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Only Fish

A Fish Out of Water Collection

by Amy Lane

Impossible Storms

An Ace and Sonny Story

I did not expect this story to go where it did.

A rare, once in a lifetime hurricane was hitting the San Diego and Death Valley area of Southern California, and one of my FB group members said, "Hey, Amy—I hope the Victoriana gang is okay—a giant thunderstorm in the desert could be a lot of fun!"

And I thought, "It would be interesting to see what happened…"

And then, as I was writing, I realized that for people like Sonny and Ernie, an impossible storm in the desert was no fun at all. And everybody else was lucky to survive.

"ERNIE?" BURTON'S voice sounded very windblown, and Ernie had a vision of him down south somewhere, doing something Ernie wasn't supposed to know about.

"Yeah, Crullers?" He looked around, trying to get oriented. He was… standing in his living room? His feet were numb and sore from… standing in his living room? How long had he been there? He didn't even remember answering the phone.

"You watching the news about the storm?"

"No." Ernie wasn't great with news or social media. Usually his brain was a pretty big receptor for the forces of the universe, and that freaked him out enough. "Why?" There was something big and oppressive on top of him. Over his head. A miles-high blanket of warm water vapor pushing him into the floor. He'd been out in that, right? His brain, free-sailing, whipped savage by the wind, by the rain. He'd fallen through a hole and into a fetid whirlwind that wasn't his, stinking of sex and blood and death and… oh God, the wind!

Why was he standing in his living room? When had Burton left?

"There is a helluva storm headed your way—a hurricane, with strong winds and flash floods. Are you sure you haven't heard anything about it?"

Ernie blinked, and suddenly he was in it , with Burton, his body being thrown around like a leaf, flotsam on the floodwaters, surrounded by driving rain that sounded like machine-gun fire, sense-shocking rattles of angry water, drilling its way through shingles, roofs, and walls.

He sucked in a breath, hearing Burton's frantic screams in his ear. "Ernie? Ernie !"

"Here, Lee," he croaked. God, it was all around him, it was filling his nose, his throat, his lungs—

"Club Boy, are you fucking with me ?" Burton demanded, and Ernie took another breath, and another.

And realized he could take breaths. He was standing in his living room, shivering, because the AC was still on full and unseasonable clouds had blocked the August sun.

"Here," he gasped again. "Really here. Sorry. Good thing you called. It's gonna be a gully washer."

Across the line, he heard Burton take an easier breath. "That's what they say. I'm hoping our people are gonna be fine. It's making landfall here in an hour, and it's no joke. Could you, uhm—"

"Check on folks," Ernie said, even though as he said it, he already knew what he would find. "I need to call George," he said abruptly.

"Wait!" Burton's panic forestalled him. "Ernie, baby, could you be careful?"

"Yeah," Ernie said, thinking about his cats and how he had to make sure they were all in the house. Not the garage, the house. "I'll be careful. Gotta call." Suddenly he was right there in the moment, needing to move so his feet could wake up, painful pins and needles flooding from his knees down. "Be careful, Crullers. Stay away from the giant cow. He's bad."

There was a startled silence that told him whatever he'd just said wasn't exactly expected.

"Giant cow?" Burton muttered. "Okay, baby. I'll do that."

"I gotta call George," Ernie said again. "Ace is gonna need reinforcements."

"Ace?"

Oh no, Burton was panicking again, and Ernie didn't have time for this.

"The giant fucking cow will kill you if you're not careful!" Ernie screamed at him and then went tearing out of the living room to shoo the cats in from the garage while he called George and scared the shit out of him.

"I NEED TO what?" George said into his phone, distracted and busy. "No! Do not put in that central line until the doctor orders it! Dammit, this was a car crash, and we don't know his status yet!"

George kept Ernie on a special ringtone, because Ernie would only call him when it was important. George was in the middle of triaging a mess of people who'd thought they could run away from the rain in the middle of a desert highway that was about to see more rain in two days than it normally saw in a year, so it had damned well better be important.

"You need to sedate Sonny," Ernie said seriously. "Now. Like, run medication to him and inject him now ."

George had to dodge out of the way of the EMTs following the gurney as they ministered to a child. "I'm sorry, Ernie, we have to—"

"I don't know if Ace can hold him," Ernie said, his voice breaking. "I can't get the cats to come in and Crullers is in Mexico and I don't know if Ace can hold Sonny and the sky's about to open and—"

George's brain went even deeper into triage mode.

"Cotton is home. Get him to help with the cats. I'll call Jai—he can get the sedative." George had no idea how to do that. Jai would be at the garage, helping Ace and Sonny batten down the hatches for the storm, right? But at least he'd have warning, and sending Ernie out into the rain wasn't going to help any of them.

"Cotton's home?" Ernie asked, sounding small. "I don't know what happened, George. It's like I lost six hours after Crullers left, staring into space, surrounded by fuzz, and suddenly a storm exploded in my brain!"

"Yeah, honey," George said, comforting Ernie in a way that was probably appropriate for his age but that Ernie seldom seemed to need. Maybe the storm—and all of the fear and pain and chaos—had threatened to burn out Ernie's receptors, and he'd simply gone blank. Six hours was a lot of time to lose, and Ernie sounded really panicked. "Cotton's at Jason's this weekend. Jason texted all of us to watch out for him while Jason went and did whatever."

"Call Cotton," Ernie said, and it sounded like he was gulping air… and begging for guidance.

"Do that. Call me back."

George was up to his eyeballs in people who needed him right now —but that included Ernie, apparently, so that was what he needed to do.

"George!" Amal called urgently. "We need you down the hall!"

"One minute!" George called back desperately. "I've got an emergency here!"

With that he started sprinting to the room Amal indicated while speed-dialing Jai.

"SEDATIVE?" JAI asked, nonplussed. He and Ace and Sonny had spent the morning securing everything in the auto bay as the weather whipped the wind around their heads and rattled the tools on their hangers. Sonny had been snarly and jumpy, the rain and wind obviously getting to him as the bare edge of the storm touched their skies. But a sedative?

Jai had never thought of such a thing.

"Ernie said he needs it," George burst out. "So I'm trusting you. I gotta go." The phone clicked off, leaving Jai to gape.

"Sedative?" Ace asked, running by Jai with his arms full of air-compressor hose that he was going to store in a box. "For who?"

"Sonny," Jai replied, and to his consternation, Ace didn't laugh and didn't ask why. Didn't argue.

"Fuck us all," he said grimly. "How do we get that?"

"I don't know," Jai replied, panicking a little from Ace's seriousness. "The kid at the station across the street?"

Ace stopped in his tracks. "The kid who sells the homemade pot gummies?" he asked, surprised.

"Da?" Jai hadn't tried them. In his mob days, if he'd wanted drugs, he'd bought real drugs, but he'd known that for the trap it was and hadn't done it often. Those days were long gone now, and he had no idea what kind of drugs were out there or where. He didn't want to give Sonny fentanyl, for God's sake. He didn't even know how that shit was dosed!

"Okay, then," Ace said. "Careful crossing the highway. We'll be in the house."

Jai glanced around, thinking the garage was bigger, sturdier, and more secure than the house. The storm would be fully upon them in an hour. The house?

At that moment a clap of thunder rolled over them, rattling the metal doors of the bay and shaking the windows as the rain began to pound.

Sonny let out a sound then, a child's cry, terrified and young, and everything clicked into place. The flurry around the garage, the need to move to the house, and the need for a sedative for Sonny.

Sonny and Ace had fought in battle. Jai had been in firefights before, and for that matter, so had Ace, but Jai had never been somewhere with artillery, ordnance, explosions.

Ace and Sonny had.

Ace was the type of man to walk away from that with bad memories and bad moments.

Sonny was the type who left a part of himself in those situations, and when something happened, something that could pull him back at a moment's notice, he was suddenly whisked away from the here and now into the nightmare world of loud noises and screams that were totally out of his control.

Sonny needed the sedatives so Ace could hold him in the here and now.

"I'll be back," Jai said, wondering how much cash he had.

"Me and Sonny'll be in the front room," Ace said. "Bring ice cream."

Jai didn't question that either. As the hurricane moved up to make landfall in San Diego and pound into the desert, he thought they might all need ice cream when this was over.