Gabe accelerated even faster, as if they were being chased. “Any words of wisdom?”
“Yeah. If the rain and wind stop suddenly, seek shelter immediately.”
Two more minutes, and then they made a hard left, swinging around the corner after Max, Patrick hot on their bumper.
“He wants us to shelter here?” Lanh’s voice actually shook.
Carter felt sorry for him. Yeah, the weather was scary, but he’d been through this before. It was only a storm. He used to sit on the front porch with his grandpa watching them, his grandmother calling them fools and insisting they come inside.
“We’d be better off in the vehicle,” Lanh said.
“Nope. Never stay in a vehicle during a tornado.”
Somewhere in his mind, Carter understood that this was the remains of someone’s home, but it had been several years since anyone lived there. The window frames were painted a bright pink, though they didn’t seem to actually hold any glass. The front door hung at an awkward angle, and the house seemed to groan and shift in the wind. Beside the house sat a rotten trampoline, and a tire swing still hung from an adjacent tree. Behind all of that ran a small creek. Those details all registered in the space of a breath before Carter jumped out of the Hummer and ran between the first of the raindrops. They struck his skin with the force of pellets from a BB gun. He reached the dilapidated front porch as lightning split the sky and the drops became a downpour.
THIRTY-TWO
Max jerked Shelby back a split second before her foot crashed through a rotten board on the front porch. She nodded her thanks, met his gaze for a fleeting second, and then dashed through the doorway. The inside of the structure didn’t look any better than the outside. A good breeze would blow it over. There was no telling what tornado-force winds would do.
Max wanted to kick something the way he’d seen Shelby kicking the dirt, but it wouldn’t help, and he needed to save his energy.
“Everyone have their packs?” Gabe asked.
They all nodded in unison.
“Check the rooms,” Patrick said. “See if you can find any mattresses to place over our heads.”
“You think there’ll be a tornado?” Shelby asked.
“Looked like rotation to the northwest.” Bianca walked past her into the kitchen.
Had they been standing in sunshine just an hour ago? Max glanced through a paneless window. The sky was like night. He reached for his flashlight, turned it on, and shone it outside. The rain was coming down sideways, from the northwest.
Bianca called out from the kitchen. “There’s a small dinette table in here.”
Patrick and Max moved the table for two into the bathroom, and they all huddled under it, or tried to. Their heads, at least, were protected.
Max had lived in Texas all of his life. He knew the basics of tornado disaster preparedness by heart.
Pick a safe, interior room for shelter.
Put something over your head to protect yourself from falling objects.
Don’t panic.
Don’t go outside.
The storm intensified. Rain pelted through the roof, the wind howled, and the temperature continued to drop.
Shelby put her arm through Carter’s. They were all crammed shoulder to shoulder. They were all wet and shivering. Rain fell through the holes in the roof and splattered against the tabletop. Lightning lit up the single window over the tub, followed by a crash of rolling thunder. Seven people huddled under a two-person dinette table. If the roof fell, it wouldn’t do much more than delay the inevitable by a microsecond.
The downpour worsened until it was impossible for Max to tell the difference between the thudding of his heart and the incessant clatter of rain. The wind had increased as well, and they heard a limb crash onto another part of the roof. Then the hail started, popping against the roof, landing on the floor and bouncing, creating a cacophony impenetrable even by thunder.
They were all soaked, even though they were inside. Shelby had begun to shake. Max inched closer until they were pasted against each other like two sides of a cardboard sign. Another peal of thunder, sensed more than heard, rumbling for ten, twenty, thirty seconds. It felt as if they were inside a drum.
It felt as if God were angry and intent on cleaning the earth.
Max had no sooner had that thought when everything stopped.
No rain.
No thunder.
No wind.
Had the storm passed, or was this simply the calm before the tornado?
“We better go see how bad it is,” Patrick said.
“Never go outside!” Bianca’s hand was trembling as she reached out to stop him, but Patrick only smiled, kissed her fingers, and strode out of the bathroom.
Everyone else quickly followed, looking like they were attached by an unbreakable string.
The living room they walked through looked more derelict than when they’d arrived.
The front porch sagged. A portion of the roof had caved in, blocking their exit. They skirted around it and hopped off the side as they picked their way across the front yard. Rain dripped from trees. The sky had lightened. Fallen limbs lay everywhere, along with pockets of hail amidst a river of mud. Not a hint of wind, not so much as a breeze, stirred the air. They looked around, looked up, looked at each other.
“We’re alive.”
“We made it.”
“Never been through a storm like that before.”
“It was so sudden.”
“How long were we in there?”
“Felt like hours.”
“Felt like five minutes.”
They continued toward their vehicles. The Mustang, Dodge, and Hummer all had limbs on top of them, but nothing large. No trees. Just dead wood that had been blown down and green leaves stripped from branches that had recently begun to leaf out.
Max heard a slurp sound each time he raised a foot as his boot pulled free from the mud. He was thinking of that, looking down and wondering if he’d ever be clean again, when he heard Shelby gasp. She reached out, gripped his arm, pushed, and turned him toward the west.
The sky’s greenish cast looked like something from a horror movie.
A cloud of dust moved toward them, but then he realized it couldn’t be dust. Everything was wet. What he was seeing was a giant wall of debris, and it was twirling, spinning through the air.
And within that cloud, stretching from the tips of the clouds to the ground, was a large, black funnel.
THIRTY-THREE
Shelby felt a giant fist close around her throat. She couldn’t pull in a good breath. Opening her mouth, she tried to scream, tried to yell, Run! but nothing came out.
The funnel, which dipped down from hideously black clouds, branched and formed two separate tornadoes.
One turned south. The other continued straight toward them.
The pressure began to build, and she clapped her hands over her ears, willing it to stop. She turned, trying to locate her son. She had to protect him. She had to get him to safety.
There was a screech, like the train passing through Abney late at night—a horrifying, painful roar.
It matched the cry of her heart.
Carter pointed toward the house and hollered, but she shook her head. She tried again to speak, but the wind pulled the unformed words from her mouth. She had to make them see, had to speak loud enough for them to hear, and she had to do it now.
Everyone was holding their hands over their ears except Patrick, who had grabbed hold of Bianca with both hands, as though he intended to pick her up and carry her to safety.
Carter and Lanh were on either side of Gabe, and Gabe was staring at the sky like he’d seen the four horsemen of the apocalypse. And maybe he had. Maybe this was the final trial that would whisk them from their earthly lives.
Max was pulling on her arm, trying to coax her back toward the house.
She yanked hard once, and then she fell into the mud. Carter turned to help her. She struggled
to her feet, grabbed his hand, and pulled him toward the side of the house, toward the creek.
Max put his mouth right against her ear, cupped his hands, and yelled, “We have to get inside.”
“It won’t stand!” And with those terrible words, she turned and dashed toward the creek, pulling Carter in her wake. Max stumbled to catch up with them. Patrick was half carrying, half pulling Bianca. He plodded after them, his head down as he pushed into the gale-force winds that had replaced the eerie calm. Gabe seemed torn between the house and their direction. His eyes met Shelby’s, and she could feel him drop his own instincts and fear. He ran flat out, caught up with them, and pushed them with both hands—or perhaps that was the tornado itself pushing them forward.
And then they were tumbling down the rain-drenched bank.
They huddled in a circle, in the two inches of water that had accumulated at the bottom of the creek bed. Heads together, hands clasped. Over and over, Shelby prayed, “Please don’t take my son. Please, God. Do not take my son from me.” She studied their hands, their fingers intertwined, and her fear for Carter made her heart ache. She was aware of Max beside her, his arm over her shoulders, every inch of him intent on protecting her from whatever was about to happen.
The most deafening sound Shelby had ever heard filled the air. She couldn’t take a breath, couldn’t focus on a coherent thought. She squeezed her eyes shut, unable to form even the simplest of prayers. She knew in that moment that she would die.
Trees crashed around them. Something slammed into Gabe. She glanced up in time to see blood pouring down his face. Patrick was trying to surround Bianca with his body. Max and Carter had their arms around her back, pulling her closer into the circle. Their heads were touching now. Lanh still covered his ears with his hands, his head so low that his forehead was touching the water. The deafening roar above them literally shook the earth.
And then, as quickly as the tempest had arrived, everything stopped.
THIRTY-FOUR
They waited one minute, and then two.
They waited until they were sure the funnel cloud had passed by.
Carter had looked up at one point. He’d seen…he’d seen the funnel from directly below it. But how was that possible? He’d be dead. Was he dead?
His mother was running her hands over his face, his shoulders, his arms.
“I’m okay. Mom, I’m okay.”
She stopped, her hands frozen at his elbows, and then she threw her arms around him.
Any other time he would have ducked away, but he stood there, allowed her to hold him, and waited for his heart rate to return to normal.
Gabe had ripped the bottom inch of fabric off his shirt and was holding it to the cut on his head.
Around them, trees were twisted and torn. Looking down the creek bed in one direction, he saw a bicycle, part of a windmill, and a watering trough. He heard the bleat of a goat, turned the other direction, and saw not one but three adult-sized goats standing in the middle of the stream. How had they ended up there? If the tornado had picked them up…shouldn’t they be dead?
Carter turned his attention back to their group, counted people, assuring himself they had all survived, trying to calm the erratic rhythm of his heart.
They were all alive.
Everyone was present and accounted for.
Miraculously, no one had been killed or maimed or taken.
They all started talking at once. What they’d seen. What they’d heard. How frightened they’d been.
Carter looked over at Lanh, who nodded toward the muddy bank.
Yeah. They needed to go up there. They needed to see what had happened.
Side by side, they began to climb, and quickly the others joined them.
It was difficult at first because of the mud and the debris and their own shaking limbs. They pushed on, reaching the top at the same instant.
And what they saw, Carter knew he would never forget if he lived to be a hundred and ten.
“The house is gone,” he mumbled, though saying it didn’t make what he was seeing more believable.
“It didn’t collapse,” Bianca said.
Patrick bent over, his hands on his knees. “There’s…there’s nothing left of it.”
No shattered glass or planks of wood or cabinets or fixtures.
No porch or tire swing or trampoline.
The entire structure and everything near it had been lifted up and carried away.
“If we had been in it…” Max’s voice cracked. He sank to his knees in the mud. Carter couldn’t tell if he was praying or crying. If his tears were from fear or joy. His mom went over to Max, squatted in front of him, rubbed his back in circles, and spoke to him in a quiet voice. The two of them there, like that, completely vulnerable, caused something in Carter’s heart to tighten. His mom, Max, Max’s parents, even Patrick and Bianca and Gabe—until that moment, they had all been superheroes in his eyes. He’d thought they were capable of anything. He’d believed that they were invincible.
He saw now that they were all merely human, and though they might pray and cry and struggle and fight, there were times when their lives teetered in the hands of God, when the decision to live or die wasn’t theirs to make.
Carter took a deep, steadying breath. They needed to assess their situation, which was what Gabe seemed to be doing. He walked forward a few steps, just past their group, and stopped. Carter joined him.
Beyond the house, where their vehicles were supposed to be, was a tangle of trees two stories high.
The cars must be buried there. Had they been crushed? Would their group be walking to Kansas? Or worse still, would they be walking back to Abney?
Beyond the cars, leading away from the homestead, was a path cut through the woods as though a road crew had been by. It was easily wide enough for a two-lane highway, and it stretched as far as Carter could see.
Though every fiber of his being resisted, he forced himself to turn, to look back the way they had come.
Patrick was holding Bianca, talking to her, assuring himself that she was okay.
His mother continued to kneel in front of Max.
Gabe, Lanh, and Carter turned as one, staring with their mouths gaped open. They glanced at each other and then back at the devastation in front of them. The tornado had dipped down fifty yards on the other side of the creek and taken absolutely everything in its path. There wasn’t even debris—just twisted trunks of trees on both sides.
It had skipped directly over the creek, over where they had taken shelter.
It had passed them by, leaving goats and a bicycle and a windmill and a water trough in its wake. Leaving seven people from central Texas shaking and trembling and wondering at the reality that they were still alive.
THIRTY-FIVE
Max didn’t know whether to weep or laugh or shout or pray. He knelt in the mud, with Shelby squatting in front of him, and was overwhelmed by the miracle of their survival.
Exhilaration flooded through his heart, mind, and body.
They had survived.
For some reason that he didn’t yet understand, God had spared them.
“How did you know, Shelby?” Bianca walked over to her, pulled her to her feet, and put a hand on each shoulder. “How did you know we shouldn’t go back into the house?”
“Something…something I researched for a Texas romance.”
“I’m going to have to start reading those,” Patrick said.
“My story took place in 1896. There was an actual storm—a tornado in Denton County in May of that year. Killed…killed seventy-six.”
“I guess that was before sirens?” Lanh was watching her closely, caught up in a tragedy worse than their own.
“Sirens didn’t become commonplace until after World War II. My characters took shelter in a barn, but it was…” She licked her lips, and Max realized she must be in shock. They were all in shock. “It wasn’t well built. At the last possible minute, they ran into a creek bed. I had foun
d interviews in newspaper clippings of people who survived that 1896 tornado. That’s why I included it in my story.”
“I will never mock your profession again.” Patrick enfolded her in a bear hug, smiling over the top of her head at Max and adding, “Writers rock!”
“I’m not a writer anymore.”
“You still rock.”
“Do you think…” She turned and looked at Max and then Gabe, who had been silently watching them. “Do you think our vehicles are in that pile of debris? Or did they…did they get swept away like the house?”
“Won’t know until we pull off the trees.” In that moment, Max felt he could do it singlehandedly. He felt there was nothing he couldn’t do.
Gabe had pulled the scrap of his shirt away from his head, stared at the blood-stained cloth, and then pressed it back to the wound. “Shelter first. It’s only two in the afternoon, but night will be falling before we know it. Inventory what we have as far as food and water. Make a plan. Tomorrow we can start digging out.”
“The others can do those things while I look at your wound.” Bianca shrugged out of her backpack, and that was when Max realized they all had their packs. He hadn’t even been aware he was wearing his because doing so had become second nature, and maybe…possibly that habit had saved their lives. They had supplies—food, water, an extra set of clothes, their weapons and ammunition, Carter’s insulin.
Everyone inventoried their packs while Bianca got ready to clean and stitch up the gash on Gabe’s head with a medical kit she pulled from his pack.
“Have you ever done that before?” Max asked.
“Nope. Good thing the doctor is alert enough to give me step-by-step directions.”
Max noticed that her hands were shaking, but her voice was steady.
“Tell me she’s not going to faint,” Gabe said.
“Doubtful. But if you move, you’re going to have a jagged-looking scar.” Gabe raised his eyebrows in mock horror, and Max assured him, “You’re in good hands.”
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