"Son, I lived my entire life in these parts. I been through more twisters'n I can count. This here is shapin' up to be an F-4, at least. Probably an F-5. You got any brains in that big, bearded head of yours, you'll get to safety."
"I'm just passing through. Nowhere to go."
I'm standing by the door, dripping wet, frozen in place just by his voice.
"Well, son, I've got a shelter and you're welcome to it. Take this here main street coupla miles east a ways. I'm the big red barn with the little white house. Shelter's around the back of the house. Just go on down and hunker it out."
"Where will you be?"
The old man waves a gnarled hand. "Out there. Folk's'll need a hand after she blows herself out."
"Think I'll stick with you, in that case."
"You ever sit through a twister?"
Lock sounds to me like he's trying to suppress amusement. "No sir, but--"
"It ain't no fuckin' hayride, boy. Get to the shelter."
"I haven't been through a tornado, but I've sailed through more than my share of hurricanes and typhoons. Nearly capsized twice, lost my mainsail once, and had my dinghy ripped away another time. I think I can handle a tornado. Besides, maybe I can help when it's over."
The old man shrugs a shoulder. "All right, then. Your funeral. Just stay clear of her path, and when she's gone, smell for natural gas. Leaks happen, and that's a quick way to get blowed up if you set off a spark in the wrong place."
"Got it."
The old man finally sees me. "You lost, sweetheart?"
I shake my head. "No, I just...I was going to wait out the storm here, too."
Lock hears my voice, pivots sharply, eyes like lasers fixing on me. "Niall." He takes a step toward me. "What are you doing here?"
I don't know how to answer that. If I open my mouth, venom will flow, I just know it. I'm pissed at him, and now that he's in front of me, I want to lay into him. Rip him a new asshole for being a coward.
I take a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "I went for a drive."
"Two hours from home?"
I narrow my eyes at him, keep my voice sharp and cold. "Yes, two hours from home. Which makes it kind of funny, running into you all the way out here, two hours away from home."
"Niall--"
"Save it, Lock. Not the place, not the time."
As if to punctuate my statement, a loud siren cranks up to a deafening, shrieking wail. The old man slaps a cover on his coffee and heads for the door.
"There she is," he says. "She's made touch-down." He climbs into an old, battered, but well-loved F-150, cranks the engine and backs out.
He pauses at the main road and then turns right, heading for who knows what. Chasing the storm, maybe.
Lock's gaze returns to mine. "It's not safe here."
"It's not safe anywhere, right now."
"We should go for that guy's shelter," Lock says. "North two miles, big red--"
"I have ears."
The siren is still howling, and now the sound of the wind is loud enough to drown out even that. Outside, rain is driving in sideways sheets, the traffic light isn't just swaying or twisting now, but is suspended sideways by the wind force. A blue plastic wading pool tumbles down the road, and then a trampoline, a stop sign, and various other debris. The other men in the store are standing stock-still, clutching coffees and staring outside, brows wrinkled, trying to be stoic but clearly afraid.
And if they're afraid, tough old farmers and cowboys born and raised in tornado alley? Shit. This is bad.
Lock stares at me, then glances outside, then back to me. Jaw flexing, fists clenching and unclenching, tension in his shoulders. I recognize the signs: he's fighting a war with himself, and losing.
"Fuck," he growls. "Come on."
He grabs me by the hand and drags me into a stumbling run out of the gas station toward his truck. He rounds the front bumper with me in tow, hauls open the passenger seat, and physically lifts me up and into the cab.
"Lock, I'm not--"
"You're going with me. End of story." His voice is hard and irritated as he reaches past me to click the seatbelt into place.
He shuts the passenger door after me, so abruptly it bumps my knee. As soon as I'm in, Utah is trying to lick me from the backseat. Lock trots over to my truck, retrieves my purse and keys, and then jumps into the driver's seat of his truck, smelling wet and looking delicious...and pissed off. What did I do to him? I'm the one who's pissed.
He twists the key in the ignition savagely, jerking the shifter into reverse, peeling out in a wide arc, and then we're lurching forward, back wheels skidding and fishtailing on the wet cement as Lock guns it. He twists the transfer case knob, activating the four-by-four. We head onto the main road, turning right. The engine roars, and we bolt forward as the turbodiesel spools up and unleashes power. I hear the wind, ever-present, wild, powerful, terrifying. I twist in my seat and scan the horizon.
Clouds, low, thick, curling, black. Whipped into a churning froth by the wind. I feel the truck swaying as the wind batters us, and glance over to see Lock white-knuckling the steering wheel with both hands, jaw tensed, body hunched forward, scanning the horizon, looking for the twister, same as me.
"Fuck. Jesus--" His voice is shocked, stunned breathless. "Fucking hell, that thing is...huge." He points to two o'clock out the windshield.
I follow his outstretched finger, and my breath leaves my body in a horrified whoosh.
We're heading north--to our right, from the east, sunlight is visible through a break in the clouds, shedding a thin stream of weak orange light. To the left is a hell-scape. Lit by the sun, the anchor-shaped wall cloud is an impenetrable fortress of thick, angry, violent black, a frenzied maelstrom of wind and rain and hail.
The funnel?
A massive wedge easily a mile wide, hundreds of feet high, visibly rotating even from this distance. We're traveling parallel to it, following its path...and losing pace. And then it abruptly veers east, directly toward us.
The sound? I've heard the usual descriptors before, of course: freight train, jet engine, et cetera.
Words don't do it justice.
The twister is easily half a mile away from us, and even with the windows closed the roar is...beyond deafening. It's as if the skies themselves have given voice to some colossal, superhuman rage. Screaming, howling, roaring, so loud that conversation is utterly impossible and my ears ache from the sheer decibel force.
My heart is hammering in my chest, just watching the thing, mesmerized, unable to look away.
Hail bounces violently off the hood of the truck, off the roof in staccato drumming thunder, cracking off the windshield, huge golf balls of ice. Rain blasts at us in sheets and horizontal waves.
Lock is hauling ass, going at least seventy on the two-lane highway, trying to outrun the tornado--which I remember reading somewhere is the worst thing you can do.
He rolls down his window.
My ears ring from the violent assault of a wall of sound, as if I was standing two feet away from the screaming engine of a 787 without ear protection. I'm gripping the oh-shit bar with both hands, trying not to hyperventilate, trying not to scream.
Utah is on the floor of the backseat, cowering, whining in her throat, tail tucked, eyes fearful. I know how she feels.
We're in its path, now. It didn't just veer, it pulled a ninety-degree shift in course, spearing toward us like a mile-wide ICBM. It's right outside my window, blocking out the world, black as night, the destructive finger of a vengeful god. I can see debris caught by the up-rushing vortex--not just sticks and rocks and bits of lawn detritus, I'm talking entire house roofs, car doors, barn doors. I watch it rip a hundred-foot-tall oak tree clean out of the ground, lift it, hurl it skyward, and then the massive tree is lost in the wild, whirling cyclonic demon.
The tip of the wedge scrapes across the ground and engulfs a house. I see the roof sucked off, tossed heavenward, lost.
I'm screaming now, tr
ying not to, but losing it completely.
Terror is a fist in my throat, demanding release.
A car whips past our hood, airborne. Twisting. Tumbling. Hurtling.
I saw a face in that vehicle, a snatched glimpse as the airborne missile seared past.
Lock has the gas pedal floored. I feel our velocity as a reckless rush through the storm, pushed back in my seat as he accelerates. Thrown to the side as he jerks the wheel around something in the road--an entire cow, lifted, tossed, and slammed down in the center of the road, turned into a pile of meat and gore. I scream as we fishtail, rock onto two wheels, wind battering at us, trying to push us over. Somehow, impossibly, Lock spins the wheel just right, we crash down onto four wheels, and then he guns the engine, sending us jolting forward, the twisting wall of hell shredding trees and houses and fences and livestock a mere thousand feet away. I can't hear anything except the deafening. The chunk of a house, a corner, a bit of roof, and torn stubs of studs, crashes into the road twenty feet in front of us, shattering into splinters, and then the two-hundred-plus miles per hour winds hurls those studs and spars and shingles at us like baseballs from a pitcher's hand. A two-by-four flies directly at us end over end. There's nothing we can do to stop it, or avoid it. Lock slams on the brakes, throwing us forward into the dashboard, and then we shrink against our respective doors, ducking and covering our faces as the two-by-four spears through the windshield directly between us.
I can't breathe, can't cry, can't scream. Can't even hyperventilate. The two-by-four would have smashed my skull into fragments if I'd ducked a split second later. Lock has us moving again, slewing around the remnants of the house.
The twister is on an intercept course with us. Moving faster than belief can credit. Slinging debris in every direction and sucking up more as it swallows a barn, and then the farmhouse, and then flattens and shreds a thousand acres of wheat in minutes.
The twister veers again, and now Lock jerks the wheel around again, sending us skidding and stuttering sideways on the highway, then down the ditch and into a field. The seatbelt goes taut, nearly crushing my chest as it tightens, and we jounce and crunch and lurch across the field, hillocks sending us skyward, wheat slapping the hood.
I crane my head to watch our rear end: the twister seems to be following us with a sentience, matching our every move, determined to catch us and swallow us. We're angling across the field, nowhere to go now except further across the field, thousands of acres of wheat extending away from us in all directions. I keep watching, and maybe it's my imagination, but the funnel seems smaller, narrower, thinner. Still deadly and following us, but getting ready to rope out, hopefully.
We've gained some distance, finally. Debris is no longer falling and crashing all around us, but the noise is still a painfully loud roar, and the rain and hail is still torrential.
I can breathe, now, but it hurts. Something hurts. I don't want to look to see why, or what. Not yet.
I swivel in my seat and see the twister spinning and skirling, half its original size now, more of a true funnel than a wedge. It jumps and hops, leaping half a mile at a time, slamming down to send dirt and sod and debris flying in an explosion, carving this way and that erratically, thinning with every passing second.
And then, abruptly, it's gone.
Lock is utterly focused, so he doesn't notice. Just keeps driving across the field, both fists white-knuckled on the wheel, brow furrowed.
I touch his arm. "Lock. Stop. It's gone." My voice is hoarse, quiet.
"It's gone?" He slows, scans the horizon behind us.
"It roped out finally."
He stops the truck. There's a moment of silence as Lock sits upright, still gripping the wheel, sucking in deep, gusting breaths, and then he slowly peels his hands off the wheel, one finger at a time. They're shaking, trembling.
There's a two-by-four between us. Lock shoves it back through the hole in the windshield, and it falls onto the hood with a loud thump. And then he unbuckles his seatbelt, unbuckles mine, and hauls me bodily across the console to sit on his lap, wedged between his big, hard, hot, wet body and the steering wheel. He cradles my head against his chest, breathing hard.
I stiffen, fighting how right this feels, how comforting his arms feel. But I can't help giving in to it. I just can't help it.
"Jesus." Lock's voice is a stunned rumble. "Just...Jesus."
"Yeah."
"I've been through hurricanes and typhoons. I've jumped out of airplanes. I've jumped off cliffs. I've climbed Kilimanjaro and Everest. I swam with sharks once, not on purpose, and not in a cage. They just...appeared, swimming around me. And that...was easily the scariest fucking thing I've ever experienced."
"I've been shot at. I watched a truck full of soldiers meant to be protecting our crew of doctors get blown up by an RPG. I was on ground zero of the Haiti earthquake. And this was easily the scariest thing I've ever experienced."
Lock finally releases me from the crushing death grip. Slings open his door and helps us both out of the truck and onto our feet, lets Utah hop out and trot off to do her business. We stand in the wheat field, staring back at what had been a thriving small-town farm community. There is nothing left.
Ruins.
Trees lying across the road. Cars on their roofs in the fields, or standing on end against crumbling walls. Two-by-fours speared into concrete. Smoke skirls and whips skyward, a thick black column, something burning.
"Jesus," Lock says again. "There's just...nothing left."
"We have to go help." I hate the feeling in my gut: Fear. Loathing. Dread. I know what I have to do, and I'm terrified to do it. "There's going to be hurt people. I have to go help them."
Lock nods, a grim expression on his face. "Yeah. Let's go."
"What are you going to do?"
He frowns at me. "Whatever I can. Whatever I have to."
I want to spew venom at him, because for some reason my anger at him chooses this moment to rise up in my gorge like vomit, hot and acidic. But I don't say anything. I choke it down, turn away, skirt the hood and climb into the cab. I have to work to hide the pain as I do so, because that two-by-four didn't entirely miss me. It grazed my ribs. I can feel the damage, and I know I'm bleeding, but not badly. Nothing's broken or bruised. I got lucky. And I don't have the will to deal with Lock trying to macho me out of doing what I know I have to do.
He must see something in my expression, though, because when he climbs back behind the wheel, he glances at me. "You seem surprised that I'd be willing to help."
"Seems to me you're better at running away than sticking around to do what needs doing." Well damn, there goes my plan to keep my vitriol to myself.
"Wow. Okay." He rubs his forehead with the knuckle of his forefinger as he trundles us back across the field to the main road. "I guess I deserved that."
"Guess you did."
"Niall--"
I hold up a hand. "I can't have this conversation with you right now. I need to focus on the job, now. I'll give you a chance to explain yourself later, if there's anything to explain. But I can't deal with you right now. I just can't. I need supplies, and I need to find a place to set up triage."
Lock doesn't answer right away. Or at all, really. He drives carefully around debris, going off road as much as he stays on the road. Pulls into the parking lot of the strip mall and stops in front of the doctor's office. The main door is ripped off its hinges, the glass smashed across the sidewalk. Papers are scattered in the hallway, tumbling across the parking lot, drifting like absurd flakes of snow. Part of the roof of the strip mall is gone, nowhere to be seen. We both get out of the truck and make our way carefully into the office. The power is off, obviously, for the whole town most likely. But with the roof gone, we can still see. Desks have been hurled against the walls, blocking doorways. A rolling desk chair is lodged in the drywall, up near the roofline.
"Hello?" Lock calls out. "Anybody here?"
"H-hello?" a small, tentative female voic
e calls out. "In here. The door is jammed."
Lock locates the source of the voice--it's coming from a closet of some kind. The doorframe itself is twisted, wedging the door shut. "Get back as far as you can. I'm going to try and break it down."
"We're all sort of wedged in here," the voice responds, "so we can't go very far."
Lock throws his shoulder against the door, and it cracks, but holds. He kicks underneath the handle, once, twice, three times, and the door finally splinters enough near the latch mechanism that he can jerk it back toward himself. He gets it open enough to be able to grab the edge of the door and yank it off. Half a dozen women are huddled in the janitor's closet with the brooms and mops and cleaning supplies, tear tracks on their faces, clinging to each other.
"Is anyone hurt?" I ask, as they file out.
They all shake their heads. "No," one woman says. "We're all fine. Shaken up, but fine."
Once they emerge from the closet, they all sort of just stumble to a stop, stunned at the damage.
"God, would you look at this?" a nurse says, shaking her head, staring around, her voice thick, tearing up. "It's just...ruined."
"The whole town is like this," Lock says. "You're lucky this building is standing at all. Some are just gone."
"God...it just came out of nowhere," the same woman says.
Another woman, wearing business casual underneath a lab coat--making her the doctor or PA--straightens, clears her throat. "We should go out there and start helping."
"That's why we're here," I say. "I'm a triage nurse. I need some supplies. Bandages, forceps, needles, stuff like that. I need to set up somewhere."
"We'll stick with you, then," she says. "Let's gather supplies. Melanie, get all the bandages, tape, and packing gauze you can find. Lucy, pain killers. I don't think we have any morphine, but see what else you can find. Elle, suturing supplies. Clear this office out, ladies. I have a feeling we're going to need everything we can get."
The nurses scatter, and begin digging through the wreckage to find the necessary supplies.
"There's not going to be enough," I say. "I used to work with Doctors Without Borders. I've seen plenty of natural disasters. And this one...this is bad."