K. Weiland - Storming

Footsteps crunched nearer. Then more footsteps, running in from far away. Voices shouted, hazy and wordless. Something that sounded a whole lot like a gunshot crashed through his head, and the pain pounded its way back through the darkness.

Warm, callused hands cradled his face. Jael’s voice—muttering about cheloveks again—drifted in.

His body remained unresponsive, but he managed to crack open an eyelid.

She huffed and closed her eyes. “_O Bozhe._”

“What happened?” His arm was working again now, so he pushed himself up. Instantly, pain spun around in his head. He flopped back down, head on her knees. That was much better anyway.

“We chased them all away,” she said.

“Damage?”

She hesitated. “Earl and I—we saved your Jenny.”

“And?”

Another hesitation. “That is all.” She lowered her face a little closer to his. “Hitch, listen. If we give him yakor_—if _I give him _yakor_—he will go away from here.”

Since when had she started caring more about saving the town than stopping Zlo?

“I am knowing he will,” she said. “We have to find it. It is only way left.”

Hitch might be dizzy and hurting, but he wasn’t that far out of it. Throwing Jael at Zlo’s mercy and then turning Zlo loose sounded like the worst idea yet.

He found her hand and gripped it. “Not happening.” The words croaked a little.

He closed his eyes again and blocked out the murmuring and shouting of the gathering crowd. For just the moment, he let himself wish he and Jael were far away, some place where no one knew where they were—not Griff or Nan or Campbell, and definitely not Zlo.

It was a fruitless wish and he knew it. No way he was letting her sacrifice herself, no matter how stubborn she decided to be. But there was also no way, this time, that he could run away—which meant he could hardly take her away either, even if she’d go.

WALTER WAS AS far from home as he’d ever been by himself. At least, not without somebody knowing where he was.

He stood in the prairie meadow between town and the Bluff. The tall grass tussocks had turned golden brown at the top with their prickly loads of seeds. They swayed and swirled in the wind, like a sea of green soda pop with golden fizz on top.

Somebody had to find Schturming before anybody else got hurt, and it didn’t appear anybody besides him had thought to look out here. He clenched the binoculars Hitch had given him and looked ahead at the tan-colored spine of five dusty bluffs jutting maybe a thousand feet out of the flat ground.

His heart beat harder inside of him, and he looked over to where Taos was busy sniffing at a gopher hole. Walter slapped his leg like Hitch always did.

The dog looked around, pink tongue lolling, and trotted to Walter’s side. Taos had stayed under the porch all night. Mama Nan hadn’t known about it, and Hitch must have forgotten about him after his fight with Deputy Griff.

Walter’s stomach tightened. At school, the big boys—and sometimes the little boys too—would fight. But never like that. Never like they hated each other so much they wanted to pound each other’s teeth out of their heads.

And the things they’d said…

Deputy Griff was one of the best men in town. Everybody knew that. Mama Nan was always wanting Walter to spend time with him—go fishing or ride in his car when he did his patrols—and Deputy Griff was always plenty nice to him.

But Deputy Griff hated Hitch.

And Hitch was Walter’s uncle . They were related. Kind of, anyway. If Hitch had been married to Aunt Aurelia, that would have made him Walter’s uncle, so that had to mean that being married to Aunt Celia—who nobody ever talked about—meant the same thing. If they were all related, it made even less sense why everybody was so mad at Hitch.

Walter frowned.

Maybe Hitch hated Deputy Griff too, but he hadn’t looked like it. There at the end, his eyes had grown big and almost shocked-like. He’d stopped the fight himself, even though he’d gotten hit in the face an extra time for it. And he’d said he was sorry for whatever it was exactly he’d done.

Nobody was on Hitch’s side. Except Jael.

And Walter. Walter was on his side.

When the family had all gone back into the house, after everybody else left, Mama Nan had huffed out the deepest breath ever. Then she buried her face in Aunt Aurelia’s sopping collar and flat-out bawled. Everybody, even Papa Byron, stood there and stared. Mama Nan never cried. She got mad and hollered and sometimes sat at the table with her hands covering up her face. But she never cried.

Even though Aunt Aurelia was the one who’d near drowned in the storm, she patted Mama Nan’s back and said, “There, there.”

Walter curled his fingers in Taos’s ruff, squared his shoulders, and started marching through the tall grass toward the Bluff. Deputy Griff had said this all was Hitch’s fault. Walter frowned harder. There wasn’t a lick of truth to that, of course. Nobody was fighting harder or was more brave than Hitch. Brave people didn’t do bad things. Brave people were heroes.

This morning, when Walter sneaked out of the kitchen, Papa Byron had banged in through the other door, into the sitting room, and told Mama Nan the sky people had come down last night and ruined most of the airplanes.

“God help us,” Mama Nan had said. “Have they found the airship yet?”

“No. It could be beyond the Bluff by now.”

That’s what had given Walter his idea. He had pulled open the kitchen door, nice and slow, so it wouldn’t screech, then slipped out. He slapped his leg to Taos and started down the road. He walked maybe a mile, and then that Miss Lilla friend of Hitch’s gave him a ride the rest of the way and dropped him off.

That’d been a good hour ago. If it hadn’t been for all the clouds, the sun would’ve been way up past the horizon by now.

He followed the old wagon wheel tracks, embedded so deep from the pioneer days that they still striped the hard ground. The air was mostly calm, the clouds socked in instead of rolling—except along the horizon where the steely curtains of rain closed in all around the valley. Every once in a bit, a raindrop would splat against his face, and he’d wipe it aside with the back of his hand.

He walked with the binoculars held up to his eyes. They were a little big for his head, so he pressed one lens against his eye and squinted around the corner of the other. He followed the trail down into a gully near the base of the Bluff. A raindrop hit the main lens in the middle and spread out to wobble his whole vision.

He stopped and turned the binoculars around to rub the spot off on his overalls’ bib. The material there, thick with his pocket, was too stiff to do the job, so he raised a knee and rubbed it there instead. That’d have to do. He’d forgot his handkerchief. Mama Nan was always telling him for goodness’ sake remember your hankie, someday you’ll need it. Guess that meant she was finally right.

At Walter’s side, Taos yipped in the back of his throat. He perked both ears, although the floppy one wouldn’t go all the way up. He was seeing something with his good dog eyes. But what?

Walter raised the binoculars and stood on his toes.

Only twenty feet away, nestled in the curve of the Bluff, plain as a coon in the corn, was the great ship hanging from its inflatable sail.

His heart scooted up his windpipe into his throat. He almost choked.

Breathe, keep breathing. Pretend to be brave. But the breath wouldn’t quite come. He threw himself onto the ground, behind a spiny yucca. Breathe! He gritted his teeth and sucked air through his nostrils. A lot of dust came with it and scraped in the back of his throat. He swallowed hard to keep from coughing and hoisted the binoculars back to his eyes.