Red Rain

10

Lea struggled to pull herself up from the ringing darkness. Her head throbbed as if about to explode. Waves of pain rolled down her back, her arms and legs. Blinking in the gray light, still unable to focus, she gazed up.

“Oh my God!”

The sky appeared so close, glaring through the jagged hole in the ceiling. She raised her head, feeling dizzy. Underwater, her clothing soaked and the couch beneath her like a furry wet animal. She brushed shingles off the couch. Still struggling to focus, she saw jagged pieces of the ceiling strewn over the room.

Martha and James bent over her. Their faces were tight with concern, ghostly pale in the heavy gray light washing down from above.

“Lea? You’re coming to? Are you okay?” Martha looked twenty years older. Her hair hung in damp tangles over her forehead. Her eyes were red-rimmed and wet.

Lea pulled herself to a sitting position. The room spun around her. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry.

She squinted at the shards of wood and broken shingles scattered crazily around the couch. Piles of wet plaster on the carpet. Like cake flour. A snowstorm blanketing the furniture.

“The roof-”

Martha gripped her hand. “Take it slow, Lea. Just breathe. Don’t try to get up yet.”

“What happened?” Martha and James slid in and out of focus. Lea smoothed a hand over her hair, trying to rub away the pain.

“Part of the roof fell in,” James said, gazing up at the sky. “You got hit by some slate shingles. It knocked you out.”

“We were so worried.” Martha squeezed Lea’s hand. “It just came crashing down on you. We put you on the couch and-”

Lea shuddered. “I. . think I’m okay. Just a headache. The dizziness is going away.”

“Oh, thank God,” Martha said.

“We all got soaked,” James said, his voice hoarse, croaky. “But we were lucky.” He glanced away, as if trying to force down some heavy emotion. Despite his attempt, a sob escaped his throat.

Martha held on to Lea’s hand. “So glad y’all are okay. We were scared. You were totally out. Look. You might have a bump on your head, but it didn’t even break the skin.”

Lea brushed back her dark hair with both hands. “Wow. Guess I’m lucky. I feel okay. Really.”

“It’s morning. The rain stopped a few hours ago,” Martha said. “The winds-”

James motioned toward the broken ceiling. “The rain. It soaked everything. The house will never dry out.”

“But it’s still standing.” Martha turned to her husband. “I think we may be the fortunate ones. I. . I’m afraid to look outside.”

James shivered. “I need dry clothes.” He started toward the bedroom. His shoes squished on the carpet.

Martha followed him. She turned back to Lea, her face almost apologetic. “We’ve been up all night. Maybe James and I should catch a few hours sleep. Before. . before we face what’s out there.”

“Yes. Don’t worry about me.” Lea shook off another wave of dizziness. “You two are so kind. I’ll never forget this. I’ll be okay. Get some rest.”

“Help yourself to anything in the fridge. We have to finish it before it spoils. There won’t be any power for a long time.” Martha uttered a long sigh.

They disappeared down the hall to their room.

Lea watched streams of water run down the wall. Stretching her arms above her head, she stood up. Suddenly alert.

Beyond the glass doors in back, tall waves continued to battle, crashing against each other, tossing off islands of foam. The water’s roar seemed to be inside her head.

I have to go outside.

She had to see what the storm had left behind. She stepped unsteadily to the door, shoes sliding on the wet surface.

I’m a journalist. I have to document this for my blog. Maybe I can sell the photos to a news network.

But she wasn’t prepared for the horrors a few steps from the house. The fallen trees and flattened houses. Everything crumbled and broken and down.

The people covered in plaster dust and mud, scrambling over the wreckage, searching house to house for survivors to rescue, finding only bodies.

She wasn’t prepared for the howls and cries. The half-naked man who ran over the debris on the street, screaming as blood flowed down his back like a scarlet cape. The pale white baby feet poking out from under the collapsed wall of a house.

I’m a journalist.

She raised her phone to her eye. Steadied it. Focused on a man carrying two corpses over his shoulder. And. .

Oh no. She studied the phone. Out of power. Dead. She stared at it. Shook it. No way to charge it. No way.

So now she wasn’t a journalist covering the tragedy. Now she was just another victim.

Men were already piling bodies where the little white post office had stood.

Lea saw arms and legs dangling from beneath crushed, collapsed walls.

She shivered. Each breath she took burned her nostrils and made her throat ache. The air was choked with dust and dirt that hadn’t settled.

I’m alive.

The island had been flattened. She squinted into the billowing gray light. The houses and shops were piles of trash. Splintered boards strewn everywhere. Fallen walls fanned out on the rain-soaked ground like playing cards.

Fifty-two Pickup.

She thought of the cruel card game her brothers used to tease her with when she was little.

“Want to play a card game, Lea?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s play Fifty-two Pickup.” Then they’d raise the deck high and let all the cards tumble to the floor. “Okay. Go ahead, Lea. Pick them up.”

That’s what it looked like here. Playing cards tossed and scattered over the earth.

Is that how she would write it? Could that be the lead to her story?

I can’t write it.

She slumped onto the trunk of a fallen palm tree and wrapped her arms around herself. I can’t write it because I don’t believe it yet. And I don’t want to write about such nightmare and heartbreak. Where would I begin? How would I ever describe an entire island crushed and flattened as if stomped on by a fairy-tale giant?

Fairy tales and childhood card games were flashing through her mind. Obviously, because she wanted to escape. She wanted to go back to somewhere safe and clean and nice. It didn’t take a genius to figure that out.

She suddenly pictured her father sitting in his Barcalounger in the tiny living room back in Rockford, holding the newspaper in front of him, folded down the middle the way he always read it, and shaking his head. Reading and shaking his head, his face twisted in disapproval.

You’d be shaking your head today, Dad.

How could she write about the corpses they were pulling out from under the debris? Dead faces, locked in startled expressions. She watched the mud-covered workers stack the bodies like trash bags in the town dump.

The smell. . Already. The sour smell of death.

And the sounds. Moans and shrieks and anguished cries rang out in the dust-choked morning air like a horror-movie soundtrack. The pleas of the injured waiting to be rescued. The survivors discovering their dead. The sweating, cursing men digging, pawing, shoveling into the rubbled houses. The groans of the men hoisting more corpses onto the pile.

It seemed to Lea that everyone left alive was howling in protest. Everyone who could move and make a sound was screaming or crying or wailing their disbelief and anger.

I should be helping.

She jumped to her feet and started to walk toward mountains of debris where the road had been. “Oh!” She stumbled over something soft.

A corpse!

No. Clothing. A tangled pile of soaked shirts and shorts strewn over the grass.

What about my clothing?

Were her belongings scattered with the wind? Was Starfish House still standing? Had Macaw and Pierre survived?

Lea shuddered. The rooming house was on the other side of Le Chat Noir, the eastern side, the exposed side where the ocean could show its storm fury. Starfish House felt fragile even in calm weather, she thought. The Swanns’ stone house had barely survived intact.

She felt a stab of dread in the pit of her stomach. Suddenly, it was a struggle to breathe. No way Starfish House could still be standing. But Macaw and Pierre?

She couldn’t phone, of course. She remembered she had been talking to Mark-or trying to-last night when the service crashed.

Mark. What was he thinking right now? What was he doing? What had he told the kids? He had to be in his own nightmare. . not knowing. .

And no way to tell him.

My poor Ira and Elena.

Ahead of her, she saw an upended SUV, windows all blown out, sitting on the flattened roof where a little food store had stood. The SUV looked like an animal on its hind legs, standing straight up on its back bumper. Lea shook her head. Hard to imagine a wind strong enough to lift an SUV off the road, onto its back end, and drop it onto a building.

She spun away from it. But there was nowhere to turn to escape the horror.

The man lumbering toward her caught her by surprise. He was tall and broad and drenched in sweat, thinning brown hair matted to his red forehead. His T-shirt was torn and stained with brown streaks. His shorts were rags.

His eyes were wild and his mouth was moving rapidly although Lea couldn’t hear his words. His arms were outstretched, his mud-smeared hands open to grab her.

He’s crazy. He’s out of his head.

Move!

But there wasn’t time.

With a menacing groan, he grabbed her by the shoulders. He pulled with surprising force, nearly dragging her off her feet. She inhaled the rank odor of his body and his mud-caked clothes.

He groaned again. She wasn’t strong enough to resist. He was pulling her away from the others, dragging her out of view, grunting and groaning like an animal.

“Let go! Let go of me! Please! What are you going to do? Please-let go!”