Chapter 1

Here we go again. Hurricane’s coming and it’s disrupting a week for me, things I need to do at work, to be sure, but even more, this was the week I finished moving into MY new house.

All that’s in the wake of my truck now as I’m joining an exodus from the coast and the corner of my state as Hurricane Laura bears down, less than forty-eight hours out.

Yes, I am cussing the weather forecasters roundly. A mere five days ago this thing was headed for land, according to THEIR predictions, five hundred miles east as a Category One. Here on the Gulf Coast we laugh with derision at Cat Ones.

Now it’s threatening to bump into Cat Five when it lands directly south of where I grew up.

You don’t sneer at Fours and Fives. You haul as much ass as can be assembled in whatever time you might have and you run away.

That’s not hard for me. I travel a bit with work, so I always have a ‘go bag’ assembled for those 2 AM “It’s broke, we’re in the dark, and we’re not sure what to do next” calls, and from that base, I quickly add a week’s clothing, a pistol (and let’s not talk about the hardcase stowed at the bottom of the stuff behind my seat), a briefcase with important papers like insurance policies on both the apartment I’m vacating and the new house I was planning on occupying next week.

And thus equipped, I joined the horde. I have the advantage of having made a hotel reservation three hundred miles outside the projected footprint of the storm as soon as I decided I was leaving. When the company said ‘go’, I went.

And about fifty miles out of town, averaging twenty MPH less than the normal speed on the highways, obstacle one raised its head. Texas was worried, too, and they reacted by closing roads through the southeast part of their state.

Re-routed. No problem. GPS can figure this out.

Obstacle two. Some knucklehead left the house without any sort of snacks. Same knucklehead skipped breakfast. Same knucklehead’s stomach was making untoward noises, demanding any manner of sustenance. That would be me. Mental note to keep some non-perishable snacks in the truck.

East Texas piney woods region is all about small towns. Just about every significant crossroads has a gas station/convenience store/’restaurant’. I’m looking at the arrow on my GPS and I see I’m coming up on one of those soon. Worth a stop.

When I get there I’m immediately thankful that I left home with a full tank of gas because there are lines at the pumps. Still, I think a stack of snacks and a drink won’t take me too long to obtain, so I pull into a freshly emptied parking slot in front of the store. Stepping out, stretching, I survey the animals of the veldt in full migration.

There’s the expected mix of minivans, SUVs, pickup trucks ... And a big older model Suburban, the father-king to the SUV line. It’s just pulling up to a pump. I’m thinking that’s some bucks to fill. All the doors open and the thing empties. Looks like a bunch of college kids. Guy getting out of the second row doesn’t hit the ground good before he’s sucking on a douche-flute, one of those vapes, an e-cig, whatever, and making as big a cloud as he can manage. Like colored hair and mohawk haircuts, it’s an affectation that I can’t understand.

The driver attends to the refueling, a group of girls head to the store. I know. I held the door open.

Inside, I head to the cooler at the back of the store, grab a pint of milk, a bottle of water, and as I’m passing the snack aisle, I grab the last package of Oreos. And hear ‘Awww... ‘ pure disappointment, behind me. I turn. Five feet four inches. Maybe a hundred ten pounds. Brown hair in a ponytail (dammit!) that stuck through the back of a baseball cap. Sparkly brown eyes.

“Last one,” she said.

I extended it to her. “Take it. I’m angling for a can of mixed nuts, too. I don’t need both.”

She smiled. Room got a little bit brighter. “Thanks.” Brow knit. Thoughts taking form. “You’re in that white Ford pickup out there?”

“Yeah.”

“Travelling alone?”

“Refugee,” I answered. “Just me.”

“Uh ... don’t take this wrong, but could you take on a passenger?”

“You were in that Suburban, right?”

“I want it to be ‘were’. Now I’m a refugee twice. Don’t want to go where they’re going. Bad company.”

“You don’t know where I’m going.”

“Are you a psychopath? Fleeing felon? Predator of any variety?”

“I have a predilection towards salted cashews,” I said. “And strong coffee.”

“No wedding band.”

“Nope.”

“Dressed pretty good for a refugee.”

“Thank you.”

“Would you...”

Think fast, Hebert. (That’s pronounced “A-bear”, for you non-Cajuns) “Let me pay for this. Get your stuff. If you’re that desperate, I’m that accommodating.”

“Lemme pay for my Oreos.”

“I got ‘em,” I told her, taking the package. “I’ll meet you by the truck.”

The line to the cash register was long, moved slowly, apparently some of my fellow travelers were trying to pay in drachmas or something, but I did get checked out, went to the truck, saw the girl standing there with a couple of bags, one a duffel such as one might take to the gym, the other a backpack, both bulging.

And I don’t even know her name.

I clicked my keyfob, unlocking the doors. She started loading her bags. The two other girls came up to her. I caught parts of the conversation, some of it to the effect that she was doing them wrong by jumping ship. And discovered that I was her Uncle James.

My name isn’t James. It’s John. Never ‘Johnny’, just John, with ‘Hebert’ for a surname, proudly Cajun.

I’m in the cab of the truck when she slides in from the other side, buckling her seatbelt.

“Uh, what do I call you?” I queried. “‘Random waif’ is a mouthful.”

“Uh, Laura. Just like the hurricane. Laura Landry.”

“Laura,” I repeated. “How coincidental.” I paused, gazed at her. “You sure this is what you wanna do? I mean, your friends...”

“There’s a difference between acquaintances and friends,” she said. “Those are acquaintances. And YOUR name would be nice, so I’ll be able to haunt you properly as you dismember my abused body...”

“John Hebert. There are business cards in the console. Put one in your pocket so they’ll be able to trace me after the crime...”

She picked up a card, surveyed it. “Engineer. One of the less psychopathic endeavors.”

“We’re usually too busy second-guessing ourselves to be too psychopathic,” I said.

It took a few false starts to negotiate my way out of the crowded parking lot, back onto the road. Once we were there, I released a pent-up breath.

“This is all a mess,” she affirmed.

“Big mess,” I said. “Was in the process of moving into a new house. Now I don’t know if I have the house or the apartment I was vacating.”

“I did an apartment with that blonde girl. It was a duplex. The guy in the front seat and the guy in the middle seat shared the other unit. The couple in the back seat, I dunno. They’re in the circles of acquaintances.”

“Not friends?”

“I’ve known Alyssa, the blonde girl, all my life. I thought we were friends. I guess we still are, but she’s headed to the edge of the circle.”

“OH? Sounds like a story there.”

“No,” she sighed. “Just a case of how some organisms react to changes in environment.”

“What WERE you going to college for?”

“Biology, in general. I was starting my first semester, but that was my general plan.”

“Kinda broad,” I opined.

“Yeah, I thought that somewhere in the middle I’d find out a direction to concentrate.”

“Not bad thinking.”

“So Dad and step-mom set me up with half an apartment near campus and took off on a great adventure. I was going to share the apartment with my high school friend, Alyssa. We went to church together. Thought we could work together on the apartment thing.”

“And that’s a change in environment?”

“Was for both of us. For her, she went kinda wild...” Deep, sad sigh. “We weren’t outside the city limits good when she was blowin’ that guy in the seat behind me.”

“Somewhat unexpected behavior for somebody you went to church with.”

“Shoulda seen the signs.” Pause. “I guess that WAS a sign. Other couple was makin’ out in the back seat. Apparently I was destined to be the consort of Jacob, the guy who was driving.” Really big sigh. “We were supposed to trade places with Alyssa and Brandon after we gassed up.”

“And you KNOW this Jacob?” I probed.

“In a ‘sitting in the coffee shop, saying ‘hi’ on the front porch’ sense. NOT in a biblical sense. I think he thought to rectify that, though. I wasn’t gonna spend the next few days defending my virtue from that mouth-breather, neck-bearded hipster...”

“Wow! Opinionated, are we much?”

“I know, looks shouldn’t matter. But they DO! Jacob’s trying to PROJECT this elite, urbanist, sophisticated image, and it’s just bullshit from a guy who came from central Louisiana where his family farms soybeans. I mean, gahhh! Talk to me all about sustainable this and Mother Gaia that, while you’re going to college on the proceeds from a few thousand acres of industrial-grade croppage.”

I laughed a little.

She glared. “It’s NOT funny! An idiot like that leads to OTHER idiots, and next thing you know, there’s a crowd forming, thinking that his crap ideas are legit.”

I was forming the next step in this conversation when my cellphone rang my truck’s sound system, the manager of one of the pipeline stations under my responsibility showing on the display. “Hey, James! What’s up?”

“You know exactly what’s up. We’re tying things down for the hurricane.”

“Figured. I’m in the middle of the woods in Texas, evacuating my butt off.”

“I will be too by the end of the day. Got some questions.”

“Of course you do.”