Chapter 9: Hellamentary

Chloe and Max sat on the couch until ten in complete silence. Max with her arm between Chloe's waist and the couch, Chloe with her cheek resting on the smaller woman's head. As the clock struck the twenty-second hour of the day, Max wordlessly got up and took Chloe by the hand, leading her to the bedroom.

They silently undressed in the dark and got into bed. Max snuggled her forehead into Chloe's collarbone as Chloe looked up at the darkened ceiling in the buffeting silence, marred only by the far-off drone of a fire engine.

Slowly, she fell asleep.


A wall of wind.

Above, it bled into the clouds, thieving from the sprawling canvas of the sky its joy, its warmth, its grace. And below…

Below, the storm clawed into the depths of the ocean, bringing up a wall of water in its forward wake as high as a skyscraper.

The air was cold in its most basic, primal sense: It scared the heat away.


August 28, 2019

Chloe's eyes flickered open two hours before her alarm was set to go off. The sun wasn't even out yet.

Max wasn't in bed, but the light coming in from the open bedroom doorway told Chloe that she was still in the house.

As Chloe brought her feet down to the floor to the side of the bed, she felt an oncoming sense of preemptive loss. The dreams of the storm were getting more vivid, more memorable. She fought the urge to wipe the imaginary ocean spray from her face.

She was dreaming about the thing that was going to kill her. Caught in a nether-world, waiting to be born.

Chloe came over in a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room, and rubbed her hands over her arms as Max's silhouette filled the bedroom doorway. She entered, and Chloe saw that she was wearing a navy blue button-down shirt. She hadn't put on her pants yet, revealing a pair of truly hideous lavender cotton underwear.

For a woman whose livelihood hinged on the mastery of images, Chloe reckoned that Max had the most atrocious taste in underwear. Just horrendously eye-watering. Yeah, Chloe wore boxers, but none of them were Pepto Bismol pink or hangover pee yellow, both of which were in the Caulfield Underthings Ensemble.

"No one will ever see them," Max had said one time, to which Chloe replied "Well, I will."

"Good morning," Max said. "You're up early. I'm making coffee if you want some."

Chloe held out her hand. Max entered and took it, before Chloe pulled her closer.

"I haven't brushed my teeth yet," Max said.

"Neither have I."

Max sat on Chloe's skinny thighs as they kissed. Her left hand was on Chloe's shoulder while the flat of her right rubbed up and down Chloe's bare back. Chloe broke out into the good kind of goosebumps. They broke the kiss.

"I really like holding you after you've woken up," Max said. "You're all warm. It's like you just got out of the oven."

Chloe smiled, but that smile faded as she looked into Max's eyes.

She had met Max when she was nine years old, and she had been a constant ever since. Even through the ten years they spent away from each other; five in childhood because the Caulfield family moved away from Seattle, and five in adulthood when Chloe left Max and went back to Arcadia Bay.

Chloe tried to imagine Max in a world that didn't have her in it. Not far away because of family or Chloe's own raging insecurities, but gone. Forever. And the prospect made the bottom of Chloe's stomach collapse. She hoped that Max would build herself back up and move on, but she hadn't made an attempt at another relationship or even had a one night stand during the three years they were broken up, so the possibility of Max whiling away the rest of her years in solitude ventured into the realm of the depressingly likely. Dooming her forever to mediocrity and loneliness because the one great chance she took in her life upon another human being fizzled out and blew away six years later. Another corner of the world made worse by the perpetual string of fuck-ups and let-downs that Chloe Price saw as her enduring legacy.

"What is it?" Max asked.

"I love you," Chloe said.

"I love you, too."

Chloe put her hand on Max's cheek.

"We haven't been telling each other that enough lately," Chloe said. "We need to say that more… It's important."

Max's smile began to fall. Chloe could see the gravity of the situation began to hit her when Chloe's phone started vibrating on the nightstand.

Max got off of Chloe and picked up the phone.

"It's Joyce," Max said as she unplugged the phone from the charger. She handed it to Chloe, who answered.

"You're up early," Chloe said.

A sigh from the other end of the line. "Yeah… It's been just a hell of a week, for the Price women, hasn't it?"


Joyce and Chloe stood next to the gas pumps across the street from the gutted and burnt remains of the Two Whales Diner. The sun's morning light hit it just so, bathing the blackened husk of the eatery in a golden glow, creating a dissonance within Chloe that almost made her nauseous.

"Fuck," Chloe said.

Joyce just nodded.

Chloe had spent an embarrassing amount of time in the teenage years following the passing of her father imagining a great cleansing fire hitting Arcadia Bay, turning the shitty little town and all of its shitty little people into ash. Even six years ago, when she offered herself up for death to stop a storm from hitting Arcadia Bay, she did it for the well-being of Max and Max alone. To sacrifice herself so that she wouldn't sacrifice herself. Arcadia Bay only barely entered into the equation for her at all, save for her mother, of course, but Chloe would have rather died saving Max than live in any timeline where there was no Max at all. Or live with seeing what destroying an entire town would do to the girl she loved.

But now?

Now, looking at the ruin of the Two Whales, Chloe felt like someone had broken into her head and defaced her memories with spray paint. Early teens waiting tables as punishment for all the shit she got up to. Max guessing the contents of her pockets with time travel powers. All the meet-ups with connections when she was in the favor business for the Arcadia Bay underworld after her defeated return to Seattle. Telling Max about a dream she had before Justin Williams' funeral, starting the whole damn love story all over again.

Even yesterday, saving Vivian from the red rain and the panic that would have killed her, bringing food and coffee to the citizens of Arcadia Bay, who looked less shitty and dumb in the light of an Old Testament style plague, and more brave and frightened.

Gone.

All of it.

And just… just…

"Fuck," Chloe said again.

Joyce looked at her daughter. "I heard you the first time."

Chloe looked back at her mother, before looking back at the Two Whales.

"What did Trevor have to say?" Chloe asked.

"Arson," Joyce said. "It started in the dining area instead of in the back where all the burners are. Insurance will cover everything, I can even get it rebuilt, but…"

"It just won't be the same," Chloe said.

Mother looked at daughter, and the sadness in both their eyes matched.

"Right," Joyce said.

Chloe folded her arms. Joyce put her hands in her pockets.

"I want to find the guy who did this," Joyce said. "I don't even want to do anything bad to them, I just want to know why. I thought I'd be angrier about this, but I'm just… I don't know what."

Even in this weird sense of loss, Chloe found a smirk that she could put on her face. "Then maybe you should hire a detective."

Joyce smiled. "I'm going to Hell for raising a smart-ass, aren't I?"

Chloe nodded. Joyce laughed.

Chloe looked at the Two Whales again, and ran through everything she'd seen in the past few days in her head. Arcadia Bay was a small town, which lent itself to ecosystem metaphors more readily than big cities did. Anything that seemed out of the ordinary could have been a clue.

She hit on something.

"When I came in yesterday," Chloe said, "I saw you talking to someone. Some guy in a suit."

"Yeah?"

"Who was it?"

Joyce sighed. "Some guy who wanted to do construction on the diner."

Chloe's eyebrows raised. "Construction?"

"Yeah," Joyce said. "Apparently, City Hall revamped the building code. They've been doing construction in town these past few months, trying to get local businesses to pass muster. It wouldn't have cost anything, except the business I would have lost while they were doing it."

"So you didn't agree to the construction?"

"Hell no," Joyce said. "If Mayor Newman fiddled with the building code, he can come up to me and tell me to my face. Being as you and him are so chummy, I thought he'd have done that in the first place."

"We're not…" Chloe said, before deciding to drop it. "I remember seeing a business card on the booth table yesterday. Do you still have it?"

"Yes," Joyce said. "I keep every business card I'm given because, well, you never know. But… do you think he had something to do with this?"

"Maybe."

Joyce's brow furrowed. "But… A guy comes in and tries to do construction, only to burn the place down? That doesn't make sense. It would defeat the purpose. And he said he was coming in again today."

Chloe had to concede the point that no, it didn't make sense. But still…

"You ever notice how everything in this town in connected?"


Chloe made a point to drive The Taxi past the car wash over on Tenth and Main. There was no line. Chloe remembered a private joke she'd had with the one friend she'd made in Seattle in 2014…

Praise Gay Jesus, Chloe thought, for He hath better abs than Straight Jesus.

Chloe pumped a five dollar bill into the slot and got the works, as the automated car wash got the sticky remains of the previous day's red rain off of her canary yellow internal-combustion adopted daughter.

She pulled The Taxi into a parking space outside the car was, and got out to inspect the chassis, eagle-eyed, looking for any minute scratches or dings that the car wash's automated feelers and cleansers could have given the paint job.

Once she had been satisfied with the fact that the car wash didn't hurt her baby, Chloe reached into the pocket of her trench coat. She pulled out the business card Joyce had given her, along with her phone.

Joseph Thompson of Trident Construction…

Chloe dialed and waited… Voice mail.

As she took the phone away from her ear, Chloe saw someone across the street in front of the Wendy's. He was in his fifties, a crummy gray comb-over flailing madly about his head in the chilly mid-morning wind. He looked dour and sullen, which clashed wildly with the message on the sandwich board he was wearing:

REPENT! THE END IS NIGH!

Even without the inside info Chloe had on The End and its relative Nighness, Chloe would have bought what he was selling. No one looked that defeated while expecting a tomorrow to come.

She hung up and dialed another number.


In the tiny rear room of the Blackwell teacher's lounge, Max made a pot of coffee.

When she was a little girl, Max had always imagined the teacher's lounge of DesRosiers Elementary here in Arcadia Bay as some great and wild Grown-Up Land where the teachers did whatever fun stuff grown-ups did. All the stuff they didn't let kids do, like drink beer and smoke cigars and fist-fight. An eight-year-old's Lighter-and-Softer fantasy of Viking Valhalla.

So ingrained was this in eight-year-old Max's psyche that the twenty-three-year-old Max was surprised by how let down she was when she saw finally saw the inside of a teacher's lounge. It was just a big room near the door, a small room in the back, a couple of tables, a few chairs, and a coffee pot. There was nothing on the walls to make the place more lively, no flowers for warmth, just the spare utilitarianism of a makeshift hospital in a zombie apocalypse movie. At least here, in the small rear room, Max could shut off the oppressive overhead fluorescent lights and pretend that the place was cozy.

She took a paper towel out of the steel dispenser above the sink and wiped down some of the water she had spilled when her phone started vibrating. She wadded up the wet paper towel and tried to make a three-pointer into the plastic wastebasket in the other room (which was a failure, as it bounced off the side of the rim and landed on the linoleum floor) before answering.

It was Chloe.

"Hello?"

"Hey," said Chloe. "You doing alright?"

"I'm fine," Max said. "How's Joyce?"

"Taking it in stride. She's less angry or sad, and more annoyed. Which is, well, just her all over."

"How about you?" Max asked. "Are you doing okay?"

A pause.

It had taken a long process of trial-and-error when she first started dating Chloe to realize that the young Miss Price did not respond well to hovering. Chloe needed attention and reassurance, but she needed them on her own terms, and would either shut down or blow up if she wasn't ready to share. But Max knew from this pause, which could have filled a book better than any collection of words, that Chloe was sitting on something. But she'd get to it in her own time, and Max knew that she would have to respect that.

"I'm good," Chloe said. "Or as good as I can be. But one of the reasons I called, um… Have you heard of something called Trident Construction?"

"Umm… No. Why?"

"Mom talked to someone who worked there yesterday," Chloe said. "I figured it might mean something."

"Okay," Max said. "I can keep my ear to the ground and see what comes up. I don't know how much help I'll be, but… y'know… I'll make a point to be observant."

"Thanks, Max," Chloe said. "I've got to go, though. I'm making a stop that might have something to do with Victoria's case."

"Okay."

"I love you," Chloe said.

"I love you, too."

They said their goodbyes and Max hung up the phone. She looked at the level of the coffee in the pot, before turning to the alcove that separated the smaller room form the larger main one.

Warren had entered, and was dutifully throwing away the paper towel that Max had failed to sink into the wastebasket. He looked up and their eyes met.

The previous six years had been kind to Warren. The shaggy hair of his year as a Blackwell student was now cut a little shorter, and infused with some kind of product. He no longer dressed as though he just threw his clothes at a leaf blower and wore whatever stuck to his body when he stepped in front of it. He hadn't gained weight and his face hadn't changed one iota in the six years since they had both attended this school. Many of Max's fellow students at the time wondered just what in the hell Victoria Chase saw in Warren when they had first started going out, but Max knew: It was the investment plan. And given how many of the female students (and some of the male students, for that matter) checked out Warren's ass whenever he walked down the hall, it appeared that Victoria's investment had paid off.

"Hey," Warren said.

"Hey, Warren. Um… Chloe's following a lead that might have to do with Victoria's case, so… Just so you know."

"And just so Victoria knows," Warren said. "Right."

Warren sat down. And given that she had nothing better to do, and considered Warren a friend even though his wife hated her guts, Max sat down as well.

"Are you doing okay?" Warren asked. "I mean what with the rain and… y'know… the guy who tried to shoot you?"

Max found it in her to smile at this. "Warren, I've been shot before, not just shot at. Once you get shot, the people who miss don't scare you quite as much. Everyone asks me if I'm okay, and I'm tempted to freak out because I'm not feeling as not okay as everyone expects me to be."

"Oh," Warren said. "Sorry."

"It's okay," Max said. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"Well… I did tattle on your girlfriend to you," Warren said. "So you can use my apology on that instead."

Max laughed. "You didn't tattle. You were trying to be a good husband. I get it."

"Really?"

"Yeah," Max said. "If Chloe came to me with a problem, I'd have done the same thing."

"Well, good," Warren said.

Max got up to pour herself a cup of coffee. "Is it alright if I ask you a personal question?"

"Well, you can ask me the question, and I can tell you both if it's personal, and whether or not I'll answer it."

Max sat back down. "I know a lot of people have asked you how you landed Victoria."

Warren smiled and nodded, as though he took pride in the implied insult whenever anyone asked him about it.

"I'm not going to ask that, though," Max said.

Warren's smile started to fade away. "Oh? What's the question, then?"

Max set her coffee cup down. It was too hot. "How did Victoria land you?"

Warren didn't seem to understand the question. "Isn't it obvious?"

"I know she's beautiful," Max said. "I just… You didn't strike me as a sucker-for-a-pretty-face kind of guy."

Warren tilted his head. "As I recall," Warren said, "I had a thing for you before I had a thing for Victoria. So that is, like, some major self-effacement, or you don't know how mirrors work."

Max blushed.

"Look," Warren said. "Victoria is… definite."

"'Definite?' What does that mean?" Max asked.

Warren rubbed his face, looking to Max as though he was trying to get his thoughts on the matter in order.

"Okay," Warren said. "It's like… she's immutable. Unchanging. Which isn't to say she doesn't evolve, but she won't shift or obscure herself when she does. Once you get to know her, I mean. Once she feels comfortable around you, which is tough, but manageable. And yet, for the life of me, there are still a ton of surprises with her."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah. I knew I needed to propose to her when I realized it would take the rest of my life to find them all. She said yes… Which is a surprise in and of itself."

Max smiled. "I'm glad you're happy," she said.

"And I'm glad you're happy," said Warren. "Freaky weather and attempts on your life aside."

Max smiled again as they both fell into a weird silence.

"Life was a hell of a lot simpler when we talked about movies and video games," Warren said.

"I remember," Max said, "that you tried to convince me that there were Christ parallels in Mass Effect 2."

"Because there are Christ parallels in Mass Effect 2."

"I just don't think coming back from the dead automatically means 'Christ parallel,'" Max said.

"It's not just about coming back from the dead," Warren said. "It's about the savior of mankind coming back to redeem sin, as evidenced by all the loyalty missions you have to do."

"I'm still not convinced," Max said, egging him on, trying to get him to display the old nerd enthusiasm of his late teens. It was an attempt that was successful.

"Shepard had twelve disciples," Warren said, rising up in his seat. "The only difference between Shepard and Jesus is…"

Warren's geek zealotry was stifled by a noise coming from the hall. The all-too-familiar chorus that was guaranteed to make an appearance in every school in America…

"FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!"

"Shit," Warren said as he got out of his chair.

"Good luck," Max said.

"You can help, y'know."

"I have faith in you."

Warren left to break up the fight. Max reached into her pocket to check her phone again. When she brought her hand up, her wrist dinged the underside of the table, sending her cup of coffee to shatter on the floor.

"Dammit," Max said, springing up. She walked over to the sink near the coffee maker to grab a few paper towels out of the dispenser. She got on her knees and did as best she could to clean up without cutting herself on the remains of the plain white ceramic mug that died a foolish death on the linoleum.

As she threw the soggy paper towels into the wastebasket next to the sink, Max heard soft footsteps on the floor behind her.

"Who started the fight?" Max asked.

No answer.

"Warren?"

Max looked at the polished steel of the paper towel dispenser. The surface had a few smudges and fingerprints on it, but she could see who was standing behind her, plain as day.

" Lorraine ?"

The girl who called herself Lorraine Foster slipped a length of orange extension cord around Max's throat and pulled back hard.