R. Stine - Red Rain

I must have been the first person he saw. He’s obviously in a total panic.

She gripped the woman’s hand tightly. It felt cold and damp, like a small drowned animal. She gave the hand a gentle squeeze-and the woman screamed.

Startled, Lea dropped the hand and jumped back. Her heart was pounding in her throat. She had to open her mouth to breathe.

Don’t panic. You can do this.

The man motioned Lea to grab one corner of a slab of drywall. Lea grabbed it. They tugged in unison and managed to slide it a few inches off the woman’s chest.

The woman shrieked and wailed, batting her head from side to side.

Lea pulled up on a broken two-by-four. The man grabbed it from her and heaved it aside.

Then he turned back to the woman and wrapped his big hand around hers. The woman screamed again. Lea knew she’d hear these screams in her nightmares. Screams that seemed to have no end.

The man gave Lea a signal with his eyes. Working in unison, they forced the woman nearly to a sitting position. Then the man reached behind her back. Lea took her hands and gave a hard pull. With a moan of pain, the woman rose up, rose up in Lea’s hands. Rose up. .

Lea heard a wrenching sound. Like fabric tearing.

She gasped as the woman came stumbling out, falling toward her. Her face showed no relief. In fact, it twisted into a knot of agony. She pulled her hands free from Lea and shrieked in an inhuman animal wail: “My leg! My leg! My leg! My leg!”

Lea gasped. The woman was balanced on one leg. Blood poured from an open tear in her other side.

“Oh my God!” Lowering her gaze, Lea saw the ragged flesh of the woman’s other leg trapped beneath the pile of debris. A white bone poked up from the torn skin.

No. Oh no.

The other leg. We left it behind.

It’s torn off. I pulled it off. I pulled her leg off!

Blood showered the ground from the open tear in the woman’s body.

“My leg! My leg! My leg! My leg! My leg!”

The man stood hulking in openmouthed shock. Fat tears rolled down the boy’s red, swollen cheeks.

Heart pounding so hard her chest ached, Lea searched frantically for help. No one. No one around.

What could even a doctor do?

She and the boy and the weeping man took the woman by her writhing shoulders and lowered her gently into her own pool of blood. They stretched her out on the dirt, and the man dropped down beside her, soothing her, holding her hand, cradling her head till she grew too weak to scream.

Lea staggered away. She knew she couldn’t help. She stumbled away, holding her stomach with both hands, gasping shallow breaths of the heavy, salted air. She wandered aimlessly into the wails and screams, the moans, the howls of disbelief, the symphony of pain she knew she would hear in her nightmares.

I’m not here. I’m asleep in our bed at home. I have to get Ira and Elena to school. Mark, give me a shove and wake me up. Mark?

“My babies! My babies!”

The woman’s shrill howls shook Lea from her thoughts. She turned and saw a grim-faced worker holding two tiny lifeless figures, cradling one in each arm, as if they were alive. But their heads slumped back, eyes stared glassily without seeing, arms and legs dangled limply, lifelessly.

The shrieking woman, tripping over the jutting wreckage of her fallen house, followed after them, waving her arms above her head. “My babies! My babies!”

Lea lowered her eyes as they passed by. I’m in Hell.

Suddenly, she pictured Starfish House. Was the little rooming house still standing? And what of Macaw and Pierre? Were they okay? Had they survived? Her laptop was there. Her clothes. All of her belongings.

How to get across the island? James’s truck was useless. The road would be impassable. She could walk, but it would be a walk of endless horrors.

A steady drone, growing louder, wormed its way into her consciousness. A hum quickly becoming a roar.

“Help is already on the way.”

Lea turned to see James behind her. He had changed into baggy gray sweats. His eyeglasses had a layer of white powder over the lenses. Behind them, his eyes were bloodshot and weary.

She followed his gaze to the sky and saw the helicopters, five or six of them, pale green army helicopters, hovering low, moving along the shoreline.

“They probably can’t believe what they’re seeing down here, either,” she murmured. She shivered.

James lowered his hands to her shoulders. “Are you okay, Lea?”

She nodded. “I guess.”

His eyes locked on her, studying her. “No, I mean, really. Are you okay?”

“I. . I’m upset. No. I’m horrified. But I’m okay, James. I was just thinking about Macaw and Pierre. . ”

“Martha and I will walk you to your rooming house. It won’t take long. Maybe half an hour.”

“But-”

“If there’s a problem there, you can come back and stay with us.” He kept staring at her, as if searching for something she wasn’t telling him.

Lea pictured the little white building with its bright yellow shutters and the sign over the entryway: Starfish House . She saw Macaw in her bright red-and-fuchsia plumage; Pierre, bored, hunched over the front desk, thumbing through a magazine, humming to himself.

“Yes. I hope there’s no problem,” she said.

But there was a problem. A sad and sickening problem.

Staring at the wreckage, Lea hoped she had made a mistake. Maybe I’m in the wrong place. But the sign still stood, crooked on its pole: Starfish House. The two-story house had toppled forward. The walls had collapsed on themselves, folded like an accordion on its side. And now the whole house lay in a broken, ragged heap, a low mountain of soaked and cracked boards and crumbled shards of drywall.

“No. Oh no.” Lea covered her face with her hands. She turned to James and Martha, expecting them to be close, but she saw them across the road, helping to pull someone out from under an overturned car.

“No. No. No.”

She stepped onto the fallen front door. It sank into the wet ground. She caught her balance and started to shout. “Macaw? Pierre? Are you here? Can you hear me?”

Boards cracked and settled. A window casing toppled onto its side. Lea screamed and jumped back, thinking the house might fall on her.

“Macaw? Pierre?”

No answer. They must have gotten out safely before the house fell in.

But what was that splash of red from under a fallen slab of wall? A scarf?

Stepping carefully, Lea made her way onto the pile of debris and climbed closer. She stopped with a gasp when she saw the hand lying so flat. . the hand, smeared with dark blood, reaching out from under a wall board. . the hand open as if waving. . waving good-bye?

Lea’s stomach churned. She fought the sour taste rising to her mouth. “Macaw?”

She stumbled forward, grabbed the side of a wall, and hoisted herself higher on the pile. “Oh no. No.” The splash of red was the sleeve of a dress.

Forgetting safety, Lea dove toward it. She slipped on a broken board. Banged her knee on something sharp. Ignoring the pain, she climbed to the red sleeve. She could see more of the dress beneath the edge of the wall board.

“Macaw?” Her voice trembling and tiny. “No. Oh no. Macaw?”

She stared at the pale hand, on its back, like a dead bird.

Macaw was trapped beneath a slab of wall board. Lea’s stomach lurched again. She could feel the cold fear prickling her skin. She didn’t think. She grabbed the top corner of the slab-and pulled. Hoisted it up.

It slid more easily than she had imagined. She almost toppled over backward.

She raised the wall board. Gazed down. Down at Macaw’s lifeless face. At the puncture. . the puncture. . the blood-smeared puncture in her eye.