They Came With the Rain Read online

  THEY CAME WITH THE RAIN

  Christopher Coleman

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX | Six months before the rain

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT | Six months before the rain

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN | Six months before the rain

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE | Two months before the rain

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN | Two months before the rain

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN | The Day of the Rain

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  OTHER BOOKS BY CHRISTOPHER COLEMAN

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Come on, baby! Put a little weight on it! I wanna get at least two drinks in me before Dante’s closes.”

  Amber Godwin spun the volume control of the Ford Ranger’s radio to ten, and then she quickly sprung to her knees and faced her boyfriend, grinning. She linked her fingers and looped her arms over Derrick Zamora’s head, resting her hands on his opposite shoulder, oblivious to the danger such a maneuver might pose while traveling sixty-five miles an hour in the middle of the night.

  “You wanna get me a little drunk tonight, right?” she asked with a coquettish lean of her head.

  Derek smiled, keeping his eyes on the road. “Every night.”

  Amber leaned in and gave a schoolgirl kiss on Derrick’s cheek, and as she pulled the innocent peck away, she let the tip of her tongue linger for several beats before running it slowly across Derek’s jawline to his mouth. As their lips met, Amber kissed her beau gently, allowing her tongue to roam there for a moment, wandering in and out of Derrick’s mouth.

  Derrick shifted in his seat, the bulge in his pants beginning to form; but he kept his eyes locked on the road, leaning hard left to keep visibility past Amber’s head.

  “So, then you gotta drive faster, baby. If we get there too close to last call, that hulk Bo at the door ain’t gonna let us in.”

  Derrick pulled away, re-focusing. “I understand Amb, but the city line is coming up, and I’d rather not end up at the bottom of the ravine.” He reached over and turned the radio down to a volume barely audible.

  “Why’d you do that?” Amber asked, her lips an inch from Derrick’s ear.

  Derrick glanced down at the radio, not really processing what he’d done. “Oh, sorry. Habit.”

  Amber rolled her eyes and plopped back to her seat. “Christ, this town,” she lamented. “I swear to God. Got us all programmed like a bunch of freaking robots. Can’t listen to the radio. Can’t have a cell phone. It’s like we’re stuck in 1945.”

  “I know, baby, but let’s at least wait until we get past the—”

  “Derrick!”

  Derrick spotted the cause of the exclamation a half-second after Amber’s cry, and, instinctively knowing the calipers would lock if he panicked, he pressed slowly but firmly on the brake pedal, thumping the grill of the truck through a pair of orange cones before bringing the pickup to a lurching stop less than fifteen yards from the gaping chasm in the middle of Interstate 91.

  Amber pitched forward but avoided crashing into the dash; her face was now lit with intrigue, unconcerned with how close they’d come to their deaths. “Pull up closer,” she said.

  Derrick took several deep breaths and turned toward Amber. “What? Are you crazy?”

  Amber frowned and opened the passenger door, and then she walked toward the sinkhole, now rapt by the giant crater.

  Derrick rolled the window down and stuck his head out, following Amber with his eyes. “If I was you, I’d think about stopping right about there.”

  “I’ve never seen one of these before,” Amber said, her gaze still on the giant crater. “And by tomorrow it’ll probably be fixed. Just give me a minute.”

  “It’s just a hole, Amber. Ain’t no big deal.”

  Amber finally turned back toward the truck and smiled. “So you’re saying all holes are the same?” She put her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the side, questioning.

  Derrick laughed. “Ain’t saying that, baby. I ain’t saying that at all.”

  Amber smiled. “Well, good. And just pull the truck forward a little. I can’t really see it without the light.”

  Derrick sighed. “Fine, Bambi.”

  Derrick ducked his head back into the car and shifted the truck to park, and then he pulled the Ranger forward until he could just see the rim of the hole, at the point where the asphalt had cracked and now bent inward toward the center of the earth like a gaping mouth.

  Hell of a place for this to happen, he thought.

  Highway 91 was the only way in to Garmella, Arizona—and the only way out—and as Derrick looked to his left a few yards past the sinkhole, he could see where the shoulder of the road dipped dramatically to the left, and, just a few steps past the guardrail, became a steep embankment that led to the ravine below, leaving only a precipice on the western side of the road. To the east, on the right side of the hole from where he sat currently, was a forty-foot high wall of rock that hugged the interstate for several miles down the mountain. Derrick had always thought the landscape a welcoming entrance to the town, the tight road suddenly opening up into a picturesque flatland of homes and trees and distant mountainscapes. But for tonight, and at least for the next few days, he assumed, despite Amber’s faith in the efficiency of her state’s public works, the geography of the area would make the town a prison. Until the road was repaired, no one was driving in or out of Garmella.

  That was fine with Derrick, though, he and Amber’s partying plans for the night notwithstanding. The farthest he’d ever been from Garmella was Phoenix, and that was when he was a junior in high school and Pima made it to the 2A state basketball championship game. And even that trip had just been overnight. His family barely went on vacation when he was a kid, and when they did, it was either a weekend trip to the Grand Canyon or to some national park in Flagstaff.

  But Derrick Zamora had a truck now, the single inheritance he’d gotten from his grandfather following the old man’s sudden death over the winter, and as soon as the summer was over—or when he’d saved enough cash to last him a month or two, whichever came first—Derrick was heading east. If he and Amber were still a thing by then, which he truly hoped, he’d invite her to come along, but either way, come September, he was gone.

  Derrick parked the truck at what he estimated to be a safe distance from the sinkhole and opened the door slowly, and then he walked toward Amber, stopping a step or two back from where she stood, not even pretending to be as brave as she.

  “Damn, Derrick. Look at that.” Amber shook her head slowly in wonder, her eyes riveted to the crater below. “What do you think made it?”

  Derrick shrugged. “I don’t know. What do you mean? It’s erosion, right? Water makes the ground underneath soft or something and then it collapses in on itself.”

  Amber raised her eyebrows and tilted her chin to her chest, now staring hard at Derrick as she grinned impressively. “Well, damn, Mr. Geography.”

  Derrick frowned, unconsciously deciding not to correct his girlfr
iend on her misapplied science moniker.

  “It hasn’t rained in three months though,” she added absently.

  Derrick pursed his lips and nodded. It was a good point; though, in truth, it was probably closer to two months than three since Garmella had seen its last significant rainfall. Still, Amber’s argument was well-taken. Despite being in Arizona, theirs was a mountain town, seven-thousand feet up, with plenty of green and rainfall amounts that were about double the state average. Still, though, Garmella wasn’t Seattle, and drought had descended upon the town of just under four hundred in late spring and had shown no signs of releasing its grip. And though Derrick was no geologist—Amber’s impression of him aside—he was pretty sure sinkholes occurred in places where rain occurred with some frequency.

  “So what are you saying?” he asked, genuinely interested in Amber’s theories.

  “About what?”

  “You asked what I thought made the hole, now I’m asking you.”

  Amber puckered her lips and shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about this stuff. I just think it’s strange that the one road into this town suddenly has a big hole in it, right at a spot where the shoulder drops off a cliff and you can’t go around and pick it up again.”

  Now Derrick was even more intrigued. He gave a broad smile. “So, Russians then?”

  Amber chortled. “That’s fine. Make fun. Your theory doesn’t make any more sense than mine though.”

  “Yeah, well—”

  “Derrick, look!” Amber pointed to a spot in the sky, in the distance over the mountains.

  “I...what?”

  “Kill the lights!”

  “What?”

  “The headlights! Turn ‘em off!”

  Derrick nodded obediently and then jogged quickly back to the truck, reaching through the window and twisting the small headlight control on the dash to shut off the beams. In seconds, he was back by the sinkhole standing next to Amber.

  “You see it?” she asked, her finger still directing his gaze toward the heavens.

  He squinted and stared toward the clear night sky, trying to find the source of his girlfriend’s interest. He craned his head forward, shaking it slowly, and when he was about to give up and insist on the reveal, he saw it.

  The sky, which had been garlanded with stars every night for what seemed like a year now, suddenly contained a void, a darkness over the horizon that Derrick barely recognized anymore. But it came to him in a moment, the recognition, and a grin the size of the crescent moon above drifted across his face.

  Storm clouds.

  “Damn, Derrick, is that what I think it is?”

  “I sure as shit hope so.”

  “That’s crazy, right? We were just talking about rain and then...man, it’s beautiful.”

  The two young lovers—Derrick twenty-two, Amber nineteen—stood silently for several minutes as they watched the billowy black mass creep like ivy across the sky, methodically devouring each star in its path like a blue whale skimming krill from the ocean.

  “We should maybe go,” Derrick said absently, the instinct not to get caught in a rainstorm coming from somewhere deep in his gut. “Looks like it’s gonna be quite the squall.”

  Not a second later, as if generated by Derrick’s words, the black clouds lit to white as a surge of electricity exploded somewhere inside the gaseous form, sending horizontal bolts of lightning into the blackness.

  Amber scoffed and shook her head slowly and with determination. “I’m not going nowhere, bucko. Are you insane? It hasn’t rained in forever and this is too cool to miss.”

  “We don’t have to miss it. I just think we should get back to town before the sky opens up.”

  “That’s the point. The rain is gonna enter the town right here. And I wanna be the first one in Garmella to feel it.”

  Derrick rubbed his forehead and sighed, feeling the burn of frustration rising in his chest. Amber’s stubbornness had always been a weirdly attractive character trait, but it also made their relationship difficult at times. She never let a rude waitress or clerk off the hook without a comment, and he’d been thrust into more than a couple of fistfights because of her inability to let a catcall fall by the wayside. He loved Amber, but he knew she would have to change—at least a little—if she was going to become Mrs. Zamora one day. Once he left Garmella, Derrick had goals and milestones he planned on hitting with each month and year that passed, and he couldn’t have Amber Godwin questioning every move he made along the way. Maybe when it was time to go and he set the rules down clearly and passionately with her, she would fall in line, change her ways and commit to growing with him. He hoped so, for both their sakes.

  For now, though—tonight, at least—he was content to revert to his common pattern of compliance and let Amber dictate the way the night would go. It was about to rain after all, so not a night for fighting.

  “Fine, but I’m going to move the truck to the side of the road. I don’t need some Speedy Gonzalez smashing into the back of me on his way out of Dodge. All the good these damn cones did.”

  Amber seemed not to hear Derrick, her attention still spellbound by the atmosphere beyond, where the clouds were now a three-quarter blanket of black, with the leading edge pulled back from the sky, leaving the moon and a cluster of a dozen stars still uncovered.

  Derrick backed the Ranger up until he’d cleared the rock wall on the east and then drove slowly to the opposite shoulder, parking the truck along the guardrail on the edge of the drop-off. The truck’s headlights were still pointing toward the hole, though from a bit further away now, not quite illuminating the sinkhole with the same level of light as before. He exited the truck and walked back toward Amber who was now tilting her head up, face toward the sky. She lifted her hands and brushed back her long auburn hair from her face, and as the first large drops of rain fell on her forehead, she began to laugh.

  Derrick stopped about five paces from Amber and stared at the girl with a certain mild wonder, struck by her youth and beauty as if seeing her for the first time.

  “Listen.” Amber clucked her head forward now, turning her neck slightly as she put her ear to the sky.

  Derrick obeyed and heeded the night, and immediately he heard a muffled whooshing sound rising from the valley like a distant wind. It was barely detectable at first, but within seconds, it built to the noise of a rushing river.

  “Look!” Amber pointed to a spot in the road past the sinkhole.

  There was only blackness there, but Derrick could feel in his bones the cascade of rain just beyond, only yards away now, approaching them like a stampede of horses, growing louder with each second that passed.

  The showers ravaged Amber first, as she was still several paces ahead of her boyfriend, and Derrick could barely contain the pangs of desire that blossomed in him. “Dammit,” he said to himself, grinning at the girl’s irresistibility.

  Within moments, Derrick was caught in the torrent as well, the cool feel of the droplets on his skin almost inexpressibly refreshing, orgasmic. He felt the urge now to run to Amber, to squeeze up behind her and press his damp body against hers, to celebrate the return of rain to Garmella in some physical, quasi-sexual way.

  But he calmed his loins quickly, deciding instead to keep his current distance, to allow each of them to take in the magic of the rain independently. Derrick never took his eyes off Amber, however, and though he could barely see her anymore—the visibility in the pounding storm now almost zero—he could still see her silhouette in the shine of the headlights. He took two steps forward, clearing his eyes and forehead as he did, and when he removed his hands from his face, he saw what appeared to be a flow of dark shapes emerging from the sinkhole only a few feet away from where Amber was standing.

  Derrick wiped his eyes again, frantically this time, blinking in frustration and incredulity, trying to will his vision into a clearer view of what was happening ahead. The sight was still blurry, but the shapes remained, as black as the
sky itself, and they appeared to be crawling—climbing—the movements of an animal, their thin, wiry limbs pulling their bodies from the hole with ease, the haziness of their forms never coming into focus.

  Derrick tried to make sense of the shapes, attempting to keep his focus on the blackened shadows, his heart and lungs now in overdrive, threatening to shut down his brain if it didn’t come up with an answer soon.

  But before his mind could reconcile the forms in the sinkhole with the reality of the world, the shapes suddenly stopped, and those that had already emerged quickly disappeared into the night, drifting away like smoke from a chimney.

  Derrick forced himself to move, running forward until he was again at the edge of the hole next to Amber. He stared into the bottomless chasm in front of him, his chest and throat as tight as a corset as he craned his next forward, trying to make some sense of what he’d just seen. But there was nothing there, and he stared off to his left now, taking a couple steps in the direction the shapes had appeared to be moving before they vanished.

  “Amber,” Derrick said, his voice dreamy and confused as he continued to search the landscape, staring straight ahead now at the road that wound down the mountain beyond the sinkhole, “we need to go.” He snapped his eyes back to his left again, expecting the forms to be approaching from that direction, or to see them simply standing there at attention, ready to attack. But there was nothing other the blur of the soaked night.

  It was just a trick of the light, he thought. Amber hadn’t seen the movement, so maybe it was the vantage of his position, just a strange shadow caused by the rain and headlights.

  But Amber had been looking to the sky, basking in the rain, so she wouldn’t have seen the forms at her feet even in the light of day. It was no trick of rain and refraction; Derrick didn’t know what he’d seen, not exactly, but whatever it was, it was real.

  But what? What could even come close to fitting the description of what he had just witnessed?

  “You felt the rain,” Derrick barked. “Let’s get on the road now.”

  Amber ignored the command and instead lifted her arms high now, reaching her hands toward the sky as if offering some type of pagan prayer to the gods. She stood this way for several moments and then began to spin in slow dervish circles, laughing.