Free Storm Surge by J.D. Rhoades

walking
back towards the ferry.
    There was
still a long line waiting, shifting restlessly and looking up at the gray sky.
The rain had stopped after a brief spattering, but the clouds were looking low
and threatening. There would be more rain, and soon.
    “We’ve got a
little time,” Max said. “Why don’t you go yell for her?”
    “I swear, I’m
going to yank a knot in that girl,” Sharon said. She started towards the beach.
    “You want me
to help?”
    She hesitated.
“No,” she called back over her shoulder. “I’ll get her. You get on back to the
boat.”
    Max watched
her go. He felt a vague sense of unease, a nagging tingle at the base of his
neck. It was a feeling he hadn’t had since Chicago, but it seemed like an old
familiar friend. He’d learned to trust it, and it had kept him alive. But there
was no reason for it here. This was a nice place, with nice people. He wondered
fleetingly what Kathy-with-a-K was doing, then shook his head. No point in
that. He started back towards the ferry. He had gotten to where the footpath
crossed the main road when he stopped dead. “Ah, shit,” he said.
    Captain Jack,
the marina cat, was stretched out under a perfectly manicured bush next to the
split rail fence that ran along the road, head up, watching the passing parade
of humanity with an expression of fine disdain. His bushy tail flicked
periodically.
    Max sighed.
Apparently, no one had thought about the dumb little bastard. Or everyone had
thought someone else was going to take him back to the mainland. That was the
problem with not having an owner, Max thought. There was no one to look after
you. He felt an odd sense of kinship with the cat at that thought.
    “ C’mere , shithead,” he said. He crouched down and extended a
hand. The cat gave him a look that said you must be joking, then stood
up and stretched. He began sauntering toward Max with a studied casualness, so
there’d be no mistaking that the path was the cat’s idea and not Max’s.
    “Yeah, you’re
a bad-ass all right,” Max said, “but You’re going to
need all nine lives when that storm gets here.” Max wasn’t used to dealing with
cats; when Captain Jack was almost in reach, Max made a grab. The cat’s eyes
suddenly widened in alarm, and it shot off in an orange blur, headed for the
beach.
    “Fuck,” Max
sighed. He started off at a trot after the cat. He’d gotten almost to the beach
when he gave up. The cat had vanished. “Fine,” he said to the absent feline.
“Drown then, dumbass. See if I care.”
    He slowed down
and strolled the rest of the way to the seawall,
looking to see if Sharon and her daughter were on the way back. He stopped at
the seawall and looked out at the sea.
    Most days, the
surf at Pass Island was hardly deserving of the name. The sea was usually flat,
almost glassy, the slender barrier islands farther out stopping the big rollers
off the Atlantic. But now the usually placid sea roiled and pitched, the waves
mounting high, only to have their white, foamy tops sheared off by the
stiffening wind.
    He didn’t want
to think about the pounding the outer islands were taking already, or the
brutal blows still to come. A bolt of lightning writhed across the sky,
lighting the beach up in a hard white flash. It was followed in seconds by a
tremendous crack like God’s legs breaking, then a low
rumble of thunder Max could feel in his chest.
    He looked down
the beach, searching for Sharon and Glory. His brow furrowed. He couldn’t see
either of them.
     

CHAPTER NINETEEN
     
    Sharon stood
on the beach, looking where the line of cabanas had stood until yesterday. It
only stood to reason, she realized, that the maintenance people would have
taken the flimsy fabric structures down in the face of the oncoming hurricane.
And, of course if Glory’s iPod had been there they would have found that, too.
So where the hell was she? She glanced down the beach to where the unfinished
Mayhew house loomed over the beach.