Final Draft Fall 2012: Deathsatwist

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Deathsatwist

He’d been dreaming of the man who had swerved into his lane last month. How killing Susie wasn’t enough for the bastard. How leaving Steve and everyone he loved alive kept some sort of pattern incomplete. Steve couldn’t do anything to help his girlfriend- it had taken less than a week for the doctors to determine that she would never wake from her coma, and Steve was still in bandages at her funeral. But now the face behind those weaving headlights had returned for his little brother. Steve had gone to Jamie’s room with the gun his parents didn’t know he kept under his pillow. A figure had been walking from the bathroom towards the bed. It turned at the sound of the door opening, and some of the water sloshed out of the glass in its hand. A fearful voice had said, “Steve?”

Steve woke to the sound of gunfire and a jolt running down his arm.

Steve’s eyes snapped into focus to see the glass shatter and Jamie tumble back against his Batman-decorated dresser and slump to the floor with a dark stain forming on his chest and a face full of surprise and pain. He was ten.

Steve dropped the gun. He heard the sounds of other people awake in the apartment. His parents. How could he face them? What would happen to him? He couldn’t look at what was left of his brother. He couldn’t do anything but run.

Jamie’s window opened out onto a fire escape. It felt shaky under Steve’s feet, or perhaps it was just tears making his world spin. He managed his way down four flights before the fire escape ended in a fifteen-foot drop. Steve couldn’t get the last section of ladder to lower, so he took a deep breath and jumped. The ground approached like a speeding car and Steve landed with a graceless jolt. Numbness in his left ankle gave way to a sharp, bone-deep ache, and Steve bit his lip until it bled to keep from screaming as he hobbled away. There was the sound of his parents wailing from Jamie’s room five floors up, and the taste of blood in his mouth. His blood; Jamie’s blood.

Steve managed his way to a stoplight near the freeway a block from his building, and climbed into one of the huge concrete pipe sections on a semi’s flatbed trailer while the driver stared ahead. After tying the loose end of a cargo strap around his boyishly skinny waist, Steve sat with his head in his hands.

He’d failed. He’d lost. The man in the car had gotten Jamie after all, and he’d used Steve to do it. That had to be it. Were his parents safe? Steve snapped out of his stupor when the semi started moving; he’d pulled two clumps of brown hair clean from his scalp. He shook the strands away and looked at the hand that had fired the gun. It seemed to be heavier than the other as if he were still holding it. Steve wanted it gone. He wanted to cut it off and throw it into a ditch from the highway. But there wasn’t a knife to be found. There was only Steve with a pair of green plaid pajama pants and a stray end of cargo strap around his waist. He didn’t even have shoes. Or his wallet. Or a shirt. The wind picked up as the semi gathered speed and Steve began to shiver.

He slept fitfully, waking often to the cold wind and the throbbing in his ankle, which had swollen to more than twice its usual size. His home on the edge of the Twin Cities faded into the distance, and the tree-studded hills quickly gave way to the rolling, grassy sea that is the Great Plains. It was only an hour or so before the first windmills loomed in the dark on either side of the road. Steve had always thought their silently spinning blades looked like the makings of a guillotine assembly line, and now he couldn’t help imagining what it would be like to be next in line after hearing hundreds of other guilty souls’ last exclamations of fear and pain.

The sky turned to a deep, predawn glow, and a sign informed Steve that he had crossed from his home state of Minnesota to Iowa. He was on the run; a month ago, he never would have believed it possible. He was on the run, and he had nothing. Steve was still trying to piece his situation together when he fell into the first sleep that was deep enough to go undisturbed by bumps in the road.

“Oi!”

Steve opened his eyes to see the truck driver towering over him. He was over 200 pounds with the hair he had left shaven to dark stubble. Hard gray eyes looked out from a pockmarked face. His nose looked like it had met a few fists over the years, and he had a scar running from one corner of his mouth to his jaw line. He was wearing faded jeans, a thin sleeveless shirt, and brown utility boots that looked like they were a decade old. The man’s bare arms and the visible parts of his chest and shoulders sported a number of tattoos.

“U-um…” Steve stammered. He was not cut out for being on the run. But was anyone really?

“I said out. I drive cargo for pay. I don’t drive the homeless for nothin’.”

“Homeless?”

“What’re you one of them special folks that’s parents don’t love you? I’m not yo momma either, so get off ‘a my truck.”

Steve said nothing as he scrambled to undo the cargo strap around his waist and lowered himself gingerly to the ground. The driver watched Steve’s limping gait with narrowed eyes for several seconds. “Awwww… The look on your face!” The tattooed truck driver was suddenly laughing hysterically.

Steve tried to hobble a little faster.

“I was just kiddin’ with ya. Get in the cab, kid.”

Steve turned. Was this guy crazy?

The truck’s passenger side door opened and a boy around Jamie’s age started to climb out. He pointed at Steve and said, “Daddy, why isn’t he wearing a shirt?”

“Is that how we introduce ourselves to people, Connor?” the huge truck driver scolded.

“No. Why do I need to say ‘how are you’ if he can’t walk? I already know he’s hurt!”

“’Cause it’s proper, boy.”

“You’re never proper.” Connor crossed his bony arms.

“Oi! Now what do we say when we meet strangers?”

The boy turned to Steve and said, “I’m Connor. What’s your name?”

“Steve,” he blinked. What on earth was going on here?

The truck driver stepped forward and held out a massive hand. “Nice to meet you, Steve. The name’s Zane, and that bathroom there’s not so bad for Iowa. Go use it so we can hit the road.”

The semi’s cabin was a bit cramped with three people, but it beat riding in the back. Steve quickly got used to the smell of old cigarette butts and did his best to ignore the old soda stickiness of the gray carpet floor. The old shirt Zane gave him fit like a dress, but it wasn’t as bad as not having one at all. Steve couldn’t help but wonder whether he deserved the kindness at all. His head seemed to be spinning around the same questions on a loop. What about his parents? Would they still be in danger with him gone? Were they worried about him or just crushed to lose Jamie? Should he call? What would he say if he did? What about Zane and Connor? Were they safe with him?

“Where ya headed, Steve?” Zane asked.

He jumped a little at the suddenness of the question. Where was he going anyway? Steve had studied maps with Susie, fantasizing about the trips they’d take together in the summer between high school and college. Next summer. Remembering where he’d end up if he continued on this route, Steve found himself replying, “Texas.” Even if he hadn’t really considered where he was going before, and decided that he might as well pick something specific so he didn’t travel in circles.

“Texas, huh? Ya got a long way to go. We’re headed to Albuquerque, so I can get ya as far as Oklahoma City unless you’re wantin’ the panhandle. Ya need that foot of yours looked at, Steve?”

“It’ll be fine,” he lied. “Oklahoma City would be great, thanks. So why do you take your son on the road if you don’t mind my asking?”

“His momma’s locked up for dealin’ crack and the road pays better than what I’d get in the city. Got him some books to learn up though. He’ll do better than me in the end.”

 “Oh.” Steve talked as little as he could for the rest of the drive south. Memories flooded back to him. Susie’s smile. Jamie’s laugh. The first time he kissed Susie while they were studying together for a chemistry test. The time when he and Jamie had laughed the whole way home after getting both of their kites stuck in the same tree. A car crash and a gunshot.

He distracted himself by watching the country change around him. Iowa was a monotonous set of vegetable fields and wind farms. Sometimes, there were even wind turbines in the same fields as the corn and wheat. The corner of Missouri that the highway passed through was largely the same. Steve was fascinated to see the state border in the middle of Kansas City, and readied himself for the pancake-flat sea of green that he’d heard the main feature of the state. But he learned that he and Susie hadn’t studied the map as well as he thought; I35 goes straight through the Flint Hills, which was the prettiest part of the whole drive. The road wound between, and occasionally had been blasted straight through, green hills that ranged from the subtle bulges of ocean swells to tall, irregular monstrosities that suddenly end with sheer cliffs. There were views down the lengths of small valleys that disappeared as soon as they showed themselves at highway speed. Ponds flicked in and out of view and there seemed to be cattle milling about everywhere. Steve was sorry when they passed the sign that heralded a change of scenery from that beauty to what would soon be the flattish, shrub-studded wasteland of rusty red dirt that is Oklahoma.

Zane’s voice woke Steve from a troubled doze. “I think I’m gonna be a little behind schedule, Mr. Reynolds. Been makin’ great time but there’s a tornado warning and I gotta hunker down.” There was a pause. “Did you hear what I’m sayin’? I can’t drive this truck in a tornado.” Another pause. “Yes.” Another. “No.” And another. “A’ight, Mr. Reynolds.” And he hung up.

Connor yawned. “Mr. Reynolds wants us to drive, doesn’t he?”

Zane frowned. “Yep. He’ll be sorry one day.”

Steve looked out the window. The sun had vanished while he slept and rain was fighting a losing battle with the truck’s windshield wipers. The sky was an eerie shade of green and wind made the scrawny shrubs outside look like starved old men clinging to a horizontal cliff face.

Steve started to feel nauseous. “He’s still following me. Oh god, he’s still following me…”

“What’s that?” Zane said.

Steve hugged his knees to his chest, ignoring the jolt of agony in his ankle. “He got Susie and Jamie. Probably my parents too, and now he’s coming for me.”

Zane looked in the side mirror. “There’s nobody else on this highway. We’re the only ones crazy enough to be drivin’ in this weather. Who’s after you, kid?”

“I don’t… I can’t…”

Connor interrupted. “Daddy, why’s the sky green?”

“I don’t know. It does that when it’s gettin’ ready to make a tornado.”

“Oh. Were Susie and Jamie killed by a tornado?”

“Don’t ask like that, Connor,” Zane said. “It’s too personal. Now Steve, you said someone’s followin’ you. Who is it? Now I’m fine givin’ ya a lift, kid, but I can’t have trouble trailin’ me.”

Steve’s eyes filled with tears and a roar filled his ears.

Zane checked the side mirror again. “Aww shit. Well boys, buckle up and hold on tight. We got a twister behind us.” He pushed the accelerator pedal all the way down. The engine roared as it gathered speed.

The speedometer passed 75.

Then 80.

Then 85.

Then 90.

The needle held at 97 miles per hour, and the roaring wind still got louder. Steve closed his eyes to block out the unnaturally green sky. He missed his parents. He missed his brother. He missed his girlfriend. All alone with strangers running from a tornado, he couldn’t help but wonder why he’d bothered to run at all.