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

could do, they once again climbed back on their bikes and continued on the path they’d chosen. There was now evidence of people as they went past. Some of it was evidence of life, and some seemed to indicate the original bearer might be dead.

They found more than one shoe—and though shoes could come from closets, it was entirely possible they came from feet. There was an entirely untouched-looking lunch pack with now-spoiled meat and cheese slices. Broken glass, and parts of houses, and eventually several parts of cars littered the ground.

There were also tracks through the grass, much like the one he could see trailing him and Dev.

Someone had come through here after the tornado. Otherwise, the grass would have been whipped into some other shape by the passing storm, not staying in its uniformly bent position, revealing the track.

In fact, as they moved, they found a point where the grass told them they were crossing the path of whomever had made it before.

“It’s a person,” Cage said, hopeful that it had been Joule.

“Or a mountain lion,” Dev answered quickly, though Cage wondered if they even had those here, and would they disturb the grass this way?

As they crossed the trampled path, Cage turned turn his head to the left to see a wavy path through the grass. The person—if he was reading it correctly—came up on his left, crossed where they were stopped and headed off to the right, directly toward the path of the tornado.

But something else caught Dev’s eye. “There!”

Cage didn’t see it.

“The grass is all patted down. Let's go look.”

With nothing better to do and the day waning on with still no sign of his sister, Cage was willing to follow Dev’s lead.

Sure enough, the grass had been bent in a path leading directly toward this spot and then away from it. In the matted down area, twigs and scraps of wood had been moved—clearly by a human hand—to form a sign.

57

“Come on Dev,” Cage called back without looking. He stood up, using his weight against the pedals and bent over at the waist.

He was pretty certain that he was leaning too far forward and likely had not adjusted this mountain bike correctly. His muscles protested with every push. But even so, he continued moving.

“It’s far too late in the day to begin a search like this.” Dev’s voice came from somewhere behind him.

But Cage didn't know how long the search would be and so he just had to keep going. “We have time.”

“We can't do this.” Dev was speaking for the devil on Cage’s shoulder—the one who told him it should wait until tomorrow, that he was hurting himself by pushing so hard.

“It's Joule,” was all that Cage replied. He had to follow the arrow. The JM that had been scratched lightly to the surface was clear, once he’d looked. She’d even added a few extra pieces at the tip of the arrow tail—a sign their father had taught them meant it was her, not just an arrow anyone could have laid out.

Though the sign made it clear that it was her, and even told them the direction to aim to follow her, the biggest win was that his sister had survived. That alone was enough to keep him going.

“We don't know how far she went,” Dev said.

“Exactly. What if she’s right over that hill and we turn around? We won't find out if we don't follow the trail.”

“We don't even know if this is her.”

Cage stopped his bike, turned, and looked back at his friend, who apparently had stopped a little ways back and he hadn't realized. “One, I know it's her. And two, she carved the initials JM into the tail of the arrow.”

Dev was shaking his head, almost as if Cage were being stupid. “No, I know the arrow is her, but we don’t know about this path we’re following. We don't have any tracking skills. We've come a good distance from the sign, and we don't have any idea what we’re following at this point. What if this path—” he motioned to the bent grass behind them, “isn’t your sister’s?”

“It is. We do know.”

“How?” Dev looked incredulous. With his feet on either side of the bike, he now put his hands on his hips as if in protest.

“If she changed direction, she would have left us another arrow. And there is a path here.”

“We don't know that it's her,” Dev repeated his protest a little more forcefully.

“Who else could it be?” Cage argued back, his hands raising as he gestured around. “There's one relatively rough path through the grass that leads here. It came directly from the arrow with her initials on it. It’s her.”

“Right,” Dev said. “We could kind of see a path in the grass, but now we're heading in the woods, and we've got nothing.”

“So we keep going straight until we find the next arrow!” It all seemed so damn logical to Cage.

But Dev didn't budge. Cage just stared right back at him for a while in a ridiculously stupid grudge match that he was not willing to lose. He had a brief thought that they'd already left Sarah behind and she was okay. He could leave Deveron behind, too, if he had to.

But it wouldn’t be a good move. Finally, he said the only thing he could say, “It's my sister. She's alive. And we're following her tracks.”

But before he budged, Dev looked at Cage and replied, equally logically, “It's daylight, but not for that much longer. We work until dark and then we come back tomorrow.”

“But—”

Dev shook his head. Maybe it was because he didn't have any siblings. Maybe being an only child made him simply not understand. Dev was applying logic as well, but the kind you applied if you were on a rescue team looking for a child whose picture you’d seen but you’d never met. Cage needed the kind of logic that kept you on the trail for your only