Stormworld Read online

  Jimmy snorted, grinned. “About me?”

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  “Well, I’m having boy thoughts about you. I wonder if they’re similar.”

  “Could be, but I’m not talking.”

  “We didn’t come here to talk anyway, did we?” He reached for her, but she pushed him away gently.

  “It’s not easy for me here,” she said.

  Jimmy’s eyes narrowed. “Are you saying I’m not a good lover?”

  “No, it’s just that I miss my loft bed overlooking the blue waters of the Hood Canal and the snow-capped Olympic Mountains.”

  Jimmy flopped over on his back. “I know what you mean,” he said, as if understanding suddenly. “It’s difficult for me here, too. This isn’t my bed with the surround-sound music system and a Jacuzzi in the other room.” He closed his eyes, as if imagining.

  Belinda stared glumly at the institutional beige walls of her tiny room, then up to the ceiling and the fluorescent lighting that had been dimmed by the removal of tubes to conserve electricity.

  My God, she thought, this sterile box has become my bedroom, my office, my world.

  She bit her lip, and memories flooded back of her life BTWB, her private code which stood for “Before Things Went Bad.” She felt despair, grief, and anger, all rolled into one. She also knew why she and Jimmy were lovers now, when BTWB they acted as if neither of them really existed. It was all a matter of distraction, sensation, connection, and pleasure. Anything to deaden the pain, the loss of their former lives. Did her dream home even exist anymore or had it been smashed by a powerful tornado? Or buried in the huge blizzard that followed, crushed under the weight of snow?

  If Belinda managed to get out of this, would there be anything for her to go back to? What about her Maine Coon cat Phylum, and her golden retriever Genus? A year ago, thinking she was going off to work on a typical day at the seed repository, she had left them at the house, and then had found herself trapped by the paranoia and unwavering commands of Benitar Jackson. Under an onslaught of weather, the Director, already precarious emotionally, had gone over the edge and taken the entire staff prisoner, threatening to shoot anyone who disobeyed him.

  Like many forms of madness, Jackson’s was rooted in reality. There really were catastrophes occurring out there, killing tens of millions of people all over the world, and maybe even more. But she resented the loss of her God-given right to free choice, and knew her co-workers felt the same way she did. She wasn’t a religious fanatic like many survivors around the world, who had tilted like Jackson, sending them to the extreme end of ways they had already been leaning. She’d always had her own personal relationship with God, her own special prayers that had little to do with biblical texts or the sacred verses of any other organized religion.

  She wondered if her beautiful little house on the canal was still standing, and if her beloved pets had long ago starved, or perhaps escaped … but to what? Maybe desperate, roving bands of people had shot Phylum and Genus for food. She felt a surge of nausea well up, and then slowly subside.

  “What has happened?” she whispered to herself. “What has happened?”

  For months now, she had studiously avoided looking into the mirror in her bathroom. She had even covered the glass with paper so that she wouldn’t have to see herself with all her joy and purpose gone, the sallow skin, the lifeless blonde hair … as if even the color and sheen had been sucked away by the seed repository. It was as if the seeds themselves were using her energy as soil, taking away her life forces moment by moment, leaving her only a husk, a spent seed whose purpose was not to grow, but to give until there was nothing left to give.

  “How did this happen?” she said louder than before, as if unaware of anyone else in the room.

  “Pointless to ask that,” Jimmy murmured, without opening his eyes. “We’re here, and it’s bad for now. Let’s just be glad we have each other.”

  “But for how long?” she asked.

  Jimmy sighed. He laid his right arm over his eyes, as if trying to block out the intruding light, and the awful reality it represented. “Try not to think about it,” he said.

  “I can’t help wondering how much time we have left.”

  A long pause, then Jimmy said, “We’re safe for awhile.”

  “I don’t know,” said Belinda.

  “So the storms are worse than usual,” he replied slowly, “but bad things have happened before, and the world always gets over it.”

  “Maybe not this time. One of these days we’re going to run out of food,” she said, “with no way of replacing it. We’ve all seen the expiration dates on the cans and other containers, and we keep eating the contents anyway because we’re hungry. But we’re risking illness—or worse.”

  “Finite resources, eh? You’re starting to sound like our fearless leader.”

  “Don’t mock me.”

  “It’s bound to get better,” Jimmy insisted. We’re just having some weird and wacky weather, probably nowhere near as bad as the climate folks are saying. We’re only hearing from the rabid environmentalists and obstructionists who can’t make it on their own and expect government handouts. Well I say, if people can’t take responsibility for themselves, they get what they deserve.”

  “You’d better have eyes in the back of your head,” Belinda said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know how upset Benitar was over you not taking care of the seeds in section D. I don’t think he ever got over it.”

  “That was months ago, so don’t start. Just don’t start. OK, I forgot to turn the humidity up but we had backup seeds to replace the ones that were lost.”

  Belinda looked at him coolly. “Just watch out for him, all right? He’s more dangerous than ever.”

  Jimmy turned to look at her. “Don’t go paranoid on me. We have a good time and you start going crazy with worry over me. I must be great in bed, eh?”

  Belinda scooted up, pulling a blanket over her nakedness. “I’m not a nagging woman,” she said, “just a friend, and I want you to listen. Benitar is on the prowl, and probably suspects you of sabotaging his bulletin. You’re one of the three best computer operators we have, so you could have done it.”

  “I already told you, I didn’t.”

  “And I don’t know if I believe you.” Touching his chin, she turned his face toward her, and he opened his eyes. “I know you’re lying, Jimmy,” she said. “Don’t be surprised if Jackson has you on a hit list.”

  “Don’t be so melodramatic. What’s he going to do, kill me? He needs my skills and he knows it. Don’t worry, Beautiful, this whole weather thing is cyclical and will blow over …” He laughed at the unintentional pun, added. “Just look in the history books. We had a freaky weather thing happen, what, a century and a half ago when the volcanic island of Krakatoa blew itself to smithereens. They called it ‘The Year Without A Summer,’ and our Earth got over it. We’re a resilient planet, and the same could be said of humans. That’s why we’ve survived when other species have gone extinct.”

  “We made many of them go extinct, Jimmy. So it’s only fitting that it might happen to us, too. The explosion of that volcano wasn’t the same as the uncontrolled dumping of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by industries and motor vehicles. Emissions have never been cut enough. Politicians with vested interests failed to act.”

  “So what do you want me to do about it? Take a huge shop vacuum and suck all the C02 and methane out of the atmosphere?”

  “Don’t be facetious,” she said. “You need to take things much more seriously.”

  Jimmy turned on his side, away from her. “Yeah, yeah, Benitar’s gonna shoot all of us. Sure, sure.”

  Belinda didn’t say anything for a moment, as the very real possibility of that sank in. Then she said, “He didn’t notice me today, when I saw him standing outside the door to Peggy’s room, spying on her and Abe. He had his ear by the door, was listening to them.”

  For a mom
ent, Belinda heard Jimmy’s breath catch and she watched as he opened his eyes to look at the door.

  “He could be out there right now,” she said. A chill ran down her spine.

  CHAPTER 9

  Another Nightmare

  Disbelieving, Benitar Jackson stared at the Conelrad report on the VR display that floated in front of his eyes. He sat in his windowless office, with its locked door visible to him beyond the projected images. It was late evening, and the fatigue of the day and all of his responsibilities weighed heavily on him.

  So many problems, and none of them were small. Within the hour, he’d discovered that the exterior blast door was malfunctioning. He’d managed to close it with the manual override function, but it needed to be fixed. Another damned electrical problem that Jimmy Hansik hadn’t dealt with.

  To make matters worse, Conelrad’s Environmental Crisis Department was reporting that weather conditions, as bad as they had been in recent months, were deteriorating even more, and precipitously. Major cities had either been isolated by the conditions or substantially destroyed. Forty-foot storm surges had taken out the remaining dikes in New Orleans, and the city was completely underwater. St. Louis had been devastated by a Category Five hurricane, with sustained winds of 230 miles per hour and gusts up to 280. Temperatures in Los Angeles and Phoenix were exceeding 125 degrees, and torrential rains had turned Death Valley into a lake.

  Shaking with fear, Benitar felt lightheaded, as if from too much sugar or a spike of high blood pressure. He nearly passed out, saw the Conelrad report flicker in front of his eyes. Struggling to maintain consciousness, he closed his eyes for a moment and took a long, agitated breath.

  When he looked again, he was able to read the VR words: “Impossible, given these conditions, to get any help to you. Could be worse where you are. At least you’re not burning up like Australia with temperatures averaging 125 degrees or wiped out by rising seas like the Marianas Islands and other low coastal areas. It’s difficult to tell how much worse it’s going to get, but experts say we have a ways to go before any stabilization occurs. Wish we had some good news, but we don’t. Protect the seed bank at all costs, and continue working on hybrids that will grow in extreme climatic conditions.”

  Benitar shuddered with fear, and asked himself, “What am I supposed to do?”

  He switched off the virtual-reality screen and flipped the visor up, then rested his elbows on the desk and buried his face in his hands. Mentally, he did the math. Six people on the repository staff, not counting Peggy and her soon-to-be born child, could last maybe four and a half months. With two extra mouths to feed—if they cut back even more on rations—less than four months, considering that the baby would eat and drink less than an adult.

  “Four months,” Benitar whispered. “It’s now October 31st, so the food will last until early March if we’re lucky.” He let his breath out slowly, and realized the irony.

  Today was Halloween. Happy Halloween. Ghosts, Goblins, bats, werewolves, spiders, and the undead, all knocking on the door. He laughed weakly, bitterly, knowing he would trade the real versions of all of those monsters for the most frightening monster he had ever heard of, the weather.

  A voice interrupted him, sounding as if it was coming from the VR headset he had switched off: “You have disappointed me.”

  Benitar opened his eyes and dropped his hands. As he did so, the virtual-reality visor flipped down over his face, and he saw the image of his father standing in front of him. The man was frowning. Feeling himself drawn into the field, Benitar Jackson no longer saw his office beyond it. He seemed to be inside the milieu, with nothing “virtual” about it. Seeing his father, he couldn’t help believing it actually was him. Somehow he had returned from the dead, and not like one of the costumed trick-or-treaters of All Hallows Eve.

  “I’m sorry …” he found himself looking beseechingly at his father. Though fifty-nine years of age, Benitar felt only eight in Avery Jackson’s presence, never quite able to free himself of the parental anger and disapproval. “I’m s-s-sorry,” Benitar said in a shaking, halting voice. “But I—I—did try to please you.”

  “Trying is not always enough.” The dark eyes were piercing, unforgiving. “You could have made a fortune as I did and had the power to influence public policy.”

  “What could I have done differently? The world is in chaos, and I’m not to blame for that.”

  “The class you failed at Yale cost you the position I got for you in the Environmental Protection Agency, where you could have risen through the ranks and had the power to do something with your life. You could have made a real difference in the world, instead of the way you’ve ended up, with your back to the wall.”

  Benitar wilted under his father’s disapproving stare. He hated that look. It made him feel so stupid, ashamed, and unworthy. “You weren’t paying attention to my life. I was hired by the EPA, but they let me go because I was outspoken like you, criticizing the do-nothing administrators.”

  “You were fired for incompetence.”

  “Exactly the opposite. I was fired because I was too competent.”

  “Admit your own failures. Face them and take responsibility.”

  “Dad, you’re not being fair to me.”

  Benitar watched his father turn and walk away, and in his path a burning river appeared, with flames flickering on the polluted water. Avery Jackson halted, oddly profiled against the orange glow of the fire. Putting his right hand up, he made a sweeping gesture across the scene, and the fire extinguished, leaving the waters of the river sparkling blue and clean and pure.

  “Dad …”

  But Benitar’s father walked out into the water, not once turning back to look, but continuing on until his head disappeared beneath the surface of the river.

  Benitar cried out, a doleful wail for what he had lost, and what could never be again. He became aware of the virtual-reality headset, saw the visor fade from view. Reaching up, he felt it on top of his head, where he had earlier flipped it out of the way.

  Did I only imagine it? he thought. No, it had to be real. He came back to me, and he’s watching me now.

  With fresh determination, Director Jackson pulled a gun out of his lab coat, and stared at the weapon.

  “Dad,” he whispered reverently, as if addressing a god, “you’ll be proud of me yet.”

  With that, he took the gun and strode toward the door, knowing what he had to do next.

  CHAPTER 10

  An Accidental Meeting

  “I’ve already named my child,” Peggy said.

  In Belinda’s tiny room, she sat on the floor on a thick pillow, with her back supported by a wall. Belinda sat cross-legged in front of her, in the middle of the floor. A chess board was between them, with a game in progress, the third one they had played this evening, the tie-breaker.

  “It’s Rose,” Peggy said. She smiled, and touched her stomach as it jumped. “Little Rosie is signaling that she’s pleased to meet you.”

  “She has quite a kick. Look at that! How did you get a medical test to determine the sex?”

  “Well, I just got back from the deep forest clinic, after waiting in line with the bears, the deer, and a couple of mama raccoons. No, silly. I just know it’s a girl, that’s all. And she’s anxious to get out.”

  “We all are,” Belinda said, in a dismal tone. “We’re trapped in here because of people getting into power that had conflicts of interest—oil men for example, seeking to control oil-rich countries.” She stared at the board, then moved a black pawn forward one square. The set had hand-carved wooden pieces and a board of inlaid fossil ivory.

  Belinda was always railing against particular political leaders, but Peggy didn’t completely agree with her point of view, which they had been debating during the game.

  “It wasn’t all the fault of our leaders,” Peggy said now, responding to a diatribe by Belinda had just made against a series of U.S. presidents, who held power up to the time when the governmen
t collapsed and—pursued by angry mobs—went into hiding. “Global warming started long before they started passing the presidency around to each other,” Peggy added. “The American public knew about it back in the 1970s, but we as a people have been in denial, continuing to drive big cars and consume as if there were no limit to the resources of this planet.”

  Shaking her head, Belinda said, “The politicians and their corporate cronies didn’t do enough to stop global warming, and mounted disinformation campaigns that were designed to confuse the public. Citing potential damage to the U.S. economy, a succession of American governments refused to enter into agreements with other nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and take other environmental-protection actions. What a bunch of hooey. The politicians were using economic reasons as a smokescreen for what they wanted to do, what would line their pockets with greenbacks.”

  “You seem to overlook facts that don’t support what you want to believe.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as the fact that China, India, and other countries were exempted from any potential agreements. That isn’t right. Why should America join if China—with its huge rate of industrial growth—wasn’t participating?”

  “The U.S. should have made itself an example for the world,” Belinda insisted. “A good one, instead of a bad one. I trace all of our problems back to our self-aggrandizing presidents and their cronies. Remember the two Iraq wars, fought for oil interests? And the trillion-dollar mineral deposits in Afghanistan—do you really think that had nothing to do with us sending our forces in there, and keeping them there?”

  “I came here to play chess, not to solve all the problems of the world,” Peggy said, feeling increasingly irritated. Peggy’s own father and mother had been lifelong Republicans, working for state and national congressional candidates, so she had heard all the arguments at the dinner table.

  “Have it your way,” Belinda said, with a tight smile. “But while you’re thinking of your next move, I’ll just say one more thing. The real war our country should have fought was against industrial and auto emissions. Now we’re fighting a different kind of a war, against Mother Nature … and we can’t defend ourselves against her power.”