CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The station on California Street and Santa Clara was bustling with activity. More and more refugees were pouring in. Just across the street, there was a multi-level parking garage. Not knowing how many families they need to provide temporary shelter for, the enterprising officers and staff had decided to use the street level parking garage.
There were only a couple of cars inside when the EMP disabled virtually all the vehicles in town, so there was plenty of room for the makeshift shelter. Two tall propane outdoor heaters were set up close to the center, away from the wind and rain. A generator had been set up in a utility closet and cables ran to lights in the staging area.
By the time staff and volunteers had set up several cots and folding chairs, they had figured out that the winds were vastly reducing the effectiveness of the outdoor heaters, so tarps were hung all the way around, tied to the overhead sprinkler system and lighting conduits within the garage. All loose edges were tied off at the grommets that were manufactured into the heavy tarps. This provided a barrier against the wind and the distant generator in the utility closet, but more importantly, it tended to keep the warm in, even with the flaps facing one side tied open toward the pedestrian entrance that faced the station.
Valerie inched the car down California Street. At the Police Station, klieg lights shone down from the roof above and on the street below. The generator-powered lights illuminating the sea of slickers, caps and umbrellas created a surreal world alien to her prior Ventura life. A palm frond whipped around in a huge arc as though trapped in a funnel and destined for the drain.
The strange vision that flashed in Sandy’s imagination, however, was that, in her present drenched state, it was she who was down in the water looking up at the whirlpool. In a way, she was, for it would be dry above the clouds.
Valerie and Sandy pulled up near the front of the station, or at least as close as the meandering survivors would allow. An old pickup truck pulled up with three men in the back carrying shotguns and rifles. They had evidently been out on a supply run because the tarp tied down in the back bulged with promise.
The men in the back climbed out and a police officer directed the truck toward the vehicle entrance off Santa Clara. Valerie opted for following the truck into the parking garage rather than get out in the torrent.
They parked some distance from the blanketed enclosure. Valerie didn’t want the car’s exhaust to get into the shelter. With the lights of the Volvo off, the shelter provided a strange glow, since it was lit from within. Their eyes adjusted quickly and Valerie led them around to the entrance that drew them in with comforting warmth and light. Smells of cooking reached their nostrils from a couple of cook stoves tended to by two male cooks. Some kids were helping serve up the food.
A couple of people were caring for kids and other patients on cots. Someone had set up a coffee pot on a folding table. An adjacent table was loaded down with water bottles. Sandy wasted no time preparing herself a cup of coffee, especially as the table was next to one of the tall propane heaters. The coffee coursed from the inside and met the warm glow of the heat entering from without and Sandy shivered the last remaining cold from her bones.
Not far stood a large bulletin board on legs with sandbags at the base. Large letters across the top read, “Have You Seen Me?” Sandy wondered how someone could’ve put something together so quickly. Underneath, photos were pinned with hopeful sticky notes on them bearing phone numbers, optimistically anticipating restored phone service.
Reluctantly, Sandy removed a photo of Cassie from her wallet, scrawled her name, address and phone number on it and pinned it low enough for Cassie to find. She affixed a note that read...
CJ,
If I am not here do NOT go anywhere. I will be checking back.
Pip- Stay boy! Stay!
Nice doggie.
–Love Sandy.
She smiled to herself at that last. Sandy knew that if Cassie made it here alone, she was likely to be scared, shook up at best. She was certain the attempt at humor would relieve some tension.
Although the food smelled delightful, Sandy could not, would not rest until she found Cassie. She knew she could cover more ground in a car. Plus, the added shroud of steel would keep her dry and provide a measure of security. After she posted her note, she went looking for Valerie.
Valerie was in ardent conversation with two officers and an older man in a very wet business suite. The man in the suit looked wrong. He had to be close to shock. His suit was drenched and the knees looked like he’d slid halfway down a mountain on them. It struck Sandy as odd the way his tie was cinched, even though there clearly was no way to keep his present attire formal. Hm. Maybe he’s just cold. Or afraid of vampires.
When Sandy approached, the conversation died. Apparently, Sandy wasn’t to be privy to the topic of discussion. She didn’t really care. “Are you going out again?” Valerie looked at her companions and stepped away with Sandy.
“Yeah sure. Give me a minute though, will you?” She looked on the verge of angry tears.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Sandy asked.
“Yeah. I just… See that guy over there in the suit? He’s with the government, or so he says. He says he’s been around the whole perimeter and he thinks we’re stuck here.”
“Perimeter? What perimeter? What do you mean stuck here? You mean the government has us cordoned off?”
Valerie was having trouble grappling with her emotions. She took a breath and decided to back up. “Look, I don’t know everything that’s going on. All I can guess is that this mess around us is some big government experiment gone wrong.”
“The weather you mean? The power outage?”
Valerie chuckled without humor. “It’s a whole heckuva lot more complicated than that.”
Sandy looked nervously at her watch. “Look, can we talk about this in the car? There’s a little lost girl out there not yet six years old. I don’t know what all you’ve seen tonight… or today… whatever… but government experiment or not, she’s in trouble.”
Valerie didn’t need to be told this. There came a god-awful howl in the distance that cut through the wind and rain. The echo inside the parking garage added to the creepy quality of the howl. Folks stopped whatever they were doing and looked around at one another. At that singular moment, if so much as one person had bolted, a stampede would have followed.
Rather than break into pandemonium, everyone started murmuring among themselves. Those who had them, checked their weapons. When another wail didn’t follow, things returned to business-as-unusual. These people were already growing accustomed to the extraordinary.
Valerie commented, “That sounded like Ol’ Wailin.”
“Who?”
“Just a little something on the loose I ran into earlier today at the beach. You don’t want to meet him.” She nodded at Sandy. “Okay, let’s go find your little girl.”
Relieved, Sandy followed Valerie to her car. Valerie got behind the wheel and Sandy got into the passenger seat with her pack down between her feet. Valerie put the car in gear and pulled it to the garage exit where a cop held his hand up to stop them. Valerie rolled her window down.
“Whoa, miss. We appreciate your assistance tonight, but operating vehicles are in short supply. We’re going to have to commandeer you car.”
Before the officer knew what was happening, he found he had Sandy’s unregistered Sig Saur 9mm pointed at his face. He raised his hands and took one slow step back and told Sandy, “I don’t think you want to do that.”
“You’re right, I don’t. I’m just very tired, wet and angry. But my very real need to find a little lost five-year-old girl supersedes any and all authority.”
“Ma’am, I am a Ventura County Police Officer and…”
Valerie interrupted with, “And what, officer? It seems to me from the conversation we just had over there, we aren’t in Ventura any more, let alone Ventura County. We don’t even know if we’re on Earth anymore now do we? Suppose you tell me what gives you any more authority or rights than any of the rest of us.”
The officer had no response to that. He simply shrugged in a resigned manner, his mouth a grim line. He saluted sarcastically, gestured toward the exit, arms wide of his weapon.
Sandy kept her gun on him and said, “Let’s go.”
“You got it. Jerk’s not taking my Volvo,” Valerie muttered.
Sandy kept her eye on him until the gout of rain on the back window hampered her ability to see him. This time, Valerie avoided California Street and made a left out of the parking garage.
Once underway, Sandy was scanning their surroundings with the spot light. Valerie looked over, with concern. “Don’t you think it would be a good idea to roll up that window? I know you have a gun and all but you sure you want to press your luck? Even with old Betsy there?” she indicated the shotgun.
“I’m not so sure a pane of glass is going to make that much difference with whatever is out there. Besides, I want to be able to hear CJ.”
Valerie clicked the heater fan up one notch.
Sandy prompted, “So are you going to tell me about that government experiment you and the cop were talking about? If it’s not about the weather, then what part of all this is the government screw-up? Those monsters, or whatever, out there?”
“I’m afraid most of it is guesswork. A few of us have been comparing what we know and what we saw.”
“This sounds like a B movie. Why would the government make a bunch of zombies? Have they been gene splicing to make super warriors?” Sandy asked.
Valerie chortled, “It’s not quite like that. I don’t know what you saw, but what came after me bore no resemblance to anything that is or ever was human and was a heckuva lot bigger.” She met Sandy’s eyes with a sober fright that allowed Sandy to see just how fragile was Valerie’s hold on her sanity.
Valerie told her, “I’m not sure where they came from or what this has to do with the rest of it unless they live here and maybe we are intruding on their territory.”
Sandy pointed to the left at an intersection and Valerie turned. “You maybe should start at the beginning with what you know,” suggested Sandy. “Because last I checked I went to bed in Ventura and this still looks like Ventura to me.”
“Look. Sandy is it? Sandy, all I know is that the company I work for was working on a weather-influencing project for the Defense Department out of Mugu. I’m the Assistant Project Manager for them.” Valerie huffed heavily, “This stuff is highly classified but I guess right now that scarcely matters. But once we get out of this… if we get out of this… you can’t talk about it to anybody. Okay?”
Sandy, exasperated, turned to Valerie, “Whatever. Just tell me what in blazes is going on, alright?”
“Fine. All it was, really, was a device that could be mounted on aircraft that could change the weather. It used a special wave form of electromagnetism and could focus the energy to a relatively small area to alter weather patterns.”
“And they pointed it at Ventura and turned a bunch of people into mutants?” Sandy asked, incredulous.
“You really have to let go of the B movie stuff. Instant Mutants only happen in really bad horror films.”
“Well, look around you sister because last I checked we’re living in a horror movie.”
“No, look – I was out on the pier when it all went down…” Valerie froze and the car began to slow. “Wait. Oh, man it just occurred to me.”
“What?”
“Well, see, I got this call at the last minute from a muckety-muck higher up in the company. They said they needed me to monitor the progress from the pier and report back.”
“Only…” Sandy prompted. “I’m sorry, but could we keep moving?”
Valerie eased the car forward, “Sorry. Only, why were they going to drop Dark Cloud down on Ventura anyway? And if it was a big planned test, where’s the Navy?”
“You lost me. And ‘Dark Cloud’–is that the weather device thingy?”
“Oh, man. The Navy isn’t here because Pravus, the company I work for, had their own agenda the Navy didn’t know about. I bet they were going to maybe steal it back from the Navy or something and they used me to do it. I punched the number, only the parachute didn’t open and the thing went whammo, right into the ground. That’s what did it.”
“So, not to interrupt your stream-of-consciousness, but, Pravus called you out to steal this Dark Cloud device from the Navy but it crashed? What, was it ‘on’ or something and now we’re stuck with this storm it’s making? What does that have to do with the monsters or demons or whatever running around? That guy back there said something about walking a perimeter?”
“Yeah, see, it… they had me punch a number into a cell phone that made the Dark Cloud device drop from a navy jet at a prearranged time. I’m not sure how that worked because it’s not like it dropped right away. Maybe it just activated a trigger so when it flew over certain coordinates, POP! It breaks loose and floats down. They must’ve had someone else at the drop to carry it away with a truck or something. I know they didn’t ask me to go get it.”
“Maybe a few sailors were supposed to pick it up.”
“No, Sandy, why? The jet would return to base anyway. See?”
“Hm. I bet that Navy jet was gray.”
“So?” asked Valerie confused.
Sandy was scanning, looking for any sign of Cassie or Pip. Never in her entire life did she feel so helpless. She thought it strange that she saw nothing but trees waving in the wet gusts. Empty, light-less gray houses and southwest-style businesses flat against the dark. Now and then an out-of-place Victorian would loom in her spotlight. Lightening punctuated the certainty of her failure to protect Cassie like an undertaker’s relentless hammer driving nail after nail in a pronouncement of death.
No. She pushed the thought down. She buried it along with old pain and memories for it had no place in the here and now. Not so long as there was hope. She saw the tether that was little Cassie’s uniqueness, her calling, and Sandy grabbed it and hung on for dear sweet life. Cassie was all right. Cassie was in God’s loving care. She had to be.
Valerie interrupted her reverie, “Weird. Seems like we should be seeing someone or something out here. Where is everyone?”
“Probably huddled, scared to death in their houses,” she offered.
“Okay, so, I recall hearing some of the physicists and engineers on the project debating the technology in play. Remember that old movie about the Philadelphia Experiment?”
“Yeah, kind of. Battle ship experiment in World War Two where a ship turns green and time travels or something?”
“Close enough,” confirmed Valerie. “These guys were standing around ooo-ing and aah-ing about how cool to be using some of the same technology to change weather patterns and whether they might be able to tweak it some to move objects trans-dimensionally.”
“You’re not actually proposing that’s what they did to the entire town of Ventura,” skeptically.
“Well, from what the man you saw at the shelter said, no, not the entire city. It’s more like we’re in this rather large-ish bubble maybe a couple miles across, including some beach, ocean and sky.”
Now Valerie did stop the car and she and Sandy stared at one another and considered the implications. “Think about it. Dark Cloud comes down hard, maybe planned, maybe not, something breaks…”
“Or not,” Sandy offered.
“Yeah. Okay. Or not,” Valerie didn't like that implication. “Yeah, so the idiots maybe do want to see what will happen. So it comes down and goes off and shifts us someplace…”
“Or some when else?”
“Whew, I don’t know. It’s not like these things around us are dinosaurs. Maybe it transported us into the future? Maybe this is what lives here in Ventura’s way future. Sandy?”
Sandy had zoned out thinking about Cassie and angels and demons. “It may be something else.”
“What are you thinking?” prompted Valerie.
“You’re going to think I am crazy.”
Now Valerie did laugh. “Are you serious?”
“Cassie. I call her CJ. She’s the little girl we’re looking for,” Sandy couldn’t keep the pain and tenderness from her face, nor her voice. “The other day while I was babysitting her, a strange thing happened. I was reading when something changed around us. You could just tell the whole atmosphere was different. Charged. All the windows and doors were closed but a warm, fragrant breeze wafted across the room.
“It didn’t occur to me immediately how impossible and out of context that was. I was pretty involved in my book, but you know hindsight. Anyway, I started smelling the most wonderful smells. There was a smell almost like fresh baked bread, wooded forest, ocean breeze… it’s hard to describe how I could smell them all at once and yet separately. The breeze was warm and caressing like on a tropical island.
“Anyway, the weirdness finally slapped me out of my reading moment and I sort of looked up and around, getting my bearings away from the book. But the breeze and smells were still there. It was all so bizarre. I looked over where CJ was reading… she was staring straight ahead breathing funny in short, quick little breaths and kind of whispering.
“I was worried something had her freaked. She seemed to be in a trance where she couldn’t see or hear me. Then, like that,” she snapped her fingers, “she was out of it, fully conscious and excited. The breeze and smells were gone too.”
“That is pretty weird. But what are you saying? That Cassie was having a premonition?”
“No. She said she had been talking to an angel.”
“An angel.”
“See? I told you you’d think I’m crazy. Why is it people are more ready to accept the existence of monsters and trans-dimensional shifts than angels?”
“I’m sorry. You’re right. Why not? So what was this angelic conversation about?”
“Well, nothing directly about a government experiment gone wrong or a corporate conspiracy. It was more personal. Suffice to say it was more of a special-purpose-in-a-good-versus-evil-battle type of theme. But she did mention a gray jet and a storm.”
Valerie pulled back from Sandy some, frowning. “So… okay, so…”
“So, if we take it angels exist and deliver messages from God, and evil exists in a grand conspiracy to thwart God’s good and His creation, then that would be a kind of conspiracy.”
“Yeah… go on…”
“Well, I am kind of a newbie at this so I don’t really know yet how that interaction and influence works here other than to just be wondering out loud if this shift has brought us into a sort of angelic-slash-demonic plane or dimension.”
Valerie turned her head forward, and considered the implications. Man! On a mostly unconscious level, Valarie relegated biblical territory to the same realm as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. To think of angels and demons cohabiting in her home town was cold water in her face.
By extension that meant Valerie would have to have a serious heart-to-heart with God. The God. Moses’ Ten Commandments God. Father, Son and Holy Ghost. She self-consciously ran down a mental list of bad and embarrassing things she had said, done and thought about and she felt naked. Exposed.
Sandy, as if reading her thoughts, said “I know. It’s all pretty frightening to think about, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Valerie croaked. She cleared her voice and said, “So you think the dimension Dark Cloud stuck us into is the same one where they reside most of the time?”
“I think it is very possible.”
“Then where is God?”
“Like I said, I haven’t got it all figured out, but last I checked He lives everywhere in all dimensions. We already know that physicists have concluded that, indeed, there are multiple dimensions.
“Cassie saw and had a conversation she repeated that didn’t sound like anything a five or six year old could come up with, or a ten year old, for that matter. And I know this little girl. She is extraordinary, but this kind of thing was a first. She’s not given to telling whoppers.”
“Okay. Well, I don’t know what we can do about it. I don’t know how or if it can be reversed, but maybe one of those guys back at the shelter will come up with something.”
“Right. But first we find CJ.”
“How about we zigzag our way back around and keep our eye out for her on the way back. She very well may have made it to the shelter. You two were headed that way originally, right?”
“Yeah…”
“We can kill two birds with one stone. We check the shelter, see if she’s there and see if those guys can come up with a way to reverse the effects of Dark Cloud or turn it off or whatever. Besides,” she hesitated to bring the subject up. “I am wondering, since a small part of town was transported, electricity was cut off, water… what about air?”
Sandy tore her eyes away from her search and looked at Valerie. Clearly, she hadn’t thought of that. So, how long would the air last in their little ecosphere – their bio-dome? Even if they could hold out with supplies and pull their numbers together against monsters, how long before they ran out of air?
“All this time I had been comforting myself that we might have enough food and water to weather the storm,” shared Sandy. “But air? What's keeping the air in? Or worse, what if the air is slowly leaking to the out there?”
