The Storm That Brings it All Back

Clouds on the horizon churned and fell over one another like angry mashed potatoes, and Ray watched them. He’d known for months, hell, they’d all known for months. It was the storm to end all storms, or, rather, the storm to end all people. An anomaly, they’d called it. Ray smirked, still watching the clouds gather over the ocean, feeling the winds pick up around him. An anomaly. Storms, no matter their size, were as regular as anything Ray could imagine. He’d seen hundreds, perhaps thousands in his lifetime, ranging from small thunderstorms to full blown, building flattening hurricanes. On the Gulf Coast, storms were as regular as sunshine.

People, and their actions, were the anomaly. When NASA or whoever it had been had finally broken the news that this storm, the very one that was brewing just a few miles away, would be the one that would end it all, that would plow over all of civilization, the true strangeness had begun. Grocery stores became battlefields, their shelves pillaged like a coastal hamlet in a viking raid. People had been trampled and shot, or stabbed, or clubbed, all so someone could take the last gallon of milk. The military had imposed curfews and lockdowns and fires raging in the streets were a nightly occurrence.

After a few days the chaos had died down. Bodies still littered the streets, perhaps because of scores settled now that consequences were a thing of the past. But overall, it became quiet. Life became quiet. Ray thought it might be the “calm before the storm” that people always spoke about. It went that way for a while, with everyone shut up inside their homes with their stolen caches of food, just waiting. Ray spent this time walking. Each day he set out in a new direction, usually ending at the beach, sometimes finding himself somewhere he had never been before. The horrors of their broken society and the remnants of chaos stained the world like a rash, and everywhere he looked he saw it. Charred shells of buildings loomed over trash strewn streets. Bible verses and other graffiti covered turned over cars and buses with smashed windows. But somehow walking through it made it seem less real. Every day he walked and saw and yet each day it weighed on him less, until he found the walking as a necessary therapy. On one of his walks was where he met her.

Then it got loud again. Not with violence, or looting, or panic, but with voices. Every radio station claimed they had the answers, the way to escape the storm and the horrors it would bring. They spoke of shelters that could be dug, or of secret bunkers the government had built. Religious leaders flooded the media, speaking of the last days and the end times, of repentance and forgiveness. Fringe religions lived on the internet, cults that spoke of sacrifice and of deliverance. As the days crawled on toward the storm, people came out of their houses once again. Everyone regurgitated the information they had been bombarded with during their time spent inside, and the words spread like weeds from person to person. On his walks he started to meet people, all of whom had the answers, the solution to the coming storm. They told him things that they all were certain of. Conspiracies about who made the storm, about if the storm was coming or not, about the punishment from God that was coming for them all.

Each narrative was told with perfect conviction, like the words of a priest to his congregation. Wide eyes spread stories from wider mouths, and panic buzzed once again.

Ray checked his watch and scanned the beach, looking for her. She was supposed to be waiting for him here, but he didn’t see her. Worry about where she might be or what might have happened to her took control. He remembered the groups that had come through their town and the things they had done.

Ray had seen children dangling on wooden rings that looked like wreaths, their heads shaved bald while bedsheets were tied tightly to their small bodies, victims of some ritual. They swayed back and forth in front of a burned down strip mall, their bare feet pointing to a message painted on the street in white spray paint.

“Suffer the children to come unto me”

He pictured her there with them, dangling like they had been.

Ray kicked a rock and shivered at the thought. It was the worst thing he had ever seen in his life. Next to him, the waves slapped at the rocky shore. The water was getting rougher by the minute, the sky full of dark and broken up only by bouts of terrible lightning. Rain fell like a light mist, a taste of what was to come. Blinking water from his eyes, he peered into the dark, hoping for a flash of lightning.

It came, and the world became bright, and far down the beach he saw her. He picked up his pace, tripping over small rocks and stepping into deep tide pools. The water was coming higher.

She stood there, looking out toward the storm. Wet strands of hair stuck to the sides of her face like tentacles, her yellow jacket flapping in the growing winds.

Ray stopped a few yards away and just watched her.

Her chin was high, her eyes narrow. She did not look afraid. She stared into the storm, as if daring it to come closer, as if she knew it could not hurt her.

“I’m here!” Ray yelled into the wind. She turned her head to him. Her skin was white like lightning, her hair brown like the sea. In her eyes was a gray storm darker than the one that encroached them, and they looked directly into him.

“I’m glad you came.” She said, and smiled a halfway smile, and turned back toward the ocean.

“It’s cold out here. Why don’t we go inside?” Ray asked.

“It won’t be for long,” she said. Ray shrugged his shoulders.

“How long do you think we have?” Ray asked. She shrugged back at him. Ray opened his mouth to reply, but closed it again. She was so cool, so nonchalant, so uncaring. He yearned to be that way and for the past few days he had felt like that, but now as the storm came down on them he felt afraid and wanted more than anything to spend his time with someone who was afraid, too.

“Aren’t you scared to die?” Ray shouted. The water was raging now, like a giant had picked up the entire world and started shaking it.

“I don’t know what happens when we die.” She answered, still staring into the storm. Ray shook his head. He didn’t know how long he had to live, but he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life playing it cool.

“It doesn’t matter what happens. Aren’t you afraid?” Ray shouted. She shook her head. He still didn’t know her name.

“I’m more curious than anything. People have wondered about what happens when we die since the beginning of time, and soon you, and I, and everyone else, are going to find out.” She said, and smiled at him, and took a step closer to him.

“What if nothing happens?” Ray asked. She looked at him with her gray eyes and took his hand in hers as wind nearly knocked them over.

“When has nothing ever happened?” She asked. The lightning had become so frequent that it almost looked like midday.

Ray nodded, and closed his eyes. Somewhere, right now, churches would be full of praying parishioners. Bunkers would be full of wide eyed politicians. Strip malls would be full of wild cultists. Yet every last one of them would be doing the same thing that he was. Waiting.

“The storm that would end civilization.” Ray said. She turned to look at him, he felt her eyes on him, but he kept his squeezed shut.

“I think it has already come and gone. It was a storm of fear, and of information, and of chaos. This storm, the one we’re in now-” Ray opened his eyes, and looked into hers. Her gaze was as steady as a stone, and as warm as a hearth.

“This is the storm that brings it all back.” Ray said, and squeezed her hand, and though he didn’t know her name, and he didn’t know what would happen, he knew he would see her there.