Chapter II - Act I - The Great Storm

Chapter 2

Carlo - The Last Call Home.

The night was cold. Cocaine cold. A revival of habits of old.

It was Sara's fault Carlo was snorting coke, again. No, it was Bennett's fault for ever introducing her. Some agent he is.

It occurred to Carlo it was both their fault, in differing measures. Carlo didn't want to drink again. He felt good until the text came through and shattered his world like a light bulb, throwing it all into doubt and darkness. He didn't need the image of her being railed on the internet hanging in the twisted theatre between his ears, either, pushing him towards the edge.

Now, look what they've gone and done. He had no choice. He could barely take the shame, she was fucking for fame, so one drink to calm his nerve turned into a few, and much more besides. All too soon the worries became frantic. What would happen if the internet came back online tomorrow? How would he cope with this embarrassment? What would he do, then?

Carlo stepped out onto his driveway. Wrenched the door of his Ferrari open and threw his revolver in the passenger seat. No clue in his mind of what he was about to do; it was only the bare, ragged need for a fat, trembling line came to him. Only with a vague sense of where to drive to stop this hell from happening ticked at his nerves; the birth of an idea; he'd go up to the Hollywood Hills where that creep Lettman's house is, with a gun in the car, and more than enough pain and rage to be able to use it. He'd find every copy of that tape and destroy it. A plan he made up before screaming out of his driveway.

The car screamed to life. And soon California rushed all around, dwindling into a knotted blur behind him.

Carlo should have known Sara would do something like this. The California greed gets to them all, eventually.

Suddenly, Carlo had to scream, he roared at the top of his lungs - she said she loved me he thought, pitifully - as soon as he hit the first blank set of street lights. The light was dying into evening, golden hues hung heavy over the long Los Angeles coast.

She really thought she could pull a Kim-K on him? She had another thing coming.

'Bitch.' He kept growling to himself. 'The ungrateful, spiteful little bitch.'

He stomped the gas and kept putting the puzzle together, his head hammering with the anxious, clawing need.

The blackout fell two weeks ago. Carlo only received The Investigator's message today, this morning, by some blind stroke of signal (or a horrible stroke of luck) the message from the shady cabal of private investigators Carlo signed up to years ago finally gave him news worth taking note of, and, subsequently, drinking heavily over.

Sara Lindbergh rumoured (Confirmed by internal sources) to have filmed adult scene with one Toby Drive. Shot by Dom Lettman. Due for release - PENDING CONFIRMATION.

The rest had been a whirlwind. The sliver of signal which carried the message had all but evaporated. He tried his agent in a frenzy but the calls wouldn't even connect. So he was left alone with the news that shattered his world.

What else was there to do but drink? Carlo certainly didn't know.

Six months of sobriety, down the drain. Always awake at 8am. Always. Without fail. No headache ever woke with him, unless he took a hard fall at the park. No creep of a come-down ever crawled into bed like a bad lay from the night before. No skin-chills or frosty nostrils lingered from whatever the hell he'd been huffing. His dreams were always vivid, clean, free of nightmares (nightmares of fire), and the hours before bed were ever in his memory (which, even after a half-dozen months, was a fucking novelty).

'So much for that.' Carlo guffawed to himself. His laugh breaking at the end, crumbling into frantic half-sobs.

It made him shiver to think about. Shiver and itch, all at once as he snorted another line, slowing between baron traffic lights. His secret stash under the glove compartment still had the pink gold inside. It was open within moments. He cleared three fat fingers of it while sickening thoughts came thundering in:

She was only ever with you to get famous.

Carlo groaned. More of a bark.

Famous for fucking.

Carlo screamed again. Hitting himself in the head so hard he heard white epileptic flashes behind his eyes.

Sara was betraying him. Betraying herself. Throwing herself into some scuzzy attempt at media attention just to rise from the fire she was trying to start, apparently content leaving Carlo to twist in the ashes.

The Ferrari wailed again, carrying Carlo along like lightning out of thunder, he would make good time, at this speed. No traffic. Not even any cops; he hoped their cars and radios would be busted, still. He'd be up the hills to meet with Lettman in less than half an hour.

That fat fucking creep.

If he didn’t tell him where the tapes were, he’d kill him. Carlo couldn’t stop promising it. And even if he deleted it all, even if that fat little fop did everything he wanted, Carlo would put a bullet through his kneecap, just for daring to make the porno of Carlo's girlfriend in the first place.

Sara would be on her back, moaning... loving every moment of it.

Carlo roared the image out of his head. Tugged his junk in his jeans so it would feel bigger (because of the coke, it felt like an acorn). He pounded the car around in a banshee turn. It screamed with him, all the way around.

He realised he was driving blind. Years of sat-nav and no use of maps left him route-less. But he kept the car going along the road. He knew the house and he knew the street. He had to be certain he'd remember it, once he looked at it, otherwise he might go mad. It was on the hills. He’d been there before, gyrating in some scuzzy party or another.

Carlo felt tears rolling down his eyes. And he heard something buzzing beside his head.

To his amazement, his phone was ringing. He could only stare at it, half aware, while the horrible fantasy-future of his impending failure played itself out in his mind.

“Such a shame!" Cry the TV presenters. About as genuine as plastic roses. "The teen rockstar Carlo Carnage finds himself reeling upon the edge of his already threadbare tether, today, as a shocking revelation had just emerged."

"That's right Summer, if fact a sex tape was leaked from an unknown source--”

Carlo recognised the number.

The camera cuts from the blabbering, chiselled face of blond TV presenter clone (No. 074804) to a crestfallen picture of Carlo, long off the road and half out of his stage persona, his getup hanging from him like rags, looking ashen, looking cuckheld and beaten by the horrors of what he saw.

'What the fuck...' Carlo whispered to himself. He couldn't believe it.

“Just how will Carlo Carnage keep a hold of his sobriety?”

“I’d sure struggle to keep sober if I saw Toby Drive doing that to my girlfriend.”

And boy oh boy, do the hyenas share in laughter.

And it’s a fucking irritating laugh. One you want to punch like a shrill alarm clock at five in the morning.

Carlo's father's number stayed glazed on the phone screen, glaring at him. Tinkling against the barrel of his revolver with a noise like a tooth being drilled out of a half-numb jaw.

He fiddled at his coke. Another line of snow soon cut the chatter in his head to a minimum, and a good hard face twisting snort shot the drip down his throat. Clarity came folding back over like a blanket, coating his mind, soothing that killer’s itch, his little finger began to tap and twitch, drumming against the steering wheel.

The high began to feel gooooood. But the phone kept ringing.

Carlo hit himself in the head again. Another white flash clapped and his vision came back just in time to fight control back from the sudden swerve the car gave. He steadied it and he slapped his head again, hard. His ears were ringing. Rage bubbled up from the base of his gut and a scream filled the cabin of his car. He tugged the wheel like it was a locked door, thrashing his back against the seat so hard the car shook on its suspension. It was either this or crash the car. There was nowhere else for the hate to go. So he let himself get a taste of the sting of it.

The phone still kept ringing.

'The fuck are you calling me for?!' He cried to the screen as it went meekly back to black. How there was any signal at all was a mystery. Carlo slowed the car to a crawl, and soon to a stop.

The phone rang again. This time Carlo snatched it, and answered mid-first-ring.

‘The fuck are you calling me for, fool?’ Carlo cried. Shooting the phone a scowl beside his ear.

'Carlo.' His voice came through. It made Carlo's heart yank through the floor.

‘Piss off!’

'Carlo, wai-'

He hung up and regretted it, and then hated himself for regretting it.

Ringing. Buzzing. Droning. The space between his ears was thronging with noise. But the cabin of the car was hollow with silence.

And then, because of the stop, the engine cut out completely. And, just like that, a fifteen minute drive mutated into an hour long hike up the hills.

❧

The phone bit against Kenny's cheekbone. An empty dial tone went yewwwwwww in his ear. His eyes sat heavy upon the darkening horizon, set dead ahead seeing nothing.

The one chance... he had one damn chance to warn him - one in a million - and his son hated him so much he didn't even want to hear him.

I've doomed him. He thought gravely. He won't even listen, just because it's me telling him.

A want rose up (call again), but Ken's shame crushed it into an anxious puddle of piss in his bladder. His expression wan, he went to go take a leak.

Tom was back waiting in the kitchen after Kenny shook off and flushed, hanging around the doorway with an expectant look on his face - that youthful, mirror-like reflection of Ken's own straight-arrow stare - he was hungry for the news. Ken had nothing to give. And no hope of giving it.

You need to tell him.

'Well?' Tom said.

'What?'

He ought to know.

'Did you get through?' Tom asked, a subtle raising brow said it was obvious.

He's in more trouble than you know.

That last thought hit him hard. He felt almost punch-drunk all of a sudden, because of it.

'No, I ah...' Kenny thought of his first son. Of the panic behind the rage in Carlo's voice. 'I didn't get through.'

Tom didn't nod. He just pursed his bottom lip, looking outside to Ken's friend Connor as he set about hitching the trailer to his Jaguar, grunting out of the effort of working alone.

'I'll go help the old bull.' Tom told Kenny, opening the door to the early night. 'Hope you get through to her.'

'Yeah.' Kenny said to a closing door. 'Will do, kiddo.'

Kid's scared. Kenny thought of his second son. He won't show it, but he is.

And Kenny didn't blame him. So was Kenny. So would everyone be, at the end of the world.

Kenny tipped his hat, a beaten old stetson. As Texan as it comes. There was still no migraine underneath it, as of yet. The steel cap he got kicked into his skull all those years ago picked up the energy in the atmosphere something fierce. He only came out of the bunker in the back yard yesterday, first good bit of clean air he'd had in weeks.

Kenny looked at the phone. He left it on the table like unfinished business. Hints of concern tugged weakly at him. He knew he needed to help the others; they all were running against the clock. They might only have one more night - if Connor's concerns were right - to get a door to fit the bunker and drive it back, attach it, and outlast the coming sunrise. He should do what he said he would. He should call Tom's mother and make sure she was okay. He already tried to call his other child, and even though he got through, his attempt had failed. The right thing to do would be to try Susan's cell with what little time he had left and get her into safety... assuming she could even get here.

But all he could think of was Carlo.

The phone was in his hand. Guilt panged at him as the redial was made and, by some stroke of miracle, the fuzzy phone line droned with a rattling line of connection.

❧

Carlo shivered a little as the hill fought against him. His body felt light and his head heavy as he strolled in a storm upwards. He cursed himself for letting the car stop. His deadbeat dad popped up out of nowhere and distracted him. He should have kept it running. He shouldn't have even answered the damn phone. This solar storm was killing everything electrical, even the computers in cars. His Ferrari was too new. One little short and the whole thing was dead. Hopefully it would start when he came down again. He didn't want that thing stolen, no matter how many he could afford.

Why the hell was he calling, now?

Carlo didn't care. He was running out of time. He doubled his speed while his mind kept chatting with him. Obsessing over everything.

If his phone was working in fits and starts the internet would be soon. All too soon these fanatical pricks would be laughing at him, all around the world, watching his girlfriend being fucked online and jerking off to it.

Why was he calling?

Better yet, what the hell did it matter. He was a phoney, a hack journalist-cum-biggot who abandoned Carlo once already. Whatever he had to say, he could have said it back when it mattered. You don't just get to avoid all contact for a decade and get a chummy hello.

He rounded a corner and another itch for coke tickled at him. He had a lot, so why not? He only just got the party started. He couldn't even feel his heart beating hard yet.

Carlo stole two tender glances out of habit, only hedges bulging through their gateposts stood around him in high ribbons along the road, there was nobody around. California was a ghost town.

He whipped out his bag. He was huffing down the drip when his cellphone rang again.

Carlo froze on the spot.

How was it even ringing?

❧

Connor was showing Tom how to hitch the trailer properly. His massive bulk of a body eclipsed Toms like a twig stood side a boulder. One in a while, that would have made Ken smile. But Kenny was biting his thumb, skin-raw, listening to the crackle of static and dial tone.

He isn't going to answer.

The dial tone rang. And rang. Dipped out of existence - Ken's heart swelled, almost agonised - and bled back into bleating again.

He isn't going to-

'What the fuck do you want?' Came the voice of his first son for the second time, after ten years of silence.

❧

'You have to get underground.' Came the reply. Sounding more aged in his Texan drawl than ever. The Lonestar Ledger's mouthpiece wore itself out over time.

Carlo stood for a moment. He even looked at the phone, uncertain now if it was really just a prank number. How deep did this fuckery go?

'Listen, man. This ain't funny-'

'Carl I'm being fucking serious. This isn't a joke. You need to get underground where it's safe.'

Hate bubbled under his skin, searing at Carlo's flesh.

'Don't you dare gimme that name, Ken.' Carlo warned, adding Mexican flare to his name as he finished; 'It's Char-lo to you, you hear me? We ain't pals, old man.'

'GOD DAMN IT KID, are you hearing me?'

❧

Kenny raged at the windowpanes which gave a tremble. Tom didn't look up, he must not have heard it. Connor looked right at him with a knowing moment of stare. His blue eyes piercing for a second before turning to the task, telling Tom to do another task in tight, muted words.

Carlo sniffed on the other side of the line. Kenny looked down, shielding his face with the brim of his hat.

'I'm not messing with you, kid. I don't know what the papers have been sayin-'

'I don' read no papers.'

Ken rolled his eyes in a tight arc. Staring at the sink as he tried to hold it together. The boy gained a persona, alright. He was speaking somewhere on the scale between Mexican gang-banger and a Bond villain. 'Good, papers are full of shit, anyways.'

'What's your fuckin' point, foo.'

'The world is ending, Carlo. That's the fuckin' point I'm makin', homie.'

❧

The old man's Mexican twang wasn't bad. Carlo couldn't help laughing at it.

'God damn it, this is serious!' The phone raged at his eardrum.

'Yeah, yeah. Whatever man.' He droned, pronounced it maign, just to piss him off. 'Listen, you're still into all this conspiracy theory shit, that's cool. But I don't ha-

❧

ve time to li---- al--... I'm busy with somm--'

The line was cutting out. Worse still, Ken was starting to see stars. The migraine was coming in, which meant the aurora was coming in with it.

There was an odd feeling, it stepped along with him, as Kenny glanced up and away from the counter. His fist unfurled from the edge and his fist left a tingling phantom cramp behind it, whether his hand was curved or straight.

Did the air smell different? The back of his throat was almost salty. 'Carlo, can you hear me?'

Ken's feet felt an angle, yet the house was still and square, right before his eyes. Carlo was still chattering through fuzz on the phone. But Ken could swear it... it was like listening to him in the room, on the road, chatting both to him and the phone.

'Carlo.'

Both voices stilled. Kenny didn't turn away from the window; he swore he could see him - there - right in the reflection. He blinked, sure it’s a figment, a fragment of a frazzled mind, but the mirrored ghost of Carlo didn't move. It was like he was standing right in the kitchen.

'What?' Carlo asked behind him, Ken could hear more of him through the phone.

Ken blinked his eyes tight. 'You're in danger, you idiot. You gotta listen or you’re gonna be stuck where I can’t help you.'

The ghost of Carlo shook it’s head. Stiff shouldered and tall like Tom. He’d grown, so much taller than he looked in the magazines. It made Ken’s heart ache to see him, one arm aloft, holding a phone to his head. The other clenched as though holding something at his waist.

Ken's heart dropped. In the back of those ridiculous jeans his son was wearing there poked the tucked in butt of a pistol.

'What the hell are you going to do with that?' Ken said before he could stop himself.

The hallucination of his son seemed confused. The clenched fist swayed, as though uncertain. He looked around, nervous.

'Where the hell are you?'

'Texas.'

'You're still in Texas.'

It wasn't a question.

'Yeah.' Ken said. A tear stinging free from an eye. All the effort in the world to keep his thickening throat steady in his neck. All the rest of his words came out overripe, ready to burst. 'We're still here.'

'We, huh? Another woman? Another kid?'

Kenny let the tear fall. 'Yeah, Carl. Something like that.'

Tom called out a question to grab Connor's attention. It grabbed everyone's.

'That him?'

Carlo's chest heaved, but he didn't let his sigh make a sound.

'Yeah.'

'Real piece of shit, ain't you Ken?'

'Carl, please-'

'I said don't call me that!'

'Shhhh!' Ken hushed. Not wanting more eyes on this scene than necessary, he felt sure now, it really was happening. He set fierce in the moment, not wanting it to end. Convinced to his core he was somehow stood with Carlo right behind him. 'Fine. I'll call you Carlo.'

'Man, you full of shit.' Carlo interrupted, answering another moment entirely. Walking on the road pointing to the hedges accusingly while Ken's forehead pounded at him. 'I can hear your voice, puto. I didn't know you still had balls, but you must have some serious stones to come back in this town, again.'

'Carlo, liste-'

'You stalkin' me, bro? Why should I listen to you?' Carlo shrugged as he chuckled. Only the back of his tall head visible; it shook in disbelief.

'Because I think you might die tonight, kiddo.' Ken sighed as he wiped his eyes. Looking right at the gun tucked in his sons' drawers. 'And you can't get here in time, so I'm saying-'

'"Go underground".' Carlo repeated.

'Yes.' Ken agreed. Clapping a hand back to the counter. 'You have to.'

Carlo's head twitched to a profile, Ken caught a familiar curvee of a cruel grin. One he knew from his own unreasonable face.

'This is a good line you're pulling, old man. You know that, right?' He said, suddenly smelling long cooked meaty food and knotted wood without varnish. The smell of salt in the air was only noticeable as it went away and the cold numbness in his nostrils was suddenly sharper, drier, dustier and somehow harsher.

'Feels weird.' He said, hearing a hollow echo. Feeling dizzy.

'It does.' His father agreed.

The two stood still in the strangeness. Both hearing with bated breath the work of Connor and Tom being done outside.

'Where are you going?' Carlo asked, both here and there.

'We're getting our door back.' Kenny said cryptically. Carlo got the sense there was a lot he didn't know. Something in his gut twinged beyond the veil; prickles of dread. All too soon, he didn't have the stomach to interrupt his father anymore.

'Connor saw it coming.' Ken told the boy. Certain, somehow, he was locked in the weirdness with him. 'He watched the sun after the first blackout. Said he had a bad feeling, I was getting headaches like hell and he swore he was catching aurora glow in the night sky. "Jus' don' feel rhite."' He drawled with practice-perfect mimicry. 'He's got a telescope. He knows how to jimmy it so it'll show what the star it doing.'

There was no thought in the pause he gave himself, it was only an err, like something sombre was pulling his lips tight.

'Something like this happened back in the 1800's. Solar storm. Solar flare. Whatever it's called by the labcoats. I think we wrote about it back in the LoneStar Ledger days, but as a counter to the climate change hysterics... too easy to dismiss. Too much like right-wing bullcrap to take on board. We never should have printed it that way.'

Carlo's heart was beating. There were dust motes in the open air, two sunsets, one from his shadow ahead of his feet, another out ahead, unsheathed, blowing the last light across the shore of the city and blowing his mind all the while.

'This one's a big one.' Kenny told him. His hand falling and the phone went away with it. Any guise of normalcy fell like fighting with a bad argument. Carlo could hear him as well as if he was stood right next to him, and he knew it. He didn't know how, but it was, regardless, a plain and simple fact.

'I don't know how bad it really it is, or how Connor thinks he knows... but I think I know. Something in my gut says we need to hide, and hide well. The Great Storm is coming. And it's not gonna be like anything the Earth ever had the spite to spit at us.'

Carlo felt his pulse pounding around the bag of coke in his palm. He wondered if he was going insane, if he took one step too far and one line too many. Something in the way the dual realness floated around his head screamed whispers of doubt into him. He was here and there, without a hope of lying to himself it was otherwise.

'Hide, Carlo.' Ken begged his son. Looking to the reflection of the son he left in California after so much terror and hate made him flee from it. 'You can't get here quick enough. So hide. Hide deep and stay there until it passes. I'll come find you after it's passed us by. I swear to you. Just stay alive.'

Carlo turned to face a car passing by. A face glanced out of it, perplexed at the oddly placement of him, stood gawking at nothing in the middle of the road.

He looked at the screen of his phone and CALL FAILED glared back at him, too bright to look at for long. His heart hammered and the breeze licked a chill upon his sweat sodden skin.

Carlo jumped suddenly with a jolt of realisation; the revolver was poking out of his jeans the whole time. No wonder the driver looked shocked as he drove by.

A bird began a discussion and they all joined in with the twitter. Carlo stood there for a while after the call, uncertain and disjointed. The humid air coiled around him, warm again. But still, after this otherworldly experience, he shivered in the fledgling night.

He told himself it was the drugs, he really shouldn’t do them again, he knew he would, but he shouldn’t.

He told him to hide. To get underground. A warning so solid it pulled like a weight in Carlo’s mind. He came here to do something, to right a wrong and stop himself from being completely exposed. But out here under the setting light of the sun Carlo felt more exposed than ever; at a loss for where to turn next.

The phone had no bars. Carlo didn’t have a car and was stuck with a long hike in either direction. He told himself he didn’t believe the old man, he was growing old and going crazy. The end of the world wasn’t about to come down falling. The end of Carlo’s life was at the top of these hills, if he got on now he might stand a chance of stopping it.

It took a little while up the hill before the smell of Texas to fell out of his nostrils.