The Last Storm by Tim Lebbon

Author:Tim Lebbon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags:  
Publisher: Titan

PART TWO

THE TUMULT

JIMI

Jimi Chastain dumped the shot-up, bloodstained, windshieldless BMW at the edge of the nearest town. He’d driven past the place on his way up the valley towards the dam, and back then he’d taken no notice of the town’s name. It was somewhere else to bypass, and nowhere he’d ever go. A place so close to the reservoir, denuded and filthy though it was, would never have need of a Soaker.

Now he had need of the town, and as he hobbled down the exit ramp he had time to concoct his story.

His car had blown a tyre, sending him skidding from the road and into the ditch. He’d smashed his face on the steering wheel and broken two teeth, split his nose, blackened his eyes. The seat belt had tightened and cracked two ribs as the car rolled, and he’d received his other injuries from smashed glass. By the time anyone started to question his story—and found the car where he’d abandoned it a mile beyond town on a gravel track, and seen the bullet holes, and the blood-spattered upholstery—he’d be long gone. He rarely stayed anywhere for long, and now that he had one of the Rainmakers on his mind and in his sights, he’d never stop until he found them. Her, the dying Alison had said, and Jimi could only assume that meant the daughter was still alive. If that were the case, one way or another she might lead Jimi to him. For years wandering the Desert as a Soaker, and other jobs before that, it was what had inspired him. His driving force. His reason.

The Rainmaker beneath his boot, squirming and dying in the dust, just as Jimi’s Papa had squirmed and died.

The tang of burning still stung his nostrils—rubber, plastic, metal, fuel, and the acidic stench of his wagon’s exploding batteries. He could smell it on his clothes and in his hair, taste it on his tongue. He had blood on his hands and arms, but though some of it was not his, no one would have reason to think that. The heat was dizzying, bouncing up from the cracked road to burn his exposed skin. He’d never been so broken, but he’d never felt so good. Soon he would find and kill the man who had murdered his Papa.

* * *

Jimi was fifteen years old when he watched his Papa die.

Hidden in the dying crop, far enough away that his father couldn’t see him—they called him Wolf, but Jimi only ever knew him as Papa—but close enough that Jimi could see and hear, he watched as the strange man knelt in the dust. Mike and Lucy-Anne were out there with Papa, and that in itself had convinced Jimi that this was something worth watching. Maybe they’d end up killing the man—Jimi had seen that before—but he thought not. This was something stranger.

And yet, despite his patience and conviction that this was something unusual, Jimi fell asleep. The heat lulled him, and the

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