Storm Runners

by Roland Smith

  He felt the man’s neck for a pulse. He didn’t feel one, but that didn’t mean the driver was dead. Chase’s hands were numb with cold. He felt his jagged tooth with his tongue and glanced up the aisle to the rear of the bus. Nicole had the emergency door open and was helping Rashawn through.

  The water was up to the driver’s chest now and rising fast. Chase shouted and gave him another shake. The driver let out a weak moan just as the front end of the bus plunged completely underwater.

  Chase was washed backward in a rush of water. He managed to get a gulp of air just before he was slammed into one of the seats as the bus slipped sideways, then rolled. As the bus slid farther he pulled his way up to the driver again and grabbed the man’s arm. He tried to yank the driver free of the seat, but he wouldn’t budge.

  Seat belt!

  Chase wasted several precious seconds trying to find the release. If he didn’t get the driver to the surface on his first try, the driver would drown. If he didn’t get to the surface himself in about thirty seconds, he would drown. Chase shrugged the pack off his back and unzipped one of the pockets. The bus settled to the bottom with a dull thump.

  Chase tried to keep the panic down. He couldn’t afford to make a mistake. He pulled his knife out of the pocket and sliced the seat belt in two places. The driver rose from the seat like a balloon and came to a stop against the door, blocking the exit.

  Chase knew he wouldn’t make it to the emergency exit in the back of the bus with the driver in tow. That left the windshield. It was cracked in several places. He braced his back against a pole and was about to try to kick the windshield out, when something dark and very big swam past outside. Chase couldn’t tell what it was, but it frightened him so badly that he nearly sucked in a lungful of water.

  Get ahold of yourself! Oxygen deprivation is making you see things.

  The windshield popped loose on the third kick. On the fourth it came out of the frame and dropped into the dark water. With his lungs screaming for air, Chase grabbed the driver by his shirt collar and pulled him through the opening. Nicole was waiting for him.

  As soon as she’d seen the bus sink, she’d dived back into the water, leaving Rashawn to make it to shore on her own. She’d gotten to the bus just as Chase was pulling the driver through the windshield. She grabbed Chase’s free arm, wrapped it around her neck, and kicked toward the surface.

  The second they broke the surface, Chase took a deep breath of air and started choking. Nicole helped him pull the driver’s head above water.

  “Can you swim on your own?” Nicole shouted.

  Chase could barely hear her above the howling wind. He nodded.

  Nicole wrapped her arm around the driver. “Follow me. The shore’s close.”

  They dragged the driver up on the bank where Rashawn was sitting huddled under the first aid blanket.

  “We might need that blanket,” Chase said.

  Rashawn took the blanket off and gave it to Nicole. “Is he alive?”

  “Not at the moment,” Chase said, pushing the driver onto his stomach.

  “What does that mean?”

  Chase glimpsed his watch as he began pushing on the driver’s back.

  It was 7:32.

  07:56PM

  “Are you sure he’s dead?” Rashawn asked. Chase nodded.

  No pulse. Dilated pupils. Instead of water, blood had come out of his mouth when Chase tried to resuscitate him, which meant he was probably dead before Chase cut the seat belt.

  “I’ve never seen a dead person,” Rashawn said.

  Chase had seen more dead people than he cared to remember and wished he could have done more for the driver. But there were other priorities now. He didn’t have time to think about what he might have been able to do, not now … except for one small detail, which he hated to bring up in front of Rashawn because she was already pretty freaked out.

  “Are there alligators here?” he asked.

  “That depends where here is,” Nicole said.

  “We’re on the levee you were telling me about. Part of the refuge.”

  “Then there’s gators,” Rashawn said. “Thousands of them, according to my daddy, although I haven’t been down on this part of the refuge.”

  Chase looked at Nicole. “Did you see one underwater?”

  “No. Did you?”

  “I think so. Just before I kicked the windshield out. I almost died right there. Thanks for coming back for me. I don’t think I would have made it to the top on my own.”

  “Gators aren’t nearly as aggressive as people think,” Rashawn said.

  “She’s right,” Nicole agreed. “You shouldn’t mess with them, but they aren’t usually a threat.”

  “Unless you stumble across a nest of gator eggs,” Rashawn added. “Then you might have a big problem from the momma.”

  “I only saw it for a second, but something told me it was aggressive … very aggressive.”

  “Daddy’s been dealing with gators forever,” Rashawn said. “I suspect the gators are all riding out the storm on the bottom. The bus probably jarred one loose and it was popping up to get some air.”

  Chase was happy to hear Rashawn’s little gator lecture. It meant she wasn’t nearly as frightened as he’d thought she was. If they wanted to survive the storm, they could not panic. They had to keep their senses about them.

  “It scared me,” Chase said.

  “Heightened awareness?” Nicole asked.

  They would also have to keep their sense of humor.

  “No,” Chase said. “This time it was real paranoia. So, neither of you has been on this road?”

  The road was about twenty feet above them, up a steep bank. The girls shook their heads.

  “We have to find some shelter to ride out the storm,” Chase said.

  “It’s not too bad right here,” Rashawn said. “We’re protected from the worst of the wind on this side of the levee.”

  “For now,” Chase said. “But Emily’s just getting started. The water’s rising. It’s gone up a foot since we’ve been sitting here.”

  He pulled the GPS out and turned it on. It was supposed to be waterproof, but the way their luck was going … The screen lit up and immediately picked up a satellite. Chase breathed a sigh of relief.

  “What about your satellite phone?” Nicole asked.

  His dad would certainly have his sat phone on now. “It’s —” Chase felt his shoulder for the familiar strap. The go bag wasn’t there. “I left it on the bus,” he said. “The phone wasn’t waterproof anyway and the bag was drenched. I guess I should dive back down and look for it. We could use some of the other stuff, like the first aid kit.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Rashawn said. “Gators aren’t usually aggressive, but who knows what they’re like in a hurricane.”

  Chase was beginning to really like Rashawn.

  “You probably wouldn’t find it anyway,” Nicole said. “We have the headlamps and the GPS. The first aid kit would be nice, but …” She looked at his face. “Your lip is swollen and split. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Did you say something before we went down about your front tooth?”

  “Yeah, but there’s nothing in the first aid kit that’s going to fix a tooth. I could use a painkiller, but that’s the least of our worries.”

  He handed Nicole the GPS.

  “This is the zoom button. Zoom out and find the nearest house. I’m going to check out the road.”

  Chase climbed up the bank, trying not to berate himself for failing to save the driver and forgetting the go bag. If he had the sat phone, and it worked, he’d be calling 9-1-1 right now and telling them where they were. Ninety percent of their problem would be over … maybe seventy-five percent. It would take a rescue team a while to get to them.

  The wind was fiercer up on the road. He had to spread his legs as far as they would go and hunch over to keep from being blown back down the bank. He recalculated the
ir chances of getting rescued even if they had the sat phone.

  Ten percent, he thought.

  He lumbered back to where the bus had gone into the water and discovered the wind had not blown it off the road. A large section of road was gone and water was rushing through the gap from the lake on the other side. It could have been the weight of the bus that caused the collapse, but he didn’t think so. He walked forward a hundred yards and found another section of collapsed road.

  Not good. We need to get down this road while there’s still a road to get down.

  He hurried to the spot he’d climbed up, and slid back down the bank.

  Nicole and Rashawn were smiling. “Did you find out where we are?”

  “Right in the middle of the levee road,” Nicole said. “A little less than five miles from the farm gate and ten miles from Rashawn’s.” She looked down at the driver, her smile fading. “He almost got us home.”

  “Are there any houses closer?” Chase asked.

  Nicole shook her head. “Mine’s the closest.”

  “Five miles isn’t too bad,” Chase said, not mentioning that walking five miles in a hurricane was probably like walking fifty miles.

  “I bet my daddy’s driving around, looking for me right now,” Rashawn said.

  “He’s not driving this way,” Chase said. “The road’s collapsing. The only way to the farm is on foot. The good news is that there aren’t any trees on the lake to fall on us, and there isn’t much debris flying around. I had a couple of rain ponchos in the go bag, but —”

  Nicole held up his go bag.

  “Where —”

  The girls’ grins reappeared.

  “I told her not to go,” Rashawn said. “But she was in the water like a cormorant before I could stop her.”

  “What’s a cormorant?”

  “You don’t know much about animals, do you?” Rashawn said. “It’s a bird.”

  “It only took one dive,” Nicole said. “It was right by the driver’s seat.”

  “What about the gator?”

  “Didn’t see it. You must have scared it off.”

  Chase took the sat phone out and turned it on. Not surprisingly, it didn’t work. Next he took out some energy bars and handed them out.

  “I’m not hungry,” Rashawn said. “We can eat when we get to Nicole’s.”

  “Stick them in your pocket anyway,” Chase said. “It will be a long time before we get to the farm.” If we get to the farm, he thought. “They actually taste terrible, but they’ll keep you going. We’re going to burn a lot of energy in the next several hours.”

  Next he took out a bottle of water for each of them.

  “I don’t think water’s going to be a problem,” Nicole said, pointing to the sky.

  “The water’s falling on the outside of your body, not inside. We need to keep ourselves hydrated.”

  He took out a waterproof plastic bag with paper towels in it, wiped the sat phone down as best as he could, then put it in the plastic bag.

  Finally he pulled out the two rain ponchos and handed one to each of the girls.

  “What are you going to wear?” Rashawn asked. “Not that these are going to do us much good now. I’m soaked through.”

  “I’ll use your blanket,” Chase said. “It won’t be as stylish as your ponchos, but it will work fine after I cut a hole for my head to fit through. I know you’re wet, but the ponchos will help keep the wind out and your body heat in.”

  “You must be some kind of super Boy Scout,” Rashawn said. “I’ve never seen a bag of tricks like that.” “It’s a long story,” Chase said.

  “What about him?” Nicole asked, pointing to the driver.

  Chase was sorry the man had died, very sorry, but he wanted to leave the driver exactly where he was. It would take a lot of energy they would need later to move him. “We can’t take him with us,” he said.

  “We can’t leave him here,” Rashawn said. “Tomorrow morning after this storm passes, some ol’ gator’s going to come along and make a meal out of him.”

  “She’s right,” Nicole said.

  “We’ll drag him up to the road. High ground. That’s the best we can do.” Chase didn’t want to see him get eaten by a gator either, but the result would probably be the same whether they moved him or not. He didn’t think the levee road was going to be there tomorrow morning.

  He took everything he thought he needed out of the pack, along with the satellite phone, and stuffed it all into his pockets, glad he had chosen to wear cargo pants that morning. He took a couple of pain pills and washed them down with water, which sent fire through his broken tooth. He cut a hole in the blanket for his head. Then he hung the GPS around his neck by its lanyard.

  “Did you learn that from your dad?” Nicole asked.

  “Funny,” Chase said.

  10:32PM

  Chase began to think they were walking backward instead of forward, or else that the GPS was wrong. How could it take over two hours to walk less than half a mile?

  At this rate we won’t get to the farm until sunrise, if at all!

  The wind and rain were dissolving the road as if it were a sand castle. Twice they’d had to wade around a gap in waist-deep water. The last time, all three of them had nearly been swept out into the lake by the current rushing through the opening.

  The ponchos, and the blanket he was wearing, were little help in this weather. Wet suits would have been better.

  I’ll have to suggest that to Dad, if I ever see him again, he thought. And we need more batteries in the go bag too.

  He stopped to let everyone catch their breath and change the batteries in the headlamps, which were getting too dim to see.

  “This is the last of the batteries. We’re dead without light. We’ll have to use one headlamp at a time. Whoever’s wearing it will have to take the lead and call out problems to the two in back.”

  Whoever meant Chase or Nicole. Rashawn was doing a lot better than he expected, but every thirty minutes, like clockwork, she froze and burst into tears. The fits didn’t last long, and she was perfectly fine when they were over, but he couldn’t risk having her lead them up the dark road.

  Nicole took the first lead, and it went smoothly for the first ten minutes, discounting the wind, the stinging rain, and Chase’s throbbing front tooth, which the pain pills had done nothing to help.

  Chase was a step behind Rashawn, holding on to her arm. Rashawn was a step behind Nicole, holding on to her arm. They’d tried hooking arms and walking three abreast, but when the crosswind gusted, it blew them into one another and their legs got tangled. The chain formation seemed to be working. When the wind picked one of them up off the road, which happened every few minutes, they would drop to their knees and huddle until it was safe to move again.

  Huddle … hold … walk … Huddle … hold … walk …

  “Stop!” Nicole shouted.

  They huddled. Chase switched on his headlamp, expecting to see another breach in the road. But the road looked fine except for the large log up ahead. “We’ll have to be careful,” he said. “But we can get across that log.”

  Rashawn and Nicole laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “That ain’t no log,” Rashawn said. “That’s a gator.” Chase stared ahead in horror. “That’s not a gator, it’s a Tyrannosaurus rex!”

  “I thought you said the gators were riding out the storm underwater,” Nicole said.

  “Not this one. I bet he’s thirteen feet if he’s an inch. Probably fifty or sixty years old. My daddy would flip if he was here.”

  Chase wished her daddy was there to tell them what to do. The only way they could move forward was to scare it off the road or step over it.

  “I’m surprised he hasn’t moved, with the headlamp on him,” Nicole said. “We must look like aliens to him.”

  “More like poachers,” Rashawn said. “Which makes it even stranger he didn’t bolt into the water as soon as he saw your light.
They hunt them at night with spotlights. At his age and size I bet he has a bullet hole or two in him from poachers.”

  Chase looked at Nicole. “Any ideas?”

  “I guess we move closer and see what the gator does.”

  11:02PM

  “… as you can see, Richard … Emily has bypassed Saint Pete. All we have here is a bit of rain and some wind as the outer edge is skirting past us, heading north. It made landfall at 7:00 PM in Palm Breeze.”

  “Where I live,” Richard said.

  “I hope your family is safe, Richard.”

  “I hope so too. The last time I spoke to them, which was just after my wife got home from school — she’s a principal, you know — everything was fine. An hour later I called back and the cell and landlines were completely dead.

  “I guess what I don’t understand — and I’m sure our viewers are wondering the same thing — is how could the forecasters be so wrong? Emily’s landed fifty miles north of here. But what’s even more surprising is that she made landfall four hours early, stranding tens of thousands of people trying to get home or leave the area.”

  “Those are some pretty big questions, Richard. I hardly to know where to begin….

  “Everything we know about hurricanes is based on previous data. Emily is an anomaly. This afternoon she was moving faster than any other hurricane on record. No one could have predicted that she would actually pick up speed as the afternoon progressed. Because of her speed and her direction changes, forecasters were simply unable to predict where she would make landfall.

  “As to the tens of thousands of stranded people, I don’t think it’s that many, but there are certainly people who have gotten caught by this storm. As you mentioned, Richard, we have a complete communications blackout with the exception of satellite phones. Here’s what we think is going on, and please remember that none of this information can be verified until communications have been restored.