Storm Gathering

by Rene Gutteridge

  The sirens were so loud he couldn’t hear himself coughing, and when he turned, he saw the two cruisers had stopped short of plunging into the water. Two cops from the first car and one from the second were opening their doors and drawing their guns at the same time.

  To his right were some trees, but only a few, and then another major road. The pasture was a full square mile. In the distance, thick black smoke bellowed like a dangerous thunderhead. Mick wondered what was on fire.

  He wiped his eyes clear of mud and started running. Running and praying. If I can find the truth, let me find the truth.

  It felt as if he were running in slow motion.

  The cops were yelling at him to stop, but Mick didn’t look back. If he was going to get shot, he didn’t want to see the bullet coming.

  Air wanted to stop short of going into his lungs. All the water he’d swallowed was swishing in his stomach, making him nauseous.

  He reached the patch of trees in front of the road, navigating through them in a way that could possibly block any bullets. So far he had not heard a shot. He leaped over a barbed-wire fence, catching his leg and ripping his jeans. Blood dripped from his calf down to his ankle, mixing with the muddy water that was already draining from his jeans. Falling into a ditch, he rolled to a stop and scrambled up, trying to reach the road.

  Just as he did, the farmer drove his tractor by and Mick jumped on it.

  The farmer saw him in his rearview mirror; Mick could see the terror in his eyes. He probably looked like a swamp creature.

  Mick motioned for him to keep driving, but he could feel the tractor slow. When the farmer whirled around, his attention turned to the cops who were running after them. The man shifted down, his expression frozen with shock.

  Climbing around to the opposite side of the tractor, Mick tried to hide behind some of its metal but remain out of the farmer’s reach, in case he decided to give Mick a good punt. The man craned his neck out the cab window and yelled something at Mick, but Mick couldn’t hear. When he poked his head up, one of the cops was shouting something into his radio. The other two were still running, pointing their weapons toward Mick.

  Mick ducked and looked around. A slow-moving truck crested the hill on the road and rumbled toward the commotion. It pulled over to the side of the road. He could see the silhouettes of two passengers.

  Mick hopped off the now stationary tractor and ran toward the truck. The police were still about forty yards away, waving and yelling.

  Mick crouched behind the pickup, hidden from the police momentarily, though there was no question about where he was. Everyone had seen him take cover behind the truck. But the cops weren’t going to shoot with innocent bystanders nearby.

  The woman in the cab was screaming hysterically, her eyes wide with horror as she stared into Mick’s face through her passenger window.

  Mick could hear sirens wailing again. More cops.

  The driver was now reaching for the hunting rifle that hung in the back window of his pickup.

  Little did Mick know this was going to be an asset. As he sprinted toward the field, he looked back to see the officers shouting at the man with the shotgun. For now, they had more problems than just him.

  He hopped another fence. The country air smelled burned, and Mick noticed the smoke seemed just over the hill, perhaps half a mile away. Immediately in front of him, there wasn’t a tree in sight. All he could do was run.

  Glancing back, Mick saw the driver of the truck aiming his rifle at him as the police shouted and scrambled toward the man. Nearly giddy with relief, Mick noticed something amazing. The man had only one arm! How good of a shot could he be?

  A bullet whizzed past his hand and hit the dirt right in front of him. Mick yelped, losing his foothold and falling to the ground, tumbling forward across the grass. When he looked back, one of the cops was tackling the man with the gun.

  A part of him just wanted to play dead.

  But he got up and started running again. The other two cops had jumped the fence and were chasing him, but Mick still had quite a lead.

  In the distance, he could hear the quiet thumping of a search helicopter. And something else he couldn’t identify. A low roar.

  He jumped the far fence, this time clearing the barbed wire. Across the next road, gravel and barely wide enough for a car, a steep hill hid whatever was on fire on the other side. He had run far enough that he was truly in the country, where the square mile no longer existed between paved roads. Climbing a hill this size, rare for the Texas plains, seemed impossible.

  Coming to a standstill momentarily, Mick tuned in to another sound in addition to the sirens and the thumping of the helicopter. To the west he saw a train thundering north. If he could get on the other side of that train, the cruisers would be blocked and he would have time to escape. But could he grab hold of a fast-moving train?

  Only if this were a movie.

  The two cops were now gaining on him. A couple of cruisers were speeding toward him on the road west of the field he was about to clear.

  He started running again. Toward the smoky hill.

  Donning his favorite workout clothes, a worn Dallas Cowboys tank top paired with his gray cotton sweats and Nikes, Aaron walked out the front door of his house and threw his gym bag into the back of his truck, which he never did.

  It was all for show.

  There wasn’t a car in sight, but he figured the police wanted him to think that they’d stopped watching. After Crawford’s threats, though, Aaron assumed they were somehow keeping a good eye on him. He didn’t doubt his house was bugged either. And Prescott could have easily put a locator device, which the cops called a “bird dog,” on the bottom of his truck the other day.

  He had spent the entire morning thinking out the plan.

  Driving against city traffic, Aaron checked his watch. It was six thirty Thursday evening. He hoped he had this timed right.

  Aaron thought he’d seen a tail twice in his rearview mirror, but then the car would disappear into the traffic. He turned on the sports news, trying to drown out the paranoia that was definitely following him.

  Ten minutes and a hundred glances back later, Aaron pulled into the crowded parking lot of Gold’s Gym. He got out, retrieved his gym bag with great deliberateness, and strolled toward the gym, as if he had nothing better to do.

  Once inside, a spandex-clad woman, her blonde hair lusterless and sticky with hair spray, greeted him with a fixed smile.

  “I’m interested in joining the gym, but I wanted to see if I could get a pass to try everything out, maybe for a day or two.”

  She reached under the desk she was standing behind and came up with a red laminated ticket. “Sure. This will get you in three times, and then if you want to join, you’ll just need to fill out some paperwork.”

  “Great.” Aaron smiled at her, but his delight was coming from the fact that his plan—so far—was working. He glanced out the front window of the gym, looking for Big Brother. Nothing caught his eye.

  She smiled back. “I’m Trisha.”

  “Aaron.”

  “I’ll show you around.”

  “Oh . . . that’s okay. I’m sure I can figure it out.”

  “Sorry. Policy. We have to go over all the rules with you or we might get sued,” she recited.

  Aaron followed her into the gym, where she pointed a perfectly manicured fingernail toward different equipment as she walked him to the locker room. But Aaron was hardly paying attention. He was scanning the gym rats for someone.

  “Hello?”

  Aaron looked at Trisha. “I’m sorry. What was that?”

  Her hands were on her hips. “Gawking is allowed but not preferred,” she snapped, her attention on a beautiful woman near the StairMaster. Her gaze cut back to Aaron.

  “I’m looking for someone I know,” Aaron explained.

  Trisha didn’t look sold. “Anyway, do you have any questions?” she asked in a tone flat with skepticism.

  A
aron shook his head.

  “All right. You’re welcome to use any open locker to put your bag in. The next two times you come in, you need to have this ticket punched.”

  “Thanks.”

  As Trisha walked away, Aaron watched her eye the StairMaster woman, apparently hefty competition with her tighter spandex and silkier hair.

  He looked around the gym, trying to form a strategy and hoping it would work. He prayed that Liz Lane’s new commitment to a healthier life would get her here.

  But in the meantime, he might as well take out some of his frustration on the leg press.

  Climbing the hill—which Mick thought of as the Hulk for its patchy green, bulging surface—turned out to be a difficult feat. His legs barely found balance, and as he clawed his way up, grasping at parched grass and unstable dirt, he thought he’d never make it all the way to the top.

  The polluted air didn’t help. Behind the hill, the fire roared and hissed, and Mick was unsure what he would find once he reached the top. The heat could be felt even on this side of the hill.

  The police were more than a hundred yards behind him. The helicopter that had been just a dot in the sky earlier was now lower and crossing the fields behind him like an advancing scorpion.

  Insanity. What did he think he was going to do when he got to the top of this hill?

  As he clambered upward, the sound of the fire, which he now guessed was either a large grass fire or a controlled burning of the field, swallowed up every other sound, hollering like a rushing wind.

  When he finally reached the top, his hair was blown backward by the thermal wind and his face flushed from the heat. Angry orange flames greeted him below. It was a large fire, stretching at least twenty acres in length, spreading south with the slight wind. Groupings of trees crackled, the smoke intensely building upward, floating from one tree to another, while spreading fluidly across the ground.

  But the fire was still in patches, and the black and smutty ground it had already claimed fumed with ghostly smoke trails.

  Mick was suddenly glad he was wet. He glanced behind him. The helicopter was gaining, and a cruiser was less than twenty yards away on the gravel road below. Studying the fire, he wondered if he could race around the flames. Hide beneath the dark gray smoke. And not kill himself.

  It was his only option now. From the top of the hill, he could see the end of the train rolling away. With a hefty shove, he slid down the grassy hill toward the fire. As he tumbled downward, the heat intensified and he found it even harder to breathe.

  Surrender, you fool.

  There was no indication of what was ahead. He could see nothing beyond the thick veil of smoke. It was an odd feeling, seeing light from the fire but running completely blind in the dark.

  He wondered if hell was like this strange paradox.

  Stopping near the bottom, Mick gulped down a breath and ran forward. The sound was like a curtain being whipped and snapped by a stiff breeze through an open window.

  Mick dashed around the patches of flames, so far finding it fairly easy to maneuver. Much harder to breathe. His eyes stung, watering so badly he could barely see. Clutching the bottom of his wet and muddy T-shirt, he held it over his mouth, hoping to create a small amount of breathable air.

  As he ran farther in, blackness swallowed him. His other hand tried to shield his eyes, but it was worthless. He stumbled forward, stepping over small hot spots, darting flames that shot overhead from one tree to the next.

  Choking and gasping, he kept running, sweat pouring down his face. In front of him, a large wall of fire hissed, its flames slithering against the air that fed it.

  No longer worried about being caught, Mick fell forward, splashing into the ashes, his face charred by their glowing embers. Crying out, he leaped to his feet, the skin on his hands stinging.

  Go back.

  He turned, but disorientation swirled around him. Peering through his watering eyes, all he could see were spots of orange, flags of black smoke, snowy gray ashes floating listlessly through the air. The intensity of the fire created its own breeze, but it slapped his face like an angry hand, choking his throat and clawing at his eyes.

  “God!” He’d walked straight into hell. He’d delivered himself here. As he turned in circles, fire surrounded him everywhere, and he saw no place where he could break through.

  Mick gulped down the air thirstily, drinking in its dusty grit, swelling his lungs with poison. He would suffocate himself so he wouldn’t be burned alive.

  Then he gasped. And gasped again. He couldn’t breathe. Falling to his knees, his senses raged with acuteness. The vinyl fabric of his duffel bag seared his arm. His feet were hot. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

  He was not certain about his state of being, but he found himself standing again and sprinting toward the fire in front of him, as if two hands were gripping him under each arm and dragging his cautious feet toward his own death.

  Right as he confronted the wall of flames, he jumped higher than he ever thought he could, trying to clear it like a hurdle.

  Pain shot through his calves and knees. And then he felt cold, as though his body were being lowered into the icy earth, and the images around him contorted like a reflection in a warped mirror.

  His eyes, wide-open, stared toward a skyless horizon. He felt weightless but not free. An invisible heaviness closed in around him, and his hands reached upward, trying to find something to hold, but there was nothing.

  It had been forty-five minutes, and though Aaron had worked up a sweat, he had not found whom he was looking for. He leaned against a nearby wall, next to a poster of a man with rippling muscles. He dried his face with his white towel, scanning all those around him, looking for Liz Lane.

  His mind wandered to Mick, his thoughts uttering desperate, wordless prayers energized by fear but filled with little hope. He couldn’t imagine where his brother might be. The next state over? Two miles away? It sickened him to have no control. For so long, he’d tried to control Mick, tried to push him in the right direction. Mick always pushed back.

  Aaron broke from his thoughts when he saw Liz Lane toting a large workout bag over her shoulder, looking decidedly out of place while managing to hold her head high. She eyed a skinny brunette working two dumbbells, rolled her eyes, and journeyed forward with a heavy sigh. Aaron watched her drag into the women’s locker room, and a minute later return with a fluffy white towel around her neck and her frizzy blonde hair in a high ponytail. Scratching her face nervously, she looked like she didn’t know what to do next.

  After several seconds of deliberation, she decided on the leg press, and Aaron trailed her from a distance until she got situated. She did a rigorous set. When she stopped to rest, Aaron approached her. Her attention was on a woman whose bones were protruding from her overly tanned skin.

  “She could use a trip to KFC, eh?” Aaron said.

  Liz looked at him, chuckled, and then recognition lit her eyes. “You’re the—”

  “Yes. Aaron. How are you?”

  Her expression turned disturbed. “You work out here?”

  Aaron maintained a smile. “Just finished.” He wiped his forehead for effect.

  “You’re the guy’s brother,” she said suddenly. “The cop.”

  Aaron tried to play it as casually as he could. “I am. My brother is Mick.”

  “You didn’t tell me that,” she said, “when you came to interview me.”

  Aaron sat on the bench next to her. “My brother wasn’t a suspect then.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Liz, my brother didn’t do what they are accusing him of. But I think you may know who did.”

  “Why would I know?”

  “I think Taylor Franks told you more than you told me.”

  “I don’t know anything about her disappearance.”

  “I believe that. But I think Taylor may have indicated more about Sammy Earle than you said earlier. Maybe you were trying to protect
your friend. She may have told you some things in confidence.”

  Liz shook her head. “I told you all I know.”

  “You mentioned she was on antidepressants. What was the reason for that?”

  “You already know everything I know about her boyfriend. Yeah, the relationship hit her hard. Breakups hit a lot of people hard.” Her expression told him she wasn’t pleased with the questions. “This isn’t official police business?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t have to answer any of your questions.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  Liz licked her lips. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get on with my workout, which should tell you something, since this is my least favorite thing to do.” An unkind smile swept her lips.

  “So you’re okay if the wrong guy goes to jail?”

  “I just want Taylor back, and it doesn’t sound like that will happen,” Liz said, pumping her legs back and forth on the press. Sweat trickled down her temple, but Aaron suspected it wasn’t from the workout.

  “That’s not going to happen if the police are focused on Mick. If you can tell me anything that might help the police look in a different direction . . .”

  “Maybe you just want your brother off. Who cares if he did it, right?”

  “That’s not true. If I thought Mick did this, I’d be out there helping them hunt him down.”

  Liz studied his eyes carefully, then looked away. “All I know,” she finally said, “is that this Sammy Earle made her life miserable. And Taylor was a woman who hated who she was.”

  “Really?”

  Liz nodded. “Yeah, I mean, she’s beautiful, but she never saw herself that way. She always seemed like she needed someone to affirm that. I tried to do that for her, and I think I accomplished it in a way. As we grew to know each other, I saw this quiet strength in her, growing day by day, you know? I can’t comment on Sammy Earle. Taylor never talked specifically about him very much. She tended to talk in more general terms. Really, the only thing I do know about him is that, though he was really rich, when it came to her, he was cheap.”