The Tempest

by A. J. Scudiere

  And after smelling the first pile of manure, she had to make a point of avoiding the patties. The last thing she wanted to do was finally find a savior and smell like cow shit.

  The fence around the home was what she’d come to know as black horse fencing. The posts had slats between, tipped vertical, making a flat front fence. And all of it remained intact and easy to climb over.

  As she dropped onto the grass on the other side, she was grateful to find it was mowed lawn perfectly devoid of cow pies. It was not, however, devoid of nails, broken wood, or glass.

  Toto squirmed again, wanting to be let down. When she didn’t let him, he climbed down her sleeve, puncturing her as he went.

  “Ouch! Ouch. Toto!”

  But he reached the end of her arm and jumped for the ground. For a moment, her heart stalled. He was too tiny to leap that far, but it seemed all it cost him was a bit of a thump as he hit. Her kitten wandered off, butt and tail twitching as he went.

  Shit, she thought, following him. She'd named him. She knew he was too far from his mother now. It was up to her to keep him from getting cut on any of the dangerous things scattered through the yard. And where was she going to find kitten food?

  This time, she watched as he squatted in the grass. Yep. Just a bathroom break.

  But he was carefully picking his way through, avoiding the sharp edges and not putting everything into his mouth like a human toddler. He’d be okay.

  Joule turned away. It would be easy enough to find him in the low grass, she thought as she began searching in earnest for anything helpful.

  As the two of them wandered to the other side of the house, she saw shots of red in the grass. They turned out to be bottles of energy drinks. One was even intact.

  “Toto. Look at this.” She held the heavy bottle up toward him. It wasn’t just water, but electrolytes. She’d drunk enough back at the stream that she didn’t need this right now, so she opened her pocket and shoved the bottle down in. It barely fit, but in two more minutes she realized the farmhouse was home to a fitness nut.

  Energy bars, still in their wrappers, were strewn through the grass. Frosted Flakes lay individually like snow in between some of them.

  Okay, so not everyone who lived here was a fitness freak.

  But she put the bars in her pockets. She had a bottle. She had water. And she had food.

  Next up, she had to find something for Toto. If only these people had a kitten. Fifteen minutes later, she had two pull-tab cans of tuna and she was reaching over to scoop up something that might be kitten-appropriate when she heard a voice.

  “What are you doing?”

  Joule looked up. Oh, hell no.

  34

  “You have got to be shitting me.” Deveron, usually quiet, was the only one to speak this time.

  Cage, Sarah, and Deveron, still holding hands, stood at the end of the driveway silently scanning the damage.

  “Maybe it's not as bad as it looks,” Cage offered, looking at the trash strewn across the lawn—trash that he could identify as Sarah’s sweater, the crackers that Joule liked, his books, Dev’s video game controller. Why had he said that? It was definitely as bad as it looked, and it looked awful for a building that was still standing. When was he ever the optimist?

  The driveway was long and they were still a good way down from the house. This time, the gravel road remained intact. Though some of it clearly had blown this way or that, cotton was strewn and mixed in, as was some identifiable trash and a lot of unidentifiable trash.

  As they got closer, Cage saw that his assessment from the end of the driveway had been correct. At least one corner of the house was missing. The edges were rough, as if the house were cake and a child had shoved his hand into it, pulling out a piece to eat.

  Sarah turned to Cage, her disbelieving expression conveying everything even before she opened her mouth. “Trust me, it's worse than it looks.”

  She’d been through this before.

  Though his feet ached, and he was sure the others’ did too, Cage trudged the length of the gravel drive. This was worse than walking on the pavement. Everything wanted to roll under his feet, and somehow he was confident that he could feel the gravel poking through the soles of his heavy work boots. He was grateful they were laced up tight, preventing his ankles from turning.

  Their house looked like a lot of the other houses they’d passed, with a gaping wound and some things inside seemingly untouched. The tornado appeared to have chunked out the bulk of the main room that served as both dining room and living area. Given what he could see was missing, Cage could now identify the curved piece of wood he saw as a leg of the dining room table. He stepped over it.

  The next thing he stepped over was a small globe, papier-mache, smooth and shiny. It had sat in the wicker basket on the table along with several others and decorative wicker balls. Once purely ornamental, they were now purely trash.

  It was a shame the four of them had taken all the skulls off the walls and dressers and hidden them in drawers or the backs of closets. They might have been able to claim that “decor” had blown away with the damage.

  He was coming to terms with the fact that the house was unlivable. He might be able to salvage some of his things, but they couldn’t stay here tonight.

  If Joule—or Izzy—did manage to come home, who would be here to meet them?

  He wondered if he should stay anyway. Was the weather warm enough? Would he be okay? Or were there looters outside of Horton, Alabama?

  There were no answers to any of these questions—not that he knew—but he picked up his pace to see what he could. Letting go of Sarah's hand, he left her and Dev to come up behind him. He needed to see the car.

  The carport had been twisted and warped, its metal legs lifted out of the ground on one side and the whole top tilted. The surface was now facing him, and somewhere behind it was the car… maybe.

  The way the ground naturally rolled with small hills and rises, he couldn't quite see underneath. So he began running. He needed that car.

  As he got closer and more worried, the stinging of the soles of his feet was no longer a concern. He could now see tires, front and back, still inflated.

  Good! The car was still there.

  The question was, was it drivable? Had one of the posts of the now ripped and twisted carport been jammed through a window? Had the windows or doors been ripped off? Was there a rock sitting on the engine? It was hard to breathe. Because that car was why he'd come back. Not the house.

  Though he’d wondered briefly, back at the community center, if Joule was waiting here for him at the house, he’d shoved the hope away. It came surging back to life now.

  “Joule!” he yelled, “Joule!”

  But only silence answered back.

  Deveron and Sarah were smart enough to keep their mouths shut. Probably like him, they were simply listening for an answer. But none came.

  Hoping to get any response, he called out for Izzy, too. Once more, he held his breath, wondering if the unfairness of life would have her hollering back, but not his sister. He truly did want to find Izzy, but there was nothing he could do about the pure, soul-deep panic that he felt when he worried about his twin.

  When he heard nothing, he turned the last edge and peered around the mangled carport. The car was sitting there, appearing entirely undamaged.

  His first thought was that he needed to start it and check that it ran. Which led to a second thought. He needed the keys.

  Dashing toward the house, he saw that the cement steps leading to the kitchen door had been tossed aside. The door was missing too. But it appeared the brick siding and the flooring was intact.

  He had trouble picking through the rubble that piled at the side of the foundation, but he climbed carefully, eventually getting his hands on the edge and testing it to see if it would bear his weight. When it seemed to pass his quick and dirty test, he hoisted himself up to the floor of the small walkway in between the dining room and the k
itchen.

  The kitchen appeared intact, thank God. The tiny island had been jostled, but that wasn’t surprising, given that it was on wheels. It was a shock that it hadn’t moved far, given that it was merely fifteen feet from where the wall was missing.

  He walked the short path around it to see that the hooks on the other side were now empty. Was that his fault? Had he forgotten to leave his keys there?

  Patting his pockets again, he confirmed that—aside from his wallet and phone and work ID—he didn’t have anything else on him. Sarah had driven today. He would have left the keys behind. On the hook.

  He was already on his hands and knees, searching, as he heard Deveron in the background saying, “Wait here. I want you to come in, but with your arm, you shouldn’t be trying to muscle your way up.”

  “I can jump down. I just need help climbing up,” Sarah protested back.

  Still Cage frantically searched the room. Napkins were strewn all over the floor. The paper towels had been pulled from the holder and thrown around as though someone had TP’d the inside of the house.

  Cage patted at the floor, wondering where the keys might have gone. Dev’s keys should have been here, too. It took only a moment to find his roommate’s keys and, as he turned, he saw his friend had boosted himself into the house through the same open doorway.

  His brain was firing in odd patterns, and it only just now occurred to him that they could have just walked up the front porch and come in the door like normal people.

  He hollered that idea to Deveron, who called back, “Well, there you go, making sense.” And he walked past Cage, stepping over their things to unlock the front door and let Sarah in.

  Cage wanted to laugh hysterically. He wanted to lose it over the fact that the front door had been double bolted while the back of the house was missing. Much of the screen was missing off the back porch and though the back door was intact, the wall next to it was completely gone. But the front door was fully locked.

  He clamped down on the rising hysteria and held out his findings with one hand. “Your keys.”

  He didn’t get up though, and the other hand was still patting at the floor, searching for his own keys. Dev didn’t have a car, so the find wasn’t all that useful to Cage right now. At last, he moved the island aside and found his own keyring underneath.

  “Got it!” he yelled, thinking he would run right out the gaping hole and jump to the ground right in front of the car. But what if he landed on something and twisted his ankle? He couldn't afford that.

  So he headed out the front door, letting the screen slam behind him. He couldn’t see the car from here, and irrational fear gripped him that it had been lost in the last five minutes, or that he’d hallucinated it in the first place.

  But it was still waiting and he took a deep, calming breath, reminding himself that he had to stay fed, healthy, and calm if he was going to find his sister.

  Not even closing the door, he shoved the key into the ignition and waited.

  35

  “You've got to be shitting me,” Joule uttered into the air or maybe to Toto.

  In front of her, Jerry's brows pulled together. Though he was almost too far away to recognize, he'd heard her.

  She instantly regretted saying it. Because the fact was, if Jerry could lead her to people, she would take it. She didn't have to be his friend.

  “You!” he responded, the single accusing word indicating that all of her feelings were mutual.

  She decided that she wasn't quite ready to say, Oh, it's good to see you. Because, while it was good to see another person, Jerry would have been the last of her choices. Instead, she asked what she could honestly ask. “Are you okay? Are you injured? Do you need anything?”

  “I'm fine.” He put his hands on his hips and adopted his best “angry elementary teacher” expression. “But I see you’re stealing from the Johnsons?”

  “Yes.” Joule offered it back with zero expression, because fuck him. “I'm in the middle of nowhere, after a disaster, with no food or water. And I picked up a sports drink, five nature bars, and two cans of tuna. I'll give the Johnsons the twenty bucks the first time I see them. I suspect they were going to claim their ‘ground food’ on their list of losses on their insurance.”

  Though she said the last part with emphasis, she realized that she didn’t know if the Johnsons actually had insurance. Still, he could go screw himself. “I'm not taking computer equipment or stealing their TV, Jerry.”

  “I’ll hold you to that.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  Clearly, he was fine enough to be his usual asshole self.

  When he stayed silent for a moment, she added, “I'm fine, too. Not very injured, just bruised and banged up. Thank you for asking.”

  He tossed her a sarcastic look but stayed silent.

  This was not working. She had one goal, and working against Jerry was working against that. She took a deep breath and tried not to look like she was taking it. “I'm sorry.”

  It felt like twisting a knife in her own gut to admit that she was sorry. She wasn’t sorry she’d been rude to Jerry, though. She was sorry that she’d hurt her own chances of getting home. She pushed a little further. “Listen, you seem to know where we are. Do you have a working cell phone?”

  He shrugged. “No one does. Cell towers are all out.”

  She’d suspected that was the case. “Is there maybe a landline in any of these houses?”

  As she asked it, she looked around and saw that all the buildings were gone. If there had been a plugged in phone, it and the lines connecting it were all gone as well.

  But Jerry didn’t mock her. “All out, too.”

  He waved his hands around as if to indicate the things she’d just accounted for. And at least the conversation was proceeding now as if it were occurring between two normal people. But he still didn’t offer any help. She tried again.

  “Do you have a car?”

  “Nope!” He offered that up almost too cheerfully. “I was in my truck when the Twister hit. Got out, got into the cellar here. Came out afterwards …” He held his arms out and twisted in a full circle as though offering a fashion show. “You see my truck?”

  Not now, but she had seen his truck before. It was a massive monster that made him look like he had some insecurities to make up for. She didn’t say that now, because she would have loved to have ridden in that ugly behemoth all the way back to town. Instead, she put the pieces together. Incredulous, she asked, “The wind lifted your truck?”

  “Damn straight. And the Johnsons weren't home when I got here. It was coming on fast, so I busted the lock on the cellar.”

  And here he'd been mad at her about a couple cans of tuna and a bottled drink. But this time she managed to bite her tongue. “Do you know where we are?”

  “I told you, the Johnson’s farm.” He said it again as though she was stupid.

  And she opened her mouth to call him a few choice words, instead the hood at her stomach squirmed and let out a “mmmrwow.”

  “What's that?” Jerry pulled back as though she had some disease and he might catch it from how far away he still was.

  “A kitten?” she said, by way of explanation.

  “What are you doing with a kitten?”

  Oh dear God. It was a damned tornado and it followed her! But Joule calmed herself—forcibly—and answered, “I found him. He was going the same direction as me and we decided to travel together.”

  “You probably stole it from its mom.” The accusation was not surprising and Joule once again bit down her automatic retort.

  “Mom was nowhere around.” She was almost angry that she'd had the exact same thought as Jerry. “And he followed me. I wasn’t going to leave him.”

  At least Jerry seemed to concede that little bit.

  She tried again. “So where exactly is the Johnson farm? Like, which direction is Horton? Or Arab? Or New Hope? Are we close to anything?”

  Jerry shook his head and
pointed into the distance. “Arab, Horton, and New Hope are all that direction. We're out in the great beyond.”

  Well, shitballs, she thought. She was in the great beyond with Jerry, of all people, and he didn't even have his truck. “Would anyone else out here have a truck or something we could borrow?”

  She was already emotionally tired of walking, and she was going to be physically exhausted before too long. Fueling a car would be easier than fueling herself. Whatever it was, it'd be faster.

  “No cars. The Johnsons have one truck and it wasn't here when I stopped.” But he added, “There's another farm a ways over. They might be home. It’s worth a shot.”

  “How far is it?” Joule was becoming wary. She’d come a long way and only found him.

  He shrugged. “A couple thousand acres.”

  She had no idea what kind of distance that was. “Should we walk on the road?”

  She'd said we, as though she stopped and picked up Toto along the way, and now she was simply picking up Jerry, too.

  “No. If we take the road, it'll take ten times as long. We can head straight through here.” He pointed to a tree line in the distance that seemed to denote a fence on a property.

  Joule nodded along, wondering what they would find when they reached the other side.

  As he started to take off, she stopped him. “You might want to grab one of those sports drinks, unless you have water or food on you.”

  “Good point.” He didn’t acknowledge his accusation from before as he stepped into the side yard and grabbed several things to put into his own pockets.

  Luckily, the walk wasn't as far as it looked. They'd carefully picked their way through the barbed wire fence and trees and crossed another yard. This house, though undamaged, was empty.

  Together, they circled the place and banged on doors. Joule was getting so tired of having nothing work. She considered breaking in to find car keys, but since there were no cars or trucks available, that seemed pointless.

  “Wait,” Jerry told her. “I have an idea.”