Stormer’s Song
by Jeanne G’Fellers

Off the east coast of Florida, Stormers were setting their nets to sing.

"You ready, girl?" Ston looked over his shoulder at his netter. Girl, that's what he called her. Never Merindi, seldom by her last name of Johanson and never by her rank, which was low in the Stormer hierarchy but impressive for her youth. Behind her back he called her worse, but that was only when he was off duty and in the company of pilots who knew what it was like to deal with a new netter. He knew how scuttlebutt took on a life of its own and knew when and where he could talk freely—or so he thought. Merindi was aware of his colorful names for her and had names for him as well, but she kept those strictly to herself. Let her call him what he wished. Experience wasn't everything. Experience made old men like Ston into fools. “You ready to sing, girly?”

"Singing is what I do best.” Merindi's answer, the customary between netter and pilot, couldn't contain her excitement. She looked young and eager as she passed him his mask and donned her own, her dark ringlets pulled back in a tight ponytail, her warm cinnamon eyes darting about anxiously. That youthfulness, that inexperience, irritated Ston to no end. A kid, that's all she was to him, a kid. And no pilot worth his weight wanted a kid working the nets. Still, she had done well enough on the practice runs. Hell, she'd moved faster than most of the experienced netters! That, Merindi believed, pissed him off the most. She could fix their ragged equipment when government funding was short, which was most of the time, and didn't think twice about using her own money to keep her personal gear ship-shape. She had proven herself dedicated, but Ston only chuckled at her pride and self-sacrifice. Ingeniousness and martyrdom didn't mean everything. It didn't stop death. Real life was different indeed.

Merindi adjusted her face mask and grasped her crook a little tighter as Ston throttled the flyer into a slow rise. She might be new to the flyer crews, but she was already immune to the tales of laughing suicide, so immune that the tales themselves seemed laughable. Ston hadn’t complained, at least not to his superiors, when he’d been saddled with her. Nor had he tried to fill her head with the cautionary tales most pilots unloaded on their new netters. Not Ston. No, he had joked through their initial meeting, ho-hummed through their practice runs and admonished her methodical gear checks. She wouldn't last, he'd told her. Netters were expendable. They came and went, meeting death when their nets flapped backward, whipping the mask from their faces. There'd been seven netters and only one pilot on his flyer he'd said with a squaring of his shoulders. Pilots were above such hazards. Piloting was a Stormer's sure bet. Pilots, like him, were forever.

“Wind's picking up.” The words jerked from Ston’s mouth as soon as they formed. Not that they needed hearing, for the wind pulled hard on the flyer. Merindi must have heard him though because she nodded, steadied her crook, and reached down, grasping the netting stacked at her feet. The iridescent material crackled under her gloves, sending up sparks. The occupants of the neighboring flyers were similarly employed, one gathering the net, the other at the controls. The death breeze whirled around them as they worked, billowing the rain coats covering their bio-suits, challenging them to sing it away.

Merindi swung the tip of her net over the railing. "Offloading!"

Ston tightened his mask then flipped a lever, extending the flyer's port and starboard hooks. Merindi raised her crook, gathered the net in the curve, and, with a twist of her arm, caught it on the port hook’s point. She reloaded her crook then called out to alert Ston of her progress, but he was already in action, closing the distance between them and the flyer off their port side.

"Sing high!" Bellowed the other flyer's netter.

"And loud!" replied Merindi as she and the other netter secured the contents of their crooks on each other's hooks. As the flyers parted, the nets stretched between them, a sequence soon repeated on starboard side of every flyer. The entire event, often likened to an aerial ballet, took only moments, flyers swaying, touching then parting as a tremendous canvas unfolded in the sky. Merindi could see their movements repeating in the wall of flyers behind them. There were only two layers of protection this time, two electrified micro-barriers between death and the coastal population. This storm would be minor, opportunity for practice but no test of skill. She felt a twinge of disappointment even as the wind continued to pick up.

Merindi tightened her breather and gave Ston the thumbs up. Now they waited, watching the living storm build. It began as a red tide, an overgrowth of algae and phytoplankton in the tropical currents. The overgrowth killed fish and shellfish alike, overwhelming their systems with neurotoxins. Humans weren’t affected unless they actually ingested infected seafood, or they hadn't been until around twenty years earlier.

The first storm had risen when heavy rains passed over an undetected red tide. A water spout had thrown the algae into the moisture-laden atmosphere where it had ridden the winds to land and humanity. Thousands had died within hours. Rapid onset PSP, the coroners had called it, Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning, which might have made sense if any of the victims had been eating shellfish at the time. But they hadn’t—they’d been sleeping when the storm hit the Florida coastline. Merindi’s father had died, her mother and brothers too. She remembered their bodies jerking and shaking, their giddy, dizzy behavior even when they knew they were dying. She remembered stumbling about, too, clumsy with ataxia as she tried to help them. But she'd survived, spared because she'd been sleeping with a blanket over her head. That blanket, that ratty old blanket she'd had since infancy had filtered the air she'd breathed, preventing her from inhaling a lethal dose.

Sirens began to wail in the coastal towns below. Those who remained on the coastline these days were warned when death threatened. They had the opportunity to protect themselves, could flee to the sealed, air-filtered rooms required in every building. But not Ston and those like him. They wanted to face death head on, stop it in its microscopic tracks. They became Stormers. Now Merindi was one of them, shoulder-to-shoulder in the fight, but with a different goal. She wouldn’t merely stop death, she would conquer it, own it. She deserved repayment for her losses, for the pain, for the funerals, for the foster care and accompanying misery. Death owed her, and she was there to collect.

Ston tightened his mask. The nets were tight, vibrating in the wind, humming with the song of electric charge. The sound both excited and frightened Merindi. It represented dangerous thrill. Ston, like most experienced stormers, found the noise soothing, a personal narcotic, a high, the sole opportunity for relief from the physical pain of two decades fighting storms. Merindi knew the stories, had been taught the psychology behind Stormers' seeming addiction. Old stormers lived for the song, ached to be one with the nets, to be part of the song, the song that protected. She watched as Ston closed his eyes. He was one with the song, in tune with the vibrations. She could fairly see the joy coursing through him, the exhilaration, the passion, the—Ston’s eyes began to water.

“You okay?”

He tried to speak, but when his lips and tongue refused he turned to Merindi with a blank expression. They both knew what lay ahead, but he was dizzy, too drunk with the song to care, and Merindi didn't move to aid him. The storm and music were beautiful, as alluring as the ocean's moonlit glow. He cried out his want to swim in it, in that reddened gleam. No matter that it was four thousand feet below. No matter that his body felt distant from his mind. No matter that Merindi only mildly objected when he disconnected his belt. She moved along the railing to his side, hooking to the eyelet he'd abandoned so she could fumble with the radio controls to send out a rescue call she knew would remain unanswered until the nets ceased singing.

"Ah, can’t you feel it, girl? Don’t you want it?” Ston laughed as he crawled toward the edge. “It feels as good as it looks. Come feel it with me.” Merindi stooped to grab his line then backed away, the rope loose in her palm. His eyes flared with passion for the red, burned for death.

Lightning struck a nearby flyer's hook and the song became shrill with arching electricity. Merindi's skin prickled as she shook off the noise that blasted through her body. But not Ston. He’d removed his protective gear and stood, quivering, before her near flyer’s port edge, his bare upper body glowing, tan flesh now radiant red with death—beautiful, dizzying, giddy death.

"Come on, girl, be a woman!" He grasped her line and jerked it toward him, laughing in time with his pulls. Merindi tugged against his reeling until she'd been pulled within his reach then leaned back to avoid his lunge. "Get rid of that mask and breathe free."

Merindi pushed him away and he stumbled back, laughing haughtily as his safety line tore from her grasp before she could release it, ripping through her gloves and into her tender flesh before slithering over the side behind him. She kicked his face mask off behind him then clamored for a safety blanket and stuffed her hands between the folds, praying death hadn’t touched her too.

Ston was gone, but the song remained, singing his eulogy as Merindi took the pilot's seat. Under the blanket, she held to the controls, held tight until the winds eased and the other flyers disconnected and moved away, held tight until radio contact was possible, and she was talked through the landing maneuvers she had been studying for years.

When she landed an escort led her to a debriefing room but not before a group of pilots assembled around her flyer to glower and throw insults. Pilots never succumbed they told her. Only netters did. Girl. Kid. Bitch! Ston had been right about her. What had happened up there? What had she done?

*****

Merindi flexed her scabbed palms and looked out over the ocean into the second storm of the season. There’d been no formal inquiry into Ston's death. The report stated what Merindi had confirmed as the only eye witness—his breather had cracked during the lightning blast. Now there was one more mark on her flyer’s side, one more tally, one more Stormer dead. She hadn’t acted surprised when she’d been promoted, hadn't tried to contain her delight when she'd aced her pilot exams. Like everything else government funded, they were under-paid and short-handed, consistently recruiting new members. She hadn't blinked an eye when she'd been introduced to her new netter, hadn't hesitated to tell him of Ston's happy death. Of course he hadn't listened, but it really didn't matter. Soon the nets would be singing, singing high, singing loud. Merindi smiled. Another storm meant another test of skill, another chance to beat death, another chance for repayment. She fingered her breather, examining the seals before sliding it over her head.

Her netter looked at her inquisitively then shrugged and turned back to the nets at his feet. She had insisted on inspecting her own mask since their first practice run. In fact, she refused to let anyone else touch her personal equipment—not the repair crews, not the inspectors—especially not her netter. She was talking to him now, her voice almost breathless with anticipation.

"Netters come, netters go." Merindi's mouth curved into a smile behind her mask as she spoke. "But a pilot, boy, now a pilot is a Stormer's sure bet."

 

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