Storm Warning

Train Station Recon

                    As expected, we were a solid 45 minutes early. But I was done sitting around waiting for things to happen. Getting out of the truck, I walk to the train station with its four walls still standing even as the outside degrades. It is not lost on me that Maddie and Derek are at my back in a badass, kickass triangle formation like you read in the books or see on the television. It is funny though… that this time, it is my story, my life, and my battle that is being waged.

                     Shaking my head, I walk forward and try the door. Locked. Go figure. The door stands tall and impenetrable with a thick metal chain that went unnoticed in the darkness weaving its way through the two small vertical door pulls with a padlock front and center. There is a bunch of debris around the abandoned train station, and the windows are boarded up. The train station stands tall as an icon of its time. The station is surrounded by a sea of broken bottles and old cigarette butts in various stages of smoked in a ring as if it were the ocean surrounding an island that has long lost its zeal. In a pile of discarded materials, I see a flash in my peripheral. I look in that direction as something metal glints from the passing headlights. Getting closer, I see a curved metal piece sticking out of the pile. Moving the other trash out of my way and praying I can get away from tonight without a damn tetanus shot, I find the holy grail… an old rusted crow bar. I grab ahold of the item and carry it with me as I search around the building. With a groan of frustration, I throw my head back in upset as I catch a window that is only slightly past eye level, but not something you would notice if you didn’t bother to look up. Note to Self: Don’t Die Because You Forgot to Look Up! I search around the building for something… anything that could support my 145 pounds.

                     About five minutes later, I find it… a wooden cargo box about three feet high. It was in a dumpster around back. I wasn’t planning to go look in the dumpster, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I laid the crow bar on the ground as I hauled myself into the dumpster. So, that was gross! But I got in, lowered the box to the ground to avoid splintering it, and nearly threw myself free of the stink.

                     Picking up the crow bar, I crouch to pick up the box, which was just a little too big for me to carry by myself. Keeping a hold on my crow bar, I drag the box back around to the side of the building where I spotted one of the windows. I place it directly underneath the window.

                     After a quick trip around the building, I found that this was one of maybe four windows for the entire building. I shake my head and use what little light I had to climb up onto the box. I squint my eyes and use what little I could see to determine my crow bar placement. I put the flat edge of the crow bar between the window and the board. With the window still slightly out of reach, my arms put as much pressure onto the crow bar as possible as my arms extend straight up. I don’t know how I did it, but I hear a c***k in the wood, giving me the hope to keep going. I keep pushing and pushing on the crow bar. I stand on my tippy toes as I fight for more leverage to push down on the crow bar when I lean too far to the right. My foot slips, and it is a free fall to the ground.

                     I hear the box topple over onto its side as I hit the ground… hard. The crow bar fell off the left and as luck would have, I was protected from landing on it and puncturing something. My hip managed to break my fall, and I hissed in through my teeth. It felt like I decided to hit the concrete with the bone first, and technically, I did since there is no fat there to provide some sort of cushion. If it hurt like this while I raggedly breathe in and out through my teeth, I knew that was going to really hurt later. Derek and Maddie came running around the side of the building at the noise created from a falling crow bar and a toppling box.

                     I didn’t even notice that they had separated from me. As they see me on the ground, Derek slows down in shock as Maddie continues her run to me. Maddie yells, “ARI!!” She skids to a halt and kneels by my battered and bruised body. “What the hell happened?”

                     Derek finally reaches me and helps me up. He uses his phone’s flashlights to look at me for any cuts. When he shakes his head, he finally speaks up. “I don’t see any cuts, but your right hand is scraped from where you caught yourself. And there is a nasty bruise, starting to peek out from underneath your jeans.” I groan as I lift my shirt as assess the quick spreading of black and blue.

                     I pull my shirt down on a oner. As we look around, we realize that I was incredibly lucky. Other than the scrapes and bruises, there were no other injuries. And there could have been if I had fallen over to the left 3 inches. The glass shimmers in the dark as Derek’s flashlight skims the surface. I shake myself and, finally, answer Maddie. “I was trying to use a crow bar to separate the wood from the window. My thought was if we couldn’t go through the front door, then maybe we could go through a window. But it was just a little out of my reach.”

                     Maddie nods. “I tried to do the same thing on the other side of the building. But with wood.” Interesting, I was so focused on my mission. I never even noticed them. Note to Self: Always Be Aware of Your Surroundings. “I have so many splinters.” She holds up her hands, palms up, to show at least ten small black lengths under the skin of her right hand, and approximately, the same from her left.” I grimace in sympathy as I mentally gag as she used her manicured nails to roughly push them out. “Where are tweezers when we need them?”

                     “I found a door around back. I tried to break it down with my shoulder and a lot of force.” We both snap our heads in his direction. “Yeah. That didn’t go well.” I close my eyes and shake my head. So much for being badasses.

                     “So, out of the three of us, none of us managed to have a good plan.”

                     “They were good plans… just poorly executed.” Maddie swings around to point at Derek. “Except maybe his.” Derek jerks and puts his hands up as if to say what. “You went into it with the intention of causing yourself pain. Think smarter, not harder.” Derek nods dutifully but was cracking a smile the entire time. 

                     Almost immediately after, headlights swing widely across the alley as if someone pulled in to the parking lot. We, instinctually, put our backs as close to the wall as possible so that whoever it was could not spot us. We hear a voice exclaim in a hushed stage whisper, “Maddie!” Maddie inches to the corner of the building, and without warming, she jumps out from behind the wall. He yells at a barely contained volume before quickly quieting himself. “JESUS! Don’t do that!”

                     Maddie whispers back. “Sorry!” Derek and I look at each other before we join Maddie. The guy gasps as he sees me walk out. “Guys, this is Chance. He was a friend of Sarah’s.”

                     I couldn’t help myself. “Why didn’t she tell me about you? AND why now that she is dead, did you want to see me?”

                     He looks at me and jerks his head to the chained doors. “Let’s go inside.” Pulling out a key, he unlocks the padlock. I look at Derek as he huffs and rubs his right shoulder. Shaking my head and fighting a smile, I follow Chance into the building with Maddie and Derek close behind. Think about it. We could all have avoided injuries if we just waited for him to open the damn door.

                     Chance goes to the middle of the empty but dusty floor all the while knocking down spider webs that were all currently missing their hosts. Shivering, I walk faster until I, to, am in the middle of the floor. “I know you are probably wondering why I brought you here…”

                     “Well, DUH! I asked you why outside.”

                     Maddie elbows me in the ribs as she whispers, “Be nice!”

                     “Right. Well, before I tell you that, I need you to know that I loved Sarah. Still do. Therefore, I will do anything to protect you. We were friends … Sarah and I … for a long time. We dated briefly when you were too young to understand. About a year after I first met here, I found her arguing with a man in front of the train station. It got heated, and when she saw me, she left the man standing there seething in order to come in and see me. She broke up with me then and there. She said her past made it dangerous to be with me. With anyone else, I would have thought she was just trying to get rid of me. But not her. She was terrified, and it broke her heart to have to end our romantic relationship. At least, that is what I told myself, but I refused to give on her. We remained friends, and we definitely let our judgment lapse from time to time.” I didn’t say anything because what was there to say? So, I stayed silent and battled my grief as I listen to him recount his love for Sarah. I never called Sarah ‘mom’ when she was alive, but that is what she was. She was my mom. If I had known, I would have told her that I felt like she was my mom. But I guess that was the point, you never really had the time you needed to say everything you needed to say. She used to tell me she didn’t deserve to be called mom. Given everything that’s happened and the past, I guess I could see how she felt she didn’t deserve it, but she protected me when she, literally, had no reason to, and she did it at the expense of her own life. “Anyway, I worked at both train stations during that time I met her. I worked this one during the day, and I worked at that one at night. I didn’t like all the free time I had; so, I filled it. I never liked to sit around and hang out until I found someone worth just sitting around with… Sarah. I could do nothing with her for the rest of my life.” Even across the way, I could see the tears in his eyes and could hear the lump in his throat as he talked. “Since…” Chance clears his throat as he gathers himself. “Since I was working at both train stations, I knew they were shutting this one down and remodeling the other one. That’s how I knew they were getting rid of the lockers. Barely anyone used them; so, it wasn’t financially feasible to continue to have them there. I called Sarah immediately. She came and grabbed her bag from the locker. She looked upset. She didn’t know where to hide it. I was confused. Why did she need to hide it? I took her back to my house. She showed me what was in the bag… TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. I joked about her stealing from the back. She didn’t laugh. She said she took the money from something… someone even worst. That was when she told me that the things that she did in her past will come back for her and that the person she crossed wouldn’t hesitate to kill her when it did. The man from before was warning her to keeping moving. But she wanted you to have a life. So, she stayed, but she made me promise her something. I promised to get this money to you if anything ever happened to her, which I learned about earlier today. She said that the people hunting her were also hunting you and that this money is how you would get away. She told me to tell you to leave the moment you get this bag. I don’t know who you are running from, but if they found her, they are really f*****g close to find you. You need to leave and never come back. I hid it in my crawl space for a year. By then, this station was empty for ten months, and the remodel of the other one was finished.”

                     He walks behind a bunch of fallen storage shelves, threw some aside, and pulled out a simple black bag covered in dust. “I was hired to watch this place at night, which is why I had access to the key for the padlock. Every night I came, I moved the bag to a different location.” He walks the bag over to me and holds it out from his body. I slowly wrap my hand around the handle as he took his hand back. My arm drops suddenly from the unexpected weight of the bag. I opened my mouth to say thank you but he cuts me off. “Don’t say thank you. Just go!” I stare at him as he yells. “GO!” Derek, Maddie, and I trip over ourselves to get back to the truck quickly. But I still heard his words float through the air. “Stay Alive. Live for Sarah.” The tears stream down my face as we race out the door and all but jump into the truck.

                     If it wasn’t so serious, it would have been funny that Maddie jumped in first with me jumping seconds after she did, resulting in me landing on top of her in a sprawl across the seats. Derek was already in the drivers’ seat. As he started the truck, we righted ourselves and sped off.

                     It was ten minutes later before we had managed to calm our beating hearts.