The Resurrected Compendium Read online

  The smell faded and disappeared.

  Her fury was never sudden any more. It was always there, barely below the surface, ready to boil up and out of her for any reason. That ceaseless, simmering anger was the reason why she had a mess on her kitchen floor and why she flung open the back door now and took two thumping steps onto the back porch.

  Everything had gone still. Dead silence. Not even the puff of a breeze. Marnie went out into the yard, her feet whispering in the grass, face tipped to the sky as she tried to find more of that delicious scent. Suddenly it was all she could think about.

  It was gone. She concentrated, moving slowly because the great, vast bulk of her body wouldn’t let her move faster than that. She didn’t know what she was looking for, only that she had to find it…had to figure out what it was…

  And then the storm came. First with the spang of hail clattering onto the house and barn roofs and clanging off Tony’s pickup truck. A few small hailstones hit her bare arms, stinging, and Marnie muttered another string of curses as she covered her head instinctively. Bigger hail followed a moment after that, and a pang of real fear shot through her. Hail that could dent metal would have no trouble also doing worse to her skull.

  The wind came next, no soft breeze this time but the force of a pushing hand, so hard it made her stumble. She went to her hands and knees in the grass, her nightgown tangling around her legs. Her fingers fisted in the dirt for a moment. The skies opened, pouring rain. Lightning flared with thunder so close on the flash it was like they happened at the same time — shit, maybe it was simultaneous. The storm was so close over her the lightning might even be striking the rod settled on the barn roof.

  She had to get inside. With nothing to grab to help herself up, the best she could do was roll herself onto her feet and push. Her belly was in the way. Her sodden nightgown clung to her and her hair had fallen in her face, making it even harder to see, much less move. Still, Marnie got to her feet with the roar of the wind in her ears so loud she couldn’t even hear herself scream.

  Another crack of lightning connected the sky to the earth and lit the yard. It hit so close the metal fillings in her teeth twanged — for an instant she swore she heard the rise and fall of that preacher’s voice, the one who was set up in his tent a few miles from here, the one who did that radio program Tony found so fascinating. Then it was gone, replaced by a sound that wasn’t so much the noise of a chuffing train but more like a furious scream.

  Another flash painted everything in a blue-white glare, and she saw the snake in the sky.

  Somehow, she got herself moving. Not to the house, not to the barn, but toward the side yard where the metal doors lay snug against the ground with a few stakes tied with orange ribbons surrounding them to remind Tony not to run them over with the mower. Cyclone cellar, just like the one in the Wizard of Oz, the place she’d snuck into with her cousins and her boyfriends, the one she’d never needed before.

  She needed it now, Marnie thought as she pushed her unwieldy body to run on rain-slippery grass and prayed to whatever God would have her that she wouldn’t fall. She’d never get back up. Her bare foot hit something sharp that sliced, the pain instant and huge. When she screamed, her mouth filled up with rain. She spat it out and refused to fall.

  Her fingers scrabbled against the metal. She broke a nail. No time to curse now, though the pain of ruining her manicure was worse than the discomfort in her finger. She didn’t remember the doors being so heavy. She’d imagined flinging them open, but could barely lift even one. Bracing her feet against the concrete rim around the doors, Marnie pulled, hard. Harder. Her hands slipped, and for one endless moment she knew she was going to go flying onto her back. At the last second, another nail broke as her fingertips caught and the door eased open.

  She was smart enough not to shove her fingers into the wedge of space between the doors, even as she wasn’t convinced she’d be able to keep it open. Another hard tug, this one wrenching her back. Then one more, and the door finally heaved open far enough that the weight of it started tipping it all the way open.

  No, no, not that, she’d never be able to close it again. “C’mon, you bastard.” The words gritted out, unheard over the storm.

  Somehow Marnie got herself inside the doorway and down the first few concrete steps, twisting as she did to keep the door from coming down and hitting her in the head. That wouldn’t just knock her down the stairs, it would probably kill her…and no matter how many times she’d thought anything would be better than the life she’d made for herself, she didn’t want to die.

  Grunting, her arms trembling, she managed to lower the door a few inches over her head before she ducked out of the way and let it close. The silence wasn’t deep, but it was immediate. The doors muffled the sounds outside, but the noise of her breathing and the pounding of her heart had become very loud in her ears. For the second time that night, she felt like she might pass out. Her legs wouldn’t hold her, and she sank onto the cold, damp stairs with her arms wrapped around her knees and her face pressed to the soaked cotton of her nightgown.

  Inside her, the baby moved, kicking hard enough to force a groan from her throat. It shifted, tiny hands and feet finding something to grab and pound and hurt; Marnie arched her back and lifted her hips, palms flat on the steps, to ease the pain and give the kid some room. The baby quieted, but her breath had gone harsh and panting. She thought her heart might just beat right out of her chest. She swallowed the taste of metal.

  She must’ve fainted then, at least for a minute or so. The world grayed out and disappeared. There was no pain, and she wasn’t angry. It was the best she’d felt in almost a year.

  Then the door above her creaked open, letting in the wind and rain and noise. Letting in Tony. And Marnie didn’t think twice, she just pushed upward with both hands above her head, her injured foot protesting the sudden pressure. She pushed up and out. She pushed him. She pushed Tony out the door, into the storm, and then stopped pushing. The door slammed closed on the hand he’d shoved inside to keep the door from closing.

  If he screamed, she didn’t hear him. If he bled, the spatter of it didn’t feel any different than the rain had. Marnie eased her foot down one step in the darkness. Then another, and a few more until she was at the bottom and remembered to feel along the wall at her right-hand side for the small alcove. In her grandparents’ day, there’d been a heavy duty flashlight along with candles and waterproof matches in that niche, but some time ago she’d replaced those things with glow-sticks. She fumbled for one now, cracked the slim plastic tube and held it up to light her way into the depths of the shelter. She made a spot for herself on one of the uncomfortable cots and pulled a blanket over herself.

  Marnie went to sleep.

  5

  Tony’d lived through a tornado before. A bad one had devastated the trailer park he and his mother had been living in while his dad was chasing his dreams all around the country. He’d been just a little kid, six or seven years old, and he’d pissed himself when the trailer walls started shaking. His mom had dragged them both outside and shoved him underneath the trailer, past the lattice and beyond the tangle of pipes and wires. His mom had always said they lost everything that day, but all Tony remembered was the warm and embarrassing trickle of pee down his leg, and the smell beneath the trailer where things had died.

  He didn’t remember the noise. He didn’t remember pain. Both were consuming him now.

  His hand was broken, he knew it the way he’d known the time he broke his leg when he got a little drunk and jumped off the cliff into the river but hit the bank instead. The wind had taken the door out of his hands and slammed it closed on his fingers, but not before he’d caught a glimpse of Marnie inside. Thank Jesus, she was okay.

  Tony sagged against the metal as the wind whipped at him. He pounded with his other hand and couldn’t even hear the sound of it over the storm. He wanted to shout Marnie’s name, tell her it was going to be okay, but the pain in his hand h