by Roland Smith
“What time does it usually get dark around here?” he asked Nicole.
“Seven thirty or eight,” she answered. “Why?”
He looked at his watch. “It’s three forty and look how dark it is.”
“You’re right. It looks like it’s going to rain.”
“It’s going to do a lot worse than that.” He looked back up at the sky and was tempted to call his father again.
Instead he said loudly, “What’s the latest on Emily?”
He hadn’t seen a weather report for a couple of hours, but he estimated that the wind was blowing at least fifteen miles an hour where they were standing, and gusting to twenty-five or thirty. The thick, bruised clouds above were moving fast.
No one answered him. He asked again. Louder.
This time everyone turned his way.
Dr. Krupp looked annoyed. “I talked to my husband fifteen minutes ago. He said that Emily is going to hit south of here around midnight.”
“How far south?”
“No one knows.”
“What category?”
“Right now it’s a Category Five. But they’re predicting Emily will be downgraded back to a Category Four by the time she makes landfall.”
“I heard it’s gonna be a Category Three,” one of the bus drivers added.
“That’s still winds in excess of one hundred miles an hour,” Chase said. “I don’t think the buses are a good idea.”
Dr. Krupp put her hands on her hips. “Really? And how do you suggest we get you and the other students home?”
“I don’t think we should go home. We should stay right here. The school has a low profile. The buildings are constructed out of reinforced concrete. The safest thing for us to do is to ride out the storm in the cafetorium. It’s right in the middle of the campus, no windows, protected on all four sides by other buildings.”
“How long have you been in Florida, Chase?” Dr. Krupp asked.
Here we go, Chase thought. He took a deep breath. “Two days.”
“And how many hurricanes have you been in?”
“None, but I know enough to stay exactly where I am when I have everything I need to survive.”
“You’re getting on the bus, Chase. We are not spending the night at the school. We don’t have authorization from the district, or your parents. Getting permission would take several hours.” She looked at her watch. “You’ll all be home in less than two hours.”
Nicole stepped forward. Chase didn’t want her to get involved. This was his argument.
“Let me talk to him, Dr. Krupp.”
“Make it quick. You’re leaving in two minutes.”
Dr. Krupp walked back to the drivers. The kids stared at Chase like he had lost his mind. One of them made clucking noises like a chicken. Chase took a step toward the boy, but Nicole grabbed his arm and pulled him down a breezeway where no one could hear them.
“What do you think you’re doing, Chase?”
“You’re mad at me?” He couldn’t believe it. He’d expected Nicole to be on his side, but she looked more upset than Dr. Krupp.
“Dr. Krupp is trying to get everyone home safely and you’re —”
“Dr. Krupp is trying to get us out of her hair so she can go home. She doesn’t want to spend the night with forty-two kids in the cafetorium.”
“That’s right! She wants to spend the night with her own family just like I do. Just like everyone here does. Just because you don’t have —” Nicole stopped herself.
“You think this is about me?” Chase asked.
“Who else would it be about?”
“It’s about all of us. We are leaving a perfect place to ride out a hurricane. The two buses are going to take us to homes that are not nearly as safe as Palm Breeze Middle School. That is, if we even make it home. Everyone is talking about where the hurricane is going to make landfall.” Chase pointed at the ground. “I’ve got news for you. It’s going to be here. Right where we’re standing. And it will be here a long time before midnight. Dr. Krupp cannot make anyone get on a bus. If we stick together we can stay at the school, where we’ll be safe.”
“You can spend the night here if you want,” Nicole said. “But I’m getting on the bus and going home. You are being paranoid!”
Chase watched her stamp back to the curb and the waiting buses. He thought about the farmer in Oklahoma who left his combine in the middle of the hailstorm. He’d been going home too. He’d made it about a hundred yards before being stoned to death. He’d gotten hit in the head twice. The first stone knocked him out. The second killed him, according to the newspaper.
Dr. Krupp started dividing the forty-two students into two groups. Chase thought about holding his ground and refusing to go, but it wouldn’t accomplish anything. She would still put the other kids on the buses and send them on their way, including Nicole. Dr. Krupp would stay behind with him and either call his father and tell him to pick Chase up, or call the police and have them deal with him.
Going against everything he knew, everything his father had taught him, he joined the others at the curb, ignoring the smirks and clucking sounds. He wasn’t about to let Nicole ride on the bus without him.
“Mrs. O’Leary is calling your parents to tell them you might be a little late because of the alternate route, the traffic, and the weather so they don’t worry.”
Chase was the last to board his bus. As he stepped through the door, Dr. Krupp put her hand on his shoulder.
“There’s nothing to worry or be nervous about, Chase. Don’t be afraid. You’ll be at the Rossis’ farm in no time at all.”
“There is everything to be worried about, Dr. Krupp.” He pointed at the sky. “Emily is here. You’d better drive straight home and stay away from windows.”
Chase realized that Dr. Krupp was trying to be kind, but being kind didn’t make someone right. He was not afraid to ride on a bus. But there wasn’t time to explain to her what his father called The Gut Barometer, or TGB. “Everyone has one,” his father had told him. “It works just like a real barometer: When the pressure drops, the weather is going to change. The TGB is in your solar plexus. You feel the pressure drop in your gut.” Most of the time people ignored their gut gauge, and most of the time it was okay to ignore it, until the one time it wasn’t okay.
Chase knew this was one of those times.
He got on the bus, and the driver pulled the door closed behind him. The kids had all paired off and were grinning at him as he made his way past them. Nicole had taken an aisle seat next to some guy and didn’t even glance at him as he walked by.
“Cluck … cluck … cluck …,” someone said from the front of the bus.
A few kids laughed.
Chase took the bench seat at the back of the bus. Right next to the emergency exit.
05:15PM
“Does anyone have a cell signal?”
Three hours before nightfall, it was almost completely dark outside.
Chase sat in the back and watched the lights as sixteen cell phones flicked on. They had been on the bus an hour and a half and had dropped off four people. He knew there wasn’t a cell signal because he’d been checking his phone since they’d left the school. He wanted to talk to his father, and thought about breaking out the satellite phone, but it was only to be used in case of emergency. And in order for it to work, his father would have to have his satellite phone on, which was unlikely at this point in the storm.
“No signal.”
“No bars.”
“Dead as a doornail.”
Gusts of wind crashed into the bus like ocean waves as they inched along in bumper-to-bumper traffic. The rain poured down so hard it was pointless to look out the window. All they could see were headlights and glimpses of angry motorists.
The bus stopped again. The kid next to Nicole got up, along with four others, and they made their way to the front.
“Okay!” the driver shouted. “Do you see your parents’ cars out there?”
<
br /> The kids peered through the steamed windows. They said they did.
“Are you sure? ’Cause I’m not letting you off this bus unless you do. I don’t care how close your house is to this stop. You can’t walk in this stuff. If your folks aren’t there, I’ll drive you to your doorstep.”
They all swore their parents were waiting.
“Okay. On the count of three I’ll pull the door open and you all bail out quickly so I don’t get too drenched. One … two … three …” The doors shuddered open and the kids jumped out into the wind and rain like paratroopers.
The driver got soaked anyway to everyone’s amusement, except Chase’s.
Chase noticed Nicole move over into the window seat vacated by the boy. Why? She wouldn’t be able to see out, and it was more dangerous to sit near the window than the aisle. He knew he should make his way up to her and say something, but the only things he had to say would sound wimpy, so he stayed where he was, thinking about how dangerous school buses were. At his last school he’d done a report on them and gotten an A, but the teacher had said it would be best not to put it up on the bulletin board with the other reports because it might scare people.
School buses are not designed to operate in winds exceeding fifty miles an hour. Even on a calm day, school buses aren’t safe. In every state, it’s against the law to drive in a car without a seat belt. By law, children under a certain weight have to ride in the back, strapped into an appropriate car seat or booster. Parents wait with their kids at the bus stop so nothing bad happens to them, then they watch them climb into the yellow death trap and blow them kisses good-bye.
Florida is one of the few states that require seat belts in school buses, but only in newer school buses. The Palm Breeze bus was not new. The driver was the only one belted in.
Wimp, Chase thought. But he couldn’t help himself. Over the past year he’d seen too many disasters and what happened when people didn’t recognize them for what they were. The kids on the bus thought this was an adventure. But Chase knew it was just the beginning of what, for some of them, would be the worst night of their lives.
07:10PM
The wind got stronger and the rain fell harder. When there were just five of them left on the bus, Nicole finally joined Chase on the back bench.
“This is pretty scary. You might have been right about staying at school.”
“We’re almost at the farm, aren’t we?”
Nicole started talking very quickly. “I can’t tell. The driver’s been following a crazy route to get around traffic. The girl sitting right behind the driver lives the closest to us. I think her name’s Rashawn. She’s a new girl. Someone told me her father’s the caretaker of the wildlife refuge next to our farm. The caretaker’s house is five miles farther out. She’s usually already on the bus when I get on in the morning. I guess her parents took her to school today. She’s probably wishing they had picked her up too…. I’m sorry I called you paranoid.”
Chase smiled. Not at Nicole’s nervousness but at something his father had said to his uncle Bob when Uncle Bob accused him of being paranoid.
“I wasn’t insulted,” Chase said. “Paranoia is just another word for heightened awareness.”
“Funny,” Nicole said, relaxing … a little. “Why are you sitting way back here?”
Chase pointed at the emergency door. “Safer.”
The bus stopped. Two more people jumped off, leaving Chase, Nicole, and the girl sitting up front.
“Tell me about the refuge,” Chase said, as the bus lurched forward. He didn’t really care about the refuge, but he felt that if he could keep her talking, it might calm her down.
“It borders one end of our farm. We actually used to own a good piece of the refuge land, but my grandfather donated it to the state.”
“How big is it?”
“It’s huge, and getting bigger. The state bought a large parcel of land down the road from us with a levee on it. Eventually they’ll buy our place, which will connect the levee property to the refuge.”
“Your dad’s going to sell the farm?”
“Not any time soon, but yeah, he’ll sell it. If the circus goes under, we won’t need the land.” “What’s on the refuge?”
“I haven’t really spent any time there. If I’m not swimming, I’m taking care of the animals. There isn’t much time for exploring. I suppose the refuge has birds, gators, deer, snakes … Florida things.”
Chase scooted over to the window. All he could see was pitch-black through sheets of rain, no car lights, no streetlights, no house lights. He scooted back to Nicole.
“Maybe we should invite Rashawn to come back here with us. She’s probably just as scared as we are.”
“You’re scared?”
“Yeah, aren’t you?”
“I’ll get her.”
Chase pulled the handheld GPS out of his go bag and fired it up.
Nicole returned with Rashawn. She was big, almost as tall as he was. She was sopping wet from sitting close to the door, and she was shivering. He hoped she was shivering because she was cold, not frightened. None of them was dressed for a hurricane. Rashawn sat down on the bench across the aisle from them. Chase took a Mylar first aid blanket out of his bag and handed it to her.
“Why’re you sitting all the way back here?” Rashawn asked through chattering teeth.
“Chase thinks it’s safe —”
“Warmer,” Chase interrupted. No use scaring Rashawn any more than she was. “And drier.”
“You’re the boy who was afraid to get on the bus.”
“Yeah.”
Rashawn shook the blanket out and put it around her broad shoulders. “What kind of kid carries a blanket in his backpack?”
“A Boy Scout,” Nicole answered.
“Former Boy Scout,” Chase clarified.
“That bus driver’s lost,” Rashawn said.
“What makes you think that?” Chase asked.
“Been sitting behind him since we left school. He talks to himself. He also curses … a lot. Everything was fine until he dumped off those last two kids. He took what he thought was a shortcut.”
“Do you know where we are?”
Rashawn shook her head, splashing water from her wet hair on both of them. “I’ve only been here a month. I couldn’t find my way home from school on a bet. Guess I should have been paying better attention.”
Chase slid over to the window to get a better angle on the satellites for his GPS. Once the satellite located them he could he could punch in where they needed to go and tell the driver.
“Maybe we can help him.”
07:20PM
Their location popped up on the little screen, but it meant nothing to Chase. As he turned to ask Nicole for her address, a gust of wind lifted the bus completely off its tires. Just as suddenly, the bus slammed back on the road and started to tip.
“On the floor!” Chase shouted above Rashawn’s and Nicole’s screams. He reached out and grabbed an arm — he couldn’t tell who it belonged to — and pulled one of the girls to the floor. “Brace yourselves!” He wrapped his legs and arms around the steel seat rods, hoping Nicole and Rashawn had done the same. If they were lucky, the bus would simply land on its side.
They weren’t lucky.
The bus rolled three times, maybe four…. It was impossible to tell in the dark with the deafening sound of screeching metal, shattering windows, and terrified screams — including Chase’s own.
The bus came to a stop, but only long enough for Chase to reach out and grab his GPS. He glanced at the screen and saw a single black line surrounded by blue.
The bus started to slide. Front end first.
“We’re going into the water!” he shouted, hoping someone was alive to hear him. “Stay on this end of the bus! We’ll use the emergency exit!”
No one responded. They were either too frightened to speak, unconscious, dead, or had tumbled to the front of the bus.
The bus hit the water l
ike a torpedo, pushing Chase’s face into the seat frame. He felt a front tooth snap, followed by the coppery taste of blood. Frantically he felt around for his go bag. He’d need the first aid kit and everything else in the bag if they survived the crash.
He grabbed a handful of hair.
“Ouch!”
Chase spit out a mouthful of blood. “Nicole?” “Yeah.”
“Anything broken?”
“I don’t think so. You?”
“Front tooth. Where’s Rashawn?”
“I’m next to Nicole,” Rashawn said.
“My go bag,” Chase said.
“I have it,” Nicole said. “We’re sinking.”
“Give me the bag.”
Chase pulled a headlamp out of the side pocket, turned it on, and slipped it over his forehead. Nicole looked pale in the bright light.
“You and Rashawn go through the emergency door and get to shore. It can’t be too far.”
He pulled a second headlamp out and handed it to her.
“What are you going to do?” Nicole asked, putting the headlamp on.
“I’m going to check on the driver.”
They looked down the length the bus. Water was gushing through the cracked windshield.
“I’m a better swimmer,” Nicole said.
“I’m sure you are,” Chase said. “But I’m stronger.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“No, get Rashawn to shore. I’ll be right behind you. Go!”
The water was rising fast. The bus would be completely submerged within minutes. He made his way down the steep, slippery aisle, wondering how he was going to get the driver back up the aisle if the guy was unconscious.
The driver was unconscious, slumped over the steering wheel. Chase pulled him up. There was a deep, ugly gash on the man’s forehead oozing blood.
Chase shouted at him, then tried to shake him awake.
No response.
After the lightning strike, he and his father had taken first aid classes three nights a week for months. By the time they’d finished they could have become paramedics.
