The Tempest

by A. J. Scudiere

  “Now,” she told them, the tension in her voice surprising him. But he didn’t get to ask as she snapped into the general air around them. “Everything!”

  “It's barely noon,” Cage muttered it to himself, but Chithra gave him a harsh look, then pointed skyward as though he hadn't been paying attention. The fact was, he hadn't.

  The clouds had been dark since last night, but nothing had happened, so he'd gone about his work. But his manager was right. The reason they needed the tent with the light in it to see their work was because the sky was so overcast—even at barely-noon.

  Radnor had been reluctant to send them home again after the last time he’d miscalculated, setting them behind. Honestly, they could have worked through the rain. It wouldn't have slowed them down. According to Radnor, a little water wouldn’t hurt anyone. So now, Cage wondered why Chithra had suddenly ordered them to shut it down.

  “What do we do with the samples?” he asked.

  “Mark them and box them.” But Chithra was already headed to the next team before Leah had said, “But our half earthworms will die.”

  Chithra turned back, her harsh words slicing the conversation with Sarah and Kevin. “Put them in the box!”

  With a shrug, Cage sent Leah back to the site to pick up their tools while he struggled to label the half-finished work. His eye kept dashing to the sky. Where was his sister?

  Despite the strange request, it hadn’t taken him very long to box and mark everything. He was immediately pressed into service helping to take down the tent. It required four of them to get it down with the wind fighting them and attempting to lift the top right off the poles.

  Today, he'd worn his jacket over the T-shirt, and it flapped around him the same as the tent. Cage was relatively certain that his clothing would have made a noise if he could have heard it over the harsh thumping of the canvas.

  They collapsed the tent accordion style, and as each of the four of them walked their leg toward a center point, he looked over his shoulder and back toward the other side of the field. But he didn’t see Joule.

  She was here on site, he knew, but he forced his attention back to the task at hand and let Micah hold the heavy, collapsed tent. He and Izzy used Velcro straps to tie it.

  “Where’s the bag?” Kevin asked as he looked at then pointed to the ground at his feet. “It was right here.”

  It took a few moments before Leah returned and figured it out. She pointed and commented, “It’s stuck in the tree.”

  As Cage turned to see where she was looking, he spotted the red bag plastered halfway up the trunk, the wind holding it in place.

  “I've got it!” Leah was running off before anyone could stop her.

  Cage’s heart beat a little easier as Leah returned with the matching canvas bag, and the three of them slipped the folded tent down inside, pulling the drawstring.

  “What else do we need to get?” he asked, even as he stubbed his toe on one of the sandbags still sitting where the post had been.

  “I left the main field bag,” Leah commented, “but we can grab it on the way back.”

  Between the tools and tent and sandbags, the six of them could barely manage to carry their gear back to the car as the wind whipped their hair around and plastered their clothing to their bodies.

  It might have been fun, had he been younger and more naive.

  As the team trekked across the open space, Cage found himself sneaking a glance toward the edge of the trees and wondering if he could see night hunters roaming in between the trunks.

  Even as he reminded himself it was just his imagination, he startled at the harsh of the siren stopping all five of them in their tracks.

  20

  “We don't have sirens here,” Deveron commented to Joule as both their heads snapped at the harsh sound.

  She was frowning without meaning to. It took a second to recognize it wasn't a siren, but a bullhorn. Even as Joule figured it out, Radnor's voice came over the line. “F 2 in Horton.”

  That was all he needed to say.

  “Holy shit.” But her words were swallowed as her boss must have pressed the button again and the sickly electronic siren noise filled the air once more.

  Radnor was making a running loop around the field—which she'd never seen him do before—and aiming the siren first one way then another. Periodically, he would stop and plant his feet, pressing the device to his mouth to say once again, “F 2 on the ground in Horton.”

  She hadn't wanted to look up the information before, but now she regretted not knowing how much bigger an F2 was than an F1. At the time, she’d mentally told herself she didn’t need that information because she’d had her tornado scare and she was done with it.

  She and Deveron quickly packed their tools. Her hands moving with almost no input from her brain, and she had the handles Velcro’d together and the whole thing scooped up and ready to go.

  She was starting across the field as she felt the first drops of rain hit. Large and soft, they were almost whimsical amidst the panic that was trying to force its way through the field and through her system. Joule fought down her fear. She could see the other teams around her moving quickly, trying to clear out in an efficient manner while holding their own worry at bay.

  The siren stopped for a moment and Radnor’s voice came over the bullhorn again. Only this time all he said was, “Shit.”

  Unable to help herself, Joule laughed. She turned to find Deveron doing much the same. Probably hysteria and panic response, she thought but she'd giggled a little harder.

  But when Radnor’s voice came back, she quit.

  “F 2 in Arab.”

  Once again, Joule turned to Deveron. They'd covered some distance, but the field was huge. They were nowhere near the main tent yet. “Did he get it wrong the first time?”

  Arab was a different city from Horton, almost thirty minutes away. But even as Deveron shrugged in reply, Radnor’s voice came over the system again. “Two twisters on the ground.”

  Joule froze.

  Horton and Arab were on almost opposite sides of the array field. They were standing somewhere in between what was now two tornadoes—but the real question was, where would the storms be in relation to them in five minutes?

  That all depended on which way the twisters tangled and turned. And that was unpredictable. They could move slowly. Turn on a dime. Plow a ten-foot-wide precision cut through a gravel driveway or eat one half of a store—like she’d seen in town.

  “Everyone, head immediately to your cars, and go home.” Radnor blasted the siren once, almost like a car horn, rather than a wail now.

  After three short blasts, which Joule didn’t think they’d been trained to interpret as anything other than an attempt to get everyone’s attention, her boss began reciting safety information.

  “Find shelter. Don't hide under bridges, they're not safe. The engineers know the physics will actually increase wind speeds. Don't try to outrun it. Get out of the car, get into a low ditch.”

  It took her a few moments to realize he must have pulled something up on his phone and was reading the instructions out to everyone. Periodically he would stop and add his own commentary or blast the siren like a horn again. Still, he moved around the field, aiming it in every direction and looking for all of his employees.

  She could tell when he ran out of instructions, because his voice became more forceful. “Everyone to the tent! Check in with Chithra before you leave. We need to be sure we've claimed everyone.”

  Radnor wasn't one to give in to panic, not that Joule imagined, but she could hear a hint of terror seeping into his voice as she and Deveron raced across the field, tool bags still in hand.

  “Leave your equipment behind,” Radnor called out. “We don't care, keep yourself safe.”

  “The tornado’s really not close,” Deveron told her. His breath and his clunky movements as he tried to run with the heavy toolbag at his side cut into the words.

  Joule still understood
and she agreed. But Radnor wanted them to run. In fact, in just another second, he yelled out over the bullhorn again. “Faster! Please drop your bags.”

  And it took the two of them another few moments and Radnor repeating himself to realize their boss was aiming the bullhorn at them. Both of them were still clutching their tools as though they were saving graces—as though they could simply remove a lug nut from a tornado if it came their way and stop it in its tracks.

  Dropping her own bag, Joule elbowed Dev, who seemed to have not caught on that he was still clutching his like a lifeline. As she heard his bag hit the grass not far from where she’d left hers, she grabbed his free hand and waved to Radnor, letting him know that they'd finally understood and were following instructions better now. She was breathing heavily, her heart pounding.

  She couldn’t take another disaster.

  Hand in hand, they bolted through the rain and toward the tent as Chithra and Leah stood there, calling out first names as people went by.

  “Micah!”

  “Sarah!”

  Each person waved, knowing they’d been accounted for, before diving through the now heavy rain toward their cars. Several were revving and pulling out as Joule told herself that Sarah wouldn’t leave without them.

  “Kevin!”

  “Peter!”

  “Wendy!” she heard as she headed into the flimsy shelter of the tent.

  “Joule! Deveron!”

  It surprised Joule to realize that she had an emotional reaction to each name. Though she was no fan of Peter’s, she was glad he'd been checked off.

  As she moved around to sneak a peek at Chithra’s clipboard, the woman turned the other direction inadvertently cutting her off. So Joule tried again, but Chithra’s constant effort to scan a moving crowd meant Joule couldn’t get a read on the list.

  When she turned again and caught Joule’s questioning gaze, Joule simply asked, “Cage?”

  But Chithra just narrowed her eyes and didn't even have to glance at the list. She knew everyone going by. And she shook her head at Joule. “Not yet.”

  21

  The thundering noise made Cage look up.

  He saw it looming above the trees, even as he heard the siren sound on the bull horn click off, replaced only by Radnor’s quiet, “Oh crap.”

  In the distance hovered the wide, dark gray funnel. The sound was something between a grind and constant thunder as it plowed toward them. Cage imagined it scrubbing the earth as it went, just like the clean line through the gravel drive, but this time maybe even miles wide.

  Radnor, having found his senses, this time merely yelled, “RUN!”

  His breathing stopped, but Cage didn't need to be told twice. He quickly found himself in the middle of a chain, all four of them having locked hands without thinking about it. It was probably a horrible idea, but none of them were letting go. He, Leah, Micah, and Izzy were all running together as a single unit. When Leah stumbled, Cage and Izzy—on either side of her—yanked at her hands, pulling her back up.

  As she mumbled, “Thank you,” Cage thought that maybe they’d dislocated her shoulder. But a dislocated shoulder would be the least of their worries if the tornado caught them.

  The funnel seemed to have stopped moving and hovered in the distance. Or plausibly, it was like watching another airplane from your airplane window. If it didn't appear to move in space, it meant the two were on a collision course.

  Maybe no matter where he ran, he was on an inevitable course with this funnel. If the one he'd seen before was an F1, then this was nothing of the sort. This was not the F2 of Horton or the one from Arab. This was their own whirling, screaming monster.

  Though his mind told him in the end he’d find out the beast was only an F2 or F3, right now he was confident it was a seven or an eight and that the Fujita scale would rework their numbers because of this one.

  As they approached the middle of the field, he finally spotted movement on the other side. He couldn’t hear it, but he saw as cars revved and turned, pulling out of their spots and peeling away from the lot. He watched ahead, still running, still hoping his foot placement was solid, because he wasn't looking at his feet. As far as he could tell, neither were the rest of them. His feet pounded the earth and he thought just keep going just keep going.

  He spotted Sarah's blue car as she backed up then slammed it into gear. As she pulled away from him, Cage could see Joule’s face in the rear seat, her hands flat against the glass as Sarah drove away.

  Thoughts moved rapid-fire through his brain. Were they leaving without him?

  It didn't matter. It was best that they were safe. And he could ride with Leah or Micah or with any of them. No one would refuse him a seat in their car.

  It was best that Sarah and Joule were getting away, because this time when he looked up the monster was closer.

  Wider.

  Darker.

  Angrier.

  The four of them were flat out bolting now, free-range running for their lives. Behind him, Radnor brought up the rear of the small fleeing crowd, and Cage had no doubt the man was identifying every employee. His harried voice was still calling out instructions. “Get in your cars and drive away! Don't drive into it. Go north! Go north!”

  There was a pause, a new set of directions. “If you can't get in a car, get in a ditch. Hold on to something buried deep—a tree or a pipe. Strap yourself to it if you can.”

  The words were broken up by his heavy breaths as Radnor worked furiously to save everyone. He left the bullhorn turned on and maybe mistakenly broadcasted his encouragement and directions each time he found someone. “Get up. Get up, Jason … Come on.”

  Cage breathed only a little easier knowing that Radnor was gathering the fallen.

  As they approached the edge of the parking lot, Cage again spotted Joule through the back window of Sarah's car. Why weren’t they gone?

  His sister’s hands were waving frantically, pointing at him, and he realized they weren’t going to leave without him. He would have waved them on, but he was so close. They'd lined the car up, and now Sarah slammed it into reverse, aiming directly toward him. Gravel spewed as the bright blue bumper came directly at him and the others.

  His heart thumped as he dropped their hands, moving the last few feet and closing the distance. In no time at all, he was peeling open the back door and climbing in, pulling Izzy on top of him. Micah and Leah both refused, yelling into the high winds that they had other rides, that the others were waiting for them.

  “Go!” Sarah yelled at them, her own window down, her hand motioning them as she watched to be sure they made it to the other cars. The wind whipped through her hair and all around her, stealing her words. In fact, Cage wasn't sure if he'd actually heard her voice, or just seen her mouth move.

  But Leah and Micah were off in two different directions. In a moment, they had both climbed into other, already populated cars. Cage was asking the one thing he could, “Deveron?”

  But again, the wind and noise stole his voice. And even as he asked, the front door flew open and Deveron slid into his usual seat.

  “Go!” his friend yelled, and Sarah was off before Dev even had the door closed.

  As Cage looked out the back window, Izzy tried to situate herself, partially climbing over him and smushing herself into the middle space. He tried to put on a seat belt but couldn't make it click and instead reached out and braced his arm against the back of Deveron’s seat. With his head cranked around to look out the back window, much like his sister on the other side, the twins watched as the wide beast hit the edge of the field, pulling up enormous trees by their roots and sucking them into the sky.

  22

  “North,” Cage yelled as they hit the main road. “Go north!”

  He said it the second time, in case Sarah hadn't heard. How could she hear with the windows down?

  She’d opened them to let the wind flow through the car rather than shattering the glass. But as she made the sharp turn onto t
he small highway, he felt a precarious dip in the back of the car. The tire missed the pavement and his stomach pitched as he worried about going nose down into the ditch.

  Across the back, he and Izzy and Joule clutched the seats in front of them, as though that would save them if the car suddenly dropped seven feet. The ditches on either side of the roads here were deep. The advantage to that was that they would already be low to the ground, in case the tornado went directly over them. Unfortunately, he would bet there were no pipes, nor anything solid, to hold on to if it rolled right over them.

  He'd never seen anything like the wide, curling monster. Though Sarah had pulled away before he could see more, he found he was grateful for that. He'd watched three tall trees get ripped out of the ground—roots and all—the dirt that pulled up with them disintegrating quickly into the air that disappeared into the gray. As the trees were quickly whirled away, he wondered how long it took them to reach the other side of the funnel or to come back around to the front. Would the tornado eventually just drop them somewhere?

  Underneath him, the tires squealed as Sarah raced down the road. They all knew they weren't supposed to try to outrun it, but there was now no other option.

  The pylons they'd sunk in the field, though they should hold up to the force of at least an F5, had not been tested, and they were too big for human arms to wrap around them and hold on. Although the best hope for anyone stranded in the field would have been to belt themselves to the pylon anyone still out there probably would have been ripped away in a heartbeat.

  Cage found himself wondering if all the Helio Systems people had made it off the field because it looked like the tornado was barreling across their construction even as Sarah squealed away from the site. He hoped everyone including Radnor had abandoned the area …