Drought

Blake hadn’t yet noticed there was a claw hooked through the lobe of his ear, and the wound was bleeding quite freely. “Sorry,” I said before reaching over and extracting the curved weapon from his skin. He winced, but I think all of us were beyond feeling much shock at that moment. We’d had all the shock we could handle for a lifetime, and then some.

I glanced around for a second, then passed him a doily from the end table next to the couch. When he raised his eyebrows at me, I simply shrugged. Beggars couldn’t be choosers and there weren’t a lot of options to pick from in this dark, underground space. He nodded and held the white lace to his dripping ear, and red bloomed across its surface as it soaked up the blood.

Shuddering, I turned away. There were only five of us left in the group, although we’d started out about fifty strong at the town council meeting. Of course, some of those fifty might still be around—when we ran outside, most of us had scattered in different directions as we got pelted by nature’s revenge. There was no telling what happened to the others.

“Where to now?” Cass asked. She was my best friend since grade school, and I was glad she always followed my lead. It probably saved her life once the rain started falling.

But I was tapped out of ideas. We were sheltering in Mrs. Reader’s basement right now, who was our third grade teacher before she retired five years ago. She’d been at the council meeting too, although hadn’t been one of the lucky ones. I saw when she’d been struck and went down, and spared a moment to check on her as the air thundered with the sounds of hundreds of attacking creatures.

But, no—Mrs. Reader’s neck had been broken with the impact. She was gone, although she’d told us before we ran out of the council building that she lived half a block away, and her basement would be safe. She had almost a year’s worth of food and supplies there. Yay, hoarder mentality.

I’d made a split-second decision when I realized Mrs. Reader was dead, and I ran for it, dodging the missiles being flung down from the sky. Aside from Cass, I hadn’t known others were following me until we washed up here and I found the key under the front mat to open the door.

By the thumps and yowls upstairs, I wasn’t sure how long this place would last us. If there was enough structural damage to the upstairs, the basement might not keep us sheltered. And we had electricity for now, but for how long?

I crossed my arms. “Any ideas?”

Silence was my answer, so my eyes scanned our party. In addition to our idiot mayor Blake, there was our town treasurer, Wallace, and some rando I’d never seen before. I estimated his age to be about ten years more than me, so maybe forty or so. “Who are you?” I asked.

His eyes flicked over me, starting at the crown of my head and moving down to my feet, then back up again. God, I hated guys like this—I knew just the kind of jerk he’d be, and I was sure he was probably big mad that I was the one who’d taken the initiative to get us here. “Sebastian.”

He didn’t say anything else. Okay, got it. Not helpful. “I propose we stay here,” I said, turning to the others. “We have some food if we need it and some breathing room.” Not to mention a few other things—blankets and a working bathroom. I certainly had no plans to go poop in the woods somewhere, even if it were safe to do so.

And there was no way I was making it to my own house, which was all the way across town, especially not on foot. I’d walked to the town council meeting today, since it was a lovely day when I started out—partially cloudy and cool for a summer solstice. Hard to believe it was nearly the end of June. I certainly hadn’t expected what was to come.

“We should—well, we should go out and help,” Blake said in an earnest tone of voice. Probably the same type of message that got him elected, although I wouldn’t know. I didn’t vote for the guy.

“And what?” I snorted. “Get clobbered and die? No, we should wait it out. After all, how long does rain usually last here?”

I could see them all considering my argument. It was a good point—while there were some longer showers we usually experienced this time of year, an intense rain like this hardly ever lasted more than fifteen minutes to half an hour before the weather settled down to a long, steady precipitation or tapered off altogether. I had no idea what would happen with this supernatural occurrence—because there was no way I could believe this was anything other than creepy and unnatural as hell—but I was hopeful. I mean, the downpour couldn’t keep going forever, right?

“If it doesn’t stop soon, we can see about going outside anyway,” I added in response to Blake’s obviously guilty expression. He didn’t want to help people out of the goodness of his heart, I guessed. No, it was because he considered himself responsible for this mess.

Well, no kidding. So did I. He did this to our town, and I was going to make sure he was going to pay for it in the near future.

Drought is an ugly thing to a rural community made up mostly of farmers living in a small town. So, when this idiot opened the council meeting with the dumbass idea of reviving an ancient pagan ritual on the summer solstice—“for fun”—to bless the fields, there was enthusiastic, whole-hearted support.

No one seemed to hear my question, “Well, why did they stop doing it in the first place?”

But there was truth to all the old sayings. “Be careful what you wish for.” “Better safe than sorry.” And, the one where we had ended up: “Raining cats and dogs.”

Perhaps the ritual wouldn’t have gone so badly if Blake hadn’t brought his beagle to the meeting, and it hadn’t snatched up the ancient book in its jaws right when he’d been reading the words off the page. As the tug-of-war ensued until, all of a sudden, his dog let go of its grip on the book and went barking over to the window.

We’d all seen the first feline splash down. After that, a poodle bounced up and hit the window in a red splat that shattered the glass. Pounding on the roof made us all glance upwards—the one-story council building shook with the impacts. When the sound turned to a rumble, we’d all run.

Yes, Blake was an idiot for restarting an ancient ritual and then flubbing it. Perhaps if he’d completed it properly, we’d now be enjoying a nice deluge of water from the skies that would save the crops for the farmers.

But, no. We were stuck here until the animal rain ended. And if I ever found that book in the rubble of the town council building, I’d burn it to ash in a heartbeat.

“Sit tight,” I said as I peeked out of the basement window. “Looks like it might be letting up.”

“And then what?” Cass asked me. I was glad it wasn’t Blake who voiced the question. I’d have given him a piece of my mind if it had been.

“And then we see what happened to everyone else,” I said decisively. “Bury the bodies. And—” I pointed my finger at Blake, “sign me up.”

“For what?” he asked. He was still holding the doily to the side of his head, although the bleeding seemed to have slowed down. Honestly, I didn’t care if he lost the ear, not after what he’d done to our town, which had been already suffering greatly before this latest fiasco.

“The election,” I replied. “You’re no longer running unopposed for reelection next month, you idiot. I’m going to clean up this town the right way.” I jerked a thumb outside. “Starting with those damn cats and dogs.”