Race the Sky

by Michael Galloway

  He sat in his truck for several minutes before he worked up the courage to visit Rebekah’s grave site. He was never one to visit the grave sites of lost friends or relatives, and at her interment he left the service early because he could not take it anymore. At the time, he did not have the words to explain his actions and he never tried to contact her parents after the service. Even now he still could not explain to himself all the emotions he went through that day.

  When he finally left the truck, he carried with him a bouquet of a dozen yellow roses. He knew, of course, that Rebekah was no longer here, as she once told him that “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” He did not know what he believed at this point, but whether she was here or not, he always intended on buying her roses as a means of trying to restart their relationship when she was alive.

  His steps were measured and if not for the fog he would have felt even more awkward walking through here. He read the names and dates on some of the grave markers and noted how a few had flowers and statues next to them while others remained barren. When he found her stone, he knelt down and noticed that a fresh bundle of mixed flowers had been placed on her site recently. As he set his flowers down next to the first bundle, he scanned around the grounds to see if anyone else was watching. Seeing no one, he closed his eyes and began a conversation.

  “I don’t know if you are here or not. Or what I’m doing here. But if you can hear me…”

  “John!”

  He opened his eyes and recognized the voice as that of Rebekah’s mother. His first instinct was to run and never look back. Somehow his legs did not respond and before long, he felt her hand on his shoulder. It took all of his strength to not collapse onto the ground.

  The next thing he felt was her mother’s arms around him and the next thing he heard was her father’s footsteps in the grass. He stood up, but he had nothing to say. Her mother had wavy reddish-brown hair, two silver hoop earrings, and a reassuring smile. Her father had graying hair and his beard and mustache looked like they had aged considerably since John last saw them.

  “Thank you for coming out here,” her father began. “We kept hoping we would see you again someday. We…uh…found something for you a while ago.”

  “And we’re sure Rebekah would want you to see it,” her mother finished.

  Her father withdrew a folded, unsealed, white envelope from his jacket pocket. He handed it over to John.

  John took the envelope and found it was addressed to him but had an unused stamp on it. He lifted the seal and withdrew the paper inside. As he unfolded the note, he recognized it was written in Rebekah’s handwriting. At first, the words blurred together. Once he composed himself he began to read it slowly and methodically in silence. It read:

  John,

  I’m sorry for the way our last conversation ended. There have been so many things on my mind lately that I sometimes have trouble sorting it all out. I still love you. I still want to be with you. But there is something I want you to know before we go on.

  Over the past few weeks I have been looking into a troubling situation brewing at the Spirit of Grace church over in Wick. I’ve been doing a lot of digging on Jared Wyckham, who calls himself a “church doctor.” He moved into the congregation a few months ago. I liked him at first. Everybody did. But I found out there have been a few strange deaths surrounding him wherever he goes. He passes it off saying it was an “act of God” or “God striking out at his enemies”. I don’t buy it. I don’t trust him and I can’t believe how stupid I’ve been. I’m heading over to his place today to see if I can talk to him. If I don’t make it back, I hope this letter gets to you in time and you’ll know what happened.

  I still love you and want to get back together with you. Please call me.

  Rebekah

  At this point, John almost lost his balance, but he knew he had to be strong for her parents. They both looked at him with sympathetic eyes. He handed the note over to her mother to read.

  “Are you sure you want us to read this?” Her mother asked with pensive eyes.

  John motioned toward the letter.

  Together, her parents read the note in silence. After they finished her mother hugged John again and handed the note back to him.

  “There’s something else, too,” she said as she looked at her husband.

  Rebekah’s father spoke up again but he shifted his feet anxiously. “The other day a neighbor of this supposed church doctor came forward. He says he saw Becky’s car pull up into the doctor’s driveway. Then she let herself into his house. A couple of minutes later there was some yelling by…what’s his name? Jared. She ran out of the house and drove off. Apparently, Jared got into his truck and followed her.” Her father lifted his eyes and looked at John. His eyes were red and burned with anger. “Do you know where we can find this guy?”

  John pointed to another grave about fifty feet to the northwest. “He’s right over there.”

  “Over where?”

  “In the ground. He didn’t make it through the storm that hit Wick. They found his body face-down in a field about a quarter mile east of town.”

  As her father stalked off toward the grave, Rebekah’s mother and John followed. Her parents’ shoulders deflated but maybe this moment would bring them a sense of closure and peace about what really happened that rainy afternoon.

  As all three of them stared at Jared’s gravestone, John spoke up again. “Somehow I knew she didn’t hurt herself. I know what everybody was saying, but that never fit with who she was. Besides, the burn marks and the skid marks never made sense. Then there was the bumper.”

  “Wait. Slow down. The burn marks?” Her father said. A tear streamed down his cheek. One of his hands was balled up into a fist.

  Rebekah’s mother put an arm around him. “Easy now.”

  John turned to look back toward the town. “There are burn marks on the pavement right where her vehicle left the road. Before the skid marks. I’m heading up there later today to take some pictures, if you don’t mind.”

  “What about the bumper?” Her father said in a low rumbling voice.

  “On Jared’s truck. A friend of mine saw some paint on his bumper that matched the color of Rebekah’s car. Here.” He pulled out his cell phone and brought up the pictures of Jared’s Jeep. Then he held the phone out for them to see.

  “You think he pushed her off the road?” Her father asked.

  “Pretty sure of it now.”

  “Where’s the truck?”

  “Probably in a junkyard. It was rolled in the storm and thrown into a tree. Not much left of it, really.”

  Her father unclenched his fist in defeat. After all, the only thing he could step into the ring with now was a ghost. After an extended hug from his wife, he extended a hand to John to shake. “Thanks. Let us know if you need anything. Please keep in touch.”

  John nodded but at the same knew this might be one of the last times he ever saw them face-to-face. Despite the shared pain between them, he knew he had no idea what they were going through.

  As he walked back to his truck through the fog, he took one last look back at Rebekah’s gravesite. Her parents left for their vehicle holding hands and sharing memories. The fog continued to drift through the graveyard and eventually obscured his view. Upon passing between the brick columns he knew he was one step closer to the truth even if it meant walking away for good.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  John drove up to the Main Street Bridge on the edge of Wick and parked on the shoulder. He took out his camera and walked back to the point on the road where the first burn mark appeared. This part of the town was run over by the twister and evidence of scoured earth lie everywhere. The grass had a sour brown look to it and bits of leaves were embedded into the railings in the bridge. In the nearby farm fields, he could still see the spiral scars from the suction vortices and beyond that, numerous black and blue tarps covered the buildings in town.

  He stopped at the fir
st burn mark on the road and took multiple shots. It was a small blackened crater, four inches across, with gray and black cracks that radiated out from its center. Further up the road, he took pictures of the skid marks from Rebekah’s tires. From there he took pictures of the bridge railings, the bridge deck, and the embankment on both sides.

  Along the way, he discovered another burn mark in the grass. This mark looked as if the sand and nearby stones were fused together into pieces of brittle glass. He picked up a chunk of the glass and dropped it into his pocket. Surrounding the mark was a fractal-like pattern of gray, white, and black branches that radiated out several inches in all directions.

  He descended the embankment and stood at the edge of the creek. The water was only a foot deep here, but flowed around a stick-like object near the creek’s edge. He reached over and pulled the stick out of the water. It was not made of wood and instead resembled the piece of metal Madeline had found earlier. The lettering on one side was blackened and covered in dirt and rust. The design, like the other piece, was cylindrical but flattened, as if a heavy weight crushed it into the soil. He washed the piece off in the creek but it did nothing to help decipher the lettering. He packed up his camera, carried the piece back to his truck, and left for home.

  * * *

  When he arrived home, he withdrew the letter from his pocket and brought it over to his bedroom closet. On the floor of the closet he pulled out his cardboard memory box but only opened the top just enough to slide the letter inside. He closed the top and slid the box back into the corner. He did not have the courage to rummage through its contents just yet, but he knew he would in the coming days. At that point he would decide whether to give the items back to her parents, dump them in the garbage, or save them for nostalgia reasons.

  He paced over to the kitchen table and set the newfound metal piece next to the piece Madeline discovered. The designs were identical and despite the illusion that they were simply pipes or discarded cans thrown into the ditch, his instinct told him they were rocket casings. Upon closer inspection, he found a thin strand of black thread coiled up inside one of the casings. It resembled a tiny ball of lint but the more he picked at it the more he discovered it to be some kind of extraordinarily thin thread.

  He picked up his cell phone and called Madeline. After a minute of apologies over the gold glitter delivery and the picnic (it was the second round of apologies this week), and after explaining his visit to Rebekah’s gravesite, he made a declaration. “I found another rocket casing at the accident scene.”

  “How do you know it was from a rocket?” Madeline asked.

  “It looks like a hobby rocket I shot off as a kid in rocketry club. Okay, maybe a little more sophisticated.”

  “What do you think it means?”

  “I don’t know. But I found more burn marks nearby. My question is: who fired the rockets? Maybe she drove to avoid getting hit. They don’t look like they exploded, though.”

  “Why would someone shoot rockets at her?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she was on to something. The note hinted at that.”

  “The note?”

  “When I went to the cemetery, I met Rebekah’s parents. Hadn’t seen them since the funeral. Her dad handed me a letter that she never got around to mailing to me. The letter said she was going to go over and confront Jared. Then her dad said a neighbor came forward, too. Apparently the neighbor saw her come running out of Jared’s house. Jared drove off and chased her down with his truck.”

  There was a moment of silence on the phone until Madeline broke in again. “But what does that have to do with the rockets?”

  “I’m not sure. I didn’t find any sign of explosives in them either. Unless…”

  “Unless…what?”

  John picked up the casing with the thread inside of it. He held it so that the thread hung just above the tabletop. Then he turned it around so that he held the rocket by the piece of thread instead. He swung the casing back and forth like a pendulum before responding to her question. “Unless someone used the rockets to trigger the lightning strikes.”

  “What?”

  “Remember when you were driving and I told you to head to the gas station? You said you heard something metal hit your roof. And weren’t there lightning strikes hitting around you? I don’t know. Maybe I’m just grasping at straws, but I once talked to a scientist who was researching lightning. They shot off rockets into storms with wires attached to them. The wire made it easy for the lightning to discharge. It’s almost like that, but in reverse.”

  “Are you saying someone was trying to kill me?”

  “I don’t know. But here I thought it was God.”

  “Are you saying it wasn’t God?”

  “I don’t know who it was, but I don’t think it was Him. Besides, it’s kind of hard to stay mad at someone who is starting to show you the truth about what happened.”

  “You lost me.”

  John let out a big sigh. “Don’t tell anyone this. But I once prayed for an answer about this. About what happened. I did it after I left the funeral. I didn’t know what I was doing, I was just looking for an answer. I was mad at everyone and anyone so I don’t know how or why I did that. But then nothing seemed to happen so I gave up. On God.”

  He paused and then continued. “Know what else? I was looking at the data again from the storm. There’s a funny pattern that matches what happened in Ingot before the sensors gave out. It’s like I could tell when the storm was going to turn before it hit the town. Do you know what this means?”

  Madeline lowered her voice. “Remember when everybody was huddling around praying in the park before the storm? When I was running to your truck, I prayed, too. I prayed it would miss us. And I got an answer. The answer was ‘no.’”

  This time it was John who remained quiet.

  “Are you still mad at Jared?” Madeline said.

  It was a question for which he had no ready answer. He remained silent for a few seconds and then replied, “Are you?”

  “I asked you first. Don’t answer a question with a question.” The tone of her voice indicated she was smiling.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I haven’t forgiven him if that’s what you’re getting at. Have you?”

  “I’m working on it. Now if I could get my Mom to give up his books, it would be a start.”

  “How is she doing?”

  “Slowly and steadily she’s getting back to her old self.”

  “Are they going to rebuild the church?”

  “That’s the hope. One brick at a time.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  That night John sat alone at his desktop computer and typed in an extensive chase log summarizing the Wick event. The storm damage survey from the National Weather Service had been released to the public and upon reviewing it, a few items jumped out at him. Although the initial storm moved northeast, for a time it expanded. Toward the end of the tornado’s life, it changed direction twice before dissipating fifteen miles northeast of Wick. The path width ranged from fifty yards to one-and-a-quarter miles across just before it hit the town.

  He switched over to a radar replay of the storm and searched for patterns that he could correlate with the Ferganut sensor data he collected. As he watched the whirling reds and yellows on the radar, he realized how fortunate they were not to get killed by the wildly unpredictable nature of the storm. The final report was that six lives were lost, four from the Spirit of Grace Church alone, and eight people were injured.

  Even with his improved data collection, what he thought about most was whether their phone calls and e-mails to the Weather Service made an impact on saving lives. He made a note to himself to write up a formal paper at the end of the chase season. He then reviewed his sensor data from the storm again and drafted a summary.

  When he finished, he thought ahead to the offseason. For starters, he planned on testing improved designs for the rockets. Madeline’s upgrade on the sensors helped, but he still thou
ght about modifying their electronics if he could get a hold of a schematic. Perhaps with some detective work he could track down Professor Ferganut and pay a visit to him.

  He began typing again. There is endless debate about the true role or purpose of a tornado. The truth is nobody knows for certain. One can look at fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, radar replays, damage photos, wind patterns, and hours of footage documenting the life of a tornado from birth to death. Was it the atmosphere’s attempt to stabilize itself? The air movement in a thunderstorm is already efficient at that. Even if the true purpose was discovered would more homes and lives be saved? If the path could be predicted well ahead of time could anything be done to alter the outcome?

  Perhaps, to some extent, it is a means of restoring equilibrium. And maybe that’s what happened in Wick—a restoration both in the sky and on the ground.

  He stopped, picked up one of the metal pieces found at the accident site, and turned it over in his hands. If it was a piece of a rocket, how was it fired? Did someone fire it from a drone? Or was it a ground-based launch? What was the payload?

  He leaned back in his chair. He doubted that Jared knew how to design such a device let alone fire it at a moving target. He also had a feeling that the designer was far from finished and that he would soon find himself in a race against the clock, the clouds, an unseen force from above.

  About the Author

  Michael Galloway is an outdoors enthusiast whose interests include camping, fishing, hiking, writing, and technology. He has a degree in Journalism, and has been writing software in one language or another for over twenty years. He currently lives in Minnesota with his family.

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  Also by Michael Galloway

  An Echo Through the Trees

  Theft at the Speed of Light

  Horizons

  Gathering the Wind