I’m not sure if it was Logan banging on the little door or the thunderclouds crashing against each other in the sky above my house, but something woke me up with a start that made me knock my head against the bedroom door. My cell phone told me it was 3:12 A.M. A huge sheet of lightning lit the front hallway like a camera flash. I waited for the bang, but it never came. Heat lightning. My Earth Science teacher, Dr. Yarbrough, once told us true lightning is hotter than the surface of the sun, but heat lightning isn’t even as hot as the surface of your skin. It’s trick lightning. All flash and no bang. And I felt something very much like it, all bright and fake.
My neck hurt and my mouth felt gummy. In the closet, Logan whined like a chained-up dog. A high, lonesome sound. It made my arm hair bristle to hear it. I hushed him, but it did no good. When I leaned in through the door and whispered for him to quit, he said something I didn’t understand about hajjis and started to cough. I smelled cigarette smoke again and it pissed me off. Mom and Hayes murmured. The TV yammered behind their voices. Then a heavy thump shook the floor behind me. I knew exactly what made it.
Logan sat on my bed wearing a pair of jeans a good two sizes too big and nothing else. Laid across his knees was a pink Wiffle ball bat with a jagged piece of metal tied to the fat end with a shoelace. It looked as though he’d dug up my crusty old Easy-Bake Oven from one of the boxes back there, disassembled the thing, and weaponized it. With his right hand he stropped what looked to be a butter knife against a ragged leather belt. The cutting side was shiny and sharper than a butter knife has any business being. Before I had a chance to say something about all this, he held up a hand.
“Just wait,” he said, without looking away from the knife, “and hear me out.”
Clearly, something had changed. He sat up straight. His hair still looked messy, but he’d done something to it. Maybe patted it into place. Even his eyes looked clearer. The knife made throat-clearing noises as it scraped the leather. Logan whipped it back and forth five more times. Then he raised his head.
“Keep your voice down. I seen one out there, but there may be more. If they don’t know we’re onto them, we keep some tactical advantage.”
“Who?”
“Hajjis. I knew it was only a matter of time before they found me. You’d think I’d be scared, but I ain’t. I aim to be free of this shit once and for all.”
“Logan,” I said, trying to keep my voice down, “what the hell? Every time a door slams it’s hajjis.”
“That’s right. Before I only heard them. This time I’ve seen them.” He pointed to his eye with the butter knife. “One I spotted had an M-4. Ain’t no mistake about it.”
Suddenly, he hunched his shoulders and held up both hands, commanding silence. Without meaning to, I went to one knee and listened. Logan widened his eyes at me and smiled. This smile had nothing to do with me. His head swung back and forth, following some imagined sound.
“Hear that?” he asked.
I nearly said no, but then I did hear something. A leaf clawed against a window screen. For half a moment, he had me going there. I let my breath out through my nose.
“Wind,” I said, but I whispered it.
“Nuh-uh.” Logan smiled that faraway smile again. “Not possible.”
I tried to think of something I could say to calm him down, but he was up and past me before I’d even managed the fuzzy outline of a thought. I made a grab for his newfound jeans, but he twisted away. Logan opened the door wide enough to slip through sideways, settled the bat against his shoulder and disappeared into the hall.
“Logan, don’t,” I said, but it was too late. The boy was beyond listening to anything I had to say to him. Some bit of wet wiring inside that pretty head of his had truly gone awry. It shouldn’t of shocked me, but it did. And it was even worse knowing I’d been the cause of it. I didn’t find him this way. I made him this way. There wasn’t a thing to do but follow him out into the trouble.