THE FUGITIVE
Loomis found cover under a highway overpass when thunder pealed overhead and the downpour started, fearing a hailstorm was coming. Lightning flashed wildly, lighting the landscape strangely. He unrolled his sleeping bag in the sandy dirt, then flicked his lighter to check out the graffiti. Predictions of doom. Invocations to Trust Jesus. Wild scrawled genitalia and childish stick figures. Bums leaving each other messages, passing through from Alaska to Florida and beyond. Red anarchy symbols. Big grinning faces. Pictures of animals. All like prehistoric cave paintings. The sand was pockmarked with footprints and there was an old fire pit with blackened sticks in it. Beer cans. Condoms. Stray socks. He lay back and watched the storm, thankful that he hadn’t gotten too wet. He took out a can of beans, opened it, and spooned it right out of the can. Then he lay back again and looked out into the storm. He drifted, then dozed.
He heard a voice, coming closer, closer, then he was awake. Someone was under the overpass with him. He fumbled for his lighter and flicked it, throwing the abutment and the sand into a yellow light. A sunken-cheeked man with long, stringy, soaked black hair stood over him.
“You’ve got to hide me!” he shouted. “They’re after me!”
“Who?”
“The FBI!”
“What?”
“I’m innocent, I tell ya!” He was dressed in torn military fatigues, the standard issue uniform of mental patients dumped on the street by new government cost-cutting measures.
“For Christ’s sake, do something! They’re right on my tail!”
Loomis crawled crabwise backward out of his sleeping bag and out of the man’s reach. He had the gaunt, fishbelly white look of the opioid user.
“You’re safe here,” Loomis said, fumbling for his pocketknife.
“You don’t understand! They know how much I know!”
“Everything’s OK.”
The man froze in place, his clothes, hair and face dripping. His look suddenly changed from abject fear to one of stunned recognition.
“Wait a minute.”
He leaned down and flicked a lighter in front of Loomis’s face. He stared silently.
“Unbelievable.”
“What?”
“Shit.”
“What?”
“You’re him. Aren’t you? Him!”
“What are you talking about?'“
The gaunt man nodded.
“They said you’d come. Right when you were needed most. You’re Him!”
“Look buddy…I…uh…”
“It’s a miracle! The inscription was true! You will smite the beast! The letter shall be revealed!”
“No!”
The man spun like a dervish in joy.
“I must tell the people!”
“Look…”
“Yes! I must tell them all!” The specter leaped and hopped.
Loomis thought for a second.
“Yes,” he said. “You must spread the good news. Go ahead.”
The specter nodded enthusiastically.
“The last shall be first! The rapture is at hand! Hallelujah!”
He suddenly charged at Loomis, who put his fists up, then veered past him, straight into the wall of rain, disappearing not yards from the overpass. Lightning flashed but Loomis couldn’t see him anymore. Thunder cracked directly overhead.
After making sure the man wasn’t coming back, Loomis found his pocket knife and unfolded it. He climbed into his sleeping bag and leaned against his pack, which was propped against a pillar, knife in hand, waiting for the storm to stop. What he’d realized was that it was seventy miles to the next town, and if the man ever got there, in the unlikely event any fool came to check on his ravings, Loomis would be long gone.
“Never sleep out where people can find you! Shit!” he swore at himself while the storm drilled the pavement of the empty highway.