The Tempest

by A. J. Scudiere

  When they had done everything they could do, they once again climbed back on their bikes and continued on the path they’d chosen. There was now evidence of people as they went past. Some of it was evidence of life, and some seemed to indicate the original bearer might be dead.

  They found more than one shoe—and though shoes could come from closets, it was entirely possible they came from feet. There was an entirely untouched-looking lunch pack with now-spoiled meat and cheese slices. Broken glass, and parts of houses, and eventually several parts of cars littered the ground.

  There were also tracks through the grass, much like the one he could see trailing him and Dev.

  Someone had come through here after the tornado. Otherwise, the grass would have been whipped into some other shape by the passing storm, not staying in its uniformly bent position, revealing the track.

  In fact, as they moved, they found a point where the grass told them they were crossing the path of whomever had made it before.

  “It’s a person,” Cage said, hopeful that it had been Joule.

  “Or a mountain lion,” Dev answered quickly, though Cage wondered if they even had those here, and would they disturb the grass this way?

  As they crossed the trampled path, Cage turned turn his head to the left to see a wavy path through the grass. The person—if he was reading it correctly—came up on his left, crossed where they were stopped and headed off to the right, directly toward the path of the tornado.

  But something else caught Dev’s eye. “There!”

  Cage didn’t see it.

  “The grass is all patted down. Let's go look.”

  With nothing better to do and the day waning on with still no sign of his sister, Cage was willing to follow Dev’s lead.

  Sure enough, the grass had been bent in a path leading directly toward this spot and then away from it. In the matted down area, twigs and scraps of wood had been moved—clearly by a human hand—to form a sign.

  57

  “Come on Dev,” Cage called back without looking. He stood up, using his weight against the pedals and bent over at the waist.

  He was pretty certain that he was leaning too far forward and likely had not adjusted this mountain bike correctly. His muscles protested with every push. But even so, he continued moving.

  “It’s far too late in the day to begin a search like this.” Dev’s voice came from somewhere behind him.

  But Cage didn't know how long the search would be and so he just had to keep going. “We have time.”

  “We can't do this.” Dev was speaking for the devil on Cage’s shoulder—the one who told him it should wait until tomorrow, that he was hurting himself by pushing so hard.

  “It's Joule,” was all that Cage replied. He had to follow the arrow. The JM that had been scratched lightly to the surface was clear, once he’d looked. She’d even added a few extra pieces at the tip of the arrow tail—a sign their father had taught them meant it was her, not just an arrow anyone could have laid out.

  Though the sign made it clear that it was her, and even told them the direction to aim to follow her, the biggest win was that his sister had survived. That alone was enough to keep him going.

  “We don't know how far she went,” Dev said.

  “Exactly. What if she’s right over that hill and we turn around? We won't find out if we don't follow the trail.”

  “We don't even know if this is her.”

  Cage stopped his bike, turned, and looked back at his friend, who apparently had stopped a little ways back and he hadn't realized. “One, I know it's her. And two, she carved the initials JM into the tail of the arrow.”

  Dev was shaking his head, almost as if Cage were being stupid. “No, I know the arrow is her, but we don’t know about this path we’re following. We don't have any tracking skills. We've come a good distance from the sign, and we don't have any idea what we’re following at this point. What if this path—” he motioned to the bent grass behind them, “isn’t your sister’s?”

  “It is. We do know.”

  “How?” Dev looked incredulous. With his feet on either side of the bike, he now put his hands on his hips as if in protest.

  “If she changed direction, she would have left us another arrow. And there is a path here.”

  “We don't know that it's her,” Dev repeated his protest a little more forcefully.

  “Who else could it be?” Cage argued back, his hands raising as he gestured around. “There's one relatively rough path through the grass that leads here. It came directly from the arrow with her initials on it. It’s her.”

  “Right,” Dev said. “We could kind of see a path in the grass, but now we're heading in the woods, and we've got nothing.”

  “So we keep going straight until we find the next arrow!” It all seemed so damn logical to Cage.

  But Dev didn't budge. Cage just stared right back at him for a while in a ridiculously stupid grudge match that he was not willing to lose. He had a brief thought that they'd already left Sarah behind and she was okay. He could leave Deveron behind, too, if he had to.

  But it wouldn’t be a good move. Finally, he said the only thing he could say, “It's my sister. She's alive. And we're following her tracks.”

  But before he budged, Dev looked at Cage and replied, equally logically, “It's daylight, but not for that much longer. We work until dark and then we come back tomorrow.”

  “But—”

  Dev shook his head. Maybe it was because he didn't have any siblings. Maybe being an only child made him simply not understand. Dev was applying logic as well, but the kind you applied if you were on a rescue team looking for a child whose picture you’d seen but you’d never met. Cage needed the kind of logic that kept you on the trail for your only remaining family member.

  Dev kept trying to make his case. “Now we know she’s alive. She's not only alive, she's alive enough to get up and move around and think to leave an arrow that you would recognize. She put her initials on it in case those of us looking for her found it. There's every possibility she's already located help and that we’re now aimed the wrong direction. We could be getting farther away by following this track.”

  Cage wanted to argue back. His feeling was that Joule was still somewhere in front of him was very strong. The worst case scenario was that she had walked in a circle, but if he followed her signs, then he would, too. He would eventually catch up to her. But he couldn't crack the fortress that Dev was building.

  “Okay,” he agreed. “Until nightfall.” He didn’t clarify that he wasn’t agreeing to stop searching at nightfall, but only that he was agreeing to stay with Dev until then.

  With renewed hope, he led the two of them into the woods. The ground here was harder going. The tornado hadn’t thrown as much junk into their path among the trees, but the ground was strewn with roots and rocks. Just being in the woods held gut-churning memories for him.

  Eventually, they hopped off their bikes and simply pushed them along. They ran into a stream where they stopped and looked at each other. Though Cage didn't say it, he thought, Good job, Joule. The first thing she’d done was find water.

  Together, the two men looked first to the left and then the right. There was no clear direction to go.

  “What do we do?” Dev asked now on a heavy sigh, as if to suggest he knew that Cage would have some easy answer. “Do we go straight through?”

  Cage had already considered that possibility. If she turned, there should be an arrow. He was checking the appearance of the other side of the creek. The side was slick and muddy, and it should show if someone had climbed up.

  “I don't see any evidence that she went through here. So did she go right or left?” Dev’s question mirrored his thoughts. But Cage truly had no idea. He and his twin weren't psychically linked as much as they were in tune with each other, though he was confident that he would know if Joule had left this world.

  Right now, he could not for the life of him decide if she woul
d have gone left or right. But at just that moment, they heard a noise and both of their heads snapped up.

  58

  “I know you're up there.”

  Joule stood frozen by the voice. She couldn't see the man. She had to assume he could maybe see the top of her blonde head. Or maybe she was lucky and her hair color would blend in with the hay.

  Could he see them? Or was he just making accusations to get them to come down?

  “My horse blanket’s missing,” he called up.

  Joule cringed—they’d left evidence. They could have slept up here without the blankets, because heat rose, but the barn still wasn't what she would call warm. The blanket had made a difference between getting real sleep and not really getting any rest at all.

  Next to her, Jerry held up a hand, motioning her to stay put. She clutched Toto to her chest and, once again, the kitten must have discerned the tension in her system, because he curled down into her hands and didn't make any noise or try to escape. She rubbed at his small head as though that would make any difference.

  Standing to his full height, Jerry walked out near the edge of the loft and called down as he did. “Hey, Paul. It's me.”

  When Paul didn't answer, Jerry added, “Jerry McGee.”

  “What is your dumb ass doing in my loft, boy?” At least now Paul sounded exasperated rather than angry. Less like he was likely to cock the shotgun again and more like he was ready to give Jerry a good verbal lashing about stealing horse blankets.

  “Give me a sec, okay?” Jerry asked, slowly grabbing at the two rails of the ladder that extended up past the flooring for support. They were the only thing that made it reasonably easy to get up and down. Then Jerry rotated his large frame around and began the careful process of climbing back down to the ground.

  Still, Joule thought, it was a crappy system up here. Not made for people. A good run or a shove and anyone could fall right out of this place. The height was dangerous, too, but she was in no position to suggest Paul follow OSHA guidelines. So she simply held her breath and held her kitten while Jerry made his way down.

  It seemed to take forever for Jerry to get to the bottom of the ladder, and he didn’t talk while he did it. Joule was wound tight by the time he finally reached the hay-covered floor.

  What happened next was not what she expected.

  “I found your truck,” Paul told him, though the news sounded more accusatory than exciting.

  Joule frowned. She must have clutched Toto just a little too tightly, because he began wiggling. She stroked his soft fur again, happy when he settled down.

  “That's great news!” Jerry replied, sounding as if he'd missed the tone. The question was, had he? Or was he just writing it off? He knew Paul, and Joule didn't. Maybe Paul was just a surly old goat most of the time.

  “Let's talk about what I found in your truck.”

  “Wait a minute!” Joule could easily imagine Jerry holding his hand up as if to say “Stop!” just as he’d stopped her several times. She wished she could see them, but it was too risky. “Where did you find my truck?”

  “I found it because I was up the road a ways. Why was it there and you’re here?”

  “When this second set of twisters came through, I got shelter and when I came out I saw they stole it.”

  “Your big truck?”

  “Paul, they were huge! Have you been listening to the radio?” Joule almost laughed. What she wouldn’t have given to have been listening to the radio.

  “It’s off the side of the road, ass down in a ditch,” Paul replied, though again his tone sounded impatient.

  “But it's all in one piece?” Jerry asked, almost as if marveled by the idea that it hadn’t been torn limb from limb.

  “Yeah, it is. And so is what’s inside.” Paul's impatience was now something that couldn’t be ignored. “It’s got three bricks of cocaine in the back seat.”

  Holy shitastic fuckballs! Joule’s head jerked back, even though she wasn’t down there in the conversation herself. She almost scrambled backwards from the shock, as though she could backpedal from the accusation. But she stopped herself at the last minute, glad she hadn’t made any noise.

  Could Jerry explain that?

  Joule had not been prepared for that possibility. Silence met Paul’s accusation. She was glad that she hadn't blurted anything out or yelped, giving herself away.

  Was Jerry running with the Larkins? But that didn’t make sense. He could have easily turned around when they fled through the woods. He hadn’t seemed really shocked when she found the bricks of coke in the cellar… was that because he was with a counter cartel? Had she not only landed herself in the middle of a drug running operation, but a drug war?

  “Are you shitting me?” Jerry finally snarled, and she wondered how real the accusation was.

  “There were three bricks of that shit, taped up, and wrapped in plastic.”

  “What color was the plastic?” Jerry asked, now sounding curious more than anything. “No. Wait!”

  Joule had no idea where he was going with this. She pressed her back into the hay bale behind her and waited. But she was ready to bolt and run as soon as she heard anything that let her know she was in real trouble.

  Jerry continued. “Let me tell you first what we found at the Larkins.”

  Crappety Crap! Jerry had just said “we.” He'd outed her, seemingly without knowing it. She could only hope that Paul hadn’t caught the slip as Jerry continued.

  Jerry sounded pretty smart as he told Paul about getting stuck in the cellar during the storm and trapped by what they'd eventually seen was a large tree that had fallen right across the back of the house.

  “We found bricks of cocaine in the crawlspace,” Jerry told the old man. “Wrapped in plastic. Green plastic, but still clear.”

  Okay, Joule thought, that was smart. Name the color first.

  “So, if that's what you found in my car, my guess is the Larkins planted it.”

  She could almost hear Paul rubbing at his chin as he thought it through. “If I believe your story, then how did the Larkins know it was you in their house?”

  “Well, they know I was out there, and they clearly found my truck, just like you did. Maybe they were just planting the coke on me to keep some of the suspicion off of themselves.”

  Shit, Joule thought, sighing out her displeasure as quietly as she could. It had been a good lead. But Jerry was losing the upper hand.

  “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?” Paul asked.

  The question struck Joule as dumb, but Jerry answered right away, and sincerely. “No. That's why I'm down here talking to you now. Because I trust you. The reason I'm in your barn is because I fled from the Larkins last night.”

  Joule almost raised her hand and comically wiped it across her forehead. He had been smart enough to say I this time.

  But her relief didn't last for long.

  “You say you won’t lie to me, but you're lying to me now.” Paul’s tone was low and angry—not the accusing sound from before, but something deeper. “There's two horse blankets missing. And you said we.”

  Damnit Jerry! He kept putting her in these situations. She clutched Toto closer to her chest and waited.

  59

  “Come on down, Joule,” Jerry called up. “It's okay. I trust Paul.”

  Well, she thought, still clutching Toto to her chest, that was it. It didn’t matter if she trusted Paul yet or not. Jerry had decided for her. So she stood and walked closer to the edge where she could look down and wave before following Jerry's earlier actions and slowly stepping backwards down the ladder.

  As she hit the bottom rung, though, she turned around and learned that Jerry was wrong. No one should be trusting Paul at all.

  Paul stood with his feet planted wide, the shotgun pressed into his shoulder and his eye aimed down the sight right at her.

  Her—inappropriate—first response was to turn to Jerry, as if to ask, Did you know about this? But Jerry's expressio
n was equally incredulous. He hadn’t seen this coming.

  “Paul, what are you doing!”

  It wasn’t a question, and Paul didn't answer. Instead, he reached back and pulled a cell phone out of his pocket.

  It was remarkably high tech, considering the overalls and hunting jacket and old ball cap that had seen better days. He looked to be dialing someone.

  “I've got them,” he said into the line as soon as someone answered. “Come on back.”

  Shitgibbons. For someone to come back had to mean he was talking to the Larkins.

  “What are you doing, Paul?” she asked, purposefully using his name. It felt odd rolling off her tongue for the first time in an accusatory tone, but she was not a fan of the shotgun aimed at her.

  Her heart was racing, her muscles tensed and ready to go, Toto still clutched to her chest. And she wished to God she had left him up in the loft. He could have been a barn kitten for the rest of his days, happily hunting mice—if he was old enough to catch them and feed himself… she wasn’t sure. Her fingers squeezed around his tiny, soft body involuntarily.

  She wondered what would happen if she said Don't hurt my kitten. Would Paul let Toto go? Or would he shoot him just to make a point? Clearly, Jerry had no idea who Paul really was.

  Then the old man moved ever so slightly, turning his torso toward Jerry. “I'm sorry, man. They've got my daughter.”

  Fuckballs. This wasn't an issue of Paul being an asshole. It was a hostage situation on top of another hostage situation. The phone buzzed, and Paul put it back to his ear. “No! I'm not sending them out. Not until you send my daughter in.”

  Joule thought she heard something from the other end of the line, but it didn’t matter. It was too late and the barn doors were creaking loudly as they slid open.

  A woman stumbled in, dropping onto her hands and knees as if pushed. “Sorry, Daddy,” she said softly.

  Joule wanted to look at her, but she knew it was far more important to keep her eyes on the barn doors. If she could see someone, then she might have an idea what they were up against. But no one showed their face through the slim opening. Instead, they began the process of shoving the heavy door closed.