Storm Season (18 page)

Why were they in that town, then?
Some of the panic had drained from Tobias’s expression, replaced by confusion. There was a layer of trust there too, which tore at Jasper’s heart as he tried to convince them both that his theory was right.

“There aren’t many ways to get from Brightam’s Ford to Shaleton, Tobias,” he said quietly, hoping that he sounded more certain than he suddenly felt. It was the most likely scenario, but there was still a risk he was wrong. “They’re following the most logical route, just like we were. That’s all. They should stay on the main road.”

Tobias regarded him for a long moment, and Jasper tried to lock his doubts far beneath the surface of his mind, where Tobias wouldn’t be able to read them without prying further than he claimed to be willing to do. It worked, or else Tobias was choosing to ignore the worried thoughts, for he nodded, slipped his hand out of Jasper’s grasp, and slid back to the other side of the bench seat.

Jasper pushed away the vague sense of misgiving and guilt coiled in his gut as he laid the map on the seat between them and restarted the truck. He was right about the men’s route coincidentally aligning with theirs, he had to be, and if he wasn’t, this route still gave them a better chance of avoiding the men chasing them than the main road. He just couldn’t let Tobias see his doubts.

T
HE
storm came up suddenly, the clear, sunny sky darkened and raindrops pelted the windshield with unexpected force and swiftness. Tobias jerked his head away from where it had been resting on the window, the sudden movement startling Jasper more than the unexpected shower. He peered at the sky, frowning when he saw an unending line of dark clouds and distant flashes of lightning. Swearing under his breath as he started scanning the road for a turn off that might lead to shelter.

Jasper?

He hadn’t noticed Tobias scooting closer, his eyes wide as he peered out the windshield at the rapidly falling drops. “Get the map,” he answered, his fingers clenched tight around the wheel and his eyes fixed on the road in front of him. This was the one flaw in his plan―he hadn’t thoroughly studied the route, hadn’t planned where to turn off when the daytime storms started. He had been planning on doing that in the next town, had thought he had a few days to figure it out.

Mother Nature had proved him wrong.

Tobias struggled to unfold the crinkling paper of the map, his hands shaking and the folds catching as he tried to spread it out over his lap. They lost long minutes, the truck creeping forward in the torrential downpour, the headlights barely illuminating the road a few feet ahead, the tires slipping in the mud even at the snail’s pace.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Tobias lay the map over his thighs and found Folsom’s Hollow and the route they’d taken.
What am I looking for?

Jasper couldn’t spare a second’s glance from the road ahead, but he could imagine Tobias’s wide, terrified eyes, could feel Tobias trembling where their elbows were pressed together. “A turn off. A town. A place we can stop.” The chances of anything close enough being marked on the map were slim―the road they were on was barely big enough to warrant inclusion―but it couldn’t hurt to look. Maybe there were caves or some other site of interest for people who had the time to take trips during the dry season.

The map rustled as Tobias’s finger traced the line of the road, his movement slow and careful.
Nothing. I don’t… I don’t see anything.
The map crinkled again, louder this time, and Jasper had to fight the urge to pull his eyes from the road and his hand from the wheel to help Tobias peer at the map in his clearly desperate search for shelter.

His mind was so divided, the urge to turn to Tobias so great, that he almost missed the tiny trail, just wide enough for the truck to turn down. Slowly, he backed up and eased the truck down the muddy path a few hundred yards until the undergrowth made it impossible for the truck to go any further.

The headlights illuminated only branches and pine needles, any true leaves long fallen to decompose on the forest floor. The path continued in front of them, narrow and slick with pooling water and decaying leaves, but Jasper couldn’t tell where it led, if it led anywhere at all.

Tobias’s trembling increased, his eyes wider than Jasper had imagined as he stared into the pouring rain, peering into the darkness past the edge of the headlights range and flinching at the flashes of lightning that illuminated nothing more than trees and a narrowing path.
Jasper?

“This leads somewhere,” he answered, peering intently into the rain, hoping that a flash would illuminate something they could use for shelter.

No.
Tobias shook his head vigorously as his hand clutched tightly at Jasper’s arm.
Keep driving.

It was at least as great of a risk, especially since he’d have to back out of the narrow path, but Tobias’s whole body was quivering now, and Jasper knew without asking that there was no way he was getting Tobias to get out of the truck without a destination clearly in sight. “Are you sure?”

The terse nod was all he needed to put the truck in reverse and begin carefully backing down the slick, muddy path.

T
HE
next turn off was a few hundred yards down the road, but they drove past it when a chance flash of lightning failed to illuminate anything more than trees and bushes along the side of the path, branches threatening to overwhelm it in a few places. The truck wouldn’t have made it far, and Tobias had shaken his head before Jasper had even thought about turning the wheel.

The following turn off was on the left, another three hundred yards down the road, and substantially wider. Fallen leaves covered the ground and weeds and grasses poked up between stones, but careful examination in the dim glow of the headlights and brief flashes of brighter illumination showed that it had once been paved with gravel. Jasper turned the wheel without looking at his passenger; they didn’t make gravel roads that led nowhere and they couldn’t keep driving. The lightning was getting closer and closer and it would soon be too dangerous to be out in the open. If they didn’t find something soon, they’d have to hole up in the truck and hope that this first daytime storm of the season was a relatively mild one.

Tobias stiffened as the truck turned, but no protest ghosted across Jasper’s mind, and Tobias remained still, his muscles taut and his eyes fixed on the ever closer flashes of lightning.

The old, broken road looped through the trees, though Jasper was forced several times to veer around places where fallen trees and buckling roots made it impassable, but it maintained a general northerly direction as it wound into denser and tighter woods. Branches scraped at the sides of the truck, clacking against the paneling and windows, and twice Jasper thought they’d have to stop, that he’d have to try to negotiate the path backward or turn the truck around on the narrow path, but both times they made it through, the scratching of thick branches against metal paneling sending shivers down Jasper’s spine.

Lightning crashed closer, the rumble of thunder almost simultaneous with the flash. Jasper twitched, more surprised by the thunder than the lighting, his mouth twisting into a grimace as he felt Tobias jump next to him. Any closer and they’d have to stop, have to hope that the lightning would be drawn to the taller trees and that the metal frame of the truck would direct any hits around rather than through them.

The next flash was even closer and Jasper twitched again, but this time he saw something―a low, squat structure fifty or so yards away. It was surprisingly close, but in the half-light of the storm it was the same color as the rest of the forest, and the trees and thick torrents of rain kept him from seeing much beyond the end of the hood.

Slowly and carefully, unwilling to hurry despite the pressing danger of the storm, Jasper eased the truck forward, turned it off the path where it passed the building, and brought it to a stop as close to the lone door as he could get. Half-rotted wooden poles kept the truck several feet away and the awning over the door had long since blown away, leaving only the stubs of a metal frame attached to the stout wooden wall above the door.

“We’ll have to run for it,” he said, eyeing the distance between the truck and the door and wondering if there was time to unload anything from the back and get inside between the increasingly frequent flashes of lightning. Two flashes in quick succession nixed that idea and he pulled the truck forward a little more, aligning the passenger door with the entrance to the building. “Do you want to wait for me to get inside?” The building could be locked up, or inhabited, though the empty parking lot and remote location made that theory unlikely.

No. Let’s go.
With a tug on Jasper’s wrist, Tobias slipped from the truck, slammed the door, and dashed across the open space before Jasper even got the key out of the ignition. By the time Jasper reached the building, Tobias had gotten the door open and was inside, hovering just at the edge of the dim light cast by the open door.

“Is there―” Jasper started, but stopped when he realized Tobias wasn’t within touching distance and wasn’t likely to come any closer to the open door that Jasper couldn’t close until he’d located another source of light. He diverted his eyes to the wall, searching for a light switch, running his hand up and down the wall close to the door, and cursing when the only switch he found did nothing. Either the electricity was off or the bulbs were burnt out, and it would take further exploration to determine which. For that, they needed light.

“I’m going to grab a flashlight,” he said, turning back toward the truck, already mentally counting the time since the last lightning strike. One flashed, the rumble of thunder so close as to be almost simultaneous, and Jasper stepped out, confident he could get in the truck before the next one hit.

No!

The word sent sharp pain through Jasper’s head and he stopped, his knees buckling and his right hand flying to his forehead as his left gripped the door frame in a desperate attempt to stay upright. “Tobias,” he managed to grind out between clenched teeth, unsure what he was asking and half afraid he’d get an answer that would drive another spike into his skull.

A tentative touch on the small of his back eased the last fear and took away some of the pain.
Stay inside. Please.

Jasper didn’t have to turn to know that Tobias was blinking wide, worried eyes and chewing on his bottom lip, but he did anyway, returning Tobias’s nervous gaze with one as steady as he could manage through the throbbing in his skull, and attempting a reassuring smile that felt like it failed. “We need light. The switch doesn’t work and I―we―can’t just sit here in the dark.” It would be too much like that day in Crittendon, huddled in the cellar, the day that had convinced him that moving inland was a good idea and that he never wanted to see the coast again.

The irony of waiting out another storm in a dark, unfamiliar room while on his way to the other coast wasn’t lost on him.

Tobias swallowed, his eyes roaming Jasper’s face, flickering to the open door and cloud-filled sky. The thunder crashed again and Tobias jerked his hand and curled his fingers against Jasper’s hip before he took a deep breath, slowly straightened them, and rested his hand flat against Jasper’s side.
Hurry.

It was harder to gather his courage this time, and his hand shook as he fumbled for the key, wanting to have it ready before he stepped out into the cold, hard rain. He watched the sky carefully, ready to move as soon as the lightning flashed, but it was Tobias’s hand on his back that propelled him out the door, and instinct that kept his feet moving over the wet gravel until he reached the truck.

He struggled to get the key into the lock, adding new scratches to the already horribly damaged paint job. After several tries, the key slid in, the lock clicked, and lightning flashed in the sky, making Jasper jump as he pulled up on the handle. He’d never scrambled into the truck faster.

The flashlight was behind the seat, in his box of emergency supplies. The ones in the truck bed were bigger and better, but the storm was too fierce to risk standing out under the biting rain rummaging through the jumbled mess to find the lanterns or larger lights that he’d packed there. This was just a daytime storm, one that would end in an hour or two, and they’d be back on the road. Even if the electricity had long since been cut off in their shelter, they could manage an hour or two with the small light.

He reached down behind the seat and searched blindly, his eyes focused on the sky, the clouds, and the vision-obscuring rain that fell from them. Tobias was hovering, Jasper knew it, but when he looked back all he could see was a vague outline of the building, a darker shape behind the curtain of never-ending water.

The need to get back inside―back to Tobias, though he wouldn’t admit that to anyone―grew stronger, and Jasper’s fumbling became increasingly frantic. He was groping now for the handles that would let him lift the bag without dumping the contents so he could bring it back inside with him, or at the very least dig with it in his lap where he could see what he was doing. His fist closed around the slick handles, and he yanked upward, barely taking enough care to make sure the bag didn’t spin or catch on the back of the seat and dump everything out through its open zipper.

The flashlight was on top, right where he’d thought it would be, and he grabbed it, leaving the bag open on the seat as he turned to the door and again began to watch the sky, gauging the lightning flashes and gathering his courage for the dash back to the building. Two small flashes were followed by a large one and Jasper pushed open the door, then slammed it behind him without bothering with the lock in his haste to cross the wet gravel between the truck and the building.

He was almost there, close enough to see Tobias hovering just inside the building, when the sky flashed, the crack so loud and immediate that Jasper froze, his muscles locking in terror as his brain realized that the storm was there, the lightning truly on top of them, and that right between the metal truck and the metal remains of the awning, he was in danger.