Orb Weaver: Storm, Chapter 7

The storm was getting more intense, but people were swarming out of the shelter.

Save for those trapped.

“I can’t clear the space,” Glory Girl said. “It keeps coming down.”

And she’s our only bu—

“Here we are, to save the day!” the voice sounded over my link as Aisha… and Madison? What the fuck?

“Aisha—“

“Gotta plan, Boss!” Aisha said. Then she was shoving all seven odd feet of H.R. Geiger schoolgirl into the wrecked opening.

“Surges inbound!” I turned around to see Kid Win from his position, pointing.

A surge was coming down the road, nearly nine feet above the current water level, cars and trucks and even part of a house bobbing along with it. The line of people coming for the shelter screamed and tried to move faster—but they weren’t going to—

And then across the street, paper unfurled, and shimmered, a wall that just stopped the water.

Sure it went around it, but the mass of debris was stopped as was the full strength of the water current. It turned certain death into danger, but we needed to get them out of the water. 

“Hurry!” I shouted. Aegis flew down, grabbing someone who fell, while Gallant stood at the top of the entry into the building, looking out and shooting some people with a ray.

Panicking people.

He’s a tinker, does he have a raygun to calm people down?

Whatever he had, it was working.

But we still had people trapped, and the wall had stopped the wave, but the water was still rising.

What is Aisha doing…

****

“Got a plan,” Aisha said. “You’re gonna be the world’s scariest carjack and Glory Girl digs around you.”

Around their feet the water splashed, getting deeper and oh fuck it had to be filling up the lower parts around now.

“Oh—okay,” Madison said and spread her legs, claws invisible under the water. Then Glory Girl started pulling stuff from the top of the blockage and chunks of ceiling started to fall—and then Madison moved, her hands blurring, sinking into the mass. The ceiling stopped falling.

Glory Girl didn’t pause in her digging but her eyes widened. “You’ve got touch inviolability!”

“What?”

“It should be crumbling around you, like me. But you somehow share it with what you’re holding, at least partially…” She looked at way the roof was holding, even though there were cracks. “I mean, not like the Siberian, that’s all or nothing but—“

“Glory Girl, this really isn’t a time for college,” Tenebrae said as he levered smaller pieces out. “Aisha, you need to send numbers in there. Crowd control. Hole won’t help anyone if they trample each other. Anyone who is injured port ‘em out.”

“Shit. Right!”

*****

Let me die. Just save them. Please, Jesus.

Mark was a college student, and he’d always laughed at those movies where someone begged to die only if someone else would live. Like he joked to his friends, he’d be the first out of the shelter and let everyone else take their chances.

They’d all crammed into the shelter. They’d been moving, but even all the warning in the world wouldn’t be enough to get some people out. Like Mark

Like a dumbass he’d given his seat up to some old lady in the evacuation bus.

They’d gone into the shelter, people telling them how safe it was, and then it had heaved, the structure groaning, cracks forming in the wall, and through the cracks…

Muddy water. Thick, shorting out lights, the emergency lamps turning the interior into a vision out of hell, people running, abandoning luggage, holding screaming toddlers and infants over their heads.

Mark and some others had pushed the kids forward, so they could get out first because even an Endbringer wasn’t as terrifying as being entombed…

And then the exit had come slamming down, and the kids in front of them…

Were now being crushed between the crowd behind them, and the wreckage in front of them. They couldn’t go back. The people at the rear of the crowd didn’t even know the exit was blocked and were still shoving forward.

There was a little girl between Mark and the blockage, about 11, she’d been wearing a pink dress and her mom had told her they would be safe. He didn’t know where her mother was. Drowned, dead, or back in the crowd, thinking her daughter was safe.

But she wasn’t. She’d screamed and screamed and Mark had tried to push back, but there was no way the people behind him could push back… Now she wasn’t screaming, her face was going purple, mouth working, and Mark knew that the last sight she’d have would be him…killing her.

Please Jesus! Take Me! Save her! Never had Mark thought a prayer with such sincerity. He couldn’t talk because the crowd was also crushing him to death. But not her. Not the kids in front. Please. God. Not that.

There was a little hole in the barrier, enough to see salvation, not enough—

“Krewe is here—holy shit!”

Mark wondered if he was dying. Because he couldn’t think of any other reason why there was suddenly a shadowy form above him, looking down at them.

The angel of death?

Then it reached out and grabbed the girl, and there was a twist and nothing was there. The crowd moved forward and pushed Mark against the concrete and rebar.

Or maybe that had been Jesus. His prayers had been answered, after all.

****

“Boss!” Aisha called over the coms. “We got injured coming into the building!”

“Understood.” I glanced up at the mass of people heading into the building. “This is Investigator. Anyone with medical training, stand by for injured.”

The cops and EOC people had taken charge of the mob, thank God, and now they were clearing out a space on the fourth floor. There was suddenly a flickering and in a chain of shadowy figures, Aisha chain-ported into the building, a young girl in her arms. She didn’t say anything, just flickered back out.

“Fuck. Compression injuries,” A voice sounded in my ear. “She’s breathing.”

And Aisha flickered back again, and again each time with a person in her arms.

“Krewe, this is Aegis. How is your endurance?” Aegis sounded concerned.

Krewe’s voice was heavy, like she’d been running a marathon. “Not even tired, boss.”

****

Mark was still being crushed. The teleporting hero couldn’t get them all, not even close, so she had chosen. Kids, the ones in front the ones being crushed. Again and again, like Moses. And then there was a rumble as the blockage fell away and something stood in it, all spikes and chitin.

“H-hurry!” it said in an oddly young voice. Any other time Mark would have walked away from something that looked like a member of the Slaughterhouse, but now… now with mud and water flowing down?

He moved through, others did. Men, women, young and old. Three heroes were helping them, moving through, two actually rising up above the water, just below the ceiling where he could snatch anyone who fell. The teleporter was back, but now she somehow exploded and there were four shadowy forms, grabbing people, pulling them up, pushing them up the stairs.

“Hurry, Hurry, Hurry! First twenty to the bank get a picture with the Amazing Krewe!”

And there was the light, and if it was clouds and lightning and in the distance the sound of mighty powers contending, it was still better than being in that tomb.

****

Madison was holding up the ceiling, and even she felt the weight. She realized somehow that she wasn’t just holding up this part, but even parts where she couldn’t reach, like the way she’d thrown the test structure, even though according to the doctors, it should have come apart in her hands.

Her feet sank a little, not into the mud, but concrete and the wall shuddered.

People screamed.

“Hurry!” Madison said. And she realized that the way she was holding the ceiling, her arms up and over her head as far as she would reach, the water would rise over her mouth before it blocked the way.

I can leave. Nobody said I should come here. I— The last few lights shorted out and now there were just the flashing lights of cell phones and flashlights as people pressed by her.

I can leave.

Her legs didn’t move.

I can leave.

Her arms didn’t move.

I don’t have to drown.

She remained still as the water kept rising, holding the roof up.

Oh look, Taylor’s hiding again!

What if we just put her in the locker!

Who would care about her?

Locker girl! Locker girl!

She just had to leave and she would be safe from drowning. She could leave. Nobody demanded you commit suicide.

She could just leave the people alone, in the dark.

People were still moving, pressing against the flow of muddy water. Madison didn’t know how many more were left. Anyone on the lower level was probably dead by now.

She could leave. Nobody would blame her.

But she wouldn’t leave.

No matter what.

Madison took another breath. It wouldn’t be long—

“Hey!” Krewe appeared before her. “Back behind there’s air pockets, but this section got… depressed, lower, I dunno, it’s like the thing in your toilet that keeps your shit from stinking. Your head’s gonna be underwater.”

“I know—“

“So open your mouth,” Krewe said and pulled out one of the cylinders she had taken. “Look, this has 45 minutes, and I checked the gauge. You gotta breathe in through your mouth, out through your nose.” She glanced around. “You’ve saved a lotta people. If you can’t… you know do this—“

“I can.”

“Right,” Krewe said, holding up the tube. “Had to kludge this, but breathe slowly, I’ll be back before it’s out—but if it runs out, don’t be a fucking hero, just tear your way out, ‘kay?”

“I—okay.”

“So, I got  another tank.” Krewe nodded. “Want me to stick around?”

Madison had been the one who read people. Emma was obsessed and Sophia didn’t care. She’d been the one to turn the class against Taylor, to make her the joke.

And Krewe…

Was terrified. The rising water, the darkness barely lit by flashlights. Krewe was barely holding it together.

“I…” Madison didn’t say the thing she wanted to say more than anything else. “I’m fine. You go.”

“Right, I’ll be back.” She said, put the tube into Madison’s mouth, actually tying a bungie cord around it so it wouldn’t slip out. “Don’t bite it in half, or they’ll like need Armsmaster to build a brute stomach pump. Cya!”

And then Krewe was gone, people still moving past Madison as the water rose.

****

More people were swarming out, but I’d counted, and even assuming the shelter had been full, we were coming close to the end, less those who were dead. I didn’t know how many, but I expected at least a few, trampled or drowned in the lower levels.

“Triage is set up. We don’t have any black-tags,” the voice was professional.

“Good I—“

“Good Neighbor down, CD8, Stalwart deceased CD8,  Triumph down CD8.” 

Fuck. The casualty system was designed to let only the people in the area who could do something about the situation hear, hopefully able to recover injured capes, or not waste their time trying to save the dead.

But it only extended to the immediate region of the conflict. Which meant that…

“Leviathan heading to sector A7.”

Leviathan was coming here.

Fuck.