The Long Fall

by Logan Keys

  How could it get worse than multiple tornados ripping through a neighborhood? Brittany certainly didn’t want to find out.

  “They’re out of everything,” Lily whined.

  “Not everything,” Brittany muttered.

  Their cart had sleeping bags, a few space heaters that were battery operated, and Benton kept piling in MREs like they were going out of style. “Dad would have us load up on these in an emergency, Britt,” Benton said, as if he were taking responsibility for their survival himself. It made her sad to hear him speak of his father, and continuing to lie to the kids was getting harder, but it was just never the right time. Besides, she still felt like it was their mother’s job to tell them, not hers.

  It wasn’t fair for Benton to feel like he needed to grow up in a hurry now that tornados had taken his entire home. When they left the house, neither Benton or Lily had cried for their things; they’d just packed up and moved like…like all military kids did, Brittany supposed.

  “We need extra blankets,” Brittany said, “Just in case. Good warm ones.”

  Benton asked for a Swiss army knife. It seemed dangerous for someone his age, but he swore he’d had one back in what was left of his room, so she agreed. She didn’t know what they’d need, and it was better to be prepared and not need something than to need it and not have it.

  Lily just wanted Barbies, so Brittany got her a Barbie thermos instead and told her it would be for soup or hot drinks on the road if the weather turned bad.

  “Why are the shelves so empty?” Lily asked, noticing again how the store looked bare, and Benton turned to wait for the answer as well.

  Because something isn’t right and everyone knows it. “People are stocking up.” And with that, Brittany sent Benton for even more MREs and water.

  “This is the last of it,” he said, dumping some gallons into the basket.

  Brittany felt alarms going off in the back of her mind looking at how little they’d been able to find, but she squashed them down. She couldn’t panic; she needed to be the adult in the situation. After piling on another blanket, she took some ramen she found hidden on a bottom shelf. It would have to do. The register line was all the way to the other side of the store now. Someone told Brittany they were having to call the banks of cardholders and get verification of funds to run the card later because the internet was down.

  That seemed too trusting to Brittany, but then the manager who was walking the line, assuring people they would be helped, said, “We’re trying to be there for those that have been caught in the tornadoes.”

  The store obviously had no working heat. They waited for what seemed like forever, and Brittany knew the kids were getting antsier because the adults were. More people were discussing the “freak storm” and some were even giving their opinion on the matter. A big, burly guy in front of Brittany with a truck driver hat was telling his wife, “The damned government controls the weather and look? We’re all running in here to buy buy buy, aren’t we?”

  “Hal,” the woman with him said softly, tucking further inside her jacket with embarrassment.

  “No. No, Lottie. It’s outrageous. We’ve lived here our whole lives and have never seen that many tornadoes that close together before.”

  Lottie crossed herself. “Those poor people,” she said, glancing back at Brittany who wondered how they knew she and the kids had been in the pathway of destruction.

  But the answer came when Brittany moved further up the line. She caught her own reflection in a mirror and saw that her jacket was torn at the shoulder and stuffing was coming out of it. Her hair was half plastered to one side of her head while the other side was windblown in all directions.

  The kids, too, were scraped up and dirty, and they were shivering as the temperature continued to drop again. Brittany swiped at blood from a big scrape on her cheek that she hadn’t even felt before. She looked terrible; no wonder the people inside had been staring.

  Something was happening further up the line. “Sorry folks,” the manager said. “We are trying to help as many as we can.”

  An older guy started walking away from the register. “They can’t get ahold of my bank. It’s out of state and they aren’t open due to the weather.”

  Hal turned to look at his wife. “See.”

  A woman began to argue with the cashier. “I have the funds! I don’t care if they can’t be reached!”

  The guy with her started shoving the workers. “Just take the damned card. I tried to get cash out. Your machine isn’t working.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Sorry! My family needs this stuff, what is your ‘sorry’ going to do when we run out of water? We have to boil everything as it is!”

  “Just take the stuff!” someone shouted. “Get out of the line! Let someone else go.”

  The line was jostling now, and Lily lifted her hands up to Brittany asking to be picked up. Brittany lifted her and set her inside of the cart.

  “Benton,” Brittany said quietly when a man bumped into the ten-year-old hard enough to send him back a step. “Stay close.”

  Brittany put Benton between her arms in front of her.

  “Oh my God!” a lady cried. “Shhhh! What?” She turned to look at the crowd with her phone pressed to her ear. “They said a plane crashed!”

  Everyone started talking at once. Most grabbed their phones to check.

  People had stopped fighting in line and were either watching the news broadcasts on their phones or making calls to find out more. Brittany watched Hal bend over his wife who had her hand over her mouth. Both were looking at her phone. “It’s true,” Lottie said.

  Brittany pulled her own phone out and opened up her news feed. At the top it said: “Breaking news” in red, so she clicked and gasped at the wreckage.

  “What?” Benton asked. “What is it?”

  The woman behind her squeaked in alarm. “Dear Lord in heaven, it says more than one has crashed. Two planes.”

  The article Brittany had open said a plane was down at JFK and another had crashed somewhere in Tennessee.

  The store grew very quiet, and strangers were looking to each other for answers. The silence was broken by the people who’d been trying to buy their stuff before, and they frantically grabbed their things in a hurry. “I’m not going to wait around for a plane or a tornado or whatever else is going to happen! You can call the cops on me, I’m taking this!”

  His exit started the panic, and everyone began grabbing their things and pushing them towards the door. “Another one!” a man shouted, crazy eyed and frightened. He held up his phone as if it was proof. “Another plane went down in New Jersey! That’s three planes!”

  Now people were screaming as others pressed them forward in a surge toward the door.

  Hal was busy forcing a man back from his own cart that was piled high. Brittany saw that he’d grabbed a lot of the water she and the kids had been after before.

  “It’s the government,” Hal said to anyone listening. “I’m telling ya. They want us all panicking, just like sheep to the slaughter.”

  “No,” another man in a suit said. He seemed the least likely to be a conspiracy theorist, but Brittany understood the weather was changing things rapidly. “The Russians,” he said. “We’re at war. My friend is ex-CIA, and he said they tampered with our satellites to screw up the weather as a first strike. Expect more.” He only had one case of water and he pulled out some money and threw it on the counter before forcing his way through the door.

  “Brittany,” Benton said, gripping her arms tightly as the crowd began to unravel. People started slamming into their cart.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Brittany said, leaving the cart and grabbing Lily.

  “No,” Benton said, pulling her back. “We can’t leave it. We might need it.”

  Benton was right, and she hated to admit that he was probably a better planner for disaster at the moment than she was because all she wanted to do was run away. Brittany fished into
her purse and found what she thought was enough cash for their items. She watched Hal start paving a way for the door, shoving his cart into anyone who was busy grabbing things that weren’t theirs. Brittany hunched over the children and followed right behind the big man and his wife.

  At the door, Hal was having to grab people by the collar and shove them away, and he even told his wife to ram a person who was trying to take some of their water. “Damned government shills! You do whatever they want like little puppets!”

  When he glanced back, he nodded at Brittany who nodded back as if they were a team. Hal kept cutting a pathway toward the door. “Honey, you got the cash?”

  “Yes, sir,” Lottie said.

  When they got near the cash register, Brittany saw that the girl who’d been manning it was hiding behind it in a crouch. A man was trying to steal the money, and the manager was trying to stop him.

  Hal picked the guy up off his feet. “Get out of here!” he growled, and the guy looked ready to faint.

  “You better call the cops, lady,” Hal said to the manager. “Better yet, the National Guard.”

  “Here!” Brittany shouted putting money in the girl’s hand before rushing for the door when she saw an opening. If she didn’t keep up her speed, she’d be trampled in the stampede.

  “It’s the apocalypse!” a guy shouted at people fleeing the store. He seemed to be a worker on a smoke break, and he shook his head, laughing while watching the melee.

  Brittany couldn’t understand what was funny about people hurting each other and stealing. She almost made it to the Jeep before two men exited a van, stopping her and the kids dead in their tracks. “She’s got MREs!” the guy called to another group who moved their car to box her in.

  Brittany and the kids were surrounded by two on each side and they weren’t letting her pass. “Just let us through!” Brittany demanded.

  “Or what?”

  One guy reached for her cart and Brittany jumped between him and Lily and Benton. She didn’t know what had gotten into her, but she wasn’t ready to see anyone scare the kids a moment longer.

  “Back off!” she said.

  “Ohhh,” he taunted, “we got ourselves a tough girl, huh?”

  “Is there a problem here?”

  Brittany sighed in relief when she saw Hal and Lottie come striding up. “You need help, little lady?” he asked.

  “No problem,” the guy said with his hands raised, and the group dispersed.

  “Thank you,” Brittany said, pushing her hands together because they were shaking so badly.

  “You be careful,” Hal warned, and he put two cases of water on top of her cart.

  “Thank you so much.” Brittany fought tears from adrenaline and frustration. Her emotions were high because she didn’t understand what was happening and the kids only had her to try to protect them as chaos reigned.

  “Get in, guys,” Brittany said after thanking Hal and his wife again. “Let’s not stick around. I want to get out of Kansas.” She eyed the dark, low-hanging clouds. “I just want to get out of this state as soon as possible.”

  Benton helped her load up the supplies while Lily sat in her booster seat with her new Barbie thermos in hand. Lily was pale, and you could tell she was just coping with all of the insanity by playing pretend.

  Brittany typed the address Reese had given into her phone’s map and GPS. It told her the distance in a robotic voice: “Thirteen hundred miles.” She sighed. Thirteen hundred miles of people losing their minds. Great.

  They pulled out of the lot as the rain began, big droplets smacking the window like it had done something offensive. Brittany turned on the wipers to try and see, but just a few miles down the highway was at a standstill. She had to bite off a curse before the kids heard.

  “What happened?” Benton asked.

  “God only knows,” she answered shortly. “Sorry,” Brittany said fixing the rearview mirror to meet Benton’s gaze. “I don’t mean to snap at you, but this place is falling apart.”

  A state trooper came walking down the line talking to people. Brittany put the Jeep into park when she realized they were not going to be moving anytime soon. She got out of the vehicle, bundled up and jogged to the trooper as he told everyone what was holding up the roads. “You all need to get back into your vehicles and turn around. It’s much safer in your homes and leaving the area guarantees no safety as the weather is being unpredictable in all counties now. Please return to your homes so these roads can stay clear for emergency personnel. There is a place for those who cannot return home due to damage from the storms; the base has made a temporary facility to help with all of your needs. Please return to your cars and to your houses or the military facility. Thank you.”

  When Brittany got back into the car, she gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles felt like they were going to pop out of her skin. “This. Is. Not. Happening!”

  It seemed like it was just yesterday that her biggest worry was whether or not they had enough candy for the trick or treaters. Wow, that was only yesterday, she thought.

  “What is it?” Benton said in a small voice once she was through with her frustration-induced outburst.

  Tears filled her eyes, and she pushed her wet hair back from her forehead. “They’ve blocked the roads out of town. They want us to go home. But we don’t have a home, do we? So they want us to go to some facility. The people there will be like sitting ducks.” Brittany twisted in her seat and leveled her gaze on Benton. “Benton. What does your mother do exactly? Do you know?”

  “Space ships!” Lily shouted, giggling.

  Brittany raised her brows.

  Benton smiled. “Lily’s right. She helped run the program that launched satellites into space.”

  “You mean…the thermal shade thingy?”

  “I think so.”

  “Benton,” Brittany said carefully. “If your mother says that the weather is going to get worse and that we would be safer if we left, should I believe her?”

  Benton scrunched up his face and frowned. “One time, my mom sent me a card signed by the president,” he said, and Brittany tried not to roll her eyes. He went on, “The kids in class said she couldn’t have met with him and that everyone got those in the mail. That it was nothing special. I told dad and he told mom I was crying. It was my birthday, so—”

  “Baby,” Lily said.

  “Shut up!”

  Lily smacked at him from out of her seat, and Benton held up a fist.

  “Stop it, guys. Benton, what does this have to—”

  “Anyway,” Benton said, interrupting her. “She Skyped the class with the president right there with her. He said bullying was wrong, and he told the class that it wasn’t nice to call me a liar.” He grinned. “And no one has ever called me a liar since.”

  Brittany’s mouth dropped open as she twisted slowly to face frontward. She thought of her mother telling her she’d catch flies like that. Making her decision, she put the Jeep in reverse and looked over her shoulder to make sure it was clear before she backed down the highway.

  She kept going until the trooper was out of sight, and then Brittany stopped and gripped the wheel. She stared at the road in front of her before turning her head to survey the small road she’d seen some cars turn going down into the Kansas Riverbed.

  “Brittany?” Benton asked. “What are you thinking?”

  She put the car into a low gear and pulled off the highway onto the bumpier dirt road. “I’m thinking that if your mom could put the president on the phone at a moment’s notice then we should probably listen to her. I’m thinking that if they’re blocking the roads, they know that more tornadoes are coming, and I don’t want to be there when they do. I’m thinking that it’s lucky your mother had the brains to get me something that’s four-wheel-drive.”

  The Jeep was already hitting bumps that made them all jump in their seats, but the thing was made for off-roading, so it steadily found its grip until the bed softened into wet sand. />
  Brittany took the red Jeep into the bottom of the riverbed where sometimes there was too much water during rainy season, but right now it was just a mud pit with a trickle. When she got alongside the puddles, she sped up a little faster, spraying mud out behind them like a rooster tail.

  “That’s so cool!” Benton shouted

  “Whee!” Lily said.

  Brittany couldn’t help it; she grinned as she started to splash out of the mud and even took the Jeep a little fast into some of the bigger runoffs of water, letting the spray clean her tires and windows which made the kids shout with glee. When she flipped on the satellite radio, there wasn’t much about the weather because it was commercial-free. Instead, her first choice was playing an alternative version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

  “Perfect,” Brittany said.

  She pushed the Jeep as hard as she dared, watching the dark clouds form behind them in the rearview mirror.

  Coming Soon:

  The Long Fall: Book 2

  Winter’s Refuge

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