Free Red Rain: A Novel by R. L. Stine

drowned animal. She gave the hand a gentle squeeze—and the woman screamed.
    Startled, Lea dropped the hand and jumped back. Her heart was pounding in her throat. She had to open her mouth to breathe.
    Don’t panic. You can do this.
    The man motioned Lea to grab one corner of a slab of drywall. Lea grabbed it. They tugged in unison and managed to slide it a few inches off the woman’s chest.
    The woman shrieked and wailed, batting her head from side to side.
    Lea pulled up on a broken two-by-four. The man grabbed it from her and heaved it aside.
    Then he turned back to the woman and wrapped his big hand around hers. The woman screamed again. Lea knew she’d hear these screams in her nightmares. Screams that seemed to have no end.
    The man gave Lea a signal with his eyes. Working in unison, they forced the woman nearly to a sitting position. Then the man reached behind her back. Lea took her hands and gave a hard pull. With a moan of pain, the woman rose up, rose up in Lea’s hands. Rose up . . .
    Lea heard a wrenching sound. Like fabric tearing.
    She gasped as the woman came stumbling out, falling toward her. Her face showed no relief. In fact, it twisted into a knot of agony. She pulled her hands free from Lea and shrieked in an inhuman animal wail: “My leg! My leg! My leg! My leg!”
    Lea gasped. The woman was balanced on one leg. Blood poured from an open tear in her other side.
    “Oh my God!” Lowering her gaze, Lea saw the ragged flesh of the woman’s other leg trapped beneath the pile of debris. A white bone poked up from the torn skin.
    No. Oh no.
    The other leg. We left it behind.
    It’s torn off. I pulled it off. I pulled her leg off!
    Blood showered the ground from the open tear in the woman’s body.
    “My leg! My leg! My leg! My leg! My leg!”
    The man stood hulking in openmouthed shock. Fat tears rolled down the boy’s red, swollen cheeks.
    Heart pounding so hard her chest ached, Lea searched frantically for help. No one. No one around.
    What could even a doctor do?
    She and the boy and the weeping man took the woman by her writhing shoulders and lowered her gently into her own pool of blood. They stretched her out on the dirt, and the man dropped down beside her, soothing her, holding her hand, cradling her head till she grew too weak to scream.
    Lea staggered away. She knew she couldn’t help. She stumbled away, holding her stomach with both hands, gasping shallow breaths of the heavy, salted air. She wandered aimlessly into the wails and screams, the moans, the howls of disbelief, the symphony of pain she knew she would hear in her nightmares.
    I’m not here. I’m asleep in our bed at home. I have to get Ira and Elena to school. Mark, give me a shove and wake me up. Mark?
    “My babies! My babies!”
    The woman’s shrill howls shook Lea from her thoughts. She turned and saw a grim-faced worker holding two tiny lifeless figures, cradling one in each arm, as if they were alive. But their heads slumped back, eyes stared glassily without seeing, arms and legs dangled limply, lifelessly.
    The shrieking woman, tripping over the jutting wreckage of her fallen house, followed after them, waving her arms above her head. “My babies! My babies!”
    Lea lowered her eyes as they passed by. I’m in Hell.
    Suddenly, she pictured Starfish House. Was the little rooming house still standing? And what of Macaw and Pierre? Were they okay? Had they survived? Her laptop was there. Her clothes. All of her belongings.
    How to get across the island? James’s truck was useless. The road would be impassable. She could walk, but it would be a walk of endless horrors.
    A steady drone, growing louder, wormed its way into her consciousness. A hum quickly becoming a roar.
    “Help is already on the way.”
    Lea turned to see James behind her. He had changed into baggy gray sweats. His eyeglasses had a layer of white powder over the lenses. Behind them, his eyes were bloodshot and weary.
    She followed his gaze to the