twelve or fifteen feet off the deck. And on the deck, wheels almost submerged in the rushing water…

The China Shop van.

With Africa sticking his head out the window. Yelling my name.

What in the name of fuck is he doing here? Does he not see the enormous flood?

Reality slaps me around the face. The stupid son of a bitch came back for me. He actually thinks he’s going to drive me out of here.

I open my mouth to tell him to get the hell away, and then I see the most wondrous thing.

No people. The homeless camp is finally, finally empty.

There’s no way to know for sure… but somehow, I do. Everybody is finally safe. Africa and the Legends got the last of the people out.

As if hearing my thoughts, the pressure of the flood gets even worse, almost punching through my PK completely.

I lean back on the slab, willing it to move down towards the van. It doesn’t listen to me at first – but then it starts to move. Slow, sluggish, but moving. To my right, a section of scaffolding collapses with a clatter, forced off its foundations by the rising torrent.

“Come come come!” Africa slaps the door with a massive palm. “On the roof. Get on the roof!”

I’m right at the end of my tether, so what he’s saying doesn’t register at first. What the fuck is he talking about, the roof? Does he not—?

Which is when the last of my PK drains away completely. And the flood, freed from its shackles, comes roaring down towards us.

I topple off the concrete slab onto the roof of the van, landing on my back, hard enough to knock what little wind is left out of me.

Africa punches the gas. There’s a horrible second where the wheels do nothing but spin in the water. Then the tires catch, and the van leaps forward.

The water hits the concrete, right behind us. The impact is so powerful that it actually jolts the van, bouncing me up off the roof. I shriek, coming back down with a thump, numb hands scrambling for purchase on the slick metal, as the roaring waters explode upwards again. There’s the insane clanging of a hundred scaffolding poles giving way at once, wrenched away by the force of the water. The concrete slab I was on vanishes under the raging torrent.

We pop out from under the freeway, wheels sending up great gouts of spray, being chased by an enormous, frothing wall of water and debris. Africa swerves to avoid – well, actually, I don’t know what the fuck he swerves to avoid, but it sends me sliding sideways. I throw my hands out, grabbing the edge of the roof closest to my head, fingers scrabbling at it.

There’s a metallic whang as a piece of scaffolding bounces off the van, hitting right where I was a second ago. Christ, that was close .

We’re not moving fast enough. Not even close. The flood has ripped through the homeless camp and is right on our heels. If it hits us, it’ll lift the van right off the concrete, send it tumbling.

And there’s not a damn thing I can do except hang on, and hope.

He can’t keep this up for ever. We have to get out of the storm drain. Only, how the hell are we going to do that, when there are flood barriers for ever? Come to think of it, where are the people Africa drove out of the camp? Surely he didn’t drop them off in the middle of the—

There’s a gap. One of the flood barriers on the left is down – a different barrier to the one I knocked over. I have no idea how they did it, but someone managed to rip the brackets out of the ground and send it sliding down into the storm drain.

I let out a scream of triumph as Africa swerves towards the gap. If we can just keep our speed up…

A second later, we hit the slope, and that’s when everything goes really wrong.