The Tempest

by A. J. Scudiere

  “I don't know if I can climb.” Sarah used her good hand to point to her bad one.

  “We’ll pull you up,” Deveron was already volunteering, and Sarah was nodding.

  Even as Cage reached out to hold onto her good hand, they heard large wheels stopping on the road overhead. Doors slammed and two faces peered over the edge of the ditch.

  “We’ve been stopping every so often and looking in the ditch!” The man said it as though they were searching for treasure. He grinned at the three stuck below and Cage realized he and his friends were the treasure: People, found alive.

  “We saw the tracks where a few cars went off the road a while back.”

  So they weren’t the only ones, he thought. Not surprising.

  The round face with the short red beard grinned happily and called, “Need a hand?”

  27

  “Just use your feet,” the man called down.

  Cage was trying to do that, but clearly failing. The harness wrapped around him did everything to help lift, but Cage also had to reach forward and grab onto the climbing ropes pulling him upward to help steady himself. The ground was soft and loamy, and the whole endeavor was awkward at best.

  He’d just watched Deveron go up like a goat, and then he’d helped with Sarah—who was nothing approaching agile-footed. They’d all bit back their yelps a few times as her feet had slipped and they waited for her to land on her bad arm. She’d managed to prevent it each time, but Cage hadn’t managed to not wince.

  He was now the last one to get out of the ditch. Boomer and Bob, who must be twins, had their huge, red, tricked-out truck well outfitted for this kind of rescue.

  “Slow and steady,” Boomer called down to him.

  Or at least, Cage thought it was Boomer. He didn't have them straight.

  “Gotcha,” he called up with a smile, though he thought he’d been going steady. He tried to move even slower.

  When he got close enough to the top, the other brother leaned over, reached down, and clasped Cage’s wrist like a bear trap. Cage grabbed on tight, appreciating the lift, but his mind flashed to the times that he and Joule had done the same.

  This time didn’t matter. Joule wasn’t here.

  Forcing his thoughts back to the task at hand, Cage reminded himself that he had to get out of here first if he was going to find her.

  “Three…” Boomer counted out to him as Cage put his last steps into place. “Two…One!”

  He cleared the top of the ditch and stood on his own, the harness finally relaxing against him, no longer grinding his skin and muscles against into bones and revealing more new bruises with each step.

  Cage wondered if he, too, had broken bones. But since he couldn’t pinpoint anything specifically, he didn’t mention it. Probably, it was just paranoia.

  While Sarah and Deveron had been hauled upward and he waited at the bottom of the ditch for his turn with the one harness, he’d pulled his phone from his pocket. It came out almost in pieces, making him wonder how it had stayed in his pocket at all. It was cracked and bent and completely useless.

  He wanted to show the rescuers a picture of his sister and ask if anyone had seen her. But that couldn’t happen now. Cage had been wondering if Sarah or Deveron had pictures of Joule on their phone—and if their phones were in any better shape than his?—when Bob had seen him and called down, “Don't worry about it. There's no service yet.”

  But there would be, Cage thought. And he'd need to find a place to get pictures of his sister downloaded. As he stood at the top now, with Bob unclipping the harness and taking their webbing and supplies back, he realized the back of their truck was already full of tornado refugees.

  A woman sat with two young children. The smaller one had her arm in a makeshift sling and the other held a once-white towel to his forehead. It was now soaking up a nice patch of red blood from a cut he must have gotten. The mother sat with her arms around the little ones, her face streaked with dirt and tears. Beside her, three men sat across the back of the cab. One had his knees up, elbows bent, and head down in between. Cage couldn't see his face.

  Some of the people looked vaguely familiar. Then again, he'd been working in this town for several months now. He'd been in the restaurants and the stores, and he'd surely seen their faces somewhere. This slice of Alabama wasn't that big, although somehow he hadn't met Boomer and Bob before.

  “Don't think you're gonna get your car back any time soon,” Boomer was telling Sarah. “It's lost until someone comes by with a working winch to tow it out.” He paused, scratched his head, and delivered more bad news. “You’re probably not high on the priority list.”

  Cage had already figured that out after the five-day lag in getting the driveway fixed so they could get up to the house. His and Joule’s car had been hostage at the house because it couldn’t navigate the road to leave. He could only hope this went faster.

  Sarah had her own wishes, it seemed. She shrugged her one good arm and told Boomer, “Hopefully it'll run without too much work.”

  Their conversation continued about who to call and what she should do next, but Cage didn’t pay much attention. Finally free of the harness constraints, he pushed all his thoughts aside for a moment and did a full rotation to look at the road.

  It was littered with toppled trees, wood pieces, shingles, pieces of pipe, chunks of insulation, and anything you might find in a home. A kid’s cup nestled in the grass nearby and a hardback copy of Pride and Prejudice lay at his feet. As he leaned over, he felt his body protest the movement, but he picked up the book and discovered that only the two pages that had been face down on the road had dirt and gravel on them. He wiped it off out of habit and the book was as good as if he’d pulled it off the shelf.

  Folding it shut, he wondered what to do with it, but he was distracted by something pink. On his left, smack in the middle of the road, was a single, pristine slice of bologna. Beyond that, a twisted water heater and a window frame blocked the lane.

  Boomer and Bob had navigated the damaged roads to get to them. And as Cage peered as far as he could in each direction, he had to wonder how they’d managed to get their truck around some of the obstacles. Then he wondered how they would get everyone back to wherever they were going.

  His next thought was how to find his sister.

  But around him, no one else was thinking, and everyone was moving.

  “Get up in the truck,” Boomer told him, as the man helped Sarah into the bed with the other foundlings. Deveron tugged on her, using her good arm. Cage was the last one, and they were all now waiting on him.

  But he didn’t move.

  Boomer seemed to sense his hesitation and provided some information. “We're gonna get you folks to the community center where they've got everything organized.”

  And it occurred to Cage, as he surveyed the motley crew waiting on him in the bed of the truck, that they were waving him in. They understood the protocol to get to the community center. Though this might be his first devastating tornado, it wasn't theirs.

  He wanted to run down the street and scream for his sister, but he wasn’t going to find her that way. He had no choice but to climb into the truck.

  28

  Her alarm was going off. The odd noise was incessant, but repeating in an odd pattern. She reached out to slap it, but missed, her hand landing in grass.

  “Ugh.” She heard her own voice, and it was less complaint and more groan. Slapping her alarm hurt, so she tried something else. She lifted one leg, placing her foot flat on the bed, but that hurt, too.

  Again, the alarm made its odd, organic beep.

  “Shut up,” she yelled at it, but though she managed to form words this time, her voice seemed to be set to whisper-volume.

  It beeped again, only this time the sound was lower and more drawn out. The beep was afraid.

  Now Joule frowned. Beeps shouldn't convey emotion.

  She rolled her head slowly toward the sound, but the crackling noise that motion
made concerned her more than her scared alarm clock. Still, she smacked her hand down in several different places, but didn't manage to hit the alarm. It rewarded her with another long, low buzz.

  Prying one eye open, she immediately shut it again, hoping to stop the bright glare. Next she tried slowly opening both eyes. Joule didn't know how long it took to get her eyes open and focused, but when she looked around, her head still made that strange crackling sound.

  The field was a mess—trees down, broken limbs everywhere. The place she lay was littered with trash, and as she rolled her head to the right again, she caught a glimpse of white next to her eye. Reaching up, she pulled a dirty plastic bag from behind her head. At least the crackling noise wasn’t coming from her.

  “Ew.” She heard the sound of her own voice, creaky as if from disuse. And in that moment, everything came flooding back: lashing herself to the pipe, her and Izzy getting thrashed around, bashing into each other until the knot on the belt had come loose.

  She'd grabbed onto Izzy. Sarah had also grabbed on to Izzy. Joule had grabbed onto Cage. And it still hadn't been enough.

  Where was Izzy?

  Joule sat right. Where was Cage? Deveron? Sarah?

  Her head throbbed from the sudden movement, but she ignored it. There was no one here. She was in a field, alone.

  The odd alarm went off again. This time, her head snapped toward the sound, though her muscles protested and her brain pulsed. She was leaning back on her hands, propping herself up in spite of the dull pain in her right arm, but she was more concerned with finding the odd sound.

  “Mrrrrrrwow.”

  A little black head popped up.

  A tiny kitten. It was out walking in the grass. It felt better, somehow, to know that maybe she wasn’t completely alone. Holding her hand out, Joule waited until the small thing came directly to her.

  Another little growl-meowl let her match the sound to her concerning alarm clock. Well, thank God she hadn't managed to smack it off.

  Not generally a fan of babies, Joule still held her hand out as the tiny feline sniffed at her fingers. This one was hard to ignore. It only took a moment for the creature to deem her friendly and leap into her lap where it pawed at her shirt.

  “Where are you from?” she asked as though it would answer. Of course, it didn’t, so she looked around.

  Kittens—ones this tiny—didn’t run around solo. “Where are your brothers and sisters? Where's your mama?”

  Again, it had no reply.

  The lack of response left the day eerily silent but otherwise gorgeous. The sky was too-bright blue, the wash of color a background for fluffy white clouds that chased each other across the cerulean expanse.

  Joule could only look up. If she did that, then the day was perfect.

  When she looked down, the damage was the only thing left to see.

  On the far side of the field, she could see a dirt rut, or at least the edge of it. She couldn't see the other side.

  But she sat there, despite the need to stand up and inspect it. When she finally decided to stand, the kitten clung to her shirt. With gentle hands, Joule put it on the ground. Best to leave it here for its mother to find.

  Aiming toward the ditch, Joule eyeballed the distance, curious now how wide it was. Wondering if she could compare it to the ten-foot furrow that had been carved in their gravel driveway, the last time this had happened.

  She laughed to herself, as if there had been a “last time this had happened.” The “last time” was nothing like this time. This time, she woke up in a strange field, alone. But seeing the ditch was an achievable goal, and she pushed forward.

  Though she didn’t want it to, the kitten followed along. Despite her headache, Joule was a quick mover, her steps high in the low grass. The kitten wasn't able to keep up. In fact, the grass was nearly to its eyeballs. As it fought to stay up to speed, it mewed for her.

  Joule looked back at it. “You can’t come with me, kitten. You need to find your mama. Or let your mama find you.”

  If only her own mama was still alive to come find her…

  As she looked around, she realized she wasn't in the field where she worked. There were no pylons—or even twisted remains of them. She had no clue where she was. This was wide open, even bigger than the space for the solar array.

  The trees were different here. She heard no traffic. She was wherever this thing had deposited her. And probably, so was the kitten. It might not have a mother within miles. So while there was a mild possibility that she was taking it away from its safety, it was far more likely she was the only safety it was going to find.

  Giving in, Joule scooped the kitten up. It stopped mewing and she got a good look at it.

  Small blue eyes held gratitude and relief. Probably a mistake on its part. She didn’t have kitten milk on her. Hell, she didn’t have food or water for herself. But the tiny ball of black fuzz seemed a little too long-haired to be the offspring of some standard, feral cat. This was probably the result of somebody’s house cat having kittens. Hopefully nearby.

  If she could find the owner of the kitten, she could find everything—food, water, a phone.

  Still she headed toward the ditch, more curious than concerned right now, with the tiny kitten tucked into the crook of her arm. The distance to the edge of the ditch was much farther than she’d first thought, and her muscles protested with every step. She was battered and bruised. And she was grateful she didn't have a mirror. She must look a fright.

  But she wanted to see what damage the tornado had done as it had literally carved its way through the earth. As she finally reached the edge of the ditch, she was impressed to see that some sturdy trees still stood within the path.

  Of the few that remained, more than one was only a trunk. Its branches had been stripped or ripped off and only gaping splinters of wounds marked where the limbs had once been. Another stood whole, leaves and everything. But what made her mouth drop open was the width of the ditch in front of her.

  29

  Water.

  She needed water.

  Joule wasn't thirsty yet, but it was a basic fact of human nature that she would be soon. What she wouldn't give to find a perfectly sealed bottle of water lying amidst the debris, but she’d had no such luck yet. In fact, she wouldn’t say she’d had any luck at all.

  She and the kitten had created the only sounds she'd heard. There wasn't even wind rustling through the treetops or birds flying through. Everything had gone preternaturally still. The world felt strange, almost too perfect—except for the fact that she was the only one in it.

  A rustling sound came quickly from her right side, and she jerked around to assess the threat. Because out here alone, everything was a threat. She might be a mere half mile from her own home, but the unknown was the unknown, and life had taught her not to be a fan.

  She and the tiny kitten turned in unison to watch as a huge buck stepped into the wide path. He looked both ways—in a very human, crossing-the-street type gesture—before he moved more fully across the open space.

  The expanse of the rut was far enough to be beyond concerning. But, as Joule watched, the deer ventured through it, braver than she—first the buck, and then several does that followed him, and then more came through. After a moment, she was enthralled and began to count them. The kitten sat quietly in her hand and she wanted to believe he was just as enraptured as she was.

  Eventually, she saw fifteen of them, but was unsure if that represented a relatively large herd. They'd seen a few deer here and there while working on the array. The fact was, the work itself kept much of the wildlife away. She’d seen a few more deer at the house, but even there, the wildlife tended to much smaller creatures like squirrels and the occasional groundhog or falcon that perched for a moment on Squirrel Log.

  Unconsciously, Joule lifted the kitten a little closer to her chest, as though he needed protection from the deer that appeared to be more than a hundred yards away. Or maybe he just needed a bet
ter view. Though she held him close, he didn’t squirm, but seemed to watch quietly until the deer walked the last bit, their small feet picking their way through the dirt and rubble.

  When they almost magically disappeared the moment they hit the tree line on the other side, Joule had a good idea of what the terrain was like.

  The tornado had scrubbed the ground and left it soft, churned, and full of rocks and trash. Though she’d been intending to keep going and see what was on the other side, not crossing it might be their safer option.

  With the deer now out of sight, the tiny kitten began to squirm. Joule set him down, frowning at him for a moment. There was no telling what he wished other than his own four feet on the ground. Would he try to chase the deer? He couldn’t even keep up with her, and she was willing to bet the deer would leave her in the dust.

  But she watched as he romped away and disappeared in the grass, much as the deer did. If she hadn’t just set him down herself, she’d have no idea there was even a kitten nearby.

  Was that it? Was he gone? Had he just decided to let her carry him across the field so he could disappear?

  She sighed. Maybe it was stupid, but she was becoming concerned about him. As tiny as he was, he’d be a target for predators—not that she’d seen any. Then again, any decent predator would be wise enough to not be seen.

  “Kitten!” she called out, though it seemed really stupid to call him that. She did it again. “Kitten!”

  Did he need a real name? Did it matter? Because he was really just a kitten. Maybe his mother was nearby and he was better off without Joule.

  She looked around again and didn’t see any mother cat, but she didn’t see the kitten, either. She sure wasn't going to name him if he squirmed, got down, and simply ran away.

  Following in the direction she'd seen him go, Joule searched but still couldn’t find him. Her own feet made shuffling noises through the grass, the sound filling the space around her. She wondered how long it had been since she’d been pulled from her friends and the pipe they’d been tied to. She’d been out cold, and when she came to, the tornado was well and over.