Chapter Fourteen: North of Center — Part 5

Nita at the Break: Part 2

Chan is about to move when Kodiak jumps up onto the table, sparks of electricity ripping up his back and across his woven metal fiber armored pants leg. The heat from the plasma is searing, and the sound and sizzle terrifying, but Kodiak isn’t thinking about the smell of burning hair and flesh: Kodiak is moving on instinct. The lightning feels like it’s closing in on all sides as he grabs Nguyet in one arm and Chan in the other. Neither of them has had a chance to react to him before he is looking for any place that seems clear of the rising torrent of loud, angry lightning jumping out in all directions. People sitting at tables are dead, so he’s ruled out the safety of his position over the long term. Once he sees the safest place, drawn from what feel like thousands of options, things sort of click together in his brain at once. Part of him knows, like a goat knows its footing on a mountain side, that touching the ground will kill him.

Kodiak crouches down tightly and jumps as hard as he can, thankful that the tables in the restaurant are bolted to the floor. He’s jolted a couple of times as he flies, and the studs on his coat are getting hotter by the moment. He lands just off center of the one place that the lightning, if that is really the proper name for it, is absent. Hollow plastic balls dart everywhere, sparking momentarily, and then settle back into place. He feels tingly all over, and realizes that the hollow balls have built up some kind of static charge that causes them to resist contact with each other.

He’s safe though, because even though the lightning is licking at the poles holding the ball aquarium in place, it can’t seem to find its way to them, or at least not with enough bravado to do any harm. The tingling of it can be felt all around them, dry and menacing. Kodiak can feel the heat through his flack jacket, and it worries him that Nguyet isn’t struggling. Chan is screaming, though, so he has some hope for both of them. He lets go of them and discards his jacket before the studs can burn his skin any worse. A couple of yellow and a purple balls have stuck to the studs, and once the coat hits the floor outside the cage, the lightning devours it, catching it on fire, turning the studs to slag, and ripping it to shreds, toying with the fire from the smoldering plastic.

Kodiak trembles with the pain of electric shock, but his legs keep working, and his heart keeps beating, and his will keeps him moving toward the center of the aquarium of hollow plastic balls. Chan is near him now, wading into the balls, while Nguyet is moving backward from the scene in fear, her body braced against his. His back is away from the kitchen and cash register, facing a distant wall where a spiraling tube slide is spewing lightning out of both ends, at least until the deep fryers explode, spraying burning grease into the kitchen and blowing out a section of the roof. Kodiak can feel the heat strongest on his back, where the burns caused by the studs of his jacket map out a pattern that feels as complex as the night sky, at least to his nervous system. When he turns to face the heat, he falls backwards on Nguyet, his legs still unsteady. Nguyet is still struggling under him when he finally does get his balance.

The lightning is dying back now. The fire in the kitchen is hot, angry, violent, devouring, but the smoke from it is escaping out through the hole in the ceiling, pulling air in through the shattered door to feed its rage. Twenty minutes pass slowly as the lightning starts to die back to a trickle, and then fade completely. The balls, once enraged with sparking static, lose all life, settling back against each other as if nothing ever happened. Kodiak’s ears pop violently and suddenly. Nobody dares move or talk. Clouds rip across the sky, and winds pummel the building. The electrical storm gives way to a wash of water that floods the kitchen, smothering the fire into extinction and sending torrents of water and residual grease out the front doors. Even the grease fire, which sizzles and explodes outward with the initial exposure to water, is smothered in the squall.

The kid aquarium holds its own against the flood, as the ceiling above it remains intact. The worst of the storm builds in fury for almost an hour, Kodiak and Nguyet endure the crack of lighting and rage of wind in silence, while Chan cries in fear and clings to both of them, his tiny arms wrapped around Nguyet’s waist and Kodiak’s leg. The wind screams at times, at one point tearing out the windows at the front of the building, at another ripping the doors off the side entrance. It is two hours past midnight when the second wave of lightning dies and recedes into the distance, and the screams of thunder are far removed from the flashes of light. When the rain is gone, and the wind dies to a breeze, there is nothing but darkness, absolute, and silence, uncompromised.

“The cosmos is one sick motherfucker.” Nguyet says, as the first light confirms her suspicions that she is still alive.

“You want to stick together?” Cody asks, when it becomes obvious that there will be no return of electricity. “At least until help comes.”

“I don’t think help is coming.” Chan says. “No sirens, no lights.”

“Yeah.” Kodiak suddenly realizes that the boy is right.

“Word.” Nguyet says.

“Truth.” Kodiak adds quietly.

The three of them are half buried in hollow plastic balls, Nguyet is cautious. Chan is between them, holding their hands. He’s shifted back and is starting to fall asleep. Nothing more is said that night. Kodiak sleeps fitfully, while Nguyet doesn’t sleep except in fifteen-minute spurts between anxious upheavals of consciousness. Sunlight will wake them in six hours time, giving them light to start moving. But now, in the darkness, Nguyet has only her nose and ears to guide her thoughts. Cody, as she has come to think of him, has a long deep breath, a steady heart, and a scent that is as filled with fear as Chan’s is. There are bodies around her. She can neither see nor hear them, except for the occasional smell of burned flesh, urine or excrement, or the wet burned hair smell that lingers about her. She will have to protect Chan from them, before he wakes up.

Next to her, the bear of a man starts to move, waking, yet again, with a start. He inhales, winces, gags, and manages, with some considerable control, not to vomit the contents of his stomach all over the plastic balls behind him. The smell of burnt human flesh has done one thing for Kodiak that he never imagined could happen. It has turned him off of meat, forever. Nguyet doesn’t allow herself to wonder if the universe has stopped laughing. Morning, she hopes, will explain everything.

“Nita.” She says, when it is obvious that the three of them will be headed out together.

“Huh?” Kodiak asks, his mind already in the future.

“Last night, you asked me my name. It’s Nita.”

“Nita. It’s good to know you.” Kodiak says.