by N. W. Harris
“Let’s pull the buses side by side, so we can hide under them if a tornado strikes,” Shane said.
Shane and Aaron drove two of the buses alongside the one Matt’s cot sat next to. The diesel engines could barely be heard over the roar of the storm. Driving so close he knocked the mirrors off, Shane set the brakes and crawled through the window into the adjacent bus. The large, metal hangar door banged against its track. He’d heard the unmistakable roaring before, when a tornado passed by Granny’s house last year and ripped off all the siding on one side with surgical precision.
“Everyone under the buses,” Shane yelled from the bottom step. He glanced up at the creaking, iron rafters with concern.
“What about Matt?” Kelly asked, herding the children.
“We’ll get him,” Steve replied, looking at Shane.
Steve set the radio down, which he’d been clutching under his arm like a football. They lifted Matt and lowered him to the floor. Using as much care as they could not to cause him further injury, they slid him on his blanket under the bus. Matt didn’t make a sound and felt limp when they picked him up. Shane worried he was getting worse, but there wasn’t anything else they could do to help him.
The violent bang of the hangar door against the building evoked a chorus of screams. Laura and Kelly hurried the kids under the buses, the howl of the storm growing louder. A twelve-foot-wide piece of the metal siding ripped away from the hangar with an earsplitting creak. Through the jagged opening, Shane caught a clear view of the swirling, black funnel approaching across the tarmac. Trash climbed into the air, lifted by the vortex like dry leaves floating in the wind. Hundreds of feet off the ground, a tractor-trailer made a turn around the hungry giant, and he realized some of those bits of spinning garbage were massive. Icicles of fear formed in his veins. They were all going to die. He spun and ran to their hopeless attempt at a storm shelter.
“Get under the bus,” he yelled at Tracy, Aaron, and Steve.
Scrambling into action, they dropped to the ground and rolled under the Freightliners. Shane flipped the tables and tugged them against the side of the bus facing the storm. The wind pushed him to the smooth, concrete floor, and he crawled toward his friends.
An earsplitting clank startled him. Over his shoulder, he saw the twenty-foot-tall, forty-foot-wide main hangar door bust free and fly into the air like a floppy piece of newspaper whipped by the wind. Shane dove under the bus between the table and the front tire. Steve and Aaron grabbed his arms and pulled him in further.
The main hangar door crashed into the first bus so hard that it rocked up off its tires, but fell back down and continued to shelter them. Shane could see the kids screaming, their mouths open and their eyes wide with fear, but he couldn’t hear them over the deafening sound of the twister. The storm moaned, an enraged monster hungry for blood. The metal building screeched as it was ripped apart; the funnel had to be almost on top of them. Shane looked at the older kids and tucked his head under his arms, then rose up and pointed at the screaming children. Kelly, Laura, Steve, Aaron, and Tracy, along with several of the other older girls, got the hint and crawled from child to child, helping them to duck their heads down and cover them with their arms for protection.
Another large chunk of the building tore loose and slammed into the buses. Glass rained down, and then the wind caught the shards and blew the pieces at Shane and the kids. His skin stung where they hit him, and it felt like he was being torn to shreds. He decided at that painful moment they couldn’t survive—this storm would kill him and all the kids under his charge. Wasn’t it better to die this way than have animals attack them or end up turning on each other like Tracy and Aaron said the soldiers had done? As horrible as the last twenty-four hours had been, he was shocked to find he wasn’t ready to give up, not yet.
Gravel, sticks, and debris pelted him, and the roar grew louder. A hand slipped around his arm. He turned his head to the side and opened his eyes enough to see Kelly crawling closer with Natalie huddled beneath her. Reminded of those petrified bodies found buried in volcanic ash in Pompeii, Shane lay on his side and pulled them in, his back to the storm. Through all the pain of being sandblasted, he found distraction in the passing thought that at least he got to hold Kelly Douglas in his arms once before he died.
The tornado persisted, the buses rocking off their tires from its gust. When the twister finally passed and the buses settled, Shane couldn’t believe it hadn’t lifted the long, yellow vehicles into the air. A lightning storm followed, softball-size hail hammering the metal roofs of the buses to a deafening rhythm only the devil could enjoy. Shane lay there, relieved he wasn’t being pummeled by flying gravel anymore. By some miracle or curse, only time would tell which, the twister spared them. When lightning flashed and lit up the space under the vehicles, Shane saw Steve, Aaron, and the other older kids had formed a half circle around the younger kids, protecting them with their bodies like Shane protected Kelly and Nat. Although exhausted and battered by the storm, Shane felt fortunate to be surrounded by such compassionate and brave people. He couldn’t imagine how terrible it would be to endure all this without them.
The hail let up after a half hour and turned to pattering rain. His ears ringing, Shane felt warm, pressed against Kelly. A corrosive mix of emotional and physical exhaustion eroded his awareness. Although he fought it, wanting to stay alert and watch out for his people, his eyes grew heavier until, finally, he surrendered to unconsciousness.
Opening his eyes, Shane searched the darkness. Where was he? It didn’t take long to realize this wasn’t his bed—he couldn’t be at home. He lay on cold, hard concrete in a puddle of water. Confusion and disorientation caused a surge of panic to boil through him. And then he noticed he was curled around a warm body. Silky hair tickled his nose, smelling faintly of roses and lavender.
Kelly.
Every horrid detail from the last day flooded his mind, drowning the flash of joy he experienced from waking up next to the hottest girl in school and making him wish he’d stayed asleep forever. His left shoulder, hip, and leg ached from lying on the ground. Fortunately, someone had put a blanket over him to keep him warm in spite of his wet clothes. Wincing, he pushed himself up enough to look around. He could just make out shadowy lumps in front of him, the kids who had become his responsibility to protect still asleep under the three buses.
A flashlight illuminated the area beyond the front bumpers. He rolled the blanket covering him with his right hand and slipped his left arm out from under Kelly’s head, replacing it with the makeshift pillow. Brushing her hair back from her face, he adjusted her blanket to cover her and her sister better, hoping a pleasant dream might carry them away from this terrible reality for a few hours.
Crawling out from under the bus, Shane rose to his feet, stretching his battered and achy body. His back and neck stung from what felt like a hundred cuts where the flying glass and debris pelted him. Heavy, green clouds overhead started to glow with the approaching dawn, giving Shane enough light to see the hangar was blasted to pieces by the tornado. Only one corner, standing just taller than Shane, remained. A fighter jet lay smashed and upside down beyond the foundation of the hangar, and the other aircraft was nowhere to be seen.
He turned around and looked at the buses that miraculously sheltered them from the twister. By some awesome stroke of luck, the metal walls and main doors of the hangar fell at angles against the buses, making a lean-to shelter that must’ve protected them from the brunt of the storm.
Tracy and Steve huddled in front of Shane, next to the military radio, with Steve holding the handset between their ears so they could listen at the same time.
His leg tingling from being pressed against the cold concrete for too many hours, Shane limped over to his friends. Tracy glanced at him with a distraught expression. After a long minute, with Tracy and Steve listening to the handset and Shane wondering what the heck had them so enthralled, Steve looked up at Shane, saying, “You gotta hear this.”
Tracy stood and rubbed her hands down her face, groaning.
“What’s wrong with this world?” she asked, walking a few feet away and leaning her head back, as if looking for the answer in the overcast heavens.
Shane reached out to take the handset from Steve, the anticipation driving him mad.
“Hold on a second, so it starts at the beginning,” Steve said, the handset still pressed to his ear.
After an excruciating moment of watching Tracy stomp back and forth and curse under her breath, Steve gave Shane the handset. He adjusted the channel to reduce the static coming through the earpiece, and then Shane could hear a woman’s voice.
“…This is Dr. Sandra Gunderson, head laboratory biologist for the Department of Defense’s Low Environmental Impact Global Weapons Research Facility. I have recorded this message in advance and against orders from General Mires in case of a weapon malfunction. If this message is being broadcast, the Low Frequency Limbic Manipulator Weapon has been activated and, as I feared, has caused the death of everyone in the laboratory, leaving no one to shut it down. Designed to be used against terrorist cells worldwide with minimal collateral damage to children and the environment, the weapon causes all multicellular organisms to target and terminate adult humans, and will cause adult humans to turn on each other in areas of higher population density.”
Now Shane understood why Tracy was so upset. He couldn’t accept what he’d just heard—the damn government had caused all this to happen. He gave Steve a look of disbelief. Steve nodded, his lips drawn tight in an angry frown.
“The weapon manipulates magnetic fields and uses extremely low frequency energy waves that will penetrate the diameter of the Earth, so it is possible the impact of this malfunction will be worldwide. Initially, the animals and insects will be triggered to attack adults, average age of eighteen and up. But due to prolonged exposure to the weapon, we believe every twenty-four to forty-eight hours younger and younger humans may be targeted. Because of the nature of the radiation being use by this weapon, we fear it may cause some disturbances to weather patterns as well.”
“Some disturbances,” Shane muttered, sick from listening to the woman’s voice. “Ain’t that the understatement of the century?”
A slamming door was audible and then the woman began speaking faster and with nervousness in her tone.
“The central broadcasting array’s controls are located in a laboratory hidden beneath the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. Tunnel access to the control room is via an entrance in room B101 of the state capitol building. The laboratory will be locked down and protected by an automated security system, so the only way to turn off the Limbic Manipulator Weapon will be to disconnect the batteries contained in a bunker just beyond the entrance to the lab.”
The woman paused, and Shane glanced at Tracy, who leaned over and put her hands on her knees, looking like she might vomit. He knew she wanted to join the military once she graduated high school and heard her talking about West Point more than once. Now she found out the government she wanted to work for was responsible for genocide—for killing the very people it was sworn to protect. Shane wished he could do or say something to make her feel better, but she was so stoic and cold most of the time he figured she’d just get angry if he attempted to comfort her.
The scientist continued, “If you are hearing this message, it is likely that you are young. I’m sorry we’ve done this to you. We have been stupid and arrogant to play with such dangerous technology, which I fear may have come from an alien source. In my research, I stumbled across some classified documents that seem to indicate extraterrestrial influence, though I couldn’t prove anything. You must try to destroy this weapon and rebuild the world as a better place, where the need for such technology no longer exists. And if anyone meets a thirteen-year-old girl named Sara Gunderson, please tell her I love her and I’m sorry.”
The woman sniffled, sounding like she struggled to keep from crying. She cleared her throat and added, “This message will repeat.”
Shane lowered the handset and stood, his knees trembling and his legs threatening to collapse under him. Looking from Steve to Tracy, he was frozen in silent shock for what seemed an eternity.
“How freaking stupid,” Shane whispered.
“No dumber than a nuke,” Steve replied, reaching down and clicking the radio off. “Something like this was bound to happen eventually. Did you hear what she said? Do you think the government has really been in contact with aliens?”
“Why not? I’d believe anything at this point. What do you think the chances are that someone else heard this and is trying to shut the weapon down?” Shane asked, doing his best to stay calm and rational, though freaking out seemed completely appropriate considering the circumstances.
“Who knows?” Steve replied, shrugging his shoulders. “Someone would have had to take the time to scour the radio frequencies with a military radio like I’ve done. Seems very unlikely.” He acted calmer than Shane or Tracy, his big shoulders slumped forward in defeat, appearing ready to throw in the towel and just quit trying to survive.
“I think we have to assume we are the only ones who heard this,” Tracy said, her brow crinkled with frustration. “We have to get down there and shut that stupid thing off.”
“Yeah, and soon,” Shane added, glad she was thinking the same thing. “It sounds like the animals could go after us any minute. What did she say? They would attack younger and younger people every twenty-four to forty-eight hours?”
Shane glanced at the buses where Kelly slept. She was a year older than he was—the animals would go after her first. He’d taken care of her this far—he wasn’t going to lose her now.
“Wake Aaron,” Shane said, the purpose pushing him forward from the time she had walked down her driveway calling for his help made him square up and get motivated once again. “We leave immediately.”
“The buses are useless,” Tracy announced, her fists on her hips.
Her stoic manner and tone took over, and though her brow still showed frustration and anger, the post-apocalyptic-super-survivor version of Tracy Shane was introduced to yesterday returned.
The dawn’s light waxed, revealing the damage caused by the storm. Thick, glowing, lime-green clouds hung low overhead, the wind kicking up again. The three school buses suffered a lot of damage. They had flat tires, busted windows, and one had a steel beam sticking out of its front grill, a testament to the power of the tornado.
“I don’t think walking is such a good idea either,” Shane replied, scanning the base for another means of transportation. “Why don’t you take Aaron and scout the area? Maybe y’all can find a couple of military trucks that are still in one piece.”
“Yeah, a Humvee would be a hell of a lot cooler than a school bus,” Aaron said. He’d crawled out from under the Freightliners and was relieving himself nearby. “Where we going?”
“Yuck,” Tracy growled. “There’s got to be a better place to do that!”
“You’re just jealous you can’t whip it out and whiz wherever you please,” Aaron countered, spinning around and zipping his pants with his hips thrust forward.
“Come on, guys,” Shane scolded. “Can it, and find us some rides. Tracy will relay what we heard on the radio while you search.”
“Yes sir,” Aaron replied, giving a mock salute. As fresh as it was to see him acting in good spirits, his joking around didn’t fool Shane. His eyes spoke of the pain they all felt, the loss of their parents still too recent an insult.
Aaron scooped his bow and quiver of arrows. Tracy and he set across the tarmac, dodging twisted remains of buildings and cars crumpled like stepped-on soda cans and dropped by the twister. The sounds of gunshots and mortar explosions carrying across the base yesterday were gone. All the soldiers must have killed each other, the animals wiping out the few who survived the battle.
Looking at the devastation, Shane was once again amazed they managed to survive. He took it as a sign. If they p
ersisted, they might make it through this nightmare and stop the weapon before it killed them all.
Kids woke up and crawled out one by one from under the wet refuge. The curious little ones began poking around in the trash deposited by the tornado, and some of the older kids passed out the snacks and sodas that survived the night in the supply bus.
“Shane,” Kelly called from under the bus with a distressed voice. “I think you’d better come here.”
He dropped to his knees and reluctantly crawled into the wet shelter where he’d spent the night. Kelly crouched near the rear axle, leaning over Matt. Shane made his way back to her, careful not to bang his head on the driveshaft.
“What’s up?”
“I don’t think he’s breathing,” Kelly whispered. A tear dripped off her cheek and onto Matt’s pale face.
Shane put his fingers on Matt’s neck and didn’t find a pulse. He knew as soon as he touched Matt’s cold skin he was dead. Pulling the blanket back, a subtle odor of decaying flesh met Shane’s nose. Nauseous, he laid his head on Matt’s chest, listening for a heartbeat. He couldn’t hear anything. Under Matt’s half open eyelids, Shane could see the whites of his eyes looked dry and sticky.
He leaned back and pulled the blanket over Matt’s head. Then Shane looked at Kelly, whose chin crinkled against a deluge of tears. Shane shook his head to let her know Matt had passed. She grabbed him and buried her face in his shirt, muffling her weeping.
Shane cradled her head with his hand, each of her sobs hot bullets searing through his otherwise-numb heart.
“It’s better this way,” Shane whispered. “He’s not in pain anymore.”
It sounded awkward and stupid, and he knew it would be better to be alive and in pain than dead, but Shane had to say something. The worst part was he didn’t want to cry. And he and Matt were best friends when they were little. Shane couldn’t feel anything except for a desire to save Kelly and to see her smile like she used to every day at school or at church. It was the only thing still anchoring his soul in his body. If he lost that thread of motivation, he may as well be dead himself.
