Who Knows the Storm Read online

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  DREAMSPINNER PRESS

  5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Who Knows the Storm

  © 2014 Tere Michaels.

  Cover Art

  © 2014 AngstyG.

  www.angstyg.com

  Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

  All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/.

  ISBN: 978-1-63216-216-8

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-63216-217-5

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014945929

  First Edition October 2014

  Printed in the United States of America

  This paper meets the requirements of

  ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

  Someone I loved once gave me a box of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too was a gift.

  —Unknown

  You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.

  —Friedrich Nietzsche

  Prologue

  New York City

  Before

  SEPTEMBER

  NOX BOYET is fifteen and his only problems in the world are his upcoming physics test and the tiny shorts Patrick Mullens insists on wearing to lacrosse practice every damn day.

  His father is traveling to parts unknown—again. He talks to the man’s assistant more than he talks to his father, by a ratio of about ten to one. His mother has been at the hospital for four months due to “exhaustion”—again. Exhaustion means relapse and hospital means sanitarium, and he stopped needing codes when he was ten. Mrs. Grimes from across the street checks in on him every day, brings leftovers from the family dinners, and Nox uses the emergency credit card to eat a lot of pizza.

  Then it starts raining.

  OCTOBER

  NOX BOYET is a few weeks away from turning sixteen. He desperately wants two things: for Patrick Mullens to stop being a cock tease (five minutes into a mutual hand job in the shower stall after practice and suddenly he remembered a piano lesson? Bullshit.) and for his father to let him have the old Beemer they leave at the house upstate.

  He’s getting A’s in everything at Trinity, and the headmaster referred to him as a “fine young man, like your father” after assembly. He’d tell his parents this in another attempt to get the Beemer, but his father hasn’t been home in over a month. His mother? Five.

  Mrs. Grimes said the LaMontes are leaving Manhattan because of the weather. She’s staying to “watch the house,” and Nox is secretly glad.

  And it hasn’t stopped raining for almost three weeks.

  NOVEMBER

  NOX BOYET is in hell.

  Most of the neighborhood is deserted. Residents have fled for drier climes—some have moved temporarily to winter bungalows and summer residences outside the city. Every day there’s another solemn story of people drowning and residents of the city and outlying areas being rescued by boaters. The subways and trains aren’t running due to flooding. The tunnels in and out of the city are closed. Buildings have collapsed under the strain of the torrential downpours and ministorms sweeping in from the ocean. Nowhere on the island seems safe—and no one is making ark jokes anymore.

  Mrs. Grimes has her nephew Roy staying with her at the house “for protection.” She still comes across the street, splashing through the muddy river that is Ninety-Second Street, to check on him. He wants to tell her it’s okay and he’s fine, but honestly—he’s not.

  Trinity, like all the other schools in Manhattan, has cancelled classes. Most of his friends have left the city with their families. Patrick called him twenty minutes ago to say they’re going to stay with his grandmother in Chicago. There are rumors the bridges will be shut down, like the tunnels already have. He’s trying to be brave, but his father’s assistant says she can’t reach him and the lady who answers the phone at his mother’s hospital says she isn’t taking calls. She’s in “isolation.”

  So is he.

  He stays in his room, trying not to jump at every little sound. The power has been going on and off for almost two weeks, and if it weren’t for all the crazy survivalist stuff his mother has hoarded in the basement, things would be way worse. He’s never been so grateful for her paranoia and his father’s black AmEx.

  He’s only a kid and he’s not ready for this much responsibility.

  ON HIS sixteenth birthday, a policeman comes to the door as National Guardsmen roll down the street in jeeps, using a loudspeaker to tell people to be prepared to evacuate. He asks if Nox’s mother is home, or another adult, but no, Nox is alone.

  Very alone.

  The policeman tells him he’s very sorry, but Nox’s father is dead. His body was found at his office building near the stock exchange—a mugging, most likely. His assistant identified the body.

  So sorry for his loss.

  Nox doesn’t cry. He walks around the house in a fog, the loudspeaker announcements of urgency fading to background noise. His father is dead. His mother is lost in a land of her own.

  There are no grandparents, no aunts or uncles. All of the people considered “family friends” have fled, and really, it was mostly social, the connection from the Boyets to the movers and shakers of old money on the Upper West Side. They were hidden away in this house, shamed by his mother’s illness and his father’s workaholic ways.

  He has no one.

  A DAY later, the National Guard goes door to door telling people they have to evacuate in twelve hours. The ferries will be departing from the Seventy-Ninth Street Boat Basin. Nox, curled up on his bed, looking at pictures of his mother on the wall, makes a decision.

  He fills his waterproof backpack with some food and water and all the money he can find in the house. He layers on the ski clothes he got last Christmas and prints out a map that will direct him all the way up to Inwood, where his mother’s sanitarium, Morningside, is.

  He’s going to get her, and then they’re getting the hell out of Manhattan.

  HE HAD no idea what he was walking into—and no idea he wasn’t coming back.

  Now

  SOMETIMES PATROL took Nox down past what used to be the Seventy-Ninth Street Boat Basin on the West Side. There was a memorial to the people who died when the ferries sank on Evacuation Day—a block of stone engraved with 1,957 names, the date. “Unknowns” tacked on the bottom for those who were never identified brought the number well over 2000. No bother of sentiment, no solemn saying emblazoned on a bronze plaque.

  Only two names on that list mattered—he knew the location by touch, knew the curve of each hammered-out vowel. They were the reason he couldn’t ever leave this place—they were the reason he walked fifty blocks a night to make sure the neighborhood was safe.


  There were other memorials, other tributes to those who died during the storms. The floods downtown and on the Island, the fires in the Bronx and Queens, the building collapses on the East Side. But Mayor Freck’s legacy was an administration that liked to remind the survivors their loved ones would want them to move on—they would have wanted the city to rise again.

  Plaques said, We remember. The enormous hotels and casinos that cluttered inhabitable parts of the island said, We’ve moved on.

  THE DISTRICT—blocks and blocks of Central Park West, Times Square, and Midtown real estate converted into casinos and hotels, built up and beautifully maintained, with a thriving clientele of wealthy jet-setters and a well-staffed security force that kept it as calm and orderly as a debutante ball. The New City.

  After the storms, the city was left a hollow shell. So many uninhabitable buildings, so many residents forced into shelters in New Jersey, Connecticut, even Pennsylvania. Wait for the water to recede, wait for inspectors to check the buildings, wait for insurance companies. Real estate prices went from millions to pennies as abandoned buildings continued to sit dark and empty, molding as months passed with no one to tend to the mess. People, museums, and businesses relocated, with vague talks of “going back” when things got fixed.

  When the federal money was slow to trickle in, the “going back” became “moving away permanently.” With no commuters and no tourists, New York was a ghost town within five years of the evacuation. The wealthy business owners and their boards collected insurance checks and moved elsewhere—other states offered incentives to relocating businesses and the bottom line was simple. Cheaper to be elsewhere, cheaper than trying to rebuild. Cheaper to take tax breaks and move the headquarters of your company to Chicago or Dallas. Even better, most of your employees followed, because there wasn’t anything to tie them to a rapidly declining city.

  The middle and lower classes just couldn’t survive. Many stayed as long as they could but in the end, six years after the storms, the population of New York dwindled to the lowest numbers since the turn of the century.

  Three years later, as the remaining citizens complained of war-zone-like conditions and the rest of the country wondered why nothing was being done besides organized looting—Broadway in Las Vegas, museums around the world dividing up the great works of art, pro sports teams lured to nearby cities—a mayoral candidate named Louis Freck swept in like Hannibal on the elephant’s back.

  He demanded more aid from the federal government while at the same time preaching the resiliency of New Yorkers. He called for a radical plan to save the city: bring money in by lining the streets with gold and hookers.

  Oh, he put it in a much nicer way. Playgrounds for the rich and richer. There were dioramas and beautifully rendered sketches for presentations, followed by minimovies and simulations as Freck’s popularity grew. Worthless real estate revitalized by investment—all from the pockets of developers, not the citizens. The desperate New Yorkers attended rallies, cheering at the chance to have some hope. Rebuild the industry and the rest of the city would grow around it.

  Freck won. No one even remembered who ran against him.

  Things happened quickly after that. Dump trucks and backhoes from private companies cleared away the rubble; construction cranes once against dotted the streets. After two years, the skyline began to rise again.

  Freck made an impassioned plea, and legalized gambling came to Manhattan Island.

  Casinos.

  Luxury hotels.

  Boutiques.

  Five-star restaurants.

  The people in the outer neighborhoods waited for the trickle-down effect as time ticked by. One year, two years. Three years—so many promises, but the District needed time to grow, to make back their investments. It would happen—just be patient. Surely all of the money being poured into the District by visitors—surely it would reach their desperately empty pockets. Jobs would be plentiful.

  Freck kept a few promises. He left some neighborhoods alone, zoned for residential rather than commercial use. They had power, fresh water. Crews removed debris from roadways, sometimes even repaved. A newly visible police force—as in, people actually saw black-and-whites cruising the streets.

  It was a start, so no one questioned the curfew in the Old City. And now? Seventeen years since the Evacuation? No one bothered to complain about it. They’d grown used to the restrictions, the “doing without”—grown accustomed to the division of the city and abandoned their hopes that one day the largesse of the District would visit them as well.

  Nox walked through Old Riverside Park, crossing up toward Ninety-First Street as he headed home. It was quiet. Curfew kept citizens inside after dark; the police didn’t bother to patrol this far north, and the dealers generally stayed downtown near the underground clubs.

  Generally.

  These days they were growing bolder. Money was finally trickling out of the District, as whores and gambling bored the tourists after a while, and the “classy” joints couldn’t keep patrons entirely satisfied. Visitors wanted something else, something thrilling and dangerous. Something they couldn’t get anywhere else.

  The secret of Dead Bolt: You could only get it here. A few hits of the pool-blue powder and the euphoria beat anything sold in those shiny casinos.

  The movement of crime into residential areas worried him. For years he’d taken care of the stray criminal that ventured into his territory. He kept an eye on the street trade—he knew who had which neighborhood in their sights, which of the street gangs that had popped up over the years were an actual threat and which were just overgrown clubs for the bored and underemployed. The visitors could take care of themselves—he didn’t care what they stuck into their veins or how many of them kicked it in alleys downtown. They were part of the problem, bankrolling the festering wound of corruption strangling his city.

  Nothing would change so long as more money could be made on strangers with itches to scratch than on those carving out livings amongst the ruins.

  THE COLD October air smelled like more snow—winter seemed to start earlier and earlier with each passing year, a double-edged sword of less crime and less food mixing together in five months of desperation. Junkies and dealers, workers and citizens, all trapped inside and trying to survive until spring.

  It was crazy to stay—he knew that. It was just… still home to the ones who couldn’t force themselves to leave. They’d survived the hell of the Storms; they’d made it when so many others perished. Maybe it was a badge of honor to scrape out an existence here.

  He was a different story.

  Where would he go? There were no fresh starts in the world for him. If he left the city, he’d leave behind all the tricks and lies he used to stay hidden. Here, money talked and laws were loose—he could play the system on the island. Off it? He’d be just another penniless drifter with no education, no plan, no real identity.

  So he stayed. And he wondered if one day this city would be anything like the one he remembered.

  A few blocks from home, movement caught his eye: two dark shadows hovering in the doorway of a long-abandoned store near the corner. A sliver of moonlight illuminated only their general shapes—men, most likely, darting together and pulling away but too tense, too sharp for it to be a romantic encounter.

  A deal.

  He blended with the darkness, stealthy and slow as he gained ground on the spot of transaction. The crisp, cold air was still, the icy sting pulling into his lungs with every breath. His clothes kept him warm; the black color let him blend into the shadows. The breathable fabric across the lower half of his face left him anonymous. A blackjack in his hand kept him safe.

  Murmurings of the conversation caught his ears. He paused, listened.

  How much can you get me tomorrow?

  A pound.

  He ducked and dodged the piles of bricks—buildings had come down on this street, destroyed by storms and fire, ignored by the city—until he reached the doorway one away
from theirs.

  Black-gloved hand tight on the weapon, breath held, eyes steady.

  He exhaled and stepped out into the open.

  They were unprepared for him. One lethargic and drunk on his own smug power—no police, people hidden away, no one to challenge him. The other’s brain a mess from Dead Bolt and neglect, no idea how to defend himself.

  It was over in a few seconds; the dealer lay unconscious, the junkie cowering in the corner.

  “Stay out of my neighborhood,” he said simply. He took the bag of poison and dumped it out into the dirty, slushy snow that lingered from the last storm. With the heel of his boot, he crushed it down to unusable dust. “If I see you here again, I’ll kill you,” he said, quieter now.

  The man nodded, frantic and jerky in his movements.

  He searched the dealer, taking his gun, credit cards, and identification pass before rolling him onto his back. A check of his pulse—alive and well—reassured him that his work was almost done.

  His gaze on the wide-eyed junkie, he tugged the dealer’s right arm away from his body until it was straight. Unfurled the fingers. A perfect target.

  This was his signature, how they knew he meant business. He raised his foot, then brought it down onto the man’s palm with his full weight behind it.

  The dealer jolted awake, then passed out again from the pain.

  Practice meant he knew exactly where to connect to break bones.

  The junkie swallowed a scream; he scrambled away, tripping and falling in his haste.

  Spoils in his pocket—and no backward glance—he continued his journey home.

  At the corner of his block, he paused. Once upon a time it had been prime real estate—million-dollar brownstones, homes of the old moneyed elite who sent their children to Trinity, Dalton, or Spence. Pure class.