Flesh Eaters (3 page)

Eleanor and Jim had met fourteen years before, back when she was a brand-new patrolwoman working every extra job she could find just to make the rent on a rattrap apartment on Houston’s lower east side.

She was working security at a Flogging Molly concert the night he came into her life. He was with a group of his friends from his college days. He was cute, she thought. A little nerdy, maybe—certainly more of a nerd than the cops she was used to hanging out with—but cute. He kept coming up to her, using really weak excuses to strike up a conversation; and as much as her cop training told her to disengage so she could watch the crowd as she was being paid to do, there was a very human part of her that liked the attention.

During a break between songs he worked up the nerve to ask for her number.

“No way,” she said. “Not while I’m working.”

“Not while you’re working? What does that mean?”

“It means I don’t give out my number to strange men while I’m working.”

“I’m not strange.”

“You know what I mean,” she said, smiling despite herself.

“You can trust me,” he said. “I’m a good guy. Come on, I don’t bite.”

Her gaze shifted from the crowd back to him. He was leaning against a wall next to a dartboard, trying to look cool, but only managing a barely contained nervousness. He
was
cute, though. She couldn’t deny that.

“I’ll tell you what. How about you give me your number, and I’ll think about it?”

His smile grew even wider. He hurriedly scribbled down his number on the back of his business card and handed it to her.

“I usually get off around six,” he said.

“I’ll think about it,” she answered.

And she had thought about it. For two days she thought about it. She hadn’t realized it going into the job, but dating options for a female cop are few. She could date other cops, and a lot of girls did, but there wasn’t a sewing circle anywhere that could gossip like a bunch of cops, and the girls who did date their fellow officers quickly developed reputations as sluts, or bitches, or psychos, or whatever, whether it was deserved or not.

The other option, dating a guy from outside the department, a civilian, was harder than it sounded. Most of the men she met came into her sphere because they were in the process of committing some kind of crime. And even if they weren’t doing something illegal, finding time to go out with them around the demands of a rotating police schedule was nearly impossible. Plus (and this wasn’t obvious, but it was something that nearly every female officer she knew had experienced) most men who weren’t cops were intimidated by a girl who walked around with a gun in her purse . . . and who knew how to use it.

But Jim Norton wasn’t that way. He didn’t seem intimidated by her at all. He’d made her feel special from the first moment he’d tried his dorky lines on her, and in the end, she’d called and asked him out. They were married eight months later.

Memories of those early days together always made her smile, but unfortunately her reverie didn’t last long, for just then the shutters started to rattle. Another blast of rain and wind swept over the house, carrying with it a train wreck sound and the horrible feeling that God’s shadow was passing overhead.

“I need to go get her,” Eleanor said.

Jim, who had rocked back on his haunches, a corner of Madison’s sleeping bag still in his hand, nodded.

“Wait for this one to pass first,” he said.

“Mom.”

Eleanor looked at her daughter. The smile and the giggle were gone. For the first time there was fear in the girl’s eyes. The knowledge that something big and angry had them in its sights was finally starting to sink in.

Eleanor crossed the room and put her arms around her. “I’m gonna bring Ms. Hester here with us,” Eleanor said.

“Mom, you can’t go out in that.”

“Sweetie, we can’t leave her to face that alone. It’ll stop in a second. I won’t be gone long.”

“Promise?”

Eleanor pulled her daughter close. “I promise.”

Five days earlier, a Category Three hurricane named Gabriella had zeroed in on Matagorda Bay, just south down the coast from Houston. Houston was expected to get the dirty side of the storm, and all the newscasters prophesied a Katrina-like disaster. A massive evacuation was ordered. Nearly four million people fled the Houston area, turning the highways that led to San Antonio and Dallas into parking lots. For two days, the city of Houston turned into a ghost town.

But Gabriella didn’t cooperate.

She fizzled to a weak tropical storm while still at sea, and when she made landfall, all she’d been able to muster was a good soaking for the grass and a couple of broken windows along the coastline.

Houstonians returned home, resentful of the ordered evacuation. It was why so many had ignored the current order to evacuate now that Hector was on the way.

In the back of her mind, Eleanor had hoped that Hector would blow itself out the same way Gabriella had, but when she stepped out her front door, all hope of that disappeared from her mind. Even the biggest trees were tossing wildly back and forth. Trash and leaves filled the air. Ocean-scented rain moved across the lawn in silvery, wind-blown curtains. A rainbow-colored canopy from a child’s backyard swing set tumbled down her sidewalk.

On the other side of the street, the pecan trees that surrounded Ms. Hester’s house were slamming against her kitchen wall, stray limbs raking across the roof, kicking up shingles and sending them airborne on the wind like playing cards.

“You stay here,” Jim said. “I’ll go get her.”

“No,” Eleanor said, barely aware that she was using the harsh, clipped tone of her cop’s voice. “Let me. You stay with Madison.”

He looked indecisive, as though he was torn between his male instincts to take the risk and his knowledge that she was the one trained for this kind of thing.

“I’ll be okay,” she assured him, but without softening her tone. It was best not to give him a chance to finish the debate, so that he wouldn’t talk himself into doing something stupid. There was no time for that. “You stay with Madison. Keep her calm.”

And with that she ducked her head and stepped off the porch and into the wind.

The rain needled at her skin. Standing upright was harder than she expected. She had to tense the muscles in her thighs just to keep her balance. The ground was spongy beneath her feet. An inch of water stood on the ground, and everywhere she looked she saw the crawfish that had washed up from Bays Bayou scurrying through the grass.

To the south was a bank of black clouds that stretched across the horizon like an angry, roiling cliff. Charleston Street stretched a good half mile out in front of her before curving out of sight. Beyond the curve was the flat greenish-black surface of Bays Bayou, now flooding the areas adjacent to its banks, and beyond the water was an industrial park of concrete and glass buildings. From where she stood she could just see a line of those buildings disappearing beneath the bottom of the storm wall. To Eleanor, it looked like they were being eaten.

She was too stunned to move. She stood there, mouth open in awe, watching the approaching monster.

A loud crack to her right snapped her out of the moment and she turned just in time to see a large limb from one of Ms. Hester’s pecan trees come crashing down on the corner of the house. It twisted in the wind, sagged, then scraped down the side of house, ripping the plywood covers Jim had put over her windows from their brackets. The glass behind the plywood exploded with a series of muffled pops.

But the tree didn’t stop moving. Its dense cluster of leaves caught the wind like a sail and pulled it down the length of the house, tearing down a section of the wall as it tumbled away from the approaching storm.

“Oh my God,” she said.

She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. In a crazy, terrible, unreal way, it looked like the house was being zippered open by an old-style can opener, the pecan tree shredding the wooden siding with unbelievable speed.

“No!” she shouted.

The tree tore free of the house and sailed down the street as though it were being dragged behind an invisible truck.

Eleanor watched it go, then ran to the house.

She pounded on the front door, kicked it with everything she had, even threw her shoulder into it. “Ms. Hester! Betty Jo! Open the door. It’s me, Eleanor.”

Nothing.

She threw her shoulder at it one more time, then ran for a damaged section of the wall, shielding her face from the wind with her arm as she searched for a way inside.

The gash left by the pecan tree had torn the kitchen wall in half. Shredded electrical wires extruded from the lath, their jagged ends reaching for her like dangerous fingers. The wind was roaring in her ears. The air around her smelled of musty insulation and ocean rain and crushed vegetation.

“Ms. Hester?” she called out. “Can you hear me?”

Nothing.

She was really scared now. Her face hurt from the pelting rain.
You gotta get inside right now
, she thought.
There’s no time. Go, go, go!

Eleanor climbed over the jagged fragment of kitchen wall. Inside, the house was a mess. Water was already pooling on the living room floor and dripping down the walls. Debris was strewn everywhere. A large recliner was upside down against the back wall of the living room, papers and pictures swirling around it.

Eleanor ran for the hall closet. Back in May, when all the literature about hurricanes had first started appearing in the papers, Eleanor had told Ms. Hester to take shelter there if she was trapped at her house during a hurricane. She threw open the door, but the closet was empty.

A sudden surge in the wind threw her against the wall, yanking the doorknob out of her hand.

“Ms. Hester?”

Her only answer was the wind ripping into the house, tearing the walls apart.

From somewhere behind her she heard a loud snap, followed by the sound of walls breaking apart.

No
, she thought, shaking her head.
That is not possible
.

But it was happening. The house was buckling, the timber inside the walls snapping like bones as the floor shuddered beneath her feet.

Where are you, Betty Jo? Come on, damn it.

And then a memory surfaced in her mind. In the Academy they taught young police officers how to handle calls for missing toddlers. Abducted children, her instructors had told her, are rare outside of the movies. You get a call for a missing four-year-old, the first place you look is under the beds. The parents will tell you they’ve looked everywhere, but they’re too scared to focus on the obvious. Chances are you’ll find the kid there, under the parents’ bed, playing, hiding, maybe even sleeping.

A small table along the hall wall began to sway and dance. All the pictures along the wall fell to the floor. A few blankets floated on the air, buoyed by the wind. Everything happened so fast all she could do was stand still and gawk at the destruction.

Then the floor shifted beneath her, and she ran for the back bedroom. The wind had blown debris into the doorway, but most of the room looked the same as it always did, neat and tidy. A flash of lightning filled the room, spilling light across the quilt at the foot of the bed. Eleanor got down on her hands and knees, lifted the bed skirt, and saw Ms. Hester curled into a fetal ball. She was trembling.

“Betty Jo, take my hand. I’m gonna get you out of here.”

No response. The woman was in shock. Her eyes were open, glittering like coins caught by firelight, but they were unfocused and vague. Eleanor could hardly believe that the woman had made herself so small.

“Betty Jo, please. Take my hand. I have to get you out of here.”

Eleanor tried to reach for her, but Ms. Hester had wedged herself deep under the bed, just out of reach.

“Please,” Eleanor said. “There’s no time.”

Not gonna happen
, Eleanor thought.

She stood up, grabbed the wooden bed frame, and tried to lift it. If she couldn’t pull Betty Jo out, she’d throw the bed off her and scoop her up fireman-style. But it was a huge wooden sleigh bed, impossibly heavy. She strained against its weight with everything she had, but only managed to raise it a few inches off the floor.

Her fingers were slipping, the muscles in her arms and back and neck screaming at her to drop the weight.

“Come on,” she said. “Please.”

“Eleanor! Where are you?”

It was Jim’s voice, coming from somewhere in the living room.

“In here,” she answered. “Help me!”

The next moment he was by her side, his hands next to hers under the bed frame. She heard him grunting, felt his body tense next to hers, and the next instant the bed was rising, coming up above her head.

“Get her out of there,” Jim said. “I’ll hold it.”

Eleanor dropped to her knees again and scrambled under the bed. Ms. Hester’s body was curled so tightly into a ball Eleanor had trouble moving her.

“Hurry!” Jim said.

“Betty Jo, come on,” Eleanor said. She slid an arm under the woman’s trembling body and pulled her out from under the bed. “Clear!” she yelled to Jim.

He let the bed fall, then reached down and scooped Ms. Hester up from the floor.

“Find us a way out,” he said. “I’ll carry her.”

The wind had blown a pile of crushed furniture and tree limbs and trash into the living room, and Eleanor had to climb over it to reach the front door. She kicked it once, twice, and it burst open as the wind caught it and ripped it from its hinges. In disbelief, Eleanor watched it slide across the yard and down the street.

But there was no time to wait. The roaring wind in the doorway created enough suction to pull her out, and she had to grab hold of the frame just to keep from getting carried away like the door.

Beyond the doorway, the sky had grown impenetrably dark. Rain was slashing sideways across her field of vision. She steadied herself against the wind, then reached in and took Ms. Hester from Jim.

“You got her?” he asked, yelling to be heard over the wind.

“Yeah, come on.”