Drought Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles by Graham Masterton available from Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Book One: Act of God

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Book Two: Sins of Men

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Recent Titles by Graham Masterton available from Severn House

  The Sissy Sawyer Series

  TOUCHY AND FEELY

  THE PAINTED MAN

  THE RED HOTEL

  The Jim Rook Series

  DEMON’S DOOR

  GARDEN OF EVIL

  Anthologies

  FESTIVAL OF FEAR

  Novels

  BASILISK

  BLIND PANIC

  CHAOS THEORY

  COMMUNITY

  DESCENDANT

  DROUGHT

  EDGEWISE

  FIRE SPIRIT

  FOREST GHOST

  GHOST MUSIC

  MANITOU BLOOD

  THE NINTH NIGHTMARE

  PETRIFIED

  UNSPEAKABLE

  DROUGHT

  Graham Masterton

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2014 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2014 by Graham Masterton.

  The right of Graham Masterton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Masterton, Graham author.

  Drought.

  1. Droughts–Fiction. 2. Environmental disasters–

  Fiction. 3. Social workers–California–Fiction.

  4. Suspense fiction.

  I. Title

  823.9’2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8399-5 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-519-3 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-548-2 (ePub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  ‘When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.’

  Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790),

  Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1746

  BOOK ONE

  Act of God

  ONE

  Martin heard the screaming inside the house as soon as he pulled into the curb. He picked up his bulging folder of case notes and swung his legs out of his old bronze Eldorado convertible, but as he did so the frosted glass window in the front door cracked, sharp as a pistol shot. He could see that a woman in a dark red dress had been violently pushed against it from inside the hallway.

  ‘You whore!’ a man’s hoarse voice was shouting. ‘Two weeks I’m away and what do you do? Two weeks! You can’t wait for me two weeks?’

  The woman was thrown against the front door a second time, even harder, so that a large triangular shard of glass crashed out on to the porch. Martin dropped his folder back on to the passenger seat and strode briskly up the concrete path.

  ‘You whore! You pisona! You piece of shit! I kill you!’

  Martin went up to the door, his shoes crunching on broken glass. Through the broken window he could see a woman sitting on the doormat with her back to him, sobbing, her black hair tangled into snakes. An unshaven Hispanic man in a filthy pink T-shirt was standing in front of her with both fists clenched, cross-eyed with rage.

  ‘Jesus!’ Martin shouted at him. ‘Back off, Jesus, before you do something you totally regret! Leave her be!’

  The man took no notice of him. He seized the woman’s dress and heaved her up on to her feet, and then he punched her in the face, twice. Martin heard the cartilage in her nose snap, and blood sprayed in loops and squiggles all the way up the wall.

  ‘Jesus, leave her be!’

  But Jesus kept hold of the woman’s dress and swung her from side to side. She was semi-concussed and her arms were dangling as if she were dancing a loose-limbed salsa.

  ‘You go screw yourself !’ he retorted. ‘This is my business, nothing to do with social service! Go on, go screw yourself ! Vete a la verga!’

  Martin took one step back, and then he kicked the door so hard that the crossbar splintered. He kicked it again and this time the lock burst and it swung wide open, juddering on its hinges. Jesus let go of the woman so that she tumbled sideways on to the carpet. He retreated toward the kitchen, holding up both hands to fend Martin off.

  ‘Don’t you touch me! I warn you! Don’t you fucking touch me! You – you work for the social service – you can’t touch me! It’s the law!’

  Without any hesitation, Martin sidestepped around the woman and went after him. Jesus backed into the kitchen and frantically tried to close the door in Martin’s face, but he was too late. Martin barged into the door with his shoulder and Jesus lost his balance and staggered back against a Formica-topped table crowded with smeary plates and empty Modelo bottles. Plates and bottles clattered on to the floor and smashed.

  ‘Don’t you touch me!’ Jesus was so frightened now that his voice was more of a high-pitched, strangulated whine, like a dog straining at its leash. ‘You touch me, I swear to God, you’re going to lose your fucking job! I make sure of that!’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ said Martin. ‘And how are you going to do that, when you’re sitting in the slammer on a charge of assault?’

  ‘Don’t you touch me! Don’t you touch me!’ Jesus gibbered. He backed right up to the kitchen sink but Martin grabbed his wrist, twisted him around and forced both of his arms behind his back, right up between his shoulder blades. Jesus stank of beer and sweat and stale cigarettes, and the hair on his arms was so bristly that it felt like holding a large dog rather than a man. All the same, Martin found that Jesus was surprisingly weak.

  ‘You can’t do this!’ Jesus protested. ‘You can’t do this to me! You work for the county! I know my rights! I have rights!’

  ‘Sure you have rights. For starters, you have the right to remain silent,
you sadistic scumbag. In fact, I insist on it.’

  As if to emphasize his point, he rammed Jesus’s arms up even higher between his shoulder blades. Jesus let out a girlish cry of pain.

  Martin half-pushed and half-lifted Jesus out of the kitchen and back into the hallway. On the left-hand side there was a grubby cream-painted door with a discolored decal of a red rose stuck on to it. Martin turned his back to the door and kicked it open, and then forced Jesus inside. All of the houses along this side of East Julia Street were identical, and Martin knew that this was the restroom.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Jesus screamed at him. ‘What are you doing, you fucking pervert?’

  The restroom was small and narrow with a pale blue Venetian blind that looked as if it hadn’t been dusted since it was first put up. A dried-up pot plant sat on the windowsill, and the mirror above the washbasin was smashed like a kaleidoscope. Around the toilet pedestal, the floor was cluttered with rancid sneakers and a rusty pair of roller skates, and balanced on top of the cistern there was an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. The toilet itself was filthy, its bowl streaked in fifty shades of dark brown, its water still amber with stale urine.

  ‘You can’t!’ screamed Jesus. ‘You can’t do this! It’s against the law!’

  Martin didn’t answer him. He forced Jesus to kneel down on the floor in front of the toilet. Then he gripped the back of his neck and pushed his head down into the bowl, as far as it would fit. Martin heard the sides of his skull knocking against the porcelain.

  ‘Oh, no! No! Holy Mary Mother of God! No!’

  Martin yanked down the cistern handle and the toilet flushed. Jesus struggled furiously as water cascaded over his head. Martin kept him kneeling until the flush had finished, and then pulled him up. Jesus spluttered and coughed and blinked, and for the first few seconds he couldn’t speak.

  ‘Well?’ said Martin. ‘Not so tough now, are we?’

  ‘You can’t – you can’t fucking do this—’

  ‘I can and I will and there’s not a goddamned thing you can do about it. You’re not even supposed to be in this house, Jesus, you worthless waste of space, and you know it. You’re not even supposed to be anywhere near this neighborhood. How do you think little Mario would feel if he saw you hitting his mother like that? You think he’d respect you?’

  ‘That’s my son! How do you think he’s going to respect her, his own mother, if she screws around with other men, right in front of him? Of course I hit her. She’s a whore. She was asking for it.’

  ‘From now on, Jesus, you’re going to leave her alone. The court says you have to and I say you have to.’

  ‘Well, screw you,’ Jesus spat at him. ‘She’s my wife and that makes her my property and no court is going to keep me away from her and neither is no caca palo from social services.’

  Martin rammed Jesus’s head into the toilet bowl again and pulled down the handle. This time, however, the handle clanked down loosely, and no water came out. Martin pulled it again, but the cistern wasn’t filling up. He dragged Jesus up again.

  ‘So what’s it to be?’ Martin demanded. ‘Are you going to stay away from Ezzie, or not?’

  Jesus spat out water and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and then spat again.

  ‘Yes? No?’ Martin coaxed him. ‘If it’s a no, Jesus, I can shove your head down there for a third time, no problem. And more, if necessary. I’m willing to go on shoving your head down there as long as it takes for you to change your mind.’

  Jesus looked down into the dirt-encrusted toilet bowl. There was no water in it now. He spat into it, and then he looked back at Martin and shook his head. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘You win, you bastard.’

  ‘You’re sure you don’t want one more lucky dip?’

  Jesus shook his head again. Martin released his grip on the back of his neck, and Jesus stood up, almost losing his balance and tilting against the wall. The first thing he did was go to the washbasin and turn on the faucet, but only a dribble of water came out. He smacked the faucet in frustration.

  ‘No fucking water! What the fuck?’

  ‘Maybe Ezzie didn’t pay her water bill.’

  ‘It’s you. The C-fucking-FS. You are supposed to pay for her water bills.’

  He smacked the faucet again but it was no use. He had to content himself with rubbing his hair with the gray, mildew-smelling hand towel that hung beside the basin. As he did so, he stared at his own reflection in the shattered mirror and said to Martin, ‘If I catch some lethal infection, you – you will be a dead man, I promise you.’

  ‘No, Jesus … if you catch some lethal infection, you will be a dead man, and the world will be a better place without you, believe me. Now, where’s Mario? I have to take Ezzie to the hospital.’

  He stepped back into the hallway. Esmeralda was sitting up now, her back against the wall, dabbing her bleeding nose with the hem of her dark red dress. Her curvy brown legs were dappled with bruises – some red, some purple, some yellow.

  ‘Jesus was just leaving, weren’t you Jesus?’ said Martin.

  Jesus had appeared from the toilet with his wet hair sticking up. He said nothing to Martin, but as he passed Esmeralda on his way to the broken front door, he stopped, and spat at her, and said, ‘Pisona!’

  ‘Hey!’ said Martin. ‘You want another dive down the U-bend? Be happy to oblige you!’

  Jesus stalked out of the house without saying anything else. A few seconds later, he drove past them in his bright yellow turbocharged Mustang, blasting his horn in defiance.

  Martin hunkered down next to Esmeralda and examined her face. Both of her eyes were already crimson and swollen so that she could hardly see out of them, and her nose looked like a large maroon plum. Her upper lip was split, too. He couldn’t tell which was blood and which was sticky red lipstick.

  ‘Come on, Esmeralda,’ said Martin, gently. ‘We need to get you to the ER. Where’s Mario?’

  ‘Mario is staying with his friend Billy today. I’m so glad he wasn’t here when Jesus came. That Jesus. He’s the devil.’

  Martin helped her to climb to her feet. Before they left for the hospital, he tore a piece from a cardboard tomato box which he found in the kitchen and stuck it over the broken window in the front door with duct tape. Then he managed to wedge the door shut with another piece of cardboard so that at least it looked as if it were locked.

  ‘Don’t worry, Martin,’ said Esmeralda, in a blocked-up voice. ‘I don’t have nothing which is worth nobody stealing. Apart from Mario, I don’t have nothing worth nothing.’

  Martin opened the Eldorado’s door for her. He looked up at the sky and it was cloudless. It was June ninth and it hadn’t rained since November twelfth, and even then less than a tenth of an inch had fallen. He remembered the date because that was the day that Peta had walked out on him, taking Ella and Tyler with her. He had stood on the sidewalk watching them drive away and it had started to rain, very softly and very quietly, and even then it was the first time in over a year.

  He climbed in beside Esmeralda and said, ‘Listen to me, Ezzie. We all have something, more than we know. Most of the time, though, we just don’t appreciate it. What does that song say? “You don’t know what you’ve got until you lose it all again.”’

  TWO

  He waited forty-five minutes with Esmeralda in the Urgent Care department of San Bernardino Community Hospital, sitting next to an elderly man who reeked of stale garlic and who groaned loudly every two or three minutes. After each groan he croaked out, ‘Madre de Dios!’ and crossed himself, again and again. At least it was cool inside the hospital, although the sunlight shining through the window was reflected so brightly by the white walls and the white marble floor that Martin felt as if he were sitting in an over-exposed photograph, and put on his Ray-Bans.

  Esmeralda dabbed her nose with a tissue and said, ‘I sleep with Jorge because Jorge is always good to me, always helping me. He is married but I don’t know his wife. It is wrong,
I know that. But sometimes I feel so much alone.’

  Martin said, ‘You can sleep with anybody you like, Ezzie, just so long as you’re discreet about it with little Mario. So far as I’m concerned, Mario’s well-being is my number one priority – and he should be yours, too, and Jesus’s.’

  ‘Mario doesn’t know about Jorge and me sleeping together. It only happens when he is at playschool. I don’t want him to find out. Jesus is still his father, even if he is a tapado.’

  At that moment a wide-hipped Hispanic nurse in a pale blue uniform came up and said, ‘Mrs Rivera? If you’d like to come this way, please, Doctor Varga can see you now.’

  Martin and Esmeralda stood up. Esmeralda took hold of Martin’s hand and said, ‘I see you later maybe, Martin. You are a good man, bless you and bless you. Not like any other social worker I ever know before.’

  Martin smiled and shook his head. ‘There’s not much that’s good about me, Ezzie. In fact I’m not so different from your Jesus. I’m only on the side of the angels by accident.’

  ‘You should be careful of Jesus. He never forgets. Never. If he thinks you have done him wrong, he will do to you twice as bad as you have done to him, even if he has to wait for years.’

  Martin watched the nurse take Esmeralda away to the Urgent Care Department. As he did so, his cellphone played the opening bars of ‘Mandolin Rain’.

  ‘Martin?’

  ‘Oh, hi, Peta. Listen – I’m in the community hospital right now. Let me take this outside.’

  He walked out into the hospital parking lot. It was just past midday now and the temperature was well over a hundred and ten. The flag outside the hospital entrance hung lifelessly, and ripples of heat rose off the tarmac so that it looked as if water were running across it. Martin was wearing only a short-sleeved white shirt and khaki chinos, but by the time he had reached the shade of the walkway that led to the ambulance parking zone, his forehead was beaded with perspiration and his shirt was clinging to his back.

  ‘Martin, we have no water. All of our faucets have run dry and the toilets won’t flush.’

  ‘I had the same thing on East Julia Street, downtown, about an hour ago. What about your neighbors? Do they have water?’