Natural Disaster (Book 3): Storm

by Lou Cadle

  “Probably. I’ll go look.”

  “I’ll hunt for the street shutoff.”

  Easier said than done. The road was covered with debris. The shutoff for the street was going to be under a plate, flush with the sidewalk or street. Good luck finding it. He needed the exact location. He tried his radio and couldn’t get Dispatch but could get the patrol team to the south. They radioed in to Dispatch from their car and in a few minutes got him an address—in front of 147.

  Massey was coming his way with a canvas bag of tools. “Wait,” Greg called. “Read the address off that house.” He pointed to the first one that still stood.

  Massey went over and turned around, yelling, “124.”

  “The shutoff is back your way,” he said. “In front of 147.”

  Massey turned and hunted for the right address.

  Greg left him to it. His radio cracked at his hip, but he couldn’t get a signal strong enough to hear the voice. He jogged back to the car.

  Greg got Dispatch on the radio and as soon as he identified himself, she said, “You need to find shelter.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s another tornado coming.”

  Chapter 8

  Holly. Greg’s first though was his daughter. “Are you sure about the tornado?”

  “Yeah. They have confirmed sightings, over in West County. The storm is tracking this way.”

  “That’s impossible. It can’t come right over the same place as the first, can it?”

  “I guess it can. And Greg?”

  “Yeah?”

  “They’re calling it a big wedge. I think it might be even worse than the first one.”

  “Christ, you haven’t seen this damage yet. How could it possibly be worse?”

  “People can see this one, at least. We’ve had six hysterical calls on 911.”

  “Thanks for the warning.” He leaned over and hit the siren, quick, to get Massey’s attention.

  When the other man looked back, he half stood from the car and waved him back, making the gesture urgent. Then he realized the city storm siren was out. No electricity, no siren. How would they warn people?

  He got back on the radio. “You have an ETA for this thing?”

  “Maybe ten minutes?”

  He cut off the radio before he let out a profanity.

  Massey trotted up. “I found a guy who knew how to shut the gas off and had a wrench. Now what’s the rush?”

  “We have another tornado coming, which may be bigger than the first. And less than ten minutes to get people—and ourselves—to safety.”

  “Hellfire.” Massey dropped into the driver’s seat and held his hand out. “Car keys,” he snapped.

  “You still have them.”

  Greg might be thinking selfishly, but he had more reason than the obvious personal one to make the suggestion he was about to make. “We should go back to the elementary school.”

  “To get your kid?”

  “No, not just that. I’m thinking, how many people can we warn in ten minutes? How many can we save, best case? At least there, we have a concentration of people we can help. Kids, teachers, maybe some parents. If we knock on doors on this street for five minutes, how many can we get downstairs before we have to quit? Five people? Ten? Yeah, of course, I’m worried about Holly, but it’s a matter of numbers.”

  Massey gave a curt nod. “Hopefully people in town have their radios on.”

  Greg knew not everyone was well-prepared for emergencies. He doubted half the people in town had battery-operated radios. Maybe one in twenty had a NOAA radio. Maybe far fewer. They might think their smart phones would get them online, but that wasn’t happening now, either, not with cell towers knocked down or overwhelmed with traffic. And some of the people with portable radios might be outside, helping people, cleaning up downed tree limbs, and not listening to the news.

  And the town storm siren had no power.

  That left nearly everyone without a warning. Not that being prepared like the most extreme of preppers would have saved the people in the completely erased houses he’d been looking at the past half-hour.

  And it was going to happen again.

  Greg said, “We don’t have any orders. If you don’t have a better suggestion, I’ll call in the plan.”

  “I guess it’s best,” said Massey, starting the car.

  Greg got on the radio—the chief couldn’t talk, so he told Dispatch where they were headed. “We can get the children we left there down into the basement, at least,” he said.

  “I’ll pass that on,” said the dispatcher.

  Massey said, “Let me tell those people on this street.” He backed up the car, yelled a warning to the grieving woman and her neighbors, and then tore out north, up the street to the north.

  Greg fumbled the external speakers on and said, “Get to shelter. Tornado coming,” over and over. He had no idea if anyone heard the message or not. He beeped the siren for a second and repeated the message as Massey turned them left, then right again onto Central.

  With a screech of tires, Massey pulled into the drive that ran in front of the school, and they both got out, slamming their doors in unison. They sprinted up the front steps, and Massey peeled off to the left saying, “I’ll clear any rooms down here again.”

  Greg ran for the office. The receptionist was there, on the landline. “Another tornado,” he shouted at her.

  Her face went pale. “I—have to go,” she said into the phone then raised her face to Greg. “Not a joke?”

  “No, not a joke. Can you make the announcement again?”

  “There’s no power!”

  “Damn. How many people are here now?”

  “Fifty, sixty?”

  “In classrooms?”

  “Downstairs in the cafeteria, some of them, but yes, some are in various rooms.”

  “I’m clearing the same wing I did earlier. You get everybody out of any offices, then run downstairs yourself.”

  “How long do we have?” she called, as he ran out of the room.

  “Five minutes, if you’re lucky,” he shouted back.

  Greg ran down the familiar hallway, flinging doors open, classrooms and bathrooms both. The third classroom had ten children and two adults supervising them. “Get back downstairs, right now.”

  This time, no one fought him. They dropped everything and ran.

  The fifth door had a teacher and four children—one of whom was Holly. “Let’s get downstairs, everyone,” he said. “Holly, get over here, now.”

  She sprung out of her chair and ran to him. He scooped her up in his arms and carried her along. “Just a couple more doors to check,” he said to her. The children and teacher who had been with her passed them by, headed for the stairs. The art room had a few people in it, an adult and two kids playing on the floor with clay. He got them up and moving, and when everyone had passed through to the steps downstairs, he turned to yell a general warning to anyone he might have somehow missed:

  “Tornado coming! Everybody downstairs right now!”

  He went into the last west-facing room and jogged to the window to look at the sky. The rain had stopped. To the west, he could see it, a black patch growing in size. The first tornado had spanned about a half a block. This one was bigger. As it came closer, he froze in place, mesmerized, watching it grow and grow, filling more and more of the sky. It was huge. It was going to take out a swath two blocks wide. Maybe more.

  And it was coming right this way.

  Holding tight to his daughter, he ran out of the room and took the steps down as fast as safety allowed. As he came to the last child sitting in line in the hallway, he slid down to the ground, his arms wrapped tightly around Holly. “Put your legs around me, sweetie,” he said. “Hold on to Dad.”

  There was complete quiet this time—no chattering children, no one shouting, just silent apprehension.

  Outside, the wind began to scream.

  Chapter 9

  “Meek? You stil
l okay?” said Adam.

  “Same old me.”

  “Except you’re not doing anything for a change. You’re usually doing two things at once.”

  “Enforced rest period,” she said. “Like in kindergarten. I hated them then, too.”

  “I’m going to go call for help again.”

  She hated the seconds when he was gone. He had left three times now, and if he was keeping time as he said he was, leaving every five minutes, maybe twenty minutes had passed. She was starting to hurt more. One hip bone was pressed into the tile so hard, she knew she was bruised there, could imagine broken capillaries spreading from that point outward, like an illustration in her bio textbook.

  “I’m back.” Adam’s voice came through the wall. “I got to talk to someone this time—a couple of guys, actually. They ran off to get help. There’s a fire truck on campus.”

  “That’s good.” She cleared her throat. “I guess I’ll be stuck for a while longer, though.”

  “I wish I could change that.”

  “You should call your mom. And mine, I guess—but don’t worry her if you do call.” Her mother didn’t handle stress well.

  “The phones are out. The electricity, too.”

  “I guess my mother will be coming to check on me.” She realized then that she wasn’t the only one in trouble. “Unless the tornado got her, too.”

  “I’m sure she’s fine.”

  “What about your family, Adam?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You should go find out. You’ve told someone, now. I’ll get rescued.” It killed her to say it. She didn’t want him to go. “You need to go home and check on your brother and sister, and let your mom know you’re okay.”

  “The school isn’t badly damaged. Just the parking lot and stadium. If they hear that, they’ll assume I’m fine.”

  “The stadium? Was anyone out on the track?”

  “I don’t know. It was raining, so maybe they’d all gone in, or had gym inside last period.”

  “I hope so. I hope I’m the only person hurt in the whole town.”

  “Are you? Hurt bad, do you think?”

  “I don’t know. I—” She hated to think about it, but she wanted to tell him, too. “I can’t feel my legs, Adam. Not at all.”

  “Meek,” he said. Nothing more, just her name, worry and care and sympathy in the tone, coming through the tumbled spaces and trying to touch her, to reassure her.

  “You’re a good guy, Adam. I hope you know that.”

  “Then why did you dump me, Meek? If I’m that good a guy?”

  “Do we need to talk about this now?”

  “I want to.”

  “Oh? I don’t.”

  He laughed bitterly. “Don’t I know it. But you can’t run away from me, for once. Tell me.”

  “I told you that I wanted to focus on my schoolwork. I’m not ready for something serious.”

  “Then we can have something less serious.” He hesitated. “If you don’t hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you. Not a bit.”

  There were long seconds of silence. Malika could hear sirens in the distance. The lines of light she could see were getting brighter. “Is the sun coming out?”

  “Was it sex, Meek? I didn’t push you, did I?”

  “No.” In a way, of course, it was sex. “I was as interested in that as you.” She surely hoped no one was eavesdropping on this conversation.

  “Was it that the sex wasn’t—” he cleared his throat “—any good? Did I disappoint you?”

  “No, Adam. You didn’t disappoint me.”

  “You didn’t disappoint me, either. I mean, it was nice. I didn’t hurt you at all? Physically?”

  “No.” He had been her first, but it hadn’t hurt one bit. It was clumsy the first time, but that was her fault as much as his—maybe even more her fault. She had been nervous—had had stage fright, without being on stage. But by the third time, she was mostly over that, and it was just her and Adam, moving slower by then, which was even nicer. It seemed like a natural part of their caring for each other. When he looked into her eyes after she had come the first time, it was like religion, like the touch of God in her heart. She felt as big as the universe and, at the same time, in a tiny, private cocoon of two, the only two people fully alive in the world right then.

  “Meek?”

  “Yeah,” she said, coming back to the present from the bittersweet memory.

  “I didn’t hurt you?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Then why? Don’t give me that story about schoolwork. That wasn’t it, was it?”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Tell me.”

  What if, Malika thought, she died? What if no one got to her in time? What if the whole building collapsed on her? What if they came and got her, and something in her was hurt so badly that she didn’t make it? Would she want him wondering for months or years, or believing the lie she had told him?

  “Was it another guy? You haven’t been with anyone else since, cuz I’ve been paying attention, but was it that you fell in—”

  “I was pregnant.” It was out of her mouth before she could stop herself. “I was pregnant and had an abortion.”

  Nothing.

  “Adam?”

  Nothing.

  More insistent. “Adam!”

  His voice was soft. “Give me a second.”

  She waited several seconds, but she couldn’t stay quiet. “Say something.”

  “I—I gotta go check and see where those rescuers are.”

  She heard him walk away. And wondered if he’d ever be back. I shouldn’t have told him.

  *

  “They’re coming.” Long minutes passed, and Malika tried not to think at all—not about her legs or Adam or the abortion or anything.

  “Adam?”

  “Yeah. There’s a wrecker and fire truck in the lot now. They’re going to pull the bus out, if they can do it without hurting you. And they want me out of here.”

  “Thank you. You’re being very nice.”

  “I love you, Malika. I’m not nice, I’m just…stupid, I guess.” He heaved a sigh. “And so mad at you right now, I’m glad I can’t get to you. I never ever thought I’d hit a girl, but I want to shake you until your teeth rattle.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t like if I did it. That’s why I didn’t—”

  “Not for that. Geez, Meek, I wouldn’t want to hurt you because of that. It’s for not telling me right then. For not trusting me. I’m angry about that, you fool.” He took a breath. “The fire guys just told me to come outside again. They don’t want anyone else in here in case something else falls down from the ceiling.”

  “Okay.”

  “I just…. I’ll see you later.”

  “Sure, see you sometime.”

  “I’ll be right here. When they get you out, I’m going to be right here, Meek. You think I stopped loving you in like five minutes? Jesus, you’re an idiot. For someone so smart, you sure are stupid sometimes.” With that, he was gone.

  *

  “Miss?” A man’s voice from outside. “Malika, is it? You in there? Awake?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Your friend says you can’t move your legs.”

  “I don’t know if they’re pinned or paralyzed or what,” she said.

  “Okay. We’re going to get you out. It may take a few minutes, so you just hold tight.”

  She heard a truck engine approaching, and then the beep-beep of a back-up signal started. A pause. Then voices, shouting—she couldn’t hear what. And a metallic clunk. More voices, or the same ones. Every second felt like ten minutes. She wanted out of here, and wanted it worse now that they were here to help her.

  Though she didn’t really want to see Adam face to face. She had never meant to tell him, not ever. She thought she would move on with her life, and the memory of him and the pregnancy—which she still couldn’t believe had happened, they had been so careful—and the ab
ortion, paid for with her own savings from work. The trip to Columbus on the bus, and the trip back, cramping, more relieved than guilty and then more guilty because of the relief, and holding the secret inside herself. Her mother wouldn’t have disapproved but Malika didn’t tell her. Her pastor probably would have understood her reasons. And now, it seemed, even Adam would have.

  She was so used to doing everything on her own. Her brother and sister weren’t much use. Her mother wasn’t. Everything had been up to Malika for a long time. She had thought taking care of the pregnancy would be, too. And she had gotten through it. She had no regrets.

  But it would have been nice to have someone to talk it over with. Someone to hold her hand on the bus ride, maybe.

  “Slow down, now!” a voice shouted outside. She heard grinding, and a big pop, as they started to do whatever it was they were doing out there.

  “It’s coming,” said a different voice.

  “Hold up!” the first voice said. “Miss? Malika, you okay in there? Anything fall on you?”

  “Nothing moved at all,” she yelled back.

  “Pull ‘er forward,” he called again.

  This time, the light changed. Malika couldn’t see behind her, but she could tell that something was moving away, letting in more light.

  With a banging, steely clank, something fell, and she yelped in fear.

  “Stop!” shouted the voice. “You okay?”

  “I’m sorry. It just scared me. Nothing hurt me.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.” She still couldn’t feel anything below her hips.

  The engine outside—louder now—ground gears and revved again. Creaking, groaning, snapping noises. A thud. More and more light filtering in.

  For the first time since she had woken, she felt hope. They were going to get her out of here. Maybe nothing would be wrong with her. If her legs were hurt, she’d deal with it.

  “Okay,” yelled the voice. “Haul it over there to the other wrecks.” Then the engine sound was gone and two voices were talking together, more quietly, so she could only hear the murmur of it.

  “Okay, Malika?” the first voice called in. “You still okay?”

  “Still okay,” she said. Just hurry up!