Shelter Read Free Page A

really hidden in her apartment; she didn't know where they were. Preston probably knew, but she no longer spoke to Preston. Preston hadn't really been her friend. He'd promised to protect her, but he'd lied. Because Preston had betrayed her, she was really on parole, really threatened with gene therapy.
        And then she heard the wind and the rain against her window, and remembered the storm warnings, and realized that the sirens that had woken her were also real. She counted two, three, six of them: sirens passing her apartment and sirens in the distance, some growing louder, some fading, all over the city.
     
        PART ONE A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
     
        One
     
        THAT same morning, Kevin Lindgren's house warned him not to go outside. The house knew the sky was dangerous. Everyone knew. Kevin didn't even need a house with a brain to tell him: all the newscasts said so, and special bulletins during the soap operas and talk shows, and, most especially, the sky itself, gray and howling, spitting sheets of rain and barrages of hailstones. Kevin himself knew that the sky was dangerous. Not fifteen minutes before he left the house, he'd watched a gust of wind pick up the patio table on his back deck and blow it down Filbert Street. Filbert wasn't really a street at all, here; it was actually ten flights of steps leading steeply down Telegraph Hill to Levi Plaza and the waterfront. The patio table was teak, and quite heavy, but even, so, the wind sent it a long way down the steps, until finally it came to rest in a neighbor's garden. It could just as easily have gone through the neighbor's roof or window.
        Kevin was standing at the living room window, watching the storm, when the patio table began its journey. "Goddess," he said, sounding impressed. "I guess I should have brought that thing inside, huh?"
        "Kevin," said the house, "I really think you should go to an interior room now. You'll be safer there."
        "Yes," Kevin said drily, "I think you're right." But before he could go to an interior room, the telephone chimed. "Pick up," Kevin told the house with a sigh. The caller's voice would be routed through the house speakers. "Hello?"
        "Kevin?" It was a woman's voice; the house, who had an infallible memory, had never heard it before. "Kevin, is that you?" The voice broke into a hacking cough, and Kevin, who had suddenly grown much paler, dropped onto the couch.
        "I—is this a joke?"
        "You think it's a joke?" The new voice was bitter now. "Voiceprint it."
        "It could be synthesized, couldn't it?"
        "Do you think that's—"
        "No. Never mind. Where have you been?"
        "Away." The woman's voice caught and broke, and then poured into a torrent of words. "Kevin, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry about everything but I want to come home now, I'm scared and the place where I'm staying is flooding, water's coming in through the door and the floor's all wet and I'm scared, Kevin, can you please come get me?"
        "In this weather? Are you out of your mind?" Kevin stood up and began to pace, running his fingers distractedly through his thinning hair. "Merry, if you're in danger, call 911—wait a minute, you mean you're back in the city? When did you—"
        "Not long. Really, not long. You're the first person I've called, Kevin, I promise, my mother doesn't even know—"
        "What about your father?"
        "—and I'm sick, Kevin, I have a fever and I'm so scared and I couldn't think who to call, I felt like I was a kid again burning up with fever and the water, the water-"
        "Call 911. If they're too busy, climb on a table or something, climb some stairs, there must be—wait. Where are you?"
        "II'm in Zephyr's old apartment, I—"
        "What? What are you doing there?"
        "It's in the Soma District, the corner of Eleventh and Harrison, it's a big old converted warehouse, you can't miss