Chasing Storm

by Kade, Teagan

  He picks up his radio receiver. “Officer 1-15, a mile south of Dead Mans Pass. Requesting assistance, over.”

  “All units unavailable,” comes the reply. “Find shelter and report.”

  “Copy.”

  Dan throws the radio against the dash. “Fuck! Come on.”

  He opens his door and we both get out, rain like wet needles pumps en-masse from the sky. I wipe the water out of my eyes as we ring around the car.

  It’s not the engine. The front tire’s twisted clean off the rim shredded by a six-inch strip of what looks like part of a windmill.

  There’s a solid boom behind us. We both turn to see the twister begin to touch down in the distance, a giant funnel of sickly green spiraling towards the ground. A fireball twists into the mass. It’s huge.

  Wind and rain whips at us from every angle.

  Dan comes up to my ear, hand on my back. “It’s not safe here.” He’s yelling at the top of his voice, but it’s drowned out by the storm. A deep panic begins to set in and I remind myself to act calm. I risk another glance back at the twister just to see it flip a barn whole, the beams swirling up into the tempest. For a moment I’m frozen by its power. “Oh god.”

  Dan spins me by the shoulders, eyes wide and alert. “There,” he says, pointing to a house in the distance. “Go!”

  I turn and run. He’s right behind me, pushing me forward as my shoes sink into the mud.

  The wind increases, a terrible howling over-riding everything as the storm moves on.

  “It’s coming right for us. Go, go, go!”

  My legs pump harder, but even the sight of the house is obscured in the rain and wind.

  I lock focus and channel everything I have into the action of getting there.

  I look left just to see the twister cut a swathe across the corn fields down the road, yellow, green and the earth itself added to its swirling mass.

  Dan gives me another push from behind and the house looms ahead in the blur.

  “To the right!” Dan screams from behind me, and I break right, running to the back of the house.

  The wind abates slightly as we come up to the side of the structure.

  Around the back the doors to a bunker set out a small distance from the house are flapping open and shut.

  “Get to that bunker!”

  We’re both stooped low, fighting against the gale. I can no longer run. My legs burn like hellfire just as I come to the doors and tumble down the stairs to splay out into the dirt at the bottom of the bunker, grit under my knees as I stand and help pull Dan down into the darkness.

  He stumbles back upstairs as the whistling increases in velocity and a sudden gust of dirt and foliage is cast into the pit with us.

  With a great heave he lifts the two doors back into place and slides the bolt through, the sound, wind and rain shut out and nothing but pure darkness is all around us in the hollow space.

  A torch light comes on. Dan makes his way down the stairs, huffing. “We’ll be safe here until it passes.”

  He casts the light around the room. It’s more of a hole than a bunker, barely big enough for the two of us. There’s a shelf at the back filled with what looks like tins of beans from the ’70s, rope, a lamp and box of matches.

  Dan pulls the lamp and matches down, striking them and getting the lamp cooking until it lights the bunker with an eerie warm glow.

  There’s a cut on Dan’s cheek. I move my finger towards it, but he flinches away.

  “It’s fine,” he says. “Just a little cut.”

  “Did you see the size of it?”

  He nods solemnly. “Biggest damn twister I’ve ever seen, and bearing right down upon us. A few more minutes…”

  We both know what might have happened if we didn’t find this shelter.

  The howling outside becomes an animal, stalking around us. The hinges on the doors strain, but the bolt holds firm.

  “Is that going to hold?” I ask.

  Dan takes off his Stetson, placing it with reverence on the shelf. “I sure as hell hope so. I don’t know about you, but I have no intention of being sucked up into that thing.”

  Time passes quietly. We don’t speak, the elephant in the room larger than the both of us.

  “Why?” Dan says finally, sitting on the lower stair. “Why him, huh?”

  I sit down against the shelf. There’s no answer I can give him I know will suffice. “I don’t know.”

  “Out of all the guys in Rosie, New York even, hell, the world, and you have to go and get with a lowlife like that.”

  “He’s not a lowlife.”

  “Oh yeah, and you’ve been back, what, a few days and you’re suddenly an expert on Millertown boys? Let me tell you a few things about your mystery man. His daddy was a thief, a drug-dealer, one of the worst, and a drunk. His mommy wasn’t much better, spreading her legs for anyone with two coins to rub together. Like I said, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, not with any of them. Break-and-enter, possession… he was booked for it all. He’s scum. The world would be better off without him.”

  Maybe he’s right. It occurs to me I don’t really know Storm. I don’t know where he came from or where he’s been, only what I feel for him, the heat that cleaves us together.

  But the people in Millertown. Every one of them vouched for him. I could see the sincerity in their eyes. He’s more than his father. I know it.

  “I can’t help the way I feel, Dan,” I tell him. “Do you think I’ve pictured myself with a guy like him? No, never in a million years,” and I see the loss in Dan’s eyes of what we could be together, the family we might have and the life yet to be led, and it would be a good life. He’s a good man, after all. He could satisfy me sexually, but it’s not the same. Why, fuck it? Why can’t it?

  Dan stands, pacing, as the doors to the bunker buckle and shake again. “Just tell me what you see in him, that’s all. I don’t want to stand here and cuss at you. It’s your life. I just want to understand.”

  So I try. I try to break it down for him. “When we’re together…” I start over. “Storm, he’s just… he’s the sun, and I have to touch it. I have to touch it even though I know I’m going to get burnt.”

  Dan laughs. “Do you know how cheesy that sounds? I could give you everything. I can be that man. Can’t you see that?” He’s reaching down, holding me by the shoulders, but I pull his hands away, holding them before us, running my thumb over his palm. “I know, Dan. I know, but I have to make this mistake.”

  He slumps back onto the stairs and nods, defeated. “Well, I won’t be around to pick up the pieces. That’s all I’m saying. If you choose him, you choose him. I won’t, I can’t, take you back.”

  A hot tear trails down my face, drifting from my cheek to impact in a rosette against the dirt below. “I know.”

  Dan lets out a long breath.

  The doors to the bunker bump and judder again, but this time with much greater force.

  Dan stands, moving up the stairs.

  The whistling is building to a crescendo outside. Even down here in the earth the storm is a physical force, far larger than any of us, terrifying in scale.

  I snap upwards at the sound of a voice in the ruckus outside.

  I move to the bottom of the stairs, cupping my ear. “Did you hear that?”

  The voice comes again, clearer now.

  Dan struggles forward to the doors. “What the hell?”

  A solid knock knock comes on the panel of the doors and Dan jumps back.

  There’s no doubt about it.

  Someone’s out there.

  “Hey!” comes the cry.

  “Someone’s out there, Dan.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I can hear it too.”

  “Let me in! Open the doors!”

  Dan squeezes himself onto the top stair and pulls the bolt back. The doors burst upon and I have to reach back for the shelf the suction outside is so great.

  Dan reaches a hand out to pull the stranger in. I
look up just in time to see them enter from the top, a man grasping Dan’s arm as they’re dragged inside. The wet, wind and cold enters with them, the man resting on the top of the stairs as Dan struggles to close the doors again, grunting with the effort of getting the bolt back in place and then collapsing exhausted in a soggy heap.

  My eyes adjust to the lamp-light and I flinch back in recognition.

  Dan notices it at the same time.

  It’s no stranger.

  It’s Storm.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It’s the last person Dan expects to see. “You.”

  Storm makes towards me. He looks like he’s been through hell. “Alice, you okay?”

  Dan steps between us. “She’s fine.”

  The doors rattle again.

  I’ve never encountered a more awkward moment, trapped underground with the two closest men in my life.

  Dan extends his hand backwards, like he’s trying to hold me at bay. He looks to Storm. “Now, sunshine, why don’t you tell me exactly why you’re here?” His free hand moves down to his gun.

  “Storm hangs by the stairs, hands up. “Look, I’m just here for Alice.”

  “Alice doesn’t need you. She never has. Your kind’s not good for her.”

  I take instant offence to anyone telling me what’s good for me. I’m not some Stepford wife or robot who can’t make up her own mind, a rag-tag woman who follows the whims of men blindly.

  Storm takes a step closer. “My kind? And just what the fuck does that mean?”

  “You know damn well. Your daddy was a crook, your mama was a crook and so are you.”

  “I’m sorry about your friend, Dan, but that was my father, not me. My father sold him the drugs. I had nothing to do with it. All that’s in the past. And what, planting drugs in my house doesn’t make you a crook?”

  I’m lost, but I remember Mom mentioning something about Dan’s best friend, Jackson, passing. She was scarce on details. It’s all starting to come together. An overdose, surely. Storm’s dad sold Jackson drugs and now Dan blames Jackson’s death on Storm. He is, after all, the only one left to point a finger at, to level Dan’s anger toward, anger for everything he’s kept bottled up since his father’s death, Afghanistan. It is all falling into place.

  Dan takes a step closer to Storm, hand still on his weapon. “Careful there, my friend. We’ve been through this. I can’t be held responsible for the actions of my men. He confessed. It was the Nomads.”

  “No? How could you not know? You’re the sheriff!”

  “I could arrest you right now.”

  “For what? You’re going to trump up another charge?”

  Dan prods him right on the chest with his index finger. “I can do whatever the hell I want.”

  Storm shoves him back and Dan’s grip tightens on his gun. “You just assaulted an officer.”

  “Did I? Alice witnessed the whole thing, ain’t that right, Alice?”

  I stay quiet. I don’t know what to do.

  “Alice is with me now and you best believe it.”

  I can’t comprehend Dan even just said that. I’m no one’s property.

  “Yeah,” says Storm, stepping right up to Dan’s face until they’re practically nose to nose, “then why was she at my place last night instead of yours?”

  “You piece of…”

  And it’s on. Dan strikes first, landing a solid jab on Storm’s jaw. Storm swings up hard right into his chest and the two men go toppling to the dirt, kicking and punching.

  I try to wedge myself between them, but it’s like trying to pull apart two semi-trailers. “Please,” I beg, “stop!”

  They’re going to kill each other.

  I put my hands together and press into the fray harder, but they’re locked tight. Both lash out together and suddenly it’s me on the floor.

  My head’s dizzy. I reach up and my finger comes away from my forehead wet with blood.

  Both of them have stopped, sitting apart in the dirt, mouths open in shock, kids who’ve just knocked over the Xmas tree or broken a window.

  They both rush forward.

  “Jesus,” says Dan, “get me a bandage or something.”

  Storm tears away a strip of his shirt and hands it over.

  I’m woozy, the room’s tilting around me as the wind howls outside and the clatter of debris builds into a climax.

  “Don’t. Fight,” I stutter, but the words come out sloppy, not quite right.

  “She might have a concussion.” Dan wraps the strip of cloth around my head and pulls tight, wiping blood out from my eye.

  Storm’s hand is on my thigh. “Just relax, baby.”

  I start to tear up. “I don’t want you to fight.”

  The emotions I’ve been holding onto for years begin to pour out. I’m too full. I need to get it out. I bury my face in my hands and sob. “No. More. Fighting.”

  “We’re sorry,” says Dan sitting beside me, “but it’s confusing. Who do you want to be with?”

  “I don’t know!” I scream. “I don’t fucking know, okay?”

  But I do, I do know, whether it’s the right choice or not.

  “I think you do,” shouts Storm, standing to sit on the stairs as the doors rattle and quiver above him. I can barely hear him it’s so loud outside.

  I let the tears flow hot and free. “I didn’t want any of us. I didn’t ask for it.”

  Dan’s holding me. “What happened happened. What matters now is what you do going forward, and it can’t be the both of us. You have to choose. You have to make it right.”

  “I can’t!”

  Dan’s looking down at the dirt, pensive. “You have to, for the good of everyone.”

  The bolt holding the doors in place snaps in two and the doors fly open, wind and debris swirling in and a great pressure building. I reach up and hold onto the shelf as it groans against the wall. Outside, I see the shimmering wall of the twister, the tempest spinning and swirling.

  An icy tendril runs right through the center of my body.

  We’re right in the middle of the monster.

  My feet actually begin to pull off the ground. My fingers begin to slip. The twister wants me. I should let it take me. Everyone would be better off.

  “No!” Storm cries, reaching out from the stairs to hold me in place.

  Dan’s grunting with the effort of trying to get the doors closed. “We have to get these doors shut,” he shouts, “otherwise we’re going to be sucked clean out of here.”

  “I’ll go,” says Storm. “They can be bolted from the outside. It’s the only way.”

  “Are you insane?!” I scream, as my legs lift off the ground and the joints in my arms pull.

  “It’s the only way!” he cries back, letting go and slamming against the stairs, holding onto the walls and staggering upwards into the open.

  Warm tears fly off my face. “Storm! No!”

  I expect him to turn around, to utter those three magical words, but he just goes.

  He becomes a blur against the wind and dirt. I see him stand up in the open, crouched there and clawing at the ground for support as the twister builds behind him.

  He’s going to die out there, die trying to save us.

  Dan says nothing, watching on.

  And then the doors close, the heavy hammer on the bolt sliding through from the outside as my feet hit the floor again and I dash up the stairs, ramming my fists against the doors. “Storm! Storm!”

  The sound builds, climbing higher and higher, increasing into a volume so loud and final it’s like the apocalypse itself has arrived.

  Something heavy pounds against the doors and buckles away. “No!” I scream, crying his name over and over but getting no response in return.

  I sit sobbing on the stairs as the twister moves over us, a haunting howling of such magnitude and power it shakes the earth around us. Dan is curled against the shelf in the corner as I continue to scratch at the doors, hoping, praying against all odds he’s
okay out there.

  I close my hands over my ears, hugged tight, falling down the stairs and pressing my face against the cold dirt while the world seems to rip apart and distort around us. I let out a long, primal scream. It goes on, on and on until my throat is raw and I cannot see but for the tears that are streaming down my face.

  Quiet.

  It comes almost as suddenly as the storm arrived, a sudden peace falling over everything.

  Dan stands and rushes towards me, a pole in his hands. He wedges it between the doors and uses it to lever the bolt outside open. It gives with a crack, the wood splintering. He pushes one of the doors open and we both emerge into an otherwise perfect day.

  Out in the open, I spin around. The twister’s gone, dissipated into a dark ether across the way. Its destruction, however, remains.

  “Storm!” I cry out, but I know it’s no use.

  The house that stood beside the bunker is gone, a mountain of rubble. Trees, water tanks… It looks like a warzone, the ground littered with jagged twists of metal and shrapnel, wood and foliage strewn for miles across the fields.

  There’s no way he could have survived out here. Nothing could have.

  I collapse on my knees and curse at the sky, Dan holding me tight.

  I cry until emergency services arrive and begin a sweep.

  I cry as they load me into a car and send me home, and I cry as Mom places me under the covers, kissing my head like a child and telling me that “everything’s going to be alright, hon”.

  But it’s not.

  Just like Tim, he’s gone.

  My Storm is gone.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I wake in a cold sweat. It seems I’ve been doing a lot of that lately.

  It’s always a new bed, a strange room. Hell, I barely even remember what my own bed feels like. But this room’s scary. Everything in it seems out of proportion, massive.

  “Help! Help!”

  Mom holds me down. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. You’re safe now.”

  “Storm, where is he?”

  She looks to the doorway. Dad stands there with arms crossed.

  Mom smiles. “Why don’t you get some rest? Can I bring you anything?”

  I’m frantic. “Why can’t you just tell me where he is?”