Gateways

As Rasalom strode away, Jack felt the pressure against him ease, but slowly. He wasn’t able to regain his feet until Rasalom was out of sight. His first urge was to go after him, but that dissolved in a blast of anxiety about his father. He rushed over to where he’d last seen him and found him sprawled in a clump of ferns, his legs and arms splayed in all directions.

Jack rushed toward him. “Dad!”

Was this the sort of pain Rasalom was talking about? He’d lost Kate, now he was going to lose his father?

But as Jack reached him, he moved.

13

Tom sat up and ran his hands over his arms and legs.

I can move! I can feel!

Dear God, I thought—

He looked up and saw Jack skid to a stop before him.

“Dad—you okay?”

“I thought I’d had a stroke! One moment I was standing by that tree. I saw you fly backwards, then the next thing I knew I was on my back and couldn’t speak or move a finger.”

Jack reached a hand down to him. “Can you get up?”

Tom let his son help him to his feet. He brushed himself off and looked around. He felt shaky and a little weak. Well, why not? He was seventy-one and had just experienced the firefight of his life. He’d been in battle before, but against other men, other soldiers. This time…

“Jack! What happened here? Who was that? Was he really walking on water?”

“That’s what it looked like.”

Jack’s eyes were flat. Not hard and cold like before when he looked like murder personified, but Tom sensed that he’d put up a wall.

“What’s going on, Jack? A girl who can control snakes and birds and even flying things from hell—and I’m sure that sinkhole goes straight to hell—and a guy who walks on water…what’s happening to the world?”

“Nothing that hasn’t been going on for a long, long time. Nothing’s changed except you got a peek behind the curtain.”

“What curtain?”

What was he talking about? Had Jack snapped under the stress of what he’d been through…or had he been through something like this before…something even worse?

“It’s over, Dad.”

“What’s over?”

“Semelee, the chew wasps, the guy on the water—”

“But you knew him. You called him by name—Roma, wasn’t it?”

“Just let it go, Dad. Tuck it away and forget about it. It’s over.” He looked up. “Even Hurricane Elvis is over.”

Tom realized then that it had stopped raining. He could still hear the rumble of thunder, but the wind had died, leaving the air deathly still. He followed Jack’s gaze, and through the partially denuded tree branches he saw clear sky, light blue, tinged with orange from the sinking sun.

Over…for a while there he’d thought the storm would never end.

He looked around…at the fallen palms and cypresses, at the slowly sinking houseboats canted in the leaf-and debris-strewn water, at their red decks and the mutilated bodies littering them like jack straws.

Tom’s mouth went dry. “Did we do that?”

“Some of it.” He didn’t seem the least bit fazed. “We can take credit for the holes in the hulls and some of the blood, but Semelee bears the freight for the rest. She’s the one who called those chew wasps out of the cenote and lost control of them. Good thing too. Otherwise they’d be standing here looking at what was left of us.”

Jack picked up one of the shotguns and hurled it far out into the lagoon.

“What—?”

“Evidence.”

The second shotgun followed the first. He saw Jack pull the pistol from his belt, look at it, then tuck it back in.

Tom glanced once more at the carnage on the boat decks, then looked again. Had one of the bodies moved?

“I think someone’s still alive out there.”

“Probably not for long.”

“Do you think we should—?”

Jack turned on him. “You’ve got to be kidding. A few moments ago they were trying to kill us.”

“In the Corps we always treated enemy wounded.”

“This isn’t the Corps, and this isn’t war. This is a street fight that just happened to take place where there aren’t any streets.” His face twisted, almost into a snarl. “What do you think we’re going to do? Paddle a couple of them back and lug them to a hospital? How do you explain their wounds? How do you explain the double-ought buckshot in their hides? In this system, you’ll wind up behind bars while they lounge around a hospital. And when they’re all fixed up, some ambulance chaser will hook up with them and file civil suits to clean you out of everything you own, every pe

Tom was seeing another side of Jack and wasn’t sure he liked this one.

“But—”

“But nothing!”

He turned and stomped off to one of the old huts and returned a moment later with something dangling from his hand. He stopped before Tom and held it up.

“See this?”

It was rectangular and looked a little like parchment, but it was too supple for that. It was patterned with crisscrossing scars and round, punctate depressions the size of a pencil eraser. When Tom realized what it was he took an involuntary step back.

“Right,” Jack said. “This is all they left of Anya, and then they hung it up to cure. Now tell me how much you want to risk to help one of those bastards.”

Tom felt a rising fury. Anya…what they’d done to Anya…a part of him wanted to paddle out there and finish off any survivors. But he couldn’t allow himself to step over that line.

He shook his head. “Nothing. They’re on they’re own.”

“Damn right.”

Jack stared at the grisly remnant in his hands, then looked around. He didn’t seem to know what to do with it. He appeared to come to a decision as he rolled up the skin and tucked it inside his shirt.

“What are you going to do with that?”

“It’s all that’s left of her. I think she deserves some sort of burial ceremony, don’t you?”

Here was still another side of Jack. Tom sensed it could be a living nightmare to be his son’s enemy, but a very good thing to be his friend.

He nodded. “Most definitely. Now that the storm’s over, we’ll take her home and find a place to lay her to rest.”

Jack looked up at the sky. “Good thing it ended when it did. I thought we were in for a much longer blow.”

“So did I.”

Then an awful thought struck him. He turned and started pushing through the ferns and brush.

“Where are you going?” Jack called from behind him.

“To high ground. I want the highest point on this hummock.”

It wasn’t far—these islands in the saw grass sea weren’t all that large. Just a few minutes walk and he was standing atop the crest of the hummock.

But he still didn’t have the view he needed. He hurried to a nearby live oak that somehow had weathered the storm intact. He stretched for the lowest branch but couldn’t reach it.

“Give me a boost,” he said to Jack, who had followed him.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Just help me up, damn it. I need to see.”

He was sorry for the sharp tone, but he was worried. He crawled onto the limb, then, hanging on to a nearby branch, straightened until he was standing. When he saw the wall of cloud and rain less than a mile away to the west, his fears were confirmed.

“Jack, the hurricane isn’t over. We’re in its eye. It’s going to hit us again. Maybe even worse than what we’ve been through. We’ve got to—oh, hell!”

“What?” Jack said from below.

Tom watched a pale fu

“Tornadoes!” He turned and slid down the trunk. “We have to get off this hummock!”

“Tornadoes?” As soon as Tom landed on the ground, Jack started climbing. “I’ve always wanted to see a tornado.” He reached the limb and peered west. “I’ll be damned. Three of them.”

“Three? There were only two before! Get down from there and get moving!”