The Tempest by A.J. Scudiere (story read aloud .txt) 📗

When he finally stopped eating, he looked to Dev. “What do we do?”

His roommate only shrugged as he looked around the ravaged landscape. “I think we're stuck.”

Cage shook his head. He couldn't be stuck. He didn't know how to deal with being stuck. If something attacked him, he figured out how to fight it. In this case, though, nothing was actually attacking him. Nothing hunted him. He was fighting the vagaries of a weather system. And how could he fight something that didn’t think, didn’t need, didn’t hunt?

A fist-sized fluff of cotton drifted past his feet, darting in and out of the tree branches. He wondered if maybe the answer was to be smaller, not bigger.

“Bicycles,” he said to Dev.

“Interesting…” He could see his friend thinking it through. “Easier to maneuver, with everything blocking the road—and, if need be, we can lift them and carry them over things.”

“Where do we get good mountain bikes?”

“There’s a shop on Buffalo Street,” a voice said behind them.

Turning, Cage recognized the man only as having been down in the shelter with them. But that was enough. He said hello, introduced himself formally, and it took less than three minutes to strike a deal.

All hands were suddenly on the tree that was blocking Cage's car into the driveway. With everyone pushing at it, the heavy trunk yielded. For a while, they used brute force and slid it back, scraping the gravel with it. Then they wised up and managed to hack at some of the branches and roll it a little farther.

“I think that should do us,” the man, Carl, said as he looked back up to the house to wave to Butler. He called up, “Is it okay if we drive around on the grass?”

Butler just laughed back at him. Cage had gotten the impression that grass down here was not a precious commodity. And, with everything else that was going on in this yard, a few tire tracks on Butler's wet grass wasn't going to make a difference.

“Let's do it,” Dev said and he opened the car door for Carl's wife, Brandy, letting her slide into the front passenger seat.

Cage was ready to climb in when he remembered Boomer and Bob’s directive. He could still follow it. Looking up, he asked, “Does anyone else need a ride down to the road? We're heading south.”

It’s not the direction he wanted to go to find Joule, but it was the direction they needed to go next.

Another couple replied quickly that they could use a ride, and Cage wound up with four people crammed across his back seat. But he was grateful to be doing the work the brothers had tasked him with.

The driving was slow and arduous, maybe only a little faster than walking, given that they repeatedly got out to clear the road. Cage was once again glad that there were six of them as they pushed trees, branches, and debris away to make a path. Their numbers definitely made the work faster.

He dropped two of them off roadside about a mile down the road, when they insisted they could walk from there. And then Carl and Brandy made it another mile before getting out. Brandy held the door open, leaned down, and looked in at him. “You're going to go another mile on this road. And you're going to hit a little section of shops, like, just three of them.”

She emphasized how small the little strip was and motioned with her perfectly manicured nails. “But the last one is a sports shop. You wouldn't know it from the outside. But if you go in the back, there's bikes.”

“How do we get in?”

She looked at him, stood up, looked around, and bent back down to talk to him in the car. “I don't know for sure, but my guess is right now you can walk right through the front of the store.”

Seeing the damage on the road in front of him, Cage guessed Brandy might very well be right.

The couple thanked him again. But then she closed the door and she and Carl headed off to figure out what damage their own place had sustained.

It was growing dark by the time Cage and Dev reached the store. With Brady's directions, it was easy to find and identify. Sure enough, the baseball gloves, bats, and golfing equipment in the front window gave no indication of mountain bikes. But in a stroke of luck, the front windows were, in fact, shattered wide enough for them to easily climb through.

Along the back wall was a small selection of mountain bikes. They picked out two and grabbed tools for adjustment. Then they raided the store. Cage grabbed a basket and added a tire inflation kit, helmets, and lights. He headed to the other side of the store to look at the gloves. Finding a set he liked, he tossed a second pair to Dev.

“Dude,” Dev replied, instantly tossing them back. “I'm going to be hard pressed for my half of what we already have.”

“I've got it,” Cage told him.

Dev raised one eyebrow. “I thought you were making the same as me.”

“I am.” It was hard to say. Still, Deveron deserved a reasonable explanation. “Joule and I lost our parents just over five years ago. So we're making the same as you, but we have a bit of a stash from the life insurance. My parents would have wanted me to spend it finding Joule.”

Dev, always smart, didn't ask how or why his parents had died, but merely nodded and said, “That explains a lot about you and your sister.”

This time, when Cage tossed him the gloves, he grabbed them out of the air and added them to his own pile. It was easier to accept gifts in an emergency, and easier knowing that Cage was going to press Dev into service for finding Joule.

A few moments later, they had everything laid out on the countertop except the