by L. B. Carter
Jen held up a finger. "If you make any comment about that moaning noise or the rocking motion, I'll shank you like I did the guy feeling you up."
Reed's mouth shut.
Jen shook her head and squinted into his baby's trunk. "What about the water? Can you carry it?"
"No point," Reed said. "We can't go into the house."
"Why not? We need to find cover, and as much faith as you have in your baby, who I thank for getting us here on less than ideal beverage options, I'm in the tornado's corner on this fight. Besides, Mrs. Juarez is in there."
Reed scowled. "If she's still alive. I'll grab her, but look at that thing." He gestured out the window.
Jen didn't even turn, raising a brow at Reed. Their visibility was about nil by this point.
"Okay, well, you remember what it looked like. If my baby is struggling, I'm shocked that the stack of toothpicks the Juarez's call a farmhouse is still erect."
Jen's other brow rose, but she didn't comment on his nervous joke. "What about the barn?"
He shook his head. "Even less stability with the inside an open plan like that. That roof is either getting picked up and transported to Oz or dropped on us like—"
"Like E.D."
He snorted. "Beautifully put. Shouldn't you know all this with your mom being a climate thingy?"
"Paleoclimatologist, and no. Climate is not the same as weather." She sounded exasperated as though she'd explained that a million times. "I do know about disasters, but my work tends to focus more... large scale. From the outside. After the fact." True. Superhumans were a whole new species, really, and designed based on human flaws in the present world. "I've never lived in this part of the country. How do you know about twisters?"
He shrugged. "Movies."
"Oh, that's reassuring. I'm confident that's wholly scientific."
"Better than the postmortem efforts you can contribute, it seems," Reed retaliated.
"So... we wait here?" Jen was taking their situation all in with wide, desperate eyes as though searching for a side of the car that wasn't being pelted with flinging rocks. The shriek of the wind was getting higher pitched, more bloody-murder like Henley's scream when she saw a what appeared to be a zombie but was actually just a blind sweet old lady. Strange sheltered nerdy kid. Even Rena wasn't that weird.
"We can't stay here. But we can't go inside either. We're going to find natural shelter."
Little pings and clunks indicated Reed's poor vulnerable Jeep was taking the brunt of the storm's bullets. The outer coating was intended to be bulletproof, but abrasion was a different matter. Poor baby.
…Poor Jen and Reed! Their skin was going to be shredded without protection. They were wearing shorts and t-shirts.
"Stay here until I come back," Reed instructed Jen.
"What? I thought you just said we can't stay here?" Jen's eyes were wide. She could normally handle so much so well, but it appeared being in a natural disaster was her undoing.
"Just until I get back. Like thirty seconds." Reed waited a beat. "What, no snarky comment about my being a thirty-second guy?"
"What? Oh. I would be surprised it was even that long." Her heart wasn't in the joke. And her hand had crept onto his arm, clutching tightly. He didn't think she was even aware. Her aqua eyes pleaded with him not to leave her as the sky darkened with the arrival of the cloud and the billowing dirt blocking out the daylight more effectively than a swarm of locusts.
He wouldn't leave her. "I'm just going to get Mrs. Juarez and grab something to cover us with, then we're going to hunker down in that ditch." He pointed in the direction he thought the corn stalks had been. They'd provide some protection, but mostly he knew they needed to get as low to the ground as possible to avoid flying debris or getting picked up in his baby or the house as if, well, like they were mice and the fire devil was a vacuum hose. "I won't let you get hurt."
He wouldn't let her be another Valerie.
◆◆◆
Reed hiked his shirt up over his nose, squinting through his sunglasses. He'd barely been able to keep the Jeep door from flinging off its hinges as he slammed it shut again behind him. Without a doubt, Jen had been swarmed with particles in the brief time he'd unsealed their small haven.
He stumbled forward, trying to keep his eyes focused on his feet and step them one in front of the other so it was a straight line following the trajectory his Jeep had been taking. The gusts buffeted him and tried to push him over. His shorts whipped at his thighs, but that was a delicate sensual touch compared to the steady hammering of pebbles slamming against his legs like he'd walked between Father's field team and the row of bulls-eyes during target practice. His shoulders hunched up, trying to prevent the sand from infiltrating his ears. He could already tell they would be filled; worse than a day at the beach.
He stepped on uneven footing and stumbled. Without being able to see his own feet anymore, trying to inspect the ground to determine where he was seemed useless. Squatting, he shoved his hands out and felt around as the skin on the backs of his hands got pierced over and over again as if his whole body was being tattooed at once. His fingers touched something papery and brittle. He pulled it toward him, feeling some resistance. It was snatched from his fingers, most of it ripping off and leaving a piece trapped in his hand. He pulled it up to his eye. It was the leaf of a cornstalk.
Shit. Had he veered off course? He shoved to a stand, spinning around as though that helped. He had no way to know the right direction now. Which way, which way? He couldn't abandon Jen or Mrs. Juarez.
He might not have a choice if he could find neither the house nor his way back to the Jeep.
Reed stood still and strained to listen. Without his sight, he had to rely on his other senses. Unfortunately, touch was out—all he felt were the needle-like pinpricks. Taste—well, that was no use, and besides, the dirt he'd already gotten in his mouth had dried up all his saliva. Even after he and Jen had filled themselves with the rest of the coffee while refueling his baby. Hearing wasn't so good—the air moaned and whistled through the cornfields and whispered in his ears, it creaked to his right and—
Creak.
That was the sound of wood settling.
Reed twisted toward it, hope inflating. For a moment, he'd let himself sink into the helplessness that had sucked him down after Val's... He would not allow that to happen again.
He shuffled quickly, keeping his eyes squeezed shut though it was hard to kick the instinct to peer ahead. He focused his awareness on what his auditory sense was telling him. It told him there was a big fucking obstacle ahead, forcing the wind to detour it with a hiss. The closer he got, the more he was certain. He could distinguish the plinking of what sounded like hail bombarding the planks.
When he tripped right over the stairs and slammed his nose into the porch, his suspicion (his hope) was confirmed.
A car horn blasted through the chaos behind him, and he picked himself up, wiping the wetness from his nose on his arm and stumbling, arms out as if he was blindfolded while playing tag.
Touching the ragged texture of the screen, he slid his hands around until he grasped the handle. Once the screen door opened, the wind swung it wide, slapping it against the house.
Reed shoved through the door, not bothering to try to wrench it shut again. The stabs on his skin abated, and he shook himself, hearing all the bits that had settled on his skin and hair trickling to the floor. More blew in behind him, pressing him forward. He blinked his eyes open. Particles clung to his lashes.
"Mrs. Juarez?" Reed shouted, dashing into the living room. It was empty. A window had broken, and a layer of sand mounded against the couch legs. "Mrs. Juarez!"
He darted around the bottom floor. Had she left when the storm approached? He checked the bathroom, but she wasn't cowering from the tornado in the tub. She couldn't see it coming. Reed didn't even see a body destroyed by dehydration that he could blame on Jen.
He ran up the stairs, skipping a few at a time in his
haste. He slipped into Lindy's room, but she wasn't where she'd slept the night before.
Reed swore loudly, slamming a fist into the door frame.
"Reed?" a voice croaked.
He whirled around. "Mrs. Juarez?" He zipped into her old bedroom. "Morbid, Jen. Real morbid," he muttered. Mrs. Juarez was cozied up in the bed in which Tio had died, cowering behind the bloodstained quilt, milky eyes wide, terror pulling her wrinkles taut.
"Reed? Is that you?"
"It's me, Mrs. Juarez. Didn't think I'd leave you behind, did you?"
She sobbed something in Spanish.
"I don't forget a lady who gives me pie." He swooped in and scooped her and all the blankets up in one swipe. A car horn resonated outside again, and the boards creaked, the windows making eerie cracking noises. "Hold tight. Keep close."
Dutifully, her thin arms wrapped around his neck, and he tried to tuck her in further without dropping her. Her weight was slight, but he was still impressed Jen had heaved the woman upstairs and then pulled an entire freaking Jeep across the wasteland to him.
Reed trotted out the door and hopped down the stairs. He was halfway down when, unthinking in his haste, he trod on one of the weak boards. His leg went through with a splintering crash.
Mrs. Juarez gave a cry as he awkwardly half-fell forward and she went flying. The shards of the broken plank scraped up his calf which already felt raw after the sandstorm.
He didn't waste time, just wrenched it out, likely doing more damage to his leg than had been caused when it penetrated, and rolled the rest of the way down the stairs to the heap of material at the bottom that was his hostess.
"Mrs. Juarez?" He urged her reply in panic. "Say something. Mrs. Juarez!"
She groaned and swore in Spanish. Reed knew that one.
He grinned, relieved. "Sorry. No time to see if you're okay. We gotta go. I don't know how long this place is going to last."
As if in confirmation, another window in the living room shattered as he huddled her, surging toward the gaping front door that was letting in the elements. It felt like the wrong way to go. Mrs. Juarez cowered into his chest. Reed heard the clunks as larger rocks made their way through the fresh opening, smacking into the couch.
"Keep your face hidden," he instructed over the roar. Then he focused forward and headed out.
Reed had to slow his pace to test with tapping toes for where the porch floor fell away to be replaced by the steps, wishing Mrs. Juarez had one of those seeing-eye canes. He made it down two stairs when a loud wrenching of metal ratcheted through the storm. Instinctively, he ducked. The screen door clipped his shoulder as it flew past, slicing momentarily into his vision with its proximity before cascading into the swirling air.
What was next, a witch on a bicycle?
Jen, darling genius after his own heart, read his mind and sounded the horn again. God, he loved her.
He buried that mental slip beneath many layers of windblown sand and followed the sound across the gravel. It was getting more frequent, and each pulse lasted longer. Jen was getting desperate. Her desperation was beneficial for Reed, who needed that reassurance that she was there and that he was heading in the right direction.
Mrs. Juarez made another pained noise when Reed accidentally rammed her into the hood of his baby. He didn't bother apologizing; she couldn't hear him, and he feared opening his mouth to let the onslaught onto his tongue.
"Reed!" Jen's voice indicated that she'd opened the door.
Reed traced it around the side of the car and felt her hands paw at him. He ducked down, the direction of the onslaught mostly hindered by his Jeep. Mrs. Juarez was shaking and muttering to herself. "Jen! Take whatever you can carry of the water and grab onto the back of my shirt." Reed rotated one-eighty, hating turning his back on his baby. Now he was pointing directly at the corn fields he'd been driving through when things first got bad for their group and his baby had given up.
Shit, things had been bad before that. For a while. Pretty much since Val. That had felt a lot worse than the disaster he was experiencing right then.
Well, look at that. There was a fuzzy little rainbow thought to keep his spirits up.
"Got it! Go!" Reed felt her hand clutch the shirt between his shoulder blades. He didn't wait another second as a loud crack reverberated from the direction of the house, and his baby gave another shuddering wobble as if it were a boat going over a swell instead of a Jeep engineered to withstand ridiculous amounts of firepower and damage.
He crouched and ran. Jen's hand slipped off for a moment but quickly latched back on tightly, pulling the fabric taught. He stumbled down a decline and went with it, slipping to his knees when stalks slapped against his face. Down low, he could almost see.
He gently lay Mrs. Juarez out flat, her cataracts gazing up at him. He lifted the blanket and reached behind him, grabbing Jen's arm and whipping her around in front of him. He urged her down under the blanket with Mrs. Juarez. The water bottles that she'd shoved into a duffel Jen placed next to them, keeping the strap wrapped around her body so it didn't take off, making another insignificant barrier between the dust devil and them. Reed settled next to her, spooning her as she spooned Mrs. Juarez, pulling the blankets over them all and wrapping his long limbs across the two women underneath the cover.
"Not the best threesome I've ever been a part of," Reed half-shouted, half-murmured into Jen's ear though the rage of the wind was quieter, blocked slightly by the Jeep and the driveway, which sat about a foot away from them and a foot taller than their spot, similar to being in an army trench in a war zone.
"You're bleeding," Jen exclaimed, concern lacing her voice. His nose must have dripped onto her shoulder. The quilt was going to be soaked in his blood as well as Tio's what with the pain in his leg from the broken stairs, his shoulder from the flying door, and his nose. He didn't know if Mrs. Juarez had been hurt in the tumble as well.
"Isn't that good news? Means we're not parents."
Jen didn't answer for a while, and Reed relaxed a bit.
This was all he could do. He was exhausted. He'd been almost dead not long ago. "Thank you for saving me earlier."
Jen shuddered at his whispered breath. "Thanks for not dying. I don't know what I'd use as a body shield without you."
He snorted, his eyes drooping regardless of the temper tantrum nature was hurtling at them. The drought had been rough, but that was more like a cold shoulder. This was similar to the time Jen had gone bat-shit, wrathful, animalistic woman-on-a-rampage and chucked water bottle ballistics at his head... And then wacked him in the balls.
"Seems you are above average." Jen's voice warbled less. She too was miraculously finding momentary peace.
"Hmm?" Reed's response was a faint moan into the back of Jen's neck as he grew shockingly comfortable pressed against her. She was safe. He'd done his job the best he could.
"That was way longer than thirty seconds."
◆◆◆
Reed roused again when Jen began to shift against him. "Keep doing that, and we'll find out about the thirty-seconds," he growled, still half asleep.
"Reed!" Jen didn't hear him. Her body pulled away.
He woke more fully, frowning as she vacated the space next to him, and the loud wind penetrated his consciousness again. The whip across his body was less strong than before, but how long he'd been asleep he didn't know. He was tired enough that it could have been only seconds.
"Reed. Move."
Her urgency and the fact that she was tugging on his arm convinced him to shove upward. His hair tossed about. He blinked his eyes open, making out her worried face. The fact that he could see her informed him that the dust storm had indeed abated. However, there was a particularly noticeable rumble rising in volume coming from behind them. He remembered from Twister that the roar of an oncoming train preceded a tornado.
"We can't outrun it." Nevertheless, he lifted Mrs. Juarez and the blankets. Jen already had the duffel in a baby-cradle in her arms an
d was backing away, edging closer to the house ...if it was still there. "No, this way." Reed darted perpendicular to the oncoming wave of sound. There was almost a palpable denseness to the air in that direction. So he aimed farther into the corn, grateful his visibility had increased to a few feet.
Once the dust settled after this storm, it was going to be much easier to see miles across this part of the country; much of the corn was uprooted and flattened as if boulders rather than sandy wind had plowed through the area.
Jen gripped the back of his shirt again though it wasn't needed anymore. Reed appreciated the reassurance that she was with him as much as she did.
The dust devil could reroute instantly on a whim. Reed didn't know if moving was the right choice. The roar grew louder. The crunching of cornstalks overpowered the wind's howl. It was close. Nearby. Extremely proximal.
Realization smacked into Reed like a screen door.
"Go!" he bellowed, sprinting suddenly.
Jen's fingers slipped away. He spun back, shifted Mrs. Juarez to one arm, and locked the other around Jen's waist. He threw them all backwards, tucking his chin to avoid slamming his head into the earth.
A rusty old truck crashed through the corn just where they'd been standing.
"Fuck." Reed gaped past Jen and Mrs. Juarez, laid on top of him, at the vehicle that lurched to a stop. Only a little dust blew into his mouth. Worth it. Then he dropped his head back, closing his eyes, listening to the creak and slam of the truck's door opening and closing.
"Mama?"
"Lindy?"
"Jesus."
"I don't think he's also in that car," Reed corrected Jen as he felt Mrs. Juarez being lifted off him for a hug from her daughter. "Although she did seem to be driving with the Jesus-take-the-wheel method."