‘They already know,’ she said quietly. ‘They’re all in on it.’
Ceri stood for a moment, stupefied. Her eyes widened.
‘But … but my parents …’
‘All of them,’ Orlaith repeated.
The tunnel filled with another freezing bite of air. The Warden folded his hands.
‘Barrow was built for parents who want to protect their children,’ he said. ‘After the last tornado hit, a lot of people felt none of the villages were safe any more. Even though the stormtraps could keep tornadoes at a safe distance from any village, people were convinced they weren’t enough. So they decided to make a village that was completely secure. A place where no child would ever risk getting into accidents, or misbehaving, or going missing. Where they were kept indoors with curfews and Storm Laws. Where they were too frightened to ever risk their lives.’
He stepped towards us again. We shrank back to the wall.
‘And to stop them from leaving the village, they started telling stories. About bears in the valleys that ate children. That stalked the streets each night. Finding those who disobeyed the laws. Punishing those who were curious.’
‘And the County Detention Centre,’ said Orlaith bitterly. ‘That helps keep everyone in line, does it?’
The Warden thought about it, and nodded.
‘Most children, yes. Those who work out the truth, though … well, we send them lots of different places. Villages outside of the valleys. Anywhere but Barrow.’ He sighed. ‘As for the five of you …’
Orlaith suddenly ran forwards and shoved him, hard. The Warden looked at her in shock. Her eyes were furious.
‘You coward!’ she spat. ‘You know about all this, and you do nothing about it? How can you …’
The Warden didn’t even pause.
‘Because I know what it’s like to lose someone you love,’ he said.
The wind suddenly blew up our backs, heaving back up through the tunnel. The Warden loomed over us.
‘You wanted the truth,’ he said, ‘and I gave it to you. And now – it’s over. Your adventure is done. I’m taking you to the County Detention Centre, and I’m doing it before that –’ He pointed up the stone tunnel, where the tornado roared and bellowed against us – ‘gets any closer!’
He reached out to us.
‘Take my hand,’ he said.
Not one of us took it. I looked at it, hovering alone in the air before us. I thought of all the times I’d been told to take an adult’s hand. Because they knew what they were doing. Because they’d keep us safe. Because they wanted to help us. I never once thought that I’d ever have to question what adults told me.
I looked up at the Warden, at my face reflecting in his glasses.
‘No,’ I said. ‘We’re not coming with you.’
The Warden’s mouth flickered for a moment. He did not move his hand.
‘I’m going to explain this one more time,’ he said. ‘And I’m going to explain it very carefully, so that you understand exactly what I’m saying.’
He reached into his suit. With the careful and deliberate movement of a hunter he drew out a black baton and held it out in front of him. It was made of hard metal, and glinted in the light.
‘Take my hand,’ he repeated.
The wind shrieked down the tunnel, and this time it was so strong that the very clothes on our bodies trembled, and for a moment the glasses seemed to lift from the Warden’s face. It was as if the power of the tornado itself was somehow filling us from the ground up, entering our blood and trying to take us to somewhere or something undiscovered. I looked up at, at the man behind the glasses, and I saw his eyes were frightened.
The five of us held hands, and stood in front of him.
‘We’re not coming with you,’ I repeated.
The Warden looked at us in shock. Then he took a step back, and raised the baton above his head.
‘Have it your way,’ he said.
And with a sudden great howl of wind the baton was plucked straight out of the Warden’s hand.
We gasped. All six of us watched the baton shoot up the stone tower, clattering against the jagged rocks. Our mouths fell open.
‘What the …’ the Warden managed.
And then he couldn’t say anything any more, because the wind in the tunnel screamed so loud our ears rang, and the air was drawn straight out of our chests as if by force, and with a great lurch each and every one of us was thrust spiralling up through the stone tunnel.
The floor disappeared below us. We tumbled up, clutching each other’s hands and shrieking in amazement. The Warden scrambled hopelessly in the air below us, trying to grab hold of something. The baton bounced against the walls above us, flying towards the opening in the roof like it was little more than a twig.
‘W-what’s happening?’ I gasped.
‘It’s the tornado!’ Orlaith laughed, pinwheeling beside me. ‘The wind in the valley outside … it’s sucking us straight up the tunnel! We’re going to make it …’
‘No!’ came the Warden’s voice from beneath us. ‘I’m not letting you go!’
With a great lunge the Warden heaved through the air and clamped his hand around Pete’s leg. He started heaving the five of us down.
‘Oh no!’ Ceri cried. ‘We’re going to fall!’
She was right. With the Warden hanging on to us we were too heavy, and our climb had slowed. I looked down in terror. The drop back to the stone floor was a long way down.
‘Stop!’ I begged. ‘You have to let go or you’ll kill us all …!’
Slowly, bit by bit, the clutch of wind in the tunnel dropped. Soon, it would break completely. The walls came to a stop beside us. The Warden grit his teeth.
‘I’m – not – letting – you – go!’ he cried.
CLANG.
There was a sharp noise above us, and then another, and another. We looked up just as the Warden’s baton spun lethally back down the tunnel towards us. It missed Pete by a hair’s breadth, and with a sickening CRACK struck the Warden right on top of his head. He gave a short cry of pain, and immediately let go of Pete’s ankle, plummeting to the floor below.
The second he did the wind bellowed through the stone tunnel again, we lurched back up. The stones around us trembled with the strength of the tornado. Orlaith clutched onto us tightly.
‘This is it!’ Orlaith screamed. ‘We’re going through the roof! Hold on!’
Our ears popped, and our heads buzzed, and our hearts felt like roaring engines inside of us, and together we were flung up, up past the jagged rocks that stuck out at all angles and tumbled through the hole in the ceiling, screaming and laughing in disbelief. And then we were flying through the valley outside, the wind freezing and powerful and somehow coming at us in all directions,
flinging us back down to earth …
I crashed down onto the grass of a hillside, sprawling into rocks and tumbling down the slope until I came to a stop. My whole body sang to me.
‘Owen!’
I pushed myself up from the ground. Behind me, the others had clambered to their feet and stood facing the horizon in a line. Their hair and clothes whipped around them, and their mouths hung open. I turned around.
The tornado before us filled the width of the valley. Above it lay jet-black clouds, shot through with veins of deepest red like a sky made of burning coals. Around it in every direction lay a spiral of trees, cars, bricks, animals, tankers, rocks, statues, chimneys and barbed wire that had caught in the vortex, spinning and spinning and crashing against the valley’s sides, shredding them to dust. But at the centre of it all, like a shape in the fog of a glass, was a spiralling white core of pure wind, goring through the earth, a wall of destruction that headed straight for us.
We were being dragged towards it, our feet slipping and stumbling along the grass. The wind was unbelievable, the sheer power of it tearing at the skin on our faces. And it was growing. I turned to the others.
‘This is it!’ I screamed.
‘Do we still do it?’
‘Are you kidding?’ Orlaith cried out. ‘We can’t go back now, Owen!’
I shook my head. ‘I mean …’
‘I know what you mean,’ she shouted. She fixed me with one of her looks. ‘But this is about more than taking a picture now. And I’m saying: we can’t go back.’
I looked at her in shock. She kept her gaze fixed on me, without blinking, her face terrified and delighted all at once. She really meant it. The tornado bellowed through the valley towards us, the ground either side pelted with car doors and garden gates that smashed into the ground beside us and missed us by inches. I turned to the others. They looked frightened too. I was frightened. I don’t think I had ever been more frightened in my life.
But I had never felt so alive.
‘All of us?’ I said.
Ceri and Pete nodded, their breaths short, their eyes wide and their faces flushed. They understood. Only Callum stayed still, staring at the distance.
‘… Callum?’ I said.
His eyes were fixed onto the tornado that roared towards us. He was breathing in and out, in and out, and he was trembling. I had never seen him so frightened. I reached out and took his shoulder.
‘Callum.’
His eyes shot back to me, desperate, terrified.
‘You don’t have to come with us,’ I said. ‘We won’t make you. You’re one of us. You can go if you want to.’
He looked back at me, his chest heaving, his eyes torn.
Then, he swallowed, and shook himself.
‘No!’ he cried. ‘I came here to chase a tornado, and I’m going to do it!’
He took our hands, and held them up to the storm.
‘Because we,’ he shouted, ‘are Tornado Chasers!’
‘And we are not afraid!’ we all screamed with him.
At that moment the wind bellowed against us, and we were flattened straight onto the ground. I tried to cling onto the grass but it gave way in my hands, the soil scattering and soaring through the air towards the storm. We were being dragged towards it.
‘I can’t hold on!’ I cried.
A hand grabbed mine. I looked up. Pete was clutching a rock that lay at the cave entrance, and was holding onto Ceri. Orlaith held onto one of Ceri’s leg braces with one hand and Callum with the other, who held onto me.
And then I realised that I was being lifted straight off the ground, and so were the others, trailing in a line from Pete like a kite in the wind. The world seemed to turn upside down, and the force of it crushed us from all sides, spinning us around and around and pressing against us. Thunder and lightning exploded above us. It was like the world was breaking apart.
‘Ceri!’ Orlaith screamed. ‘The photo! Now!’
Ceri’s camera hovered in the air before her, attached to her by the strap round her neck. She reached out for it frantically with her free hand, and with a cry of effort dragged it towards her. The tornado howled into black around us, and there seemed to be nothing else in the world but loudness and pain and confusion.
Ceri turned the camera towards us and took a picture.
And with that, the tornado began to pass.
The wind began to drop. The roar subsided, bit by bit. The air began to lift into lightness again. The crushing around us disappeared, and we began to lower to the ground.
One by one we let go of each other, and dropped onto the grass. We lay dazed for a moment, before picking ourselves up and looking around. The valley was devastated. Everywhere we looked were the fallen remains of the storm. The ground itself had been stripped bare, as if by acid.
But we had survived. The Tornado Chasers had done it. We had fought against the impossible, and we had won. I leapt to my feet.
‘We did it!’ I cried. ‘We did it, we did it!’
In the distance the tornado roared away, pushed by the last of the stormtraps into the North. We clutched each other.
‘We did it!’ we cried.
And together we danced along the sides of the valley, our arms around each other, as far away the—
No.
‘Because we,’ he shouted, ‘are Tornado Chasers!’
‘And we are not afra—!’
Our words were cut off by an almighty crash beside us. We swung round, and gasped. The tornado was even closer now, bellowing down the valley towards us. And there, not a hundred feet away, an enormous black van had dropped out of the sky, bashed and battered by days inside the storm. It had hit the ground, and was tumbling towards us at lightning speed. I cried in fear.
‘It’s going to hit us!’ I shouted.
Callum leapt into action.
‘Quick!’ he said. ‘When I say jump, everybody jumps! Get it?’
Orlaith grabbed him. ‘Are you crazy?’
‘Just do it!’ he ordered.
The van still tumbled towards us, its doors ripped open, its windscreen shattered.
‘Ready?’ said Callum. ‘One, two … jump!’
Everyone jumped, and in that exact second we flew inside the van and hit the back wall with a tremendous THUMP, knocking the air out of ourselves. I glanced up. The van had bounced hard on the ground and was now airborne again, spiralling through the air as the tornado’s strength swung it round and round the valley.
‘Ceri, quick!’ cried Callum, springing back into action. ‘The photo!’
Ceri sat up, dazed, and fumbled for the camera slung around her neck. Callum grabbed the rest of us.
‘Everyone stand by the back doors!’ he ordered. ‘We don’t have much time before the van hits the ground again!’
The doors of the van had been ripped off long ago. On unsteady feet the four of us stood by the gaping hole as the van soared like a jet plane through the air, the tornado now a solid wall of wind behind us.
‘Now, Ceri!’ Callum screamed. ‘It’s our only chance!’
At once Ceri took the photo. Without a second to spare Callum grabbed us and swung us round to the open doors. I gasped in amazement. The van was plummeting back to the earth again, the ground flying towards us.
‘JUMP!’ Callum cried.
The five of us flew screaming out of the van just as it hit the ground with another sickening CRASH, shattering into scrap on the rocks beneath us. One by one we sprawled across the ground and looked up, dazed. In the distance the tornado had moved on, on towards the North.
Orlaith turned to Callum with a smile.
‘Callum – you did it!’ she cried. ‘You actually did it!’
I laughed. ‘Callum, you’re a hero!’ Callum smiled, and put his arms around us.
‘Oh, it was nothing, ‘he said. ‘Anything for my friends.’
We ran to him, hugging each other and laughing and laughing as—
No.
‘Because we,’ he shouted, ‘are Tornado Chasers!’
‘And we are not afraid!’ we all screamed with him.
The five of us held hands, and turned to face the tornado. It bellowed towards us down the valley, obliterating everything in its path, destroying all, leaving nothing.
‘Owen.’
I turned around. Callum was looking at me.
‘Before we do this,’ he said. ‘I need to talk to you.’
I balked. ‘Callum, we can’t talk now …’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean it! I have to talk to you because I might not ever get the chance again!’
The tornado whipped around us, howling, howling. Callum stared at me, trying to find the right words.
‘I’m sorry I was so horrible to you,’ he shouted over the wind. ‘All those times I told you you were pathetic and laughed at you, I’m really really sorry. I wish I’d never even said it. There are so many things I did that I wish I hadn’t done. You were You’re the bravest one out of all of us. That’s why I was always so horrible to you. I thought knew I could never be like you.’
The wind raged towards us, erasin destroying everything in the valley.
‘And I’m sorry for those times
I pushed you in the nettles,’ he said. ‘I did it because I’m just sorry. I’m just so sorry.’
The tornado fell on us and devoured us, and Owen I reached out my hand.
‘Callum,’ I said. ‘It’s OK. I forgive you.’
He
I
This notepaper is kindly provided for the inmates of
THE COUNTY DETENTION CENTRE
Use one sheet per week
No scribbling
I wrote plenty more endings like those. I wrote hundreds. And they all went straight out the window. Because, Warden, I don’t know what happened to the others after Owen told me that I could leave. I don’t know because I took his offer. I ran away. I never saw the tornado.
This is why they call me Callum the Coward.
I kept running until the County officers found me in the next valley, and arrested me, and locked me in the back of their van while they went and searched for the others. They didn’t find them, of course – as well you know, Warden. There wasn’t a trace left of them. They combed the valleys for five days. And when they found nothing, all eyes turned to me.
They asked me endless questions about what had happened. Why hadn’t I disappeared with my friends? Why had we done it? Where had Owen gone? What happened to Ceri? To Pete? To Orlaith? Why are you the only one left, Callum? What makes you so special?
What happened to them, Callum?
I said nothing. I couldn’t bring myself to tell them the simple truth: that the others had been brave enough to stay, and I hadn’t. And then after a while, whenever I did start talking, the sound of my own voice made me feel sick. I had always talked to get myself out of everything, to lie, or bully, or cheat. Now, I didn’t want to talk any more. I didn’t trust anything that I had to say.
Neither did my parents. They came back home for a bit to see me – for a bit. They told me that I had to tell the police everything. And then they signed the papers for my internment, and left. My babysitter drove me to County herself. She put me in my cell, kissed my head, and left. And with that, I had lost everything.
That is how I began my time as an inmate of the County Detention Centre. That is where I sat in my empty cell, scared and sad, and the guards told me that I had better start talking. Because until I did, and I finally told everyone what had happened, then I would never leave.
The Tornado Chasers Page 15