Drifting

Chapter 2

Chapter 2
"Wait, what?" Lara wheezed, trying to get her breath back.
Her neighbor didn't answer, just glanced frantically around the apartment, his eyes darting erratically like a startled bird's. With awkward, jerky movements, he tore a pair of boots from a nearby closet and shoved them on over his stocking feet. He ran his hands through his wild hair and pulled it a moment, and then grabbed his keys from the drawing table and his phone from the desk with the computer, shoving them in his jeans pockets.
"What do you mean? What's going on? What happened to you?" Lara followed his every step, trying to force him to look her in the face. "Hey, stop a second, okay? Just stop -- something happened to you. I think you had a seizure. You need to go to the hospital. Or wait, does this happen a lot? Do you have medication?"
He threw the doors to his sleeping area open and whipped a thin leather motorcycle jacket up from a chair that clearly doubled as a laundry hamper. Shrugging it on, he made for the door.
"Stop!" Lara ordered. With all the grace of her birdlike figure, she snaked under his arm and slipped between him and the doorframe, winging her arms to block his escape.
"Get out of the way, Lara."
How did he know her name? She hadn't told him. Her mailbox said L. Waterson. The question skimmed over her brain but never made it to her lips. There were more pressing matters. "What's the matter with your sister?" she asked. "You were babbling in there about your sister."
He huffed a vicious exhalation and put his hands on her to push her out of the way. She resisted, and they tussled for a moment. Lara was all wiry strength, even if he did tower over her. "Stop it!" she tried again. "You can't just go running out there! It's a blizzard for God's sake. Tell me what's the matter!"
His hand brushed the exposed flesh of her collarbone, and something happened. Even though his fingers were only there a brief moment as they struggled, the touch seemed to calm him. A shuttering breath wracked his body and his hunched shoulders relaxed, sagging down. He scrabbled for her hand, and she let him take it, watching with wide, incredulous eyes as his breathing returned to normal.
As if waking from a daydream, he shook himself and took one final deep breath, releasing her hand. "I have to go. Christine needs me. Someone just attacked her."
"How do you know that?" Lara demanded, keeping her body between him and the hallway, though the close proximity of the swords made her nervous.
"I just know, okay?"
"No, not okay." Now her voice was shrill as the strangeness of the whole situation came tumbling down on her. Why hadn't she stayed home? "Not okay. You didn't get a call or a text or anything. You had a seizure, and now you're sure something's wrong with your sister."
"I can't explain it to you. There's no time. I just, I have to get to her apartment, okay? That's where they were. I can't..." He pressed the heels of his long-fingered hands into his eyes. "I can't see her anymore. He must have knocked her out. But if I hurry-"
"How far away is her apartment?" she asked.
"A few miles. Glenwood Ave," he replied.
"A few miles? Listen, public transport isn't running, and the cops said they'd arrest anyone out driving," she said, "so how did you plan on getting there? Walking?"
He nodded, moistening his lips. "I don't have a choice. I have to get there now."
"Okay, none of this makes sense." Her brain raged against it. "I still don't understand-"
"You won't understand," he argued, "so there's no point in explaining. Just get out of the way."
"No. I'm not letting you rush off like this. You're going to get hurt. I won't be responsible for that, okay?"
"I don't want to hurt you, I really don't." He put a shaking hand on the door frame. "But if you don't move I'm going to have to kick you or something."
"Don't be an idiot!" Lara shouted in his face. "Look, okay, fine, we'll go to her place. But can we at least get you in a decent coat? We should take some water or something, it's going to be a long walk. I think I have some of those hand-warmer thingies, too."
"There isn't time-"
"Stop. Close your eyes."
He pushed his brow down at her. "What?"
"Just do it."
"Close my-"
"Just do it, damn it!"
He dropped his arms to his sides, and closed his eyes.
"Now breathe in. Imagine there's a string coming off the top of your head, pulling you into perfect posture. Drop your shoulders." She repeated the mantra of her yoga teaching by heart, her voice affecting the soothing tones that she used to flood the studio with peaceful vibrations. "Imagine your stomach is a balloon and when you breathe, the balloon expands. Breathe in, in, in, hold... out, out, out. Now again."
She made him inhale and exhale three times. "Okay," she said.
He opened his eyes. "Okay," he said.
"Come upstairs," Lara suggested. "I'll get ready, feed the cat, then we'll stop back here for your things."
"Wait, are you-"
"Going with you? Yes. Go get the tuna. I dropped it by the chair." Lara turned and headed for the stairs. "Go on," she repeated.
Her neighbor complied, retrieving the tuna cans, and followed her, spots of color still high on his cheeks, but his breathing returning to normal. "I'm, uh..." The stairs squeaked in the silence.
"It's okay," she said as they reached the top floor. "It's going to be all right, I promise." She let him into her apartment, closing the door after him.
In a few minutes, Lara had put on tights underneath her jeans, and a pair of thicker athletic pants over everything. She had a lovely, warm parka with a fur-lined hood, and she pulled a knit cap over her braided hair as well, widing a scarf around her neck. Into her backpack went water, flashlights, her small purse, phone, charger and some Cliff bars just in case. Jasper was fed two cans of tuna and seemed quite satisfied. Lara locked up, and she and her neighbor, who had watched her pack in tense silence, returned to his unit.
"Is that all you have?" she asked, raising a dark eyebrow high over her disbelieving gray eye. There was a right way to do something like this, a correct and useful reaction, and he was oblivious.
Her neighbor paused where he was zipping up the hoodie he planned to wear underneath the moto jacket. "Huh?"
"None of that is going to be warm enough. Don't you have a real coat?"
He glanced through the closet. "Not really," he answered. "I, uh, I don't get out much."
Lara rubbed her chin in thought, and then brightened. "Mr. Norris keeps coveralls in the utility room. I think they're Carharts. You guys are about the same size. Okay, aside from the pot belly."
"I don't have a-"
"His pot belly," Lara corrected herself, hoping the little joke would ease her companion.
     It didn't. He pressed out into the hall and went to the cupboard under the stairs, where he jiggled the handle. "It's locked."
"Hold on, I'll call Mr. Norris. Maybe there's a key-"
Crack! The turn-of-the-century closet door shuttered and swung open, the latch disemboweled and hanging mournfully from the frame. Her neighbor tossed the useless porcelain doorknob on the carpet and pulled the tan Carharts down from their hook near the industrial vacuum Mr. Norris used on the common areas.
"Oh my God, you just-"
"Look, we really don't have time. We've wasted enough as it is. She's in trouble. Now let's go," he barked. "What you're not understanding is that this is an emergency."
"Okay, okay, we're going." Lara followed closely at his heels as he charged down the hall, throwing open the door to the outside. Last chance to turn back, she thought, wistfully picturing her orderly apartment, wishing for solitude and tea and books.
Too late. They were instantly buffeted with a powerful wind that pelted them with large wet snowflakes. The outside door blew back and slammed into the hallway wall, making a mark in the plaster. Lara shouldered the backpack, pulled up her hood with gloved hands, and plunged out into the arctic fray, sliding a bit as she trudged down the snow-encrusted stoop. Her neighbor slammed the door shut behind them, and they waded down into the knee-deep snow that drifted along the sidewalk. The rows of apartment buildings and town houses that lined their street were plastered in white, and the familiar benches, bike racks, mail drops and newspaper stands were undefined lumps of whiteness. The street lights glittered pathetically above, caked with snow, and the driving flakes worked to obscure any light coming from windows around them. It was cold and dim and white.
Somewhere in the distance, the thunder and lightning came again.
Her neighbor pointed up the street, and they set off in that direction toward Applegate Square, a collection of shops and restaurants centered around a pedestrian mall. At least, that was where Lara thought they were headed. She'd lived here for two years, but hadn't done much exploring around her own neighborhood.
The streets were completely deserted, except for one man in a caution-yellow coat who was skiing down the street sans poles, his hands clasped behind his back. He waved as he passed. Lara raised a hand in return, but dropped it immediately to catch her neighbor, who tripped over his feet or a sidewalk crack, stumbling forward in the snow.
"Are you okay?" She had to press her vocal cords to be heard over the winds.
"Fine," he replied.
"It's probably safer if we..." She linked her arm through his with a grimace of awkward reluctance. "In case one of us slips." They were half-walking, half-jogging through the knee-high snow, higher in some places as the wind drifted the mushy white mass, making their neighborhood as unrecognizable as the surface of the moon.
They went on this way for some time, not talking, just sucking in ragged breaths of freezing air as they pushed to cover city blocks. After a time, her neighbor pulled them to a stop outside a darkened Starbucks. They huddled under the awning out of the wind for the moment. Lara's neighbor leaned over, putting Mr. Norris's thick wool gloves on his knees and puffing. Lara wasn't winded, and her body was responding well, as it always did -- her blood hummed pleasantly beneath her skin as her muscles warmed. "I'm sorry," he huffed. "Shit, I'm out of shape."
"It's okay," she said. "Here." She unzipped her backpack and handed him a bottle of water.
He took a grateful gulp and passed it back to her. "Thanks. Thanks for..." He let it hang, but she knew what he meant.
"You're welcome. I couldn't just let you run off like that. Sorry if I was... pushy."
"No, no, I was being an idiot." He folded an errant black curl back underneath the knitted gray cap he wore. "I'm not the greatest in a crisis I guess." He took a breath. "Although, seriously, you don't have to come. Just give me the backpack. I'll pay you back later. This whole thing... if what I saw -- look, it could be dangerous."
"Good thing I packed the pepper spray," she said, unzipping a side pocket and withdrawing the can.
"My God, is that bear mace?" He took the can and examined it in the intermittent light that managed to sneak between snowflakes from the street lamps above.
"No, it's for people. It's just a really big can." She let slip a little smile. "Buy in bulk. It's economical."
"Might come in handy." He reached out to take the bag.
"Nuh-uh," she denied. "I'm coming with. What if you have another seizure? You can't be out here by yourself in your condition."
"It wasn't a seizure," he argued.
"Then what was it?"
"I told you, you won't believe me. Trust me, I've tried to tell people before, but they don't get it," he said.
"But it might happen again, right?" she asked.
"Yeah," he admitted.
"Well, then you shouldn't be alone." She sighed. "Believe me, there's nothing that sounds better right now than going home to my cat and my nice warm apartment, but I couldn't live with myself if I just let you go and you got hurt."
"You think I'm crazy or something," he muttered, wiping his lips after spitting in the snow. "That's fine. They all do."
"No," she evaded.
"Yes," he stated. "Well, fine. That's okay. Just be careful, all right? And if I tell you to run, run, okay? This could get sketchy. Hell, it already is."
"Okay, are we done with the disclaimer?" Lara crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm ready to go, are you?"
He nodded. "Uh, Jesse," he said just before they plunged back out into the wind.
"Huh?"
"My name's Jesse."
"I'm Lara," she said.
He raised a sardonic eyebrow at some kind of private joke. "I know."
They pressed up the block. Lara kept one arm threaded through Jesse's elbow, and used the other hand to hold her hood up, shielding part of her face. Her sensitive skin stung from the pelting snow and her eyes burned in the cold wind.
They paused again on the corner of what should have been a busy four-lane street, searching for traffic by default, though nothing stirred in the wintry landscape, the sky stained orange with artificial light and peppered with shadowy flakes. Suddenly, Lara's head snapped up. Red and blue lights washed over them as an ambulance rounded a corner and headed their way up the avenue. Well, at least EMS was doing their job.
Jesse's hand closed in a vise-like grip around her bicep. "Go!" He thundered in her ear, pushing her out toward the middle of the street.
"Wha-"
Just then, the ambulance whooped its siren. Its back wheels slipped and slid, struggling to find purchase in the snow. The world seemed to silence and slow, and Lara watched stupidly as the massive white vehicle began to fishtail. The sirens tore through the night as it barreled right for them, unable to stop. She braced herself for the impact that was sure to obliterate them both.