The Tempest

by A. J. Scudiere

  She immediately crashed into Jerry, wondering why he had failed to get out of the way. She looked up to see that Paul and Jerry were just standing there and staring at something.

  Joule turned then to see what had them so shocked. Behind her, Brenda crashed through the hole behind her and pushed right into them making them all stumble.

  “Get out of the way!” she yelled at them, pushing as she screamed. “The horses!”

  Joule almost fell, but Brenda grabbed for her, keeping her upright. Behind them, the side of the barn cracked as the horses butted or kicked their way out. With the opening now big enough, they thundered through the broken wall. Joule could feel thousands of pounds of horse muscle passing inches behind her. The horses managed to not trample the stunned humans standing in their way, but if that was instinct or her own sheer luck, she didn’t know. They bolted into the paddock en masse and then easily jumped the fences in their fear. In moments, they had disappeared into the night. Gone, but at least safe.

  The same couldn’t be said for the people.

  The two Larkins were there, and it took a moment to absorb the sight. Again, she thought it had to be the Larkins—the man in the ballcap, the woman with the ponytail that she'd seen in the barn just a little while ago. These were almost definitely the people who had tried to burn them to death.

  They each held a gun—the woman held hers to Cage’s head and looked more steady doing it. But that didn’t change the fact that the man had pressed the barrel of his semiautomatic to Dev’s temple. His hand shook as the horses thundered by, making Joule’s muscles clench with fear for her brother and her roommate.

  “This was supposed to be easier than this!” the man yelled, clearly on the verge of a temper tantrum.

  Joule tried to surreptitiously scan Laura’s face, looking for symptoms of drug abuse and wondering if the woman was strung out on her own product. But there weren’t any obvious signs.

  It was Jerry who stepped forward, though the woman motioned him back by jabbing the gun against Cage's head a little bit harder. “Stay back, Jerry!”

  “You don't want to do this,” he said calmly.

  Her reply was anything but calm. “No, I fucking don’t want to!” she yelled back. “I don't. But you've put me in a position I can't get out of otherwise. This is your fault.”

  She motioned a little with the gun, jabbing it as she spoke, and Joule watched as Cage slowly moved his head away.

  She wondered if he could quickly duck away or jab his hand up and knock the gun out of her hand. It would be a dangerous move in any situation, but nearly impossible to have a good outcome because there was another gun aimed directly at Deveron's head. Even if Cage could win against Laura, Joule would expect the man to twitch.

  Unless the two could act in concert …

  Cage and Dev couldn't. They were both facing the same way and wouldn’t be able to read signals from each other. So unless Cage could reach out and grab Dev’s hand and tap out a plan in Morse code, and then Dev could understand it—which Joule thought was a long shot. Even then, it was highly unlikely the two of them could make a move in tandem.

  But while Cage and Dev couldn't, Cage and Joule could.

  They were facing each other. They understood each other's subtle signals. So, while Jerry distracted the Larkins by trying to talk them out of the situation, Joule moved in the slow beginning of a slide toward Dev, hoping no one would notice.

  Hell, maybe Jerry would talk these asshats into becoming better people and putting their guns down, but Joule wasn't going to bank on that.

  “Why are you doing this?” Jerry demanded.

  “Come on, Jer,” the woman whined. “You know what it's been like since the big farms came through.”

  Joule didn't know, but a, Jerry did. And honestly, even she could take a good guess. The local economy was tanking. Jerry had told her the farms weren’t even getting bought out anymore. The big firms just plowed their way in, moved into other sections of the state, or even the country, and then undercut the contracts.

  At that moment, it clicked for her: Why Jerry was so mad at Helio Systems. It didn’t matter that they were solar or that it would save some of the local environment or that they would pay him more. Helio Systems Tech was another big company coming in and taking the livelihood from the locals. It wasn't that he loved his job so much. Helio was just a corporation bullying their way into his home town and he didn't trust the big corporations… with good reason.

  He’d probably spent a good part of his life watching the little farms go under. The lucky farmers had taken the cheap buy-outs. For those who didn’t, things didn't just get bad, they got horrid. Without a working farm, the land itself probably wasn't even worth much.

  She took another slide over toward Dev. And, as of yet, it seemed no one had noticed her.

  That was good, she thought. But as she tried for another step, the man's eyes darted around frantically and Joule froze where she was, hoping he wouldn't notice she was in a slightly different place than she'd been just a few moments ago.

  “Laura, these people are not involved. And neither am I,” Jerry said, trying his best to talk her down. “We’re not going to tell anybody.”

  “I can't trust you to stay quiet, Jerry. This is the only way I'm keeping the farm. The only way I’m keeping food on my table.”

  “You're going to murder people?” Jerry asked incredulously, finally putting into words what was going down.

  Laura offered a small shrug. She looked exhausted. Behind them, the barn roof began to tilt crazily as the fire consumed the walls.

  Joule had the flash of a thought that maybe it had actually been safer in the barn—fire and all. Laura’s eyes looked damn crazy.

  Joule slid another foot closer to Dev. Cage saw what she was doing, and she offered a subtle nod. When he replied with his own, she looked first at the gun at his head. She didn’t flinch, though she wanted to. She and Cage had to live forever. She wouldn’t watch him die like this. Not for this stupid woman’s drug-running business.

  Then she flicked her eyes to the gun at Dev’s head.

  Cage dipped his chin slightly in acknowledgment.

  She wiggled the fingers of her left hand, the side away from Laura and Levi, until Cage noticed. Then she held down three fingers as he watched.

  Then two.

  One.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  66

  Cage waited until he saw Joule take her first running step before he moved.

  He wasn't exactly certain what she was going to do, only that she was going to make sure that Dev didn't get shot. Dev might also have been on board with the plan, though Cage didn’t know that, either. Their roommate might have caught on to all the signaling and figured out that Cage and Joule were communicating. He certainly could have seen Joule’s fingers counting.

  The sky had grown black, but flames that were licking their way out of the barn made the area bright enough to see that the twins were signaling each other. She could only hope no one bothered to look.

  As Joule launched herself forward, Cage turned quickly, looking at Laura and for a moment. He twisted his head and found himself staring directly down the barrel of the gun.

  He hadn't dropped fast enough. Drop first, then turn. Shit, it was too late for that. He dropped low, almost as a reaction from the shock of what he’d done, and waited to feel the burn of a bullet searing through his brain. There wasn’t time to wait and see if he died first, so he jammed his hands upward, grabbing at her arm and shoving it skyward. It was not the best execution of the move, and not anywhere near as clean and superhero-like as he’d done it in his mind.

  The sound and the movement of the gunshot rocked him, almost throwing him off his feet. He felt the reverberation through her arm and the air the second she squeezed the trigger and the bullet flew upward into the sky.

  He could swear he heard another blast. Was she just pulling the trigger over and over? But he was already hear
ing the rough “Oof!” of someone being tackled, and he was pretty certain it wasn't Dev.

  Joule must have aimed for the man in the overalls with the gun. He just hoped she was staying clear of the embers that sparked and burst into the night like escapees on a prison break.

  The woman with the ponytail toppled as Cage struggled with her, pulling them both to the ground in a tangled heap. He was equally petrified by both the gun she was waving wildly and a piece of burning wood that landed next to them and began sizzling in the damp grass. The woman didn't look strung out or high, but she was certainly in a rough place where she was making crazy decisions. He felt her poor choices as thumps to his torso and kicks to his shins as she attempted to fight back.

  He pulled back a hand to clock her, hoping to get her under the chin, but he spotted her hand still holding the gun. If he hit her the wrong way, she might jerk and shoot off another bullet. So he held himself in check.

  He wanted to look back over his shoulder and check on the barn, to be sure it wasn’t about to collapse in their direction, dusting them all with wood and embers, but there wasn’t time. Looking away might mean losing this fight.

  He struggled to get into a stable position on his hands and knees. The moment he achieved it, he jammed his elbow into her forearm, hoping to keep her trigger hand pinned to the ground. He could only hope that would keep her from shooting anything more than an ankle.

  Then, as he lifted up his head to see where her gun might be aimed, he saw a boot plant itself across her wrist. A hand came into view, and the small semiautomatic was forcefully removed from her grip.

  “Noooo!” she howled, as though she were the wronged party.

  In his anger, Cage pulled back again to offer a good “shut-up” punch, but again he was thwarted.

  “Everybody up! Hands in the air where I can see them!”

  Cage shook his head. Who said that? Who was trying to take control of this asinine melee? As he rolled off the woman, who was still trying to shake him, he caught sight of Joule.

  The man in the overalls was also trying to toss his sister off himself, but Joule appeared to be remembering some of the martial arts they had studied as kids. And she wasn't quite tossed like a rag doll. It was more that she jumped and scrambled out of the way, avoiding kicking legs, flailing arms, and crackling pieces of burning wood.

  Cage could only hope that she’d managed to get the gun out of the man’s hand as well. Hell, Cage would trust the old farmer or even Jerry with the gun far more than this guy.

  “Everyone on your feet, hands in the air!”

  He thought he heard the voice again, through the ringing that vibrated his eardrums and his skull.

  Cage turned a circle, looking wildly in all directions, but he still wasn’t upright. He counted far too many pairs of feet and was still unable to hear clearly after having a gun fire so close to his unprotected ears.

  He clapped his hands to his head now, trying to stop the roar. The voice must have been very loud or very close, but he still hadn’t seen who was saying it.

  He could only hope that, while he and Joule had started the chaos, someone else was ending it. He checked his sister as he scanned the small crowd. Joule looked fine—no blood. And she moved appropriately, indicating nothing was broken or too badly twisted as she stepped further from the barn.

  Good. Her silhouette against the firelit sky filled him with relief. He’d never been happier to see her.

  Jerry, next to her, also appeared uninjured, and so did the two people that had come bursting out of the barn wall right before them. Cage next watched as the man in the overalls and the thin woman with the ponytail stood up and slowly, angrily, put their hands into the air.

  But then he spotted the person ordering them around. It was Dr. Chithra Murasawa with a rifle in her hands and an angry expression on her bruised and battered face. She aimed at the center of the small crowd, ready to swing and shoot at whoever displeased her. And she looked very displeased.

  Next to her, Izzy stood with a handgun gripped fiercely. Her feet were braced apart, her arms out, elbows locked, and the gun shaking frightfully in her grip. Izzy was alive! He breathed a sigh of relief mixed with fear. Izzy wasn’t good with that gun, not a very convincing as an authority figure.

  Cage stepped forward, motioning to the gun. “Do you want me to take that?”

  He wasn’t sure if he asked it or maybe yelled. The buzzing in his ears still hadn't quite quelled. But Izzy nodded and said—or maybe he read her lips—“Oh God, yes! Please.”

  She handed the gun to him, barrel first, and with a few deft moves, he checked the piece. It was loaded and the safety was off. He stepped quickly into place next to Dr. Murasawa.

  She was absolutely the last person he had expected to see here. And why was she so beaten up? He had to ask, “How did you guys get here?”

  “I got chased by the storm. Skidded on wet road and went into a tree,” Murasawa said. That explained the damage. She answered him without taking her eyes off the others, far more competent with a gun than Cage would have expected her to be. “When I got up, I found a truck with the keys in it and started driving around looking for people. No one is out here!”

  Cage could agree with that. “You found Izzy.”

  He hadn’t quite asked it as a question, as the answer was obvious. “Yeah. She was wandering down the street, looking really dazed.”

  This made Cage question her decision then to put a gun into Izzy’s hands but, to be fair, the situation was a fat mess. He was just grateful that he and Dev had managed to find both Joule and Izzy. And Dr. Murasawa! It was three names off the list, all at once. Had there not been loaded guns aimed at too many strangers, he would have sat on he ground and breathed with relief, or hugged everyone. This was not the reunion he’d hoped for.

  If they could just survive this standoff, they would be okay. Though he had no clue where the doctor had found these guns, he realized that, now that the two of them were the ones holding the firearms, they had a better chance.

  He turned his head slowly to his sister, leaving his eyes and the barrel of his gun turned toward the crowd. “Joule, do you want to explain what's going on here?”

  Just as he thought he was going to get some answers, another voice boomed from behind him. This time, the sound was accompanied by the unmistakable cock of a shotgun.

  “What the ever-loving hell is going on here?”

  67

  Joule wasn't facing the right direction to see much of anything. But she could tell that Dr. Murasawa and Cage were far enough back from the edge of the barn to see whoever had come around the corner. Both had been immediately convinced to follow the newest set of orders.

  She watched as they each slowly set their firearm on the ground at their feet, the other hand still in the air, and then just as carefully returned to standing.

  When the group had broken out of the barn, they’d come out the side and weren’t facing the driveway. In fact, the building shielded most of it from view. The smoke and flames didn’t do anything to make the view clearer. Jumping out of the way as pieces popped and flew, bringing flames or at least sizzling heat with them, didn’t help.

  That was certainly how Dr. Murasawa and Izzy had managed to creep up on them. And here she was, getting snuck up on again, Joule thought, as two massive forms appeared around the corner of the blazing barn.

  The barn was keeping her warm on one side, but she was fighting to find the middle ground. She wanted to be close enough for the light and heat, but far enough to avoid the embers that cracked and arced into the night and onto the grass. Luckily, the ground was still wet from the previous night and—so far—none of the embers had sparked a new blaze. There was enough to worry about without that.

  “What is with the damn guns? And why isn't anyone putting out this fire?”

  Joule looked around the small group and realized she was central to most everything that had happened.

  As the voice stepped into t
he light of the blaze, Cage smiled and called out, and though he kept his hands in the air, he wiggled his fingers in a friendly gesture. Then he greeted the newcomers by name and asked the question Joule was dying to know the answer to.

  “Boomer! Bob! What are you doing here?”

  “There's a damn fire, if y’all hadn’t noticed,” Boomer or Bob answered quickly and in a surly tone. He still had his gun up, though not quite as carefully aimed, maybe because of Cage’s friendly overtures.

  They all heard a crack and sidestepped quickly to avoid a small handful of embers that rained into their little group.

  The other brother didn’t lower his gun. “We can see the sky lit up for miles. Everyone’s coming.”

  For a moment, she let that absorb. The Larkins maybe weren't the brightest of criminals then, if they’d set a fire that would have attracted the entire county. Though Joule and the others would certainly be dead if they had remained inside the barn.

  Beside her, the blaze crackled with its own life and she could hear the sound of flames rushing up the inside walls and eating the wood.

  She took one more step away from it and absently began to lower her hand toward her pocket. But one of the brothers—they were obviously brothers—twisted his head quickly in her direction. Maybe she wasn’t quite the most favored nation that she thought she was.

  “I have a kitten in my pocket. I want to be sure he's okay.” Then she walked over with her hands still in the air. “Here, you check.”

  Joule held both her hands high, but motioned with her hip out, waiting while the big man softly slipped his fingers into the pocket of her hoodie. His face melted as he touched the tiny kitten, petting it softly.

  “You have a kitten in your pocket?” Cage asked incredulously.