Not a groan.
A siren.
Why did they have sirens out here?
It sounded like a freight train behind the trees somewhere.
Out my side window, hail pellets the size of golf balls bounced off the pavement. A few hundred feet away, the loblolly pines seemed to stand to attention. And then moved toward us. Branches flailed in a wall of wind. I looked up into a churning black maelstrom.
CHAPTER 14
“CHUCK, WHAT THE HELL...?”
He looked up from his map and followed my eyes left.
“Holy c—” He stuck his nose closer to the glass, then shoved Irena with his right hand and screamed, “Drive, drive!”
Luke jumped awake in my arms and squealed. He grabbed my shirt and climbed onto me like a baby monkey.
How far away was the churning wall of wind? A football field? Two?
Hail hammered on the hood of the Range Rover. The cars on the opposite side of the highway scattered like cockroaches. Irena tried to pull out of her lane, but almost slammed into the rear of a hatchback in front of us trying to do the same.
“What are you doing?” Chuck hollered. “Get past him. Over there!”
Cars and buses jerked back and forth as their drivers tried to disentangle their vehicles.
Luke’s nails dug into my chest. He screeched, “Daddy, what’s happening?”
Total darkness lay past the weak glow of the headlights and taillights along the road. Beyond the honking horns, an unmistakable growl shook the ground like a grading machine ripping up the highway.
“Drive into them!” Chuck yelled.
Irena gunned the engine and we heaved forward, crunching into the rear end of the hatchback. In turn, it bounced into the car in front of it. In the gap that opened, we veered to the right and unstuck from the melee. The Range Rover spun into the sand and gravel past the shoulder.
Down the grassy embankment, a wall of pine trees bounced into our headlights.
I craned my neck to look behind us. Nothing but blackness and pouring rain.
The Range Rover jackrabbited up and down as we shot to the bottom of the slope. The tree trunks grew. Irena jammed on the brakes. We slid. I grabbed Luke and braced for a side impact, but she gunned the engine again and the Rover’s four-wheel drive dragged us forward and past the first row of pines.
Tires spinning, we fishtailed and rocketed toward a thicket of bushes. The truck burst through, airborne, and slammed into the ground.
My face hit the back of Chuck’s seat. Pain exploded in my nose.
“Over there,” I heard Chuck say.
I wiped away tears streaming from my eyes. Chuck pointed past Irena’s head. A dirt road loomed in the darkness. Skidding left and right, she managed to straighten and then turn onto it. A sign bordered by checkered red-and-black squares announced, “Pine County Speedway.”
The sign was fixed to a chain-link fence. We were going too fast to stop.
“Hit it,” Chuck said.
I wrapped my arms around Luke and hunched over him. Irena accelerated. We blew into and through the barrier with a jolt and a crack. Four-story-high bleachers loomed in the headlights. We spun onto a sand track ringing the main raceway.
“Over there.” Chuck pointed ahead.
A single-story building appeared through the driving rain. White walls ringed with a checkerboard pattern under the roof. Irena hit the brakes. We skidded to a stop. Rain spattered against the windshield. A howling whistle was followed by a blinding flash of light and the bone-deep crack of an echoing thunderclap.
My hands were wet. The rain?
Damp, cold air rushed past me. Chuck was already outside the truck, his door open. He pushed his seat forward for Luke and me to get out behind him from the third row. I grabbed my backpack. The rain was horizontal in the gusting wind.
“Come on.” He offered a hand.
I lifted Luke’s arms from around my neck and handed him through the door to Chuck. Irena and Terek were already at the door to the structure. It had cinder block walls, I saw now, and a corrugated tin roof.
Irena hammered at the door handle with something.
I stepped through the car door and out into the rain. Another building was about a hundred feet down the track. Doubled over, I followed Chuck to the door. Another bright flash and thundering roar. The wind whipped leaves and branches past our feet. Irena picked up a rock and slammed it against the padlock securing the door.
A squealing yelp.
Was that Luke? I reached Chuck on the side of the building away from the wind.
“Are you okay?” I asked Luke, as calmly as I could.
He nodded mutely. Another squealing yelp, but it wasn’t my son.
“Dad,” Luke said. “Over there.”
It was a small dog, maybe ten feet away. It yapped at us furiously.
“Is that Gorby?” Luke asked.
He meant the Borodin’s dog, from our old apartment in New York.
“That’s not Gorby,” I replied.
With a final heaving blow, Irena snapped off the lock.
“Where’s Damon?” I yelled.
The truck was empty, but the lights were still on inside the cabin.
Irena was halfway through removing the chain from the door handle when Chuck said, “We need to go. This isn’t solid enough.”
In a howling gust, the corrugated roof of the structure rattled. On closer inspection, it wasn’t more than a shack. Maybe a ticket office? A bathroom?
Chuck pointed at the next building. “That’s two stories,” he shouted in my ear. He said something to Irena and Terek. They both nodded.
“I need to get some stuff from the truck,” he said to me. He handed Luke over.
My son’s arms gripped tight around my neck. Doubling over, I ran back out into the screaming wind. Rain bit into my face. The ground was soaked, and I stumbled in the wet sand. The little dog followed at our heels.
We arrived at the next building with Irena and Terek. The little dog yapped at us from a distance. With a single blow, Irena snapped the padlock from the door. She flung it open, the wind hurling it against the brickwork of the wall.
I stumbled inside with Luke.
Irena and Terek came in behind us. I fumbled in my pocket with my right hand, my left still around Luke, and found my phone. Shaking, I clicked on the flashlight.
Terek closed the door. It slammed shut.
In front of us were benches and a wall of lockers. A set of stairs led up to the second floor. The wind beat against the walls outside, its fury muted now, but I could still hear the dog yelping.
I held Luke away from me so I could inspect him in the light from my phone. He was spattered in something black. Not black. Red. Bright red.
“You’re bleeding,” Terek said.
My heart skipped a beat, then settled down. With the back of my hand, I felt my face. My nose throbbed. I’d smashed it into the back of the front seat, I remembered. It was streaming blood.
“We should get under the stairs,” Irena said.
She opened a wooden door underneath them. I expected to see steps going down, but instead the space was filled with mops and stacks of bottles. Terek joined his sister and they grabbed what they could to empty the closet.
The exterior door opened behind us, and the wind roared in. Chuck appeared, loaded down with bags. Damon came in right behind him, balancing his four drones, one on top of the other.
He deposited them gingerly on the floor. “They’re my babies,” he said sheepishly.
The wind slammed the door shut behind them.
“You okay?” Chuck had his flashlight on too. He advanced toward me and checked out my face.
“A bloody nose.” My hands trembled.
“Sit down.” Chuck indicated the bench. “What, you never seen a tornado before?”
Shaking my head, I sat.
Chuck cracked a grin. “Me either. Terrifying, huh?”
Luke slipped from my arms. “Dad,
you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Throbbing pain in my face and nose filled the gap left when the rush of adrenaline subsided.
From outside, we heard the yelping dog over the thrumming wind.
“We can’t leave him,” Luke said.
“I tried to grab it on my way in,” Chuck said. “But the thing ran away from me.”
Terek and Irena had finished emptying out the cupboard under the stairs.
“You really think we need to get under there?” I turned to Chuck.
“Sounded like pennies in a giant garburator when that thing got close. All I hear now is wind, but might be a whole string of thunderstorms with tornadoes.”
“I’ll get the dog,” Irena said.
“It’s not our problem.” Chuck walked the closet. He examined the staircase. “He doesn’t want to come in. I tried.”
Another boom of thunder shook the ground. A howl outside.
“I can’t leave it out there,” Irena said.
She walked over to the exterior door and opened it a foot. She stuck her head out, then turned on her cell phone’s flashlight and held it out. The wind sucked in and scattered leaves and pine needles across the floor.
Chuck said, “Mike, why don’t you bring Luke over here?”
My son was transfixed as he watched Irena lean out the door. She glanced back at him, smiled, and said, “I’ll be back in a second.” She disappeared. The wind pressure walloped the door shut behind her.
Terek looked at me, then back at Chuck, and said, “I need to go with her.”
He ran to the door and opened it. Squeezed through. It slammed shut again.
Damon and Chuck and I looked at each other, then at the door. The sound of the yelping dog stopped a few seconds later.
We all waited for the door to reopen. Five seconds. Ten. Nothing.
I walked over, opened it, and stuck my head out. Rain pelted me. Beyond the weak ten-foot beam of light from my phone, everything was dark. I hollered as loud as I could, “Terek! Irena!”
No response.
“Can’t see them.” My head was already soaked.
I retreated and let the door close.
“They’re probably chasing the dog,” Damon said. “I’m going to find the circuit box.”
Chuck did his what-the-hell shrug, an expression between irritation and perplexion on his face. “It’s their funeral,” he said, and then in a softer voice, to Luke: “Hey, buddy, why don’t you come over here?”
He held one of his bags awkwardly in his left hand, and pulled out a blanket and offered it to my son. When he saw me looking at his hand he said, “I plugged in my phone and your iPad, but forgot to recharge my prosthetic. Damn thing is like a block of wood now.”
I followed Chuck over to the corner, picked Luke up, and then sat both of us down in the closet under the stairs. I wrapped him up in my arms under the blanket. Damon must have found the circuit box, because the lights blinked on for a few minutes in a comforting glow—but then clicked off.
“Power lines must’ve been downed by branches,” Chuck said. “Looks like I’ll have a cold hand for the night.”
He pulled out another blanket, put his phone down flashlight-side up, and took a seat under the staircase next to me and Luke.
“Can I play on the iPad?” Luke asked.
“I think I’ll join you,” I replied and fished it from my backpack.
Three hours since Terek and Irena had gone out.
We’d opened the door and yelled their names a dozen times, but with no response. Chuck even scooted out to the truck, but it was locked. He came back and asked who locked it. Damon said it wasn’t him, and I knew it wasn’t me. There was no way to get into it, and Terek and Irena had disappeared.
And everything from on top of the truck was gone, too.
Chuck paced like a caged possum in front of the lockers, fussing with his prosthetic. “Where are they? If they don’t come back, we’re going to be stranded in the middle of nowhere.”
“They might be hurt,” Damon said. “Should we go out and find them?”
“Not till it gets light. It’ll be impossible to find them out there now.”
I held Luke tight in my arms and didn’t say anything.
It was past 11:30 p.m.
Lauren’s plane was supposed to be on the ground by now. Chuck was so obsessed with Terek and Irena, I didn’t even want to speak about Lauren, didn’t want to bring it up. I was afraid to even talk about it. I was concerned about Terek and Irena, but there was only one person I really needed to know was safe.
Where was she?
CHAPTER 15
THE CABIN LIGHTS were low.
“I’m pregnant,” Emily whispered to Lauren.
The flight attendant sat in the nook of Lauren’s first class pod. Their heads were almost touching. They held each other’s hands.
Over the past seven hours, since Emily had burst into tears, the two of them had become fast friends. Lauren had even gotten up to tell the other passengers to stop asking Emily for things, to go into the galley and get whatever they needed.
Of course, Emily protested that it wasn’t necessary, but Lauren’s scowling mamma-bear looks ensured that people were starting to get things themselves.
Having someone else to look after felt good. It was what Lauren was used to, protecting her kids. Emily was someone to talk with. About Luke and Olivia. Mike. They had shared their lives in the past seven hours.
“I haven’t told anyone else yet,” Emily added. “Not even my boyfriend. I mean”—she leaned closer and lowered her voice—“I wasn’t even sure I was going to keep it.”
Emily wasn’t the only one who had decided it was time for confession.
Murmured prayers and quiet weeping filled the cabin. Wrappers and papers were strewn through the aisles. The space smelled like a nest, as if they were nomads who had been wandering through the skies for weeks.
“You need to keep the baby,” Lauren said. “I felt the way you did once, and I was so wrong. I would never have met Olivia.”
She squeezed Emily’s hands between hers. The young woman was only twenty-five, but then again, Lauren was only thirty-eight.
“Everything is going to be okay,” Lauren promised.
She said it, but her hands trembled. She held back her own tears only because she wanted to be strong for Emily. It was good to have someone to take care of.
That magnetic pull tugged at her again. Lauren had taken off her watch and stowed it in a drawer beside her chair. She had kept looking at it every minute and that had started to drive her crazy, so she’d taken it off, but now she had to keep taking it out to check the time.
She didn’t want to look, but it pulled at her. She took it out.
It was 12:40 a.m. in New York.
Lauren didn’t need to do mental calculations. Every minute felt like an eternity. Almost eighteen hours in the air, on a scheduled sixteen-and-a-half-hour flight. How much longer could they stay airborne?
At 9 p.m., Lauren had watched as the sun finally went down on the opposite side of the aircraft. Which meant they were flying south at that point. It stayed light long enough for her to see the ice below break into fragments and then, finally, to see open blue water. They passed over land for an hour, but then headed back out to sea. Twilight had come and gone, and then darkness swallowed them again.
No moon. No stars that she could see. Nothing but a black abyss outside her window for the past three hours.
The pilots had locked themselves in the flight deck. Nobody in or out, not even other cabin crew, Emily said. Why wouldn’t the crew give their location to the passengers? Two hours ago, the pilot had tersely announced that they would be landing in America. This had earned raucous applause, but there had been nothing further since then.
Sunset at 9 p.m.? At the start of September? How far north were they, really?
“Everything is going to be okay.” Emily squeezed Lauren’s hands tighter.
“You j
ust take care of that baby.” Lauren squeezed back. “We’re going to be fine. My husband’s friend, Chuck, he’s taken flying lessons, and you know what’s the number one rule for pilots?”
“What?”
“Aviate, navigate, and only then, communicate. The pilots are busy getting us where we need to go, that’s why they’re not saying anything.”
She should never have come on this trip. Why had she left her children?
Something flickered in her peripheral vision. She looked out her window. It was the moon, rising over the horizon. And something else. Below.
She leaned into the window to get a better look.
Glittering waves.
Close.
Not thousands of feet away, but hundreds. All the way to the horizon, nothing but waves and black water.
The intercom crackled. “Ah, folks, we’re lowering our altitude to conserve fuel, bringing the speed of the aircraft down. We’re...ah...that’s all for now. Please remain in your seats, and make sure you are buckled in tight.”
CHAPTER 16
“HELLO?”
I opened one eye.
“Hello?” asked the voice again.
Something warm and wet brushed up against my fingers. I opened my other eye. A small white dog busily licked my hand.
“What happened to you guys?” Chuck asked.
The exterior door was open. Terek waved at me. Irena stood facing Chuck, a backpack over her shoulder.
“We chased the mutt across the street, and then decided to take refuge in another building. We figured it was safer to wait it out there.”
“We were worried.” Chuck didn’t specify about what.
“That’s why we stayed where we were.”
“Everything got ripped off the roof of the truck.”
“Noticed that. I don’t know what to say. Wasn’t expecting a tornado. We went and looked this morning, all the way back to the road. Nothing.”
“But you got your pack?” Chuck indicated Irena’s shoulder.
CyberSpace: A CyberStorm Novel (Cyber Series Book 1) Page 9