The Tornado Chasers

by Ross Montgomery

  ‘The forest!’

  He pointed to the other side of the valley. Ahead of us a dense woodland sprouted across the valley floor and up the hills, the layers of branches shimmering in the wind.

  ‘An actual forest,’ he said. ‘Like in books! You know what that means, right? Campfires! Berries on every tree!’

  We glanced at each other, breathless with excitement.

  ‘I’ve never been in a forest before!’ I said eagerly. ‘I mean, I’ve been near one. But my parents would only let me look at it through binoculars.’

  ‘Me neither,’ said Orlaith. ‘In fact … has anyone been camping before?’

  Everyone shook their heads. There was no chance any of our parents would have ever let us do something as reckless as sleep outside. Callum snorted.

  ‘Who cares! We’ve come this far already, right? We can do this!’ He looked at us, his eyes glimmering. ‘By tonight, we’ll be bathing in waterfalls, sleeping in treehouse palaces, eating roasted warthog …’

  Our stomachs groaned the moment he said it. Not one of us had eaten since the day before.

  ‘Oh man,’ Ceri groaned, clutching her stomach. ‘I could really do with some roasted warthog.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said desperately. ‘Do you reckon there’ll be enough warthog to go around, Callum?’

  ‘Er … I dunno, probably,’ said Callum. ‘I mean, even if there’s not that much warthog, we’ll be OK for a while. Don’t you only need to eat, like, once a year or something?’

  16

  It Turns Out You Need to Eat More Than Once a Year

  It was the next day. We stood in a limestone quarry the other side of the valley. It was raining heavily. It hadn’t stopped raining for twelve hours. We were looking at a sheep. The sheep was looking back at us.

  ‘Somebody kill it already,’ said Callum, his voice breaking.

  Nobody moved. Callum pushed me forwards.

  ‘Owen, kill the sheep,’ he said.

  I looked at the sheep. The sheep chewed thoughtfully on something.

  ‘What if it bites me?’ I said nervously.

  ‘I’ll bite you if you don’t bleeding kill it,’ snapped Callum. ‘Forget it! You’re useless. Pete, kill the sheep.’

  Pete whimpered, and stepped behind Orlaith. Orlaith glared at Callum.

  ‘Why don’t you kill it?’ she said.

  ‘Because shut up,’ he snapped. He clutched at his growling stomach. ‘Please, somebody just kill it. I can’t take it any more!’

  We knew how he felt. The last twenty-four hours had been difficult on everyone. It turned out the forest hadn’t been filled with berries and warthog like Callum had promised. There had been lots of mosquitoes, though.

  ‘Hey!’ Callum cried. ‘Look!’

  He pointed at the sheep in disbelief. It was tearing up a clutch of grass that sprouted between the rocks and chewing it. Callum’s eyes brightened.

  ‘That’s it!’ he cried joyously. ‘Grass!’

  He threw himself down onto his hands and knees and started furiously tearing grass straight out of the ground with his mouth. We watched him in stunned silence.

  ‘I think he’s eating a thistle,’ said Ceri.

  ‘Let him,’ said Orlaith.

  We dropped our bikes and slumped down onto the cold and clammy rocks. Callum wasn’t the only one in our group that looked completely demented. None of us had known a thing about camping outside. In the cold and the dark, it had been impossible to see where we were going. We had spent every moment convinced that a bear was right behind us, waiting to pounce. Our hair had quickly filled with twigs, our clothes snagged on thorns and smeared with fox poo.

  And then, of course, it had started raining.

  ‘This isn’t exactly what I expected from our adventure,’ I muttered.

  Orlaith stood up woozily.

  ‘Well, I’m going to take the stormtrap up to higher ground,’ she said. She gave it a vicious thump. ‘Maybe then this piece of junk can start getting some signal again and we can work out where the tornado is.’

  The stormtrap had been acting up ever since it started raining. Orlaith set off sluggishly up the quarry, heaving her bike with difficulty up the wet limestone. I sat with Ceri, swaying slightly with exhaustion. Up ahead Callum was trying to force Pete to murder the sheep, despite the fact Pete was crying and insisting that he was a Vegetable Aryan.

  We sat in silence for a while. I glanced at Ceri. She was staring blankly at the ground. Her white hair was pasted to her forehead in thin strands, and her back was hunched against the rain. She was rubbing her legs.

  ‘You alright?’ I said.

  She looked up sluggishly. ‘Hmm? What?’

  I glanced back down at her legs.

  ‘You’re being very quiet,’ I said. ‘Not feeling too … tired?’

  She shook her head. ‘Oh no, I’m fine! Totally, completely fine. I just …’ She let out a deep sigh. ‘I just miss Flossie, that’s all.’

  I blinked. ‘Really?’

  Ceri nodded. ‘Of course. She’s my little sister.’ She scratched despondently at a block of wet stone in front of her. ‘It’s my job to look after her, you know? To make sure she’s safe. And if I’m not doing it … I mean, who is?’

  We fell silent again. Up ahead Callum and Pete were attempting to outsmart the sheep by chasing it round a tree. It wasn’t going very well. I glanced back at Ceri. She was rubbing her legs again.

  ‘You’re sure that’s all it is?’ I said.

  Ceri fixed me with a look. ‘What do you mean?’

  I pointed at her legs.

  ‘You keep rubbing them.’ I paused. ‘We can … stop for a bit, you know, Ceri.’

  She clenched her jaw irritably. ‘We can’t actually, Owen. We have to keep going.’

  She got to her feet, her face flashing with discomfort, and made her way awkwardly up the quarry. I ran after her.

  ‘Ceri,’ I said, ‘you can’t just be brave for the sake of it. If they hurt, then you should say somethi—’

  I made to put my hand on her shoulder. In a flash she swung round and smacked it away. I startled. The two of us fell silent.

  ‘You … you didn’t have to do that,’ I said, rubbing my hand. ‘I was trying to help you.’

  ‘Well, you weren’t helping!’ said Ceri. ‘You were making me feel like a problem.’

  We looked at each other in the rain. The water dripped down into the back of my collar. I twitched, despite myself.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said quietly. ‘I didn’t mean to. I know what it’s like when … well, I know what it’s like when people think you can’t do anything.’

  Ceri’s face softened, just slightly. She sighed, and wiped the strands of wet hair from her forehead.

  ‘Alright, alright,’ she grumbled. ‘I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just the braces. I’m not supposed to get them wet, and now they’re giving me blisters.’

  I smiled. ‘Really? That’s it? Blisters?’

  Ceri nodded. ‘Massive ones. Seriously, check them out! They’re like little faces!’

  She loosened one of the straps and showed me the welt beside her knee. I grimaced.

  ‘That’s really gross, Ceri,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah!’ she said brightly. ‘I know!’

  We fell silent again. The rain drummed down around us. In the distance Pete had the sheep in a headlock.

  ‘Do you reckon we’ll get to the tornado in time?’ said Ceri. ‘Before it passes by Skirting, I mean?’

  I thought about it.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Me neither,’ said Ceri. She nudged me with her elbow. ‘Still, I’m glad we’re doing it anyway.’

  I smiled. ‘Yeah. Me too.’

  ‘You WHAT?’

  We froze. The scream had come from the top of the quarry. It was Callum. We made our way quickly up the slope.

  Orlaith and Callum were facing each other, the wind and rain pelting furiously against them. Up here we could feel
the strength of the tornado again, heaving against us and sending our sopping wet capes flapping in the rain behind us. In the distance the sheep had managed to climb a tree and was sitting calmly on a branch while Pete attempted to poke it off with a stick.

  ‘You must be out of your mind!’ Callum shouted at Orlaith.

  Orlaith waved the stormtrap in front of him. ‘I told you, the trap’s not had any signal all day! We can’t just stop and wait for it to come back! We have to keep moving!’

  ‘What’s going on?’ I said, stepping between them. ‘What’s the problem?’

  Callum’s eyes bugged out of his head. He pointed to the horizon.

  ‘That!’ he cried.

  We looked across the valleys ahead of us. There wasn’t much you could see through the clouds that now whipped through the landscape, blanketing everything in a dull white. We could just make out the great mountain range that separated the valleys from the North. They were much closer now. They crouched in the clouds like ancient giants, their surface streaked with scars and scored with ragged drops on either side.

  ‘That’s where she’s taking us!’ Callum cried accusingly.

  Orlaith sighed. ‘Look, I already explained – we’re not going anywhere near the Caves! But we’re going to have to go towards them, aren’t we? I mean, we’re heading north …!’

  Ceri blinked. ‘I don’t get it. What’s wrong with the Caves?’

  ‘What’s wrong with the Great North Caves?’ Callum gasped incredulously. ‘Don’t you even listen in class?’

  We stared at him. It wasn’t a sentence we had ever imagined him saying.

  ‘The Great North Caves?’ he said, waving his arms. ‘Otherwise known as The Bear Caves?’

  I startled, and glanced at the great white rock face ahead of us in shock.

  ‘That’s … where all the bears live?’ I whispered, my voice tight with fear.

  Orlaith put her hands on her hips. ‘Well, if we don’t head towards them now the stormtrap’s broken, we’ll get lost! And if we get lost, we’ll run out of time before the tornado passes us. Besides – we’ve still got two cans of repellent! And we haven’t seen a single bear yet, have we?’

  We glanced at each other. It was true – there hadn’t been any sign of them. But Callum was having none of it.

  ‘Two cans of repellent aren’t going to make any difference out here!’ he ranted. ‘We might as well cover ourselves in sauce and offer ourselves up to the bears on a platter!’

  ‘That sounds quite fun, actually,’ said Ceri.

  ‘It’s not fun!’ Callum fumed.

  He stepped towards us, his eyes clamped wide open. I couldn’t help but step away from him. He looked unhinged.

  ‘Don’t you know what they do when they find a child?’

  No one answered him. He fixed his gaze on us for a while, then turned around and faced the valleys. The wind roared up the hillside and beat against him, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘Callum,’ I said nervously. ‘Callum, come away from the edge.’

  He didn’t reply. A distant look had come over him.

  ‘They never kill them first,’ he said. His voice was suddenly quiet. ‘Oh no. They drag them back to the caves. They take them inside, for the others to see.’

  There was another bellow of wind, and a wall of bleach-white clouds crept over the stones at Callum’s feet.

  ‘There’s nothing but tunnels inside,’ came Callum’s voice from the clouds ahead. ‘Pitch-black, dead ends. Only the bears know their way around them.’

  The clouds had surrounded us entirely. I glanced at the others through the fog. We had never heard him talk like this before. He stood, motionless, as the wind roared and rattled around him. It was getting stronger now, louder, colder.

  ‘Even if you did manage to escape from the bears,’ said Callum, ‘you’d never find your way outside again. You’d only end up deeper in the mountain. Nothing but rocks a mile above you and a mile below you. No one would ever find you. They wouldn’t even be able to hear you scream.’

  He paused.

  ‘They say the ones in the centre, the furthest inside, are just filled with bones and hair …’

  Orlaith suddenly ran forwards and grabbed him.

  ‘Callum, stop it!’ she said. ‘You’re frightening everyone!’

  Callum pulled free of her grip. ‘I’m frightening everyone? You’re the one who’s leading us right to them!’

  The clouds wrapped thicker and thicker around us, smothering our skin in freezing dampness and blinding us from one another. Our group was falling apart and there was nothing we could do. In the tree behind us we could just make out Pete trying to convince the sheep to jump.

  ‘Oh, and well then how about you?’ snapped Orlaith. ‘Mr “I’m Not Afraid Of Anything”? Why don’t you take charge, seeing as you’re so much braver than everyone else?’

  I fumbled forwards, trying to find them. ‘Come on, guys – maybe if we all sit down like grown-ups, and have a chat about it …’

  There was a sudden thump behind us, followed by a wail. I turned round.

  ‘… Pete?’ I said. ‘Pete, was that you?’

  There was no reply. The others hadn’t even noticed.

  ‘I’ll tell you what the problem is,’ came Callum’s voice in the fog. ‘The problem is that you pretend like you know exactly what to do, with all your plans and stupid inventions, but look at us! We haven’t eaten or slept in two days!’

  I turned away from them, and stepped towards the tree.

  ‘Pete? Are you OK?’

  ‘Well you know what, Callum?’ came Orlaith’s voice. ‘That’s just what happens! We’re not in an adventure story!’

  The sheep flew out of the fog towards me, stumbling down the stones into the distance, bleating in fear. I startled wildly, and looked towards the tree. It stood in the mist before me like a skeletal hand, clawing up from the stones, trembling in the wind. My heart began to pound.

  ‘P-Pete?’ I said. ‘Pete, are you there?’

  ‘Sometimes you have to get lost!’ Orlaith cried. ‘And cold! And hungry!’

  Pete was on the ground beneath the tree, lying on his back. I knelt down beside him.

  ‘Pete!’ I said. ‘Pete, what happened?’

  ‘Something fell on me,’ he groaned. ‘Out the sky.’

  I glanced down. There was something lying on the ground next to him.

  ‘Sometimes, nothing works out how you want it to!’

  I reached down and picked it up.

  It was a teddy bear.

  ‘You can’t just get whatever you want!’

  At that moment something fell to the ground beside me with a soft thump. I stared at it.

  It was a tasselled silk cushion.

  ‘Because that’s real life!’

  All at once, the clouds passed, and the sun came out, and the stones around me emerged into view. I gasped. Pillows and cushions and blankets and duvets were falling from the sky in every direction, tumbling down the rocky slopes and heaping in piles at our feet, covering the quarry.

  ‘Nobody’s going to turn up and magically fix everything for you!’

  The downfall stopped, as quickly as it started. I gazed out in stunned silence at the quarry before me. It was filled with brightly coloured comfortable bedding, dotted with teddy bears and rugs and rocking horses.

  ‘And you know what, Callum? Food doesn’t just appear out of the sky!’

  And that was when it started raining biscuits.

  17

  A Change in Plan

  It had stopped raining biscuits.

  We sat on the edge of the quarry, looking out across the countryside. It was quite a sight now the clouds had finally cleared. The valleys to the East were a sea of yellow rubber ducks. Blankets and feathery pillows were strewn for miles and miles in either direction, turning the furthest treetops into great circuses of colour. The hillside we sat on was decked with thousands upon thousands of wedding dresses.
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br />   The tornado lay on the horizon. It had doubled in size since the first day we saw it. The clouds had now stained a darker grey, funnelling into jet blackness as they wormed their way to the ground. In its wake lay the remains of half a dozen destroyed factories, their contents scattered for miles in every direction.

  ‘It doesn’t look like it’s heading this way,’ I said, chewing on a flapjack.

  Orlaith took a bite of her Victoria sponge.

  ‘That’s because it’s, er … not,’ she mumbled, spraying crumbs.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Ceri, licking the icing off a cupcake. ‘And it wasn’t supposed to go near the factories either, was it?’

  ‘No,’ said Orlaith sheepishly. ‘It wasn’t. But it looks like it, er … pulled away from the stormtraps. I guess the tornado was just too strong for them to control it.’

  ‘Huh,’ said Callum, jamming an entire doughnut into his mouth. ‘Well, it’s been a pretty good result for us, anyway.’

  It was true. The storm going unexpectedly off-course and devastating several dozen factories had been an absolute triumph for the Tornado Chasers. We had feasted on cakes and buns and biscuits until we’d been sick, before napping the nap of kings in a giant nest of throw-cushions that had collected in the quarry. I had woken up in glorious midday sunshine to find Pete sharing a wedding cake with the sheep, their old rivalry a distant memory.

  ‘Well,’ muttered Orlaith nervously. ‘Not that good.’

  We looked at her. Callum swallowed his doughnut whole, with some difficulty.

  ‘Why?’ he managed to choke out.

  Orlaith held up the stormtrap. It had finally got its signal back.

  ‘The tornado’s left the path it was on,’ she said. ‘It broke away from the stormtraps and went on a rampage through the countryside. Luckily it got picked up by another set of stormtraps – but look.’

  She rubbed a sleeve across the display and cleared the pen lines, before re-sketching the new path across the grid.

  ‘It’s going to keep going North, now,’ she said, putting the marker pen back in her pocket. ‘It’s not going to head towards us any more.’