The Rainstorm

The moon sure can mess with a person's day, especially when it affects the weather.

The Rainstorm

    Why did they always have to wake her up so late to take her watch? Standing guard was boring and not much ever happened at the secluded Navy base. Sure, Gloria was only an E-5, a Second Class Supply Clerk, but she was doing the best she could to fit in with her new command. She absolutely needed at least a half an hour to wake up, take a shower and brush her teeth, and her uniform had to be fairly squared away when she was to show up at the guard headquarters to draw her weapon and ammo.
    That idiot Lieutenant Smith rarely gave anybody any time to make allowances for modifications in the watch bill when he implemented another mass conflagration exercise or for when important VIP’s decided to visit unexpectedly. By the time word got out to everyone, those that had the first shift only had about twenty minutes before the added personnel were supposed to be on station. It was a way to keep security on their toes and at a high state of readiness. Because the R&D base was so relatively close to Washing DC there was no telling who would show up or when, and the Operations Officer was always looking for some way to beef up the procedures of a possible attack or terrorist action. Still the constant drilling and exercises to test the system made a cushy shore assignment a joke. At least on sea duty there was some kind of heads up as far as operations at sea and a schedule of events.
SK2 Gloria Jones was a single woman of twenty seven. She stood just under five feet tall with dark brown hair and eyes, and if it weren’t for the size of her bosom she’d be well within military weight standards. She’d been in the Navy a little more than six years on her second enlistment. She had over four years sea time under her belt and was working on her military standards to pick up E-6. While at her last command, an auxiliary out of Norfolk, she was able to attend two semesters of college and save up enough money to buy her cute little Ford sedan. Her physical attributes made it necessary for her to take some karate classes after some schmuck tried to rape her one night down by the docks.
    Remembering kicking the lowlife scumbag in the balls made her smile as she finished making up her face before finishing putting her khamis on. She’d come to this place with a blue belt and more confidence in her capacity to fend off any other unwelcome advances by some horny drunk on a Saturday night.
Once her hair and makeup were satisfactory and her uniform was adequate enough for the next watch, luckily she had an extra set in her locker; she tied up her boots, grabbed her purse, and raced out the door of her small barracks room. Jumping into her car Gloria revved up the motor and sped away toward the main gate. She got there at five thirty three AM, only three minutes late, and Lieutenant Smith was at the guard shack writing the names down of everyone that needed to take over the mobile security for the morning shift. Luckily there were three others who hadn’t shown up yet.
      Mister Smith was a black man who stood well over six foot five and reminded Gloria of a basketball player she met in college. His bald head was always covered with a command ball cap and his face was expressionless. His large brown eyes seemed to take in every detail of everything about the person standing in front of him, as well as all that that was going on around him. A Naval officer who’d attended Annapolis, he was all business and by the book. As Gloria walked up to him and saluted, Mister Smith glanced down at the clipboard that seemed a natural extension of his arm and made a checkmark instead of the dreaded comments that would indicate that SK2 Jones was in trouble.
     “ ‘Morning sir.” Gloria offered. Mister Smith looked up at her with his normal blank expression, returned her salute, and stepped back into the guard shack after casually answering “Jones.”
     After signing out her sidearm and night stick, Gloria walked back to the guard shack to check out her ‘G’ ride, a brand new Chevy Blazer with incandescent lines along the sides and flasher lights mounted on the top. FC1 Hampton was to be her partner for the patrol and of course he hadn’t shown up yet, so she took the keys to the vehicle, saluted the ops boss, and strolled out to the Blazer parked near the fence. She sat in the driver’s seat and warmed the engine up as the sun started to rise in the visible ocean just beyond the wide field near the landing strip.
     Minutes passed, As the sun started to illuminate the sky the clouds off to the East had a weird greenish tint to its pink color. It was so pretty that the hassle of getting stuck on an extra day of duty was almost worth it. The colors of the dawn were exceptionally beautiful in the morning air, out of the ordinary, and definitely indicated that a weather system was heading in from the sea. As she sat and listened to country music over the radio she wished she’d picked up a cup of coffee before checking in. She’d get some on the way out to the Ops Center, a good twelve mile drive, and Hampton would have a chance to smoke one of his nasty cigarettes while she put cream and sugar in her cup.
     Gloria spotted Hampton as he finally showed up for watch almost twenty minutes late. She watched with amusement as Mister Smith chewed Hampton out in front of the guard shack, pointing his finger at Hampton’s face and gesturing with his clipboard as Hampton looked down at his feet. Finally the Lieutenant allowed the guy to go check his weapon out, and as the middle aged, black man exited the guard shack Gloria drove over and picked him up in the Blazer. He sat and wordlessly put his seat belt on, averting Gloria’s eyes as she drove out of the main gate, avoiding the Ops Boss’s blank stare.
     Joe Hampton was a veteran Navy man with almost eighteen years in. His dark skin and thin frame really showed his age in the morning light as he sat slumped down a little in his seat while the Blazer rolled down the road. It was apparent that he did not like the country music that Gloria lived for, but he silently endured until Gloria pulled into the convenience store to get herself some coffee and a doughnut. When she came back out with a cup in her hand and the last of the pastry in her mouth, Joe was rubbing his eyes and unbuttoning the cuffs of his shirt. For once he didn’t insist on driving.
     “You okay, Joe?” Gloria asked as she buckled her seatbelt and set her cup in the holder of the Blazer. “Ya’ look a little rough around the edges, man.”
     “Yeah, I’m alright." he answered, pulling his hands down from his face and looking fully at Gloria. “I got the call about an hour ago and had my hands full. Lucky I had my cell phone with me.”
    Gloria smiled and put the vehicle in gear, pulling out on the road and crossing the intersection.
    “You and your women, Joe.” Gloria reached down for her coffee and took a long drink. “If I had your Friday night agenda I would be a little rough around the edges, too. These surprise drills really suck, man.”
    “Well thanks.” Joe replied. “You getting’ squared away, shipmate? I guess these backwoods fields are a big change from the Norfolk city life.”
    Gloria chuckled a little and set her cup back down. “Yeah, you got’ that right, big guy. I’m doin’ okay though. There ain’t much for a girl to do on a Friday night when she don’t know nobody. It is good to be out of the city though.”
    Gloria was delighted with her new duty station with the forest lined fields and the swamps filled with reeds, birds, and nature, far from the maddening city streets. Things were starting to get hard for her after her father had died of cancer last year and her fiancé decided that Gloria’s military career wasn’t coinciding with his social calendar. She’d spent many a lonely weekend at sea or on duty on the auxiliary ordinance ship before her shore duty’d finally come up. When she’d come to this place there seemed to be a glint of hope for her to find a new life and hopefully new love in the rural countryside. After being there for a few weeks the pickings seemed pretty slim though. She was looking for someone stable and courteous instead of the stud she almost married. Thank God that Steven finally showed his true colors, taking Gloria completely by surprise by curtly dumping her. She guessed that things could certainly be worse; she could be married to the son of a b***h.
     “Yeah, I hear ya’ darlin’. “ Joe smiled and relaxed, despite his intense desire for a smoke. He wasn’t going to force his nasty habit on the pretty young woman any more that he had to. “God and country and all that other happy horseshit. This place tends to grow on you though. Can I introduce you to anyone?”
    Gloria looked down at herself and the intense loneliness rushed in, nothing she wasn’t used to.
    “No thanks, big guy. Once this watch is over at sixteen-hundred I’m heading up to Baltimore. I have some friends up there. Thanks though.” She knew a couple of women she met in college who’d invited her to visit. She might even give Sally a call later that night but didn’t need any business women in an unknown city to fix her up with another horny a*****e. Relaxing in her room for the remainder of the weekend was certainly the order of the day. A friend had sent her a good book that Gloria looked forward to actually reading.
     “Man, I tell ya,’ some of these girls around here just can’t be satisfied with dinner and a movie.” Joe said, rubbing his aching forehead. “But you don’t need to hear my problems. Hey, can you stop at this store so I can grab some ‘joe for myself.” Gloria smiled and said ‘sure.’ Joe was okay for an old navy guy.
When they finally made it to the gate of the test facility the sun was fully up but the clouds had arrived, it was fixing to rain. The sky outlined the clouds with that strange green glow that Gloria’d never seen before, and the wind was blowing from inland which was just plain weird. As Joe and Gloria stepped out of the Blazer to take over the watch from the old civilian lady at the gate it started to rain. The water came down from the sky in buckets almost immediately, a sudden and intense downpour that was also really strange.
     Gloria had a short conversation with Joanie for the turnover while Joe had his smoke outside the shack in the heavy rain. A local who was like Gloria in many ways, short, buxom, and pleasant, the woman smiled warmly and spoke in the quaint accent like most of the people in the area. She had warm, brown eyes behind her thick glasses, and her grey hair was cropped short above her smiling face. Joanie actually gave Gloria a short, affectionate hug before she put the wide hat atop her head, quickly ran out to her old Ford pickup and raced down the road through the heavy rain with her radio blaring country music. That’s when the rain really started pouring down hard.
     The rain fell almost straight down not in drops but in a cascade like a waterfall, like wherever you were standing a bucket was being poured down on you instead of mere precipitation from the sky. As Joe stood outside the shack smoking, doing his best to keep his cigarette dry, the water drenched him from head to toe, and of course his smoke was soaked through by the uncanny rain. Then something really weird happened.
     The rain stopped as eerily as it started and the clouds dissipated, disappeared and flowed from the sky like a river, leaving the sun to shine warmly on the saturated countryside. And there was the moon standing out above the sea. The crescented moon hung above the horizon, huge and prominent in the sky, the dark part visible in the early light of day.
     Gloria stepped out into the mud to get to the Blazer so that she could retrieve her coffee and she grabbed Joe’s cup while she was there. She gingerly stepped back through the mud to get back to the guard shack and heard Joe speak out in alarm.
     “What the f**k?!”
     Joe was standing there, smoking another cigarette of course, and looking dumfounded at the sky. Gloria looked at where he was looking and saw the crescent slowly but visibly widening on the face of the moon. Out of nowhere the rain came back in a deluge from the same direction that it had departed from, the west. The water came so fast and so hard that when it fell on Gloria’s shoulders the shock of the cold startled her being and both cups of coffee leapt from her hand and fell to the mud at her feet. She raced to the guard shack and it was Gloria’s turn to be drenched by the falling rain. As she and Joe stood inside the shack shivering, the clouds shrouded the sun anew, and the water poured from the sky.
It rained and rained for what seemed to be hours. It fell so hard that the road leading up to the gait was barely visible and no cars came or went through the gate, which was unusual for a Saturday morning. As the bizarre storm had started it suddenly stopped, the clouds disappearing as before, abruptly, leaving the waterlogged land in the bright sunshine. Joe stepped back out of the shack to once again light himself another cigarette, and he repeated his off-colored exclamation.
     “Huh? What the F**K?!”
     Gloria stepped back out of the shack and looked up into the sky, up at the moon. It had only been about an hour and a half or so, but the moon had risen to its zenith and the crescent had left, the face of the moon was black, the dark side showing fully. It also had decreased in size, unlike its earlier appearance. Plus the moon had become mobile, actually slowly moving in such a way that Joe and Gloria could see it slowly shifting in angle and decreasing in size; very slowly but just the same apparent to the eye. Joe stood there, puffing on his smoke, his face cocked up and staring straight up from where he was standing. Gloria stood next to him, also pushing her face up towards the heavenly phenomenon.
An eerie terror raced through Gloria’s body as she watched the moon slowly drift, her head tilting back on her shoulders as she watched. It got noticeably smaller as it moved. As Joe stared straight up and smoked his cigarette, he lost his balance and fell back into the mud he was standing in. He yelled as the cold, wet mud plastered the back of his pants and jacket, and he tried to keep the mud from putting the cigarette out with his hand as he stood back up awkwardly. He looked back toward the east, toward the sea, and his off-colored exclamation returned, but with a new twist.
     “Oh F**K!” he shouted.
     A new weather system was racing inland from the sea. Deep, dark clouds enveloped the horizon, approaching ominously and quickly, bringing with it rain. Joe tossed his cigarette and raced into the shack to grab the logbook inside.
     “Jones, the Blazer!” Joe yelled as a stiff wind swept around her feet from out of nowhere. “Move it!”
     Gloria ran to the car, plodding through the thick mud, trying not to slide so as to fall as Joe had. She jumped behind the wheel and slammed the car door just as another huge flow of water bombarded the car. A river of water seemed to wash down like an enormous waterfall from the heavens above. The engine of the Blazer started by the grace of God. Gloria set the four wheel drive and sloshed up next to door of the guard shack so Joe could push his way into the passenger seat through the falling flood. He slammed the door as Gloria had. The floorboard of the Blazer had inches of water swishing around at their feet from the rain.
     “Head for the paved road!” Joe ordered and Gloria complied, driving through the open gate and onto the road just in front of the fenced base. “Hold it right here, darlin’!”
     They sat there for many long minutes as the rain blasted down, flooding the land around them. As suddenly as it started, again the rain stopped and the sun came out. There was water everywhere, the fields surrounding the base flooded with about nine inches or so of standing water. Joe got out of the Blazer and looked up, back up at the moon. It was still visible but barely.
     The moon was full, shining in the sky like a bright beacon in space, but this time it resembled a pea, a pearl in the vast blue of the clearing sky, and it was still slowly but surely moving, this time growing in size instead of shrinking. Joe stood and stared up at the moon again, taking the advantage of the halt of the bizarre rainstorm by lighting a cigarette while Gloria frantically tried to establish communications using the Blazer’s two way radio with no success. As Joe watched the increasing size of the slowly growing sphere of white in the sky, smoking as quickly as he could, he noticed a dark crescent forming on the face of the moon as it grew. It amazed him, placed him transfixed as he stood and watched and smoked while standing in about four inches of water on the paved road. And the dark crescent slowly expanded as the moon slowly grew in size. Gloria rolled the passenger side window and yelled as a huge wind blew from the direction that the previous storm had left.
     “JOE!!!” she hollered at the top of her lungs. “LOOK OUT!!”
     The river of rain returned, dousing Joe’s cigarette and soaking his body more thoroughly than any bathroom shower he’d ever stood in. The wind and the rain threw him down to his knees, and this time he wasn’t able to get to the passenger door of the Blazer before the precipitation’s full force really hit. The heavy rain poured over his prone form, then it reduced in intensity for a while letting Joe get to his feet. Suddenly the rain started throwing hailstones to the earth, the size of marbles to start but increasing size to that of golf balls and then to that of eggs that hammered the top of the blazer and pummeling Joe’s back.
      Gloria frantically called to Joe as she used all her strength to push the passenger door open for him. Joe screamed as the back of his head and his spine were hammered by the onslaught of the hideous hail from heaven. He painfully crawled and finally found the door of the blazer, pulling himself up and into the car. Gloria got her share too, the hail smacking her in the face, breasts, and her belly. Joe was finally able to close the passenger door after pushing the ice that built up on the fore panel of the door off with his hands. It wouldn’t close completely, but it stopped the hail from flowing inside the Blazer. Once again the bizarre storm stopped as abruptly as it started.
      The sky cleared and the bright sun revealed the hail piled up over a foot on the ground. An eerie snow fell from a cloudless sky as if the half-dollar sized flakes of white descended from heaven like a host of angels from God’s glory. The snow descended serenely and silently in the aftermath of the ghastly rain/hail/snowstorm. Joe pushed the passenger door back open and looked to the east above the sea and there was the moon, back to its normal size, a thin crescent against a wide dark field on its face, large and graceful above the horizon. The uncanny cloud system was gone and the sun shined down brightly. Gloria looked at her watch; it was only eleven thirty AM.
      Gloria helped Joe out of his muddy jacket and covered him in a blanket from the back of the Blazer, and they waited. After an hour or so, and three of Joe’s nasty cigarettes (she didn’t mind so much if he smoked in the car anymore), Lieutenant Smith finally arrived. Master Chief Doll and OS1 Frasier were with him. They took over the watch for SK2 Jones and FC1 Hampton while Joe and Gloria were taken back to their barracks. It seemed that the Undersecretary of the Navy deferred her inspection of the base because of the weather phenomenon that affected most of the Eastern Seaboard.
      After Gloria finally settled back into her room she let her emotions flow. She cried for a few minutes and then took a nice warm shower after the water was finally restored to the barracks. Joe ended up in the hospital in the city thirty miles to the north with a fractured clavicle and a concussion. After a nice, long nap Gloria dressed up and went to the local watering hole for a good stiff drink. She met a nice, middle aged man who ended up to be not only a fireman for the county, but also spent the night with a warm and affectionate Navy woman that made love to him passionately with her voluptuous body.
Frank Doll, Master Chief of the Command, and Leslie Frasier stood the watch at the gate Jones and Hampton weathered when the bizarre storms socked the area earlier that morning. As the sun started to set Master Chief Doll called the CO of the base. The moon was rising in the East and it had some attributes that were very disturbing.
       The guard shack outside the main test facility had a candid view of the sea. The sunsets were usually very pleasant as the sun descended in the West and illuminated any clouds out to sea. But this sunset was different, this moon was menacing, a little more than a big thumbnail in the sky. This moon filled the horizon, the dark side facing the earth, the clouds above the sea placing the image of the moon into a stack of dark pancakes that rose above the sea like a mountain range, layered, circularly rising, and terrifying in its shear size against the horizon. The waves that lapped on the shore were syncopated, sometimes very low like a fresh water pond and other times huge washes that swept over the upper banks of the mainland.
      Commander Lawrence, the Commanding Officer, could only ask that he be kept informed as best that he could be, and reiterated that he was aware of the bizarre weather and the color of the sky.
      “God bless you, Frank.” Mister Lawrence said before he hung up his phone.
      “You too, sir.” Master Chief Doll replied, and hung up as well. He walked over to where OS1 Frasier was standing near the demolished guard shack. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out a stainless steel flask he had filled with single malt scotch the day he put Chief Petty Officer khakis on several years before. Frank had been sober going on six years now, however this was not a time to worry about one’s sobriety.
      “How ya’ doin’ Leslie?” he asked Frasier. He looked into her brown eyes, her dark face, and he smiled for her. He twisted the cap off the flask and handed it to the African American beauty standing in front of him.
      “I’m alright. Thanks, Mast’chief.” she replied. “Cheers!” She took a long pull of the scotch and gave the flask back to Frank.
      “Khompia!” he replied, and took a long, luxuriant drink for himself as it suddenly started to rain.


SR Urie

Author's Note

I'm all ears. Gimme' yer' best shot.

Reviews

[Salvatore Buttaci]

Congratulations for winning the 1,000-words-or-less-horror contest!

[Twilight]

A far better piece than your previous submission to my Contest, "Weird Tales", and I'm sure that you would agree! By the way, I was surprised at the level of military detail in this? Almost as if you have been in the military, or known somebody who was? I also like the sheer originality of your basic story idea!

Some of the turbulent climatic changes, reminded me of that film, "The Day After Tomorrow"! Also, the moon has often featured in folklore from different cultures (with mysterious connotations).....

Thankyou, SR Urie!