The Tempest

by A. J. Scudiere

  Did it even mater? She’d never seen the Larkins’ faces. In fact, she didn't even know if they were actually the Larkins. She’d just assumed Jerry had no reason to lie about that.

  As the woman began to get up off of her hands and knees, the barn door tapped shut. Joule heard the click of a lock and the sound of a chain dragging along metal.

  She would have run to the door, because she was pretty certain they were getting bolted in, but the shotgun kept her in place. She turned back to the man wielding it and registered the expression on Paul's face.

  He'd begun to move to hug his daughter, but stopped cold, fear painting every muscle. There were four of them in the barn now, Paul still loosely holding the shotgun on Jerry and Joule. But now he stood still, looked around, and seemed confused.

  If Joule had heard right, Paul had offered to trade her and Jerry for his daughter. But instead of trading, whoever it was had simply shoved the daughter inside. That couldn’t be good.

  There were murmured words outside, and Joule wished she could hear, but all she could get was the tone—and the tone wasn’t good. Beside her, Jerry stood still, seeming to be equally frozen by the strange and sudden twists of their circumstance. In her hands, Toto remained curled in a tight little ball.

  She wasn’t fast enough to outrun a blast from the shotgun. But Paul wasn’t holding it steadily anymore. His eyes flicked to the side, clearly confused about what had changed. Like her, he seemed to want to know what was happening on the other side of the door.

  Joule took that moment to be grateful that she had picked up a kitten and not a puppy. She tipped her hand, quickly tossing Toto to the side and knowing he would land on his tiny feet.

  She was maybe four good steps away from Paul, and it still seemed too far. As she began to move, she wondered if it would work. It was supposed to. The martial arts classes she taken as a kid hadn't taught her how to do this, but she'd spent enough time watching the black belts practice disarming assailants. She knew the moves, even if she’d never reached a belt level where they had let her practice them. This one wasn’t from muscle memory, it was all brain.

  It took forever to cross the short space. Paul's head whipped back and he saw her coming, the barrel of the shotgun lifting and aiming as he did. Only then did she remember a crucial piece. It wasn't just that she had to act the opposite of what was expected—rushing her opponent rather than walking away—she also had to get out of the line of fire.

  She dropped low, making it harder to move. It felt like the world was running in slow motion as she maneuvered below the end of the gun and slapped her hands together into a V-shape. Literally under the gun now, and almost barreling into Paul’s torso, she shifted and burst upward, pushing at the gun in his hands in a hopefully unexpected way.

  In the perfect scenario, this would allow her to grab the gun, yank it away and turn it on him. In her mind, she whacked him upside the head with the butt of the weapon, dropping him cold and giving herself some much needed satisfaction.

  But it didn't quite work out that way.

  She didn't think she'd ever seen the moves performed with a shotgun instead of a handgun or maybe a knife. Apparently, all the martial artists were convinced they would be in hand fights, and not caught in the middle of drug running rings with shotgun-wielding farmers.

  Still, she managed to catch Paul’s wrists with her movement, and that burst of power aimed the gun upward. The old man was maybe better at this than she was, because she fully expected the retort of gunfire in response to her attack and he managed to refrain from pulling the trigger in either anger or surprise.

  “What in the blazes!” he muttered like the old coot that he was: a farmer who, despite offering a hostage trade to drug runners and being double-crossed and attacked by the stowaway in his barn, still wouldn't quite swear.

  Joule had the shotgun barrel in her hands, but Paul's hands were also still clenched tightly on the weapon. She was trying to figure out if she should pull or shove when she felt the hit.

  60

  “Look!” Cage called out, his excitement ratcheting up another notch.

  They’d come across another arrow at the side of the road. After crossing the stream and climbing up the other side, they’d found mud tracks left by someone who’d come through a relatively short while before. Cage was still convinced it was Joule’s footsteps he was following.

  Another arrow, with another faint JM carved into the back of it, let him know he was right.

  “I don't know, man.” Dev looked up at the sky.

  Somehow, neither of them had noticed before this that the daylight was growing fainter and fainter. Cage didn’t care. “I can't turn back.”

  “You promised.”

  “I didn't,” he said. “I agreed to search until dark. I didn't say I'd quit then. But, look, it's Joule.”

  This time, Dev didn't try to deny it or offer up a theory that some other local JM was leaving signs. “I don’t know. What could we even do? It's already getting dark.”

  It wasn’t yet, but it would be soon.

  Cage pulled Dev’s cell phone out of his pocket and powered it up. He flicked on the light at the front of his bike and the one on his helmet and motioned to Dev to do the same. They checked each other over while there was still light to repair anything, but the helmets, rear flashers, and high beams were all still working fine.

  Better to turn them on a little early than get sideswiped by a car on the side of the road. The last thing they needed was to add their names to the already high toll of injured or missing.

  Though they hadn’t seen anyone since arriving at the roadside, they’d watched a truck go by while they were still standing in the woods. As they'd followed it, attempting to flag it down, Cage decided that that must be exactly what his sister had done. Either that or she had veered a little off track while going through the woods, but the obvious point where someone had scrambled up the other side of the bank was almost definitely hers, now that they’d found another sign she’d left.

  The JM on this one—made of bricks and sticks—was faint, but because he knew where to look, Cage had found it relatively easily. He wasn’t going back, no matter what his friend said or did. “There's pavement here. We're not walking through the woods anymore. We’ll stay on the road.”

  Now that it was powered up, the phone readily told him the time. It wasn't quite summer hours, with the long days that carried the sunlight until after eight. But it wasn't winter yet, either. They'd managed to make a good portion of the trip with daylight. Now that they had a road, he could keep going.

  Cage was turning to say something but noticed as the screen changed slightly. “Holy shit, Dev!”

  “What?”

  “Bars!” He started to dial Sarah and realized nothing was in the right place because it wasn't his phone. He handed it over to Dev to call, and even as he did that, the phone began pinging.

  He wished he could turn it off. Each sound heralding a little more battery being sucked away. But messages poured in, the next ping starting before the last one had finished. Most came in from Sarah, though there were others from the Helio Systems main line, and a handful of county alerts.

  Dev reached over and readily hit the screen, pulling up Sarah’s chain almost before Cage could even see what the options were. But he moved in close and the two huddled, straddling their bikes at the side of the road as they got their first taste of civilization in hours.

  Cage wasn’t even sure if Dev had scrolled all the way back to the top of Sarah’s long list of messages. She’d clearly had cell service for a while now.

  —they found Radnor. He went to the hospital but he didn't make it.

  Cage heard Dev let out a weary sigh of sadness as he felt the same thing happening in his own chest, but Dev scrolled to the next one, more messages dinging in even as they tried to read this chain.

  —nothing from Izzy and Joule.

  Then she added —Leslie, Melinda, Jeremy & Kevin have checked
in and are safe. I told them I was good and you were too.

  Then another text came through.

  —heard from Doug. He and his family are good.

  —no word on Izzy and Joule.

  She listed more names, every third or fourth text punctuated with “No word from Izzy and Joule.”

  When they got to the last new message, Deveron quickly tapped back. “We found Micah. He didn't make it. We'll report in when we get to the community center.”

  Once they’d read through the incoming messages, Cage carefully pulled the phone away and took a deep breath. He dialed Joule’s number.

  Dev watched solemnly as Cage heard a sound of connection and prayed for his sister’s voice. Instead he got the digital notification that the line wasn’t in service. He hit the button off and told himself it didn’t mean anything.

  Then there was a pause as the two of them looked at each other. Cage knew there was a decision to be made. There was a cell signal now, and they had one phone between them. If they split up, someone would be left completely alone, without communications.

  There wasn't much going on out here. Though they hadn’t been on the road long, only the truck they had missed had gone by. Though he had hoped they would see other people, they hadn’t yet.

  Cage was calculating what he would do if Dev decided to turn back and take the phone with him. But Dev instead seemed to interpret the phone and the link to humanity as more of an indication that it was okay to be out in the dark searching.

  “If we're connected, I'm not as worried,” he announced.

  Cage didn’t wait for him to change his mind. He hopped back on the bike and let Dev follow along. However, he once again regretted believing he'd gotten in good enough shape from the work. Everything hurt as he pushed on the pedals, knowing what he was looking for was just ahead. He wasn’t going to lose anyone else.

  He'd eaten another granola bar while they picked their way through the woods, but it wasn't really enough. He thought about shoveling a huge bowl of pasta into his face. He imagined it drenched in Alfredo sauce, maybe with mushrooms and thin slices of steak. But almost as quickly as he enjoyed the thought, it soured.

  It felt bad to be thinking about the physical pleasures of enjoying food and sating his hunger when he still hadn't found his sister. He pedaled harder.

  The road wound in between and around farms and their outbuildings. Though the structures weren’t falling down, most of them looked relatively abandoned. Only one had lights on inside and a man outside picking up debris and tossing it into a pile in the corner of his yard.

  He waved as the two went by. But they quickly pulled to stop.

  Given the size of the lot, it took a while, but the man graciously crossed the long distance to the roadside, where they showed him the picture of Izzy and Joule and Sarah.

  “Have you seen either of these two women?” Cage pointed to his sister. “We think she came through here not long ago.”

  Though he was polite about it, the man dismissed them with a shake of his head. “We grabbed the kids and the dogs as soon as we heard the funnels were forming, and we got the hell out of Dodge. We only just came back maybe an hour ago.”

  Having told them all he could, or all he was willing to, he turned and headed back toward the house, picking up debris as he went.

  Cage and Dev shrugged at each other and hopped back on their bikes. At least the man hadn't been here the whole time. Had he been watching the road and known that Joule hadn't passed by, that would have been a blow to Cage’s hope.

  He told himself there was still a very good chance that she was simply up the road a bit.

  Another ping came in, and they stopped yet again to put their heads together and read it. Sarah had sent them a list of about fifteen names still missing from Helio Systems Tech. The last two were Isabel McAlister and Joule Mazur.

  Cage didn't quite recognize a few of the others. Dev had to explain, “You know, the older guy? He has black hair with silver in it.” But Cage definitely recognized Saskia Kaczmarek, and he knew all the rest at least tangentially.

  Dev looked at him with a bone-weary sigh. “Looks like we're on the lookout for more than just Joule and Izzy.”

  Cage nodded. As if the task of finding the two women wasn’t monumental enough, there was this.

  As they climbed back onto the bikes, Cage wondered if the phone would interfere the whole way, creating this start-and-stop situation. He pushed on the pedals and pressed farther down the dark road, making their way past farmhouses, barns, paddocks, and open fields.

  Another thought rolled through his mind, one he hadn’t shared with Dev. They were supposed to be looking for Joule and Izzy. He’d hoped they were together. But from the first arrow they’d found, he’d known Joule was on her own.

  He hadn’t backtracked down the path to see if he could find the point where she’d landed—to see if maybe she’d had to walk away from the body of one of her good friends. But the arrow had only been signed JM. Not JM / IM. Not J & I.

  So the list of lost names was only a bit worse than what he’d already figured out. They wouldn’t be done when they found Joule. Izzy was somewhere else. And then so was everyone else on the list.

  They stuck to the road, and he thought about staying to one side in case a car came through, but none did. With the farms so far apart, registering the distance they covered was difficult, but being on the road definitely made them much faster.

  Then he began to wonder if he'd passed his sister somewhere along the way.

  61

  The air was knocked out of her as Joule was hit from the side.

  Jerry had tackled them, ending the small standoff as she and Paul toppled together in a tangle of limbs and grunts. The shotgun fell to the floor. It hit too softly, landing on the hay-lined floor and not making a thump or clatter to adequately convey her anger at the whole situation.

  In their stalls, the horses whuffed and stomped, clearly uneasy with what was going on.

  Disoriented from the fall, Joule quickly scrambled up. Though everybody tried to do the same, she managed to get her feet under her and get upright a little faster than the old man and Jerry.

  While she scrambled for the shotgun a little quicker than the others, she only managed to get her hand around the barrel as she saw another set of slim fingers grab for the stock.

  This was not good. If they both picked up the weapon together, that would leave the barrel aimed at her. Also, having her hand on the barrel of a gun would be doubly bad news if someone pulled the trigger. But again she thought, Surprise your opponent.

  So instead of yanking at the gun, she shoved it. And, as the woman stumbled backward in surprise, Joule yanked. Hard.

  She won. Now in possession of the only weapon, she stepped back and aimed it toward the small crowd. She motioned the daughter to move carefully and slowly over next to her father, but simply ignored Jerry. God help him if he got in her way, though.

  Thanks, Dad. She sent the thought out into whatever might be waiting in the beyond. She was grateful that her father had taught her how to shoot and hoped that skill might prevent her from being reunited with her parents too soon.

  She remembered the feel of a gun. The weight of it, pushing it up against her shoulder and aiming the barrel toward the two she was trying to corral.

  When the Night Hunters had come, her mother and father had argued about whether or not the children should be taught to handle guns. It had finally been decided that, for their own safety, they needed to be prepared to defend themselves. Aiming it at a human had never been the plan. But none of this had been in the plan.

  She’d had a fully shit two days, and she wasn’t in the mood to be dicked with by anyone.

  Backing up slowly to keep her footing, she let her thoughts run wild, because she didn’t want to pull the trigger on one of these people, but she was still sorting out who to trust.

  Paul shouldn’t be the problem. He'd been caught up in this whole thing,
the same as she and Jerry. She didn’t even know who the woman was, other than “Paul’s daughter.” It seemed the woman had been held hostage, too. But right now, she was glaring daggers at Joule.

  Joule motioned with the gun as if to say, I know how to use this and I will.

  Another portion of her mind was listening to the animals, now more than uneasy and making concerning noises. Something else was happening outside the barn, but her immediate threat was three pairs of eyes. Only one of which—Jerry's, shockingly—were looking at her as if she knew what she was doing and it was all okay.

  Another stray thought tapped at her brain, wondering about the kitten. Where was Toto?

  She’d tossed him away just a moment ago. Could she afford to turn and look?

  “Toto?” she called out as if a kitten would come when called by name—as if this one even knew his name yet.

  “Toto!” she called again, frantically, when she got no obvious response. Maybe if she could find the kitten and do one thing, the other things would fall into place. It was illogical thinking, but it was hers.

  Though Paul and his daughter glared at her and Paul made small adjustments as though he was going to dive for her, Joule didn't even flinch. She raised an eyebrow at him and motioned with the tip of the gun for him to keep his ass planted. He didn't have the chops to do what she had done. He didn't have the chops to tackle anyone the way Jerry had, either.

  “I see him!” Jerry announced happily and, as though there wasn't a standoff going on and there wasn’t a loaded shotgun between them. He headed to the corner of the large, open space. At least he wasn’t tackling her again. Crouching down, he held out a hand and called softly, “Hey Toto! Come on out, Toto.”

  It all happened in a matter of seconds. Joule turned her head briefly to see if Toto was coming out. This time, Paul did lunge at her, but he wasn’t fast enough.