The Surge

  Not even at the town meeting had she spoken. There seemed to be plenty of other people there expressing their feelings about the whole situation and she had enough to do with comprehending it all, with convincing herself that she hadn't gone mad, that she hadn't lost her marbles completely.

  It had happened. It had actually happened. The Chinese had really invaded the U.S. and this little town. And now, there was no way out. She couldn't even leave if she wanted to. And she wanted to. Oh, you better believe she wanted to.

  Now, the meeting was over, and they were expected to go back to normal. Normal? What was even normal anymore? She didn't even have a place to sleep. She didn't expect Wayne to forgive her and let her into his house again after what she put him through, thinking he was going to kill her.

  No, that ship had sailed.

  What about Josh? Maybe he could give you shelter for the night? He is, after all, your brother.

  Joanna bit her nails, thinking it over and over in her mind. Would she even dare to ask him? What about their parents? Could she maybe stay at their house? Josh had told her they were out of town, in the Bahamas. At least they weren't here when all this was going on.

  It was strange for her to sit there in Josh's car, next to him after all these years. In the back seat sat Wayne and Ellie Mae along with Marley, Josh's daughter and Ellie Mae's cousin.

  What a way to be presented to your family for the first time.

  "Don't they eat dogs in China?" Marley said suddenly.

  No one answered. Josh looked at her in the rearview mirror. The girl was heartbroken, sobbing as the words left her mouth. Josh had told Joanna that the Chinese had taken Irene, back when he came to get them.

  "Why do you say that, sweetie?" Josh asked.

  "I was just worried about Bella," Marley said and looked out the window, where the dark streetlamps rushed by.

  "Bella is our dog," he said to Joanna. "A Bedlington Terrier. You know the ones with the Mohawk, ugliest dog alive, but we love her." He looked at his daughter in the mirror again. "I’m sure Bella is fine, baby."

  Josh stopped at a red light, or what used to be one, but now there was no light in it. Ten soldiers were standing on the side of the road. They didn't seem to be moving at all, just standing there, staring into thin air.

  "They hardly even seem human, do they?" Joanna said.

  "They're trained to be killer machines," Wayne said.

  "I heard they put a needle in their collar to keep their heads from falling down," Josh said. "To keep them walking with their heads lifted high."

  Josh looked for other cars and was about to move on when there was thunder and it started to pour down, Florida-style raining.

  The soldiers didn't even move. Lightning lit up the sky and the following thunder was extremely loud, indicating that it had struck very close by. Still, the soldiers didn't even blink.

  Josh stepped on the accelerator and they rushed past them. "I can't stand the feeling of them being around here." He hit his hand on the steering wheel, grunting loudly. "I don't know what they did to Irene and no one will tell me."

  Joanna put her hand on his arm, a gesture that made her heart race. "We'll find her, Josh. I'll help you."

  "You?" Josh said and pulled his arm away so she could no longer touch it. "What good can you do?"

  Joanna recoiled in hurt, then turned her head away. "You're right. I can't do any good. Anything I touch gets ruined or dies."

  A long silence broke out in the car. Josh drove up the long dirt road leading to Wayne's house and stopped the car.

  "Thanks," Wayne said and put a hand on Josh's shoulder.

  "You know what just occurred to me?" Josh said.

  They all looked at him. He was speaking through gritted teeth.

  Wayne paused. He had gotten out of the car and stood in the door, head poking inside still, looking at Josh.

  "No. What?"

  Josh scoffed. "There is no way I can go back to that house. There is no way Marley can go back there either. Not to the place where her she and her mother were both attacked."

  Wayne nodded pensively. "Hey. You're more than welcome to crash at my place. I have room."

  He looked around in the car and his eyes met Joanna's. She felt a big knot in her stomach.

  "That goes for all of you."

  Joanna felt embarrassed. "I…I really couldn't…"

  "Pleeease, Mommy," Ellie Mae whined. "Please? I like Wayne. I like sleeping over at Wayne's house."

  Joanna sighed. "No…I can't…I mean…would you really…after what happened earlier?"

  She didn't like to have to ask him to take her in again, not after the way she treated him, but at the same time, she felt like she had no other choice. Where else could she sleep tonight? In some abandoned house?

  Wayne chuckled. "Was I hurt? Yes. But, hey, I can't blame you for thinking how you did. This whole circus is a little more than unbelievable. I think we can all stretch ourselves a little and forgive. Heck, we're gonna need each other more than ever now. We gotta stick together. There’s no time for grudges."

  Joanna's eyes met Josh’s for a few seconds, and for just a short moment, she believed she saw some meekness in them, some forgiving quality. But just for a moment. He blinked and then it was gone.

  "All right," Josh said. "Guess it’s settled then. We're all staying at Wayne's for a sleepover."

  Both girls shrieked in excitement.

  "But we have to go get Bella first," Marley said. "We can't leave Bella with 'em bad dog-eatin' Chinese."

  Chapter Forty

  Ridge Manor, Florida

  The girls were allowed to sleep together with the dog. They could all fit in one bed and Joanna put them down around nine o'clock. It was only a few minutes later that there was a knock on the door. Gun in his hand, Wayne went to open it. Outside stood Mayor Stephenson.

  "Mary?"

  "We need to talk, Wayne."

  He stepped aside and let her in. "Of course. Come in before anyone sees you breaking the curfew."

  They sat in the living room. Wayne had a fireplace but it was way too hot to have a fire now. Joanna wondered if he ever used it. Like most Floridians, he probably didn't. Wayne grabbed beers for all of them. Joanna took hers and drank from it. It made her feel calmer, but not like it used to.

  "Don't you have anything stronger?" Mary asked.

  Wayne nodded. He went to a cabinet and grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels, then poured glasses for all four of them. They sipped it, then sat with the glasses in their hands, staring into the air, the silence overpowering the entire room.

  Wayne clicked his tongue. "So…"

  Mayor Stephenson drank some more from her glass, then looked at Wayne. "I need to be here when you get the next call."

  Joanna had just taken a sip from her glass and swallowed a little too fast. It burned all the way down her throat.

  Wayne was nodding, his fingers toying with his glass. "All right."

  "It's the only way to know and to prepare ourselves for what will happen next." Mary placed a hand on Wayne's shoulder. "I am sorry, Wayne. I truly am, for not believing in you. Now I know."

  For a second, it looked like Wayne was going to say, well, it's a little too late now, isn't it, but he didn't. Instead, he said, "It took me awhile too."

  Joanna looked at the two of them, then asked: "Care to let the rest of us in on what you're talking about?"

  Mary cleared her throat. "Ever since Wayne lost his daughter…"

  "She's not dead. How many times do I have to tell you?" Wayne interrupted her, flustered.

  "I'm sorry, Wayne," Mary said. "Ever since his daughter…disappeared and never returned, Wayne has been receiving a phone call every night, right after midnight, a phone call telling him what will happen exactly twelve hours from the call. Now, once he started telling us about it, naturally we didn't believe him. Especially not his wife, Lydia, who left after some time. She wasn't able to deal with the loss of her child and the fact that??
?well…her husband went crazy afterwards and started babbling about getting strange phone calls at night from the future. On a phone that isn't even connected to anything."

  "The old phone in your office?" Joanna asked.

  Wayne nodded. "The old Stromberg-Carlson."

  "And…and who, exactly, is calling you?"

  Wayne swallowed hard, then looked into his glass. He hesitated to answer, then looked back up at Joanna and answered with something very close to a whisper.

  "Arlene. My daughter, Arlene."

  Chapter Forty-One

  Ridge Manor, Florida

  "Arlene is the one who calls you?"

  Mary stared, surprised, at Wayne. "You never told me that before, only that you received the calls."

  "Well…you know…no one believed me, not even Lydia. I couldn’t even convince her to be in the office when the phone rang, let alone pick it up and talk to her daughter. She simply refused to believe it. Didn’t want any part of my craziness, she said."

  "Let me get this straight," Joanna said. "Your daughter, who has disappeared, calls you every night and tells you the future?"

  He nodded. "Yes. Not everything, but just things she knows, like the Chinese coming. I think she might be stuck in a place where they're twelve hours ahead of us or maybe can look into the future somehow; she never explained to me how she knows these things."

  Joanna's eyes grew wider. She looked at Wayne with suspicion. "You mean like a parallel universe or something?" She said it like she was being sarcastic.

  Wayne shrugged. "I try not to explain it. I just know that she is always correct. It always happens just like she described it. Like the roof of the gymnasium falling in at the high school once and the Chinese coming."

  "So, she is alive?" Mary asked, her voice almost a whisper.

  "That's what I’ve been telling you all this time, all of you. I talk to her every night."

  Mary leaned back on the couch with a deep sigh. "Wow."

  "So, how did she disappear anyway?" Josh asked. "I heard it happened in your yard?"

  Wayne drew in a breath, then exhaled. "Yes."

  "We used to say that it was the Swamp Ape who took her," Mary said. "You all know it's what everyone tells their kids around here, and has done for years: Don't go in there, the Swamp Ape might take you, or if something is lost, they'll say, Well, maybe the Swamp Ape took it, and then you know it is lost forever. In the end, that was what they said happened to Arlene, that the Swamp Ape might have taken her. It was the only logical explanation."

  Wayne scoffed. "It wasn't no Swamp Ape."

  Joanna leaned forward. "Then how did it happen?"

  Wayne rubbed his stubble, emptied his glass, and put it down hard on the table. "She was sucked into the ground."

  "She was what?" Joanna asked, startled at the response.

  "I was in my office when it happened. One minute she was there, the next she was gone. When I rushed out in the yard, I saw it. This big hole in the ground that simply continued as far as the eye could see. When I got close to it, I felt the suction, the strong pull, and I realized that was what had happened to her. It had to be. It was the only explanation. She was simply sucked into the ground."

  '"Like a sinkhole?" Joanna asked.

  "Kind of. Only the sinkholes I’ve seen haven't been as deep as this one. It was like it went on forever. It's still out there. That's why I don't let anyone go in the backyard."

  "Can we see it?" Joanna asked.

  Wayne froze. "I don't know. I think it's a bad idea."

  "Please?" Joanna said.

  Wayne nodded with a sigh. "All right. But don't go too close."

  They followed him through the living room out to the back porch that he had completely closed in with plywood. The screen door was locked with a padlock and Wayne used a key to open it.

  Joanna felt a strong pull already as she took the first step into the yard.

  "Oh, my God," she said and took another careful step.

  Wayne brought a big flashlight and lit up the hole. Joanna couldn't believe her own eyes. The hole filled most of the backyard and it was actually like it never stopped, just like Wayne had described it. It was like it was alive, like it was constantly sucking air down into it.

  "It has grown a lot in the past two years since it appeared," Wayne said. "I once saw a bird get sucked into it. I wondered if it would see Arlene."

  "Have you ever thought about jumping in?" Joanna asked.

  Wayne sighed and lit up the edges with the flashlight.

  "Every day," he said. "Every single day."

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean

  Even though Martha's eyes had gotten used to the darkness by now, she still felt terrified looking ahead of the small boat. There was nothing but deep darkness in front of them and behind them, and well…all around them.

  The man steering the boat (did you steer a boat? She wasn't sure) hadn't said a word for the entire three hours they had been rushing across the Atlantic Ocean, and Martha could do nothing but pray and hope that they were going the right way. For all she knew, he could be taking them into the deep ocean just to dump them there and sail back. They hadn't paid him anything and had no guarantees.

  We should pay him something. Maybe we could go to an ATM once - or if - we get there and get some money? He should get something for all his trouble. He is, after all, risking his life for us.

  Martha sat next to Carl and took his hand in hers. He was in a lot of pain but tried to hide it. She didn't have to see his face to know that he was. She knew him by his sounds by now.

  "I’m sure it won't be much longer now," she said to comfort him. "Then we'll be back home on American soil and you can get Dr. Andrews to look at that hip. It'll all be over soon."

  He didn't say anything, but she felt his hand on top of hers and it felt nice. They hadn't touched each other much the past several years. Martha had, at some point, wondered if Carl simply ran out of love for her. In her heart, she knew why he wasn't affectionate with her anymore. It was the blame. He simply couldn't forgive her for what happened with Joanna. Every day, she wondered if he ever would. Every single day, she hoped.

  "I think I see something," Martha suddenly said.

  In the darkness, somewhere far on the horizon, she had spotted something, a shape. Now, she told herself, she had to calm down. It could, after all, just be another boat; they could hardly be the only ones out there. She just prayed it wasn't some big cruise ship or tanker that hadn't seen them and would sail right into them, crushing them.

  But it wasn't. As they sailed towards the shape, more like it appeared and soon there were lots of them in front of them. She realized it wasn't another boat. It had to be the coastline.

  "I see land, Carl. I see land. It has to be Florida. It simply has to be. Did you hear me? I think I can see Florida."

  "Si, Si, Florida," the man steering said in Spanish. It sounded so beautiful the way he pronounced the name.

  "It's Florida Carl," she repeated, trying to sound like him, but it just came off as odd. "Did you hear that? It's Florida! I mean, I had hoped it was, but how would we know, right? How could we be sure that he would take us in the right direction, but he said it was Florida just now, and I believe he is right. I do believe it. I mean, he must know, right? Did you hear it, Carl, did you?"

  "I heard it," Carl said.

  He sounded indifferent, but she knew he was smiling as he spoke. When you've been married as long as they had, you could hear it in the tone of the other one's voice.

  "Oh, I can't wait to go home," Martha said, clapping her hands together in excitement. "I can't wait to see Josh and Irene and especially Marley. I can't wait to give her a big hug and hear all about her dance recital. Do you think they put up those new curtains in the living room? I really hope they have. They should have been up weeks ago."

  "I don't know about that," Carl grunted, "But I sure am looking forward to setting my feet on solid A
merican ground again."

  "Oh, we'll have a burger and some chicken pot pie when we get back to Ridge Manor. And brisket, oh, I am in the mood for a brisket sandwich, the one that Miss Trudy makes at the Smokehouse Grill. Oh, Carl, I can't wait to get back. I can't wait to see everybody and tell them how awful it was. Do you think they’ve heard about what happened? You think it's been in the news? Oh, my, do you think we might get to be on the news, do you?"

  "Easy there," Carl said. "We ain't home yet."

  "I know, Carl, but still. I’m sure those reporters at News 13 will want to talk to us, don't you think?"

  "Right now, I just want to get home. Let's focus on that for now, shall we? We don't know where in Florida he'll be dropping us off. It could be all the way down south and then we'll have to find a way to get back to Central Florida."

  "I'll call Josh," Martha said, then shrieked in joy. "Oh, how wonderful it'll be to have a phone that works again. Finally, back to civilization. Where things work, where the Internet and TV work. I can't wait to just be on the couch watching TV again."

  The small boat rushed across the ocean and the beach came closer and closer. They could see more and more and Martha wondered for just a second why she couldn't see cars driving on A1A, but then thought that she had no idea if you could even see that from the ocean side. She had, after all, never come home from this side.

  The boat slowed down as they approached the beach and soon Martha was certain she could recognize the buildings in the port in Cape Canaveral. If that was the case, then they were in luck. It wasn't very far from Ridge Manor, only about a two-hour drive. Josh could come out and pick them up and they could be home soon.

  It was perfect.

  The boat chugged into the harbor and she spotted the big cruise ships that were docked further in, not noticing that their many lights weren't turned on like they usually were.

  "Next time, we're going on one of those," she said and pointed. "Loads of food and best of all, no Chinese."