Race the Sky

by Michael Galloway

  Madeline gasped. “Oh, I’m sorry, John. I didn’t know.”

  He let out a loud sigh. It was kind of nice to unload some of the burden he had been carrying over the past year on a near stranger. “So I went to the funeral but I ended up walking out partway through because I couldn’t handle it anymore.”

  “Have you talked to anybody about this?”

  “I talked to a counselor once. If you mean anybody like her parents or her friends, no.”

  “You think it was related to the church?”

  “I don’t know. My gut tells me she was on to something. But maybe it upset her too much. The breakup came out of nowhere, too. Then there was the scene of the accident.”

  “I thought you said she took her own life.”

  “Everybody’s pretty sure she did.”

  “But you don’t seem to think so?”

  “I don’t know what I believe. Look, she was driving her car in the rain and she supposedly went off the road and crashed into a creek.”

  “I remember reading about that. On the east side of town, right?”

  “Right.”

  “You don’t sound like you believe that’s what happened.”

  “She never left a note. She was on depression meds for a while, but I don’t think she ever talked about suicide. Anyway, I went to the scene to help identify the body. I’ll never forget that. But then there were these skid marks where her car left the road. And some kind of burn mark on the pavement.”

  “What kind of burn mark?”

  “Like the road had been hit by lightning.”

  “Is that why you left Janet’s house so fast?”

  John typed in his password on his laptop computer and fired up the rocket launching software. He hit a few keys and put the motors through a series of tests. After he was satisfied, he replied, “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault. You didn’t know.”

  “So is that why you chase?”

  John laughed. “Why do fisherman fish? Why do climbers climb mountains? I don’t see it as escaping if that’s what you’re getting at. Isn’t it okay to just be fascinated by something once in a while?”

  Madeline remained silent.

  John continued. “Sounds like you’re a bit of chaser yourself. You chase this church doctor guy around while he wrecks your congregation.”

  Again, she remained silent.

  John carried on. “Sorry, that probably didn’t come out right.”

  “No. It’s okay. Maybe it would help if you saw my research lab.”

  “Your lab?”

  “Well, it’s not a scientific lab. More like books in my apartment. I call it a lab sometimes.”

  The comment brought a smile to his face. There was something endearing in her voice but a part of him felt like he said too much already. He picked up the launcher rack, set it back into the bed of his pickup truck, and shut the tailgate.

  “Are you still there?” She said after his continued silence.

  “I’m here. Just putting tools away. And thinking.”

  “If you want to stop by, I’ll be here until four-thirty today. I’ll send you my address.”

  “Okay.”

  After the call ended he went back into his house and sat down in front of his computer monitor. He put the keyboard onto his lap but did not turn the machine on. Instead he spent a good ten minutes staring at a blank screen.

  Part of him wanted to stall for time or come up with an excuse as to why he could not show up at her apartment. The truth was he did not have a reason, and the more he fought with himself the worse he felt. Why did he chase anyway? Her question nagged at him now. Was it the fascination? Or was it for research and photo opportunities? The pay was good at times for quality footage. Or, did a small part of him use it as a means of escape? Maybe the real struggle was that part of him wanted to drive into oblivion and another part of him wanted to fight on another day.

  His cell phone rang. It was Captain calling, but he chose to let the call go to his voicemail. He looked again at Madeline’s note attached to his computer monitor. Even her handwriting was cute. He shook off the thought, stood up, and headed back out to his pickup truck.

  Chapter Six

  Wick was a town a few miles south of Sioux Falls, bounded by a rail line on the southern end, a shallow creek on the eastern side, and farm fields everywhere else. It was a blue-collar town with two bars, a drug store, a dollar store, and a Dairy Queen restaurant. From what John heard of the place, its historical claim to fame was that it used to have three saloons and a brothel until a flour mill on the north side exploded and burned almost the entire town to the ground in 1917.

  What made things difficult today was that he felt a tangible sense of darkness whenever he drove through here. He approached the town from the south and turned onto Central Street to avoid driving across the bridge where his friend died. He also avoided passing by the Spirit of Grace church on Second Avenue and then sped his way into the parking lot of Madeline’s two-story apartment complex.

  After she buzzed him through the security door of her apartment building, he hiked up two flights of stairs and down a long hallway with mottled black-and-gray carpeting. The halls were dimly lit and he heard several conversations and television sets through the paper-thin walls. He knocked on her door and she opened it a moment later.

  “Hi. I didn’t know if you were going to make it,” she said in a quiet voice as she led him into the living room. Her smile was guarded but still lifted him up. “So…here’s my lab. Sorry about the mess.”

  The “lab” existed in the living room of her apartment and consisted of a laptop computer, a bookcase that towered above his head, and a desk covered in paperbacks and open Bibles. It was a chaotic anomaly since the rest of her apartment appeared orderly. A pair of potted ferns hung from the ceiling and in the corner near the window a rhododendron conquered the end table.

  “I take it you spend a lot of time here,” John said with a grin.

  “Maybe too much lately.”

  He wandered over to the bookcase and scanned the titles. There were countless books on cults and apologetics with a few Biblical archaeological books. “Is this what you do for a living?”

  “No. I’m a florist. So much for using my degree in Technical Writing. How about you?”

  “I’m a software tester at a bank. And bored silly with it. I want to be a full-time researcher but right now the videos and pictures aren’t paying all the bills. Maybe I’ll end up like my Dad and hide out as a professor in a University somewhere.”

  He continued to look at the titles in the bookcase until he came across a group of books written by Jared, the self-proclaimed church doctor. “These look familiar. I remember Rebekah showing me some of these.”

  “Who’s Rebekah?”

  “That friend I told you about on the phone.” He pulled each book out one by one, read the name aloud, and looked over the back covers. “Sparks of Heaven. The Limitless Apostle. Riding the Waves of Divinity. The Supernatural Transformation of Planet Earth. Are Miracles Electric?”

  He put the books back into place but noticed something strange when he lined them up together again. “Did you see this? There are funny little symbols on the spines of the books. This one has a flame, this one looks like wind, this one has water, and this one has an Earth symbol. The last one has a lightning bolt on it.”

  Madeline stood next to him and stared at the books. “If you think that’s weird, check this out.” She drew his attention over to her desk. On top of it were several stacked books and some papers. She picked up one of the papers and handed it to him. “Did your friend ever witness a miracle?”

  John looked over the paper. On it was a list of miracles claimed to have happened in Jared’s presence. Some of the miracles came out of Jared’s books and others occurred at the local church. Next to all the entries Madeline had written the word “unverifiable” in red ink. He looked up. “So none of these
are true?”

  “Not a single one.”

  He flipped to the next page and found the same word written next to each example. In all, there were two dozen purported healings of a physical or a mental nature. He set the papers back onto her desk and looked again at the titles in her bookcase. On a higher shelf, she had multiple versions of the Bible lined up next to one another. “So tell me,” he said in a confident voice. “How do you know what you’re following isn’t a cult, too?”

  “Because I’ve seen God answer prayer.”

  “How do you know if it’s God answering?”

  “Because it lines up with the Scripture.”

  John stifled a laugh. “Isn’t that circular reasoning?”

  Madeline glared at him and then pressed on. “No, because I know the Word is alive. Despite what Jared says. So tell me more about your chasing. Where do you chase?”

  By the irritated look on her face he could tell he hit a raw nerve. “Mostly we stick to the Midwest. Sometimes we go to Texas or Oklahoma if we can afford it. Gas gets expensive and you go through a lot of it on the road. But we don’t chase in certain areas.”

  “Like?”

  “Like the Ozarks. Or the Appalachians. Usually we plan out everything a day or two ahead of time. We check the computer models, look at the upper air patterns, read through the Storm Prediction Center’s discussions, things like that. A lot of it can change overnight but we try to narrow it down to an area with the best likelihood of seeing a tornado. Then we pack up our equipment and hit the road.”

  “I was going to ask you. What was that thing mounted on the back of your truck?”

  “A rocket launcher.”

  “So you shoot rockets at them?”

  John gave her a big smile. “Rockets full of Ferganut sensors. They’re little round things about this big.” He demonstrated their size with his thumb and index finger.

  “Oh, I know what they are,” she said as she crossed her arms.

  “You do? Yeah, it’s a bear trying to get them into the right spot in a storm. But we’re getting some data out of it. Basically, we’re trying to get more insight into the wind patterns a few thousand feet off the ground.”

  Madeline looked to the side and then back at John. There was a slight change in her facial expression, as if he brought up yet another sensitive subject.

  She walked over to her desk, picked up a handful of books, and slipped them back into the bookcase. “So how did you ever get started chasing?”

  “That’s a good question. I think it started when I was about eight or so. I remember the morning like it was yesterday. It was eighty degrees and sunny by the time I got out of bed. A couple of hours later a black line appeared on the horizon. Haven’t seen anything that dark since. A half hour later the power went out and soon you couldn’t see outside the windows because it was raining so hard. And everything was green. This weird off-color green. When it was over I found bits of leaves embedded into the paint across the front of the house. The neighborhoods north and west of us had tree damage everywhere. Later we found out an F-4 missed our house by a couple miles.”

  He gestured toward her bookcase. “So what got you going on all of this?”

  “I guess I got the research part from my Dad. But most of the rest is because of my Mom. And Jared. She thinks he’s the greatest thing next to the invention of television. But now that I think about it, maybe it’s a calling.”

  “When’s the next church meeting?”

  “It’s funny you ask that. There’s going to be a healing event in a few days. And of course my Mom wants me to drive her there. I can’t imagine what’s going to happen this time.” She rolled her eyes during her last comment and her voice had a restless edge to it.

  “Why doesn’t anybody call him out on what he’s doing? That it’s faked?”

  “They’ve tried. A lot of times he’ll turn it right back on the person and say there must be a demon attached to them.”

  “Has he ever said that to you?”

  “Not to my face. If you want to tag along sometime, I’ll get you a flyer. It’s entertaining if nothing else.”

  He walked through the living room and over to the sliding glass door. Beyond the door was a balcony and outside on the ground below he noticed a paved walking trail. “Can we go for a walk?”

  * * *

  The walking trail ran parallel to the railroad tracks behind the apartment building and stretched on for a mile until it connected up with a regional bike trail. It was a dividing line between the urban and the rural, the infamous and the obscure. If John learned anything over the past week it was that Jared’s reputation seemed to envelop the town.

  “So how exactly did Janet lose her husband?” John said.

  “He was a teacher at the elementary school in town. When the storm came in school was just letting out but they couldn’t get all the kids out onto the buses in time. So he stayed back with them. The school took a direct hit from a tornado and they said some of the walls collapsed. He stopped some of the bricks from falling on the kids and saved them. But he ended up dying later at the hospital from internal injuries.”

  John wished now that he would have stayed behind and gotten to know Janet better. He looked up and in the distance he noticed a red-haired woman in her twenties jogging toward them. “So I hear you talking about your Mom all the time. Where’s your Dad?”

  Madeline turned away and stared out across the farm fields. “I don’t talk to him. My parents divorced years ago.”

  John wanted to press her further on the subject but the jogging woman interrupted his thoughts. Her hair was done up in a ponytail and she wore a black tee shirt with black shorts.

  “Good evening, Maddie,” the woman said. “Nice night, isn’t it? What brings you two out?” Although the woman stopped jogging for a moment, John was unnerved because she stayed in constant motion. At first he thought it was because she wanted to keep her heart rate up. Then, he saw her eyes and watched as they shifted back and forth over and over.

  “Hi Alicia,” Madeline said without answering any of her questions.

  “The other night after you left our study, Jared said he was worried about you.”

  “I’m sure he was.”

  “No. I’m being serious. He wanted you to know that God has great plans for you and this town. He said you just need to be more open.”

  “Jared said that or God said that?”

  “God, I think.”

  Madeline gave her a sarcastic look and pulled on John’s tee shirt.

  He followed as they both waved goodbye to Alicia. “She seems nice,” he said. “Although her eyes kept moving back and forth like she didn’t have control over them.”

  “Be careful what you say around her,” Madeline whispered in his ear.

  “Why?”

  “She’s the worship leader for the church. Kind of like Jared’s right-hand girl, if you know what I mean. He’s got tentacles everywhere in this town. Right down to the mayor and the police force.”

  John focused his attention on the setting sun and the cirrus clouds streaming over the horizon. He stared at their wispy patterns long enough to draw Madeline’s attention.

  “What is it?” She said.

  “The clouds. Cirrus clouds. They usually come in a day or two ahead of weather systems.” He pointed to the southwestern part of the sky. “Those look like they blew off from some heavy thunderstorms. I’ll have to check the maps again when I get home. Speaking of that, I think we’ll be heading out on another chase soon and we’ve got a fair amount of planning to do.”

  “Mind if I tag along?”

  “On a chase?”

  “Sure. Unless you don’t want me to go with you.” She gave him a coy look and her gaze locked in on his eyes for several seconds.

  “We’ve always got room for passengers, but I’m not much of a tour guide. There’s a pretty good setup heading for this part of the country in about three days. Captain and I will probably talk it
over tonight and then we’ll plan everything the day before at my place. I’ll let him know you’re coming with.”

  “Are you sure he’ll be okay with that?”

  “He’ll be fine.”

  “I forgot to ask, why do they call you Data Guy?”

  “Because of all the data I collect and analyze when I chase. I’m getting better at it all the time. In fact, I upgraded the rocket launcher the last time I talked to you. No duct tape either. I hope they stop calling me that.”

  “What?”

  “Duct Tape Guy. It’s my other nickname. I can’t help it. The stuff’s great in a pinch. You’ll see.”

  Chapter Seven

  John sat on his couch and flipped through numerous atmospheric computer models on his laptop computer. He paused to stare at a twelve hour model. The model depicted a strong jet streak over the region at the 250 millibar level screaming in from the west at nearly 100 knots. He then dropped down in the atmosphere and found a low-level jet driving up from the south. “This is nice,” he said as he handed the laptop over to Captain.

  “Looks better than last time.” Captain said. “Didn’t I tell you that nasty upper air pattern we saw in Texas earlier in the spring was eventually going to make its way north?”

  John glanced over at another laptop screen to his right and studied a severe weather outlook map from the National Weather Service. On day two, a moderate risk area ran from the southeastern quarter of South Dakota down through the northeastern part of Nebraska and into far northwestern Iowa. Surrounding that was an orange enhanced risk area and around that a larger slight risk area stretched from the Canadian border to southern Nebraska. In his mind, the best area to camp out would be southeastern South Dakota somewhere south of Interstate 90.

  He looked over at Captain and together they studied the paper road atlas. “What are you thinking?”

  Captain rubbed his chin and did his best to give John a serious look. “I’m thinking northeastern Nebraska. What about you?”

  “Southeastern South Dakota.”

  “Because that’s where Madeline lives?”