The Tempest by A.J. Scudiere (story read aloud .txt) 📗

Maybe she was feeling better. Maybe her arm wasn't broken, just bruised. But Deveron seemed to be thinking the same thing as Cage.

“We need to get you to the medical tent.” Dev moved as though to nudge her but stopped himself at the last moment. He was on Sarah’s right, the side with the injured arm.

But again, Sarah shook her head. “People here are way more injured than me. All I'm going to do is wait in line. I’ll be sure to get it looked at when things die down.”

But that wouldn’t happen for a long time. Cage scanned the crowd again. The line they were in seemed just as long as when they’d joined it. It seemed to be the most popular one. They were constantly being jostled by new joiners as the crowds inflated before their eyes.

It was too big. How would anyone get help?

He had one goal: find Joule.

He needed to find Izzy as well, but hoped he’d find the two of them together. As much as he hated to admit it, he could admit that his only real goal was to find his sister. But everyone insisted that they first report the women to the current missing persons list.

That’s what they were waiting in line for. But Cage was doubting that anyone else could find Joule before he did. He pushed up on his toes to see over the crowd again and spotted a woman walking down the line with a clipboard clutched to her chest. She wasn’t writing anything on it, but her purpose became clear when she opened her mouth and called out, “This line is for missing people, people you were with when the tornado hit. People who—due to the direct actions of the tornado—lost contact with you!”

She moved a few feet further and repeated the words almost verbatim. But as she moved one more step, Cage turned away, until he heard that she was giving out a new message.

“If you have family members that you were not with at the time of the tornado—people that you can't say for certain are missing, but are maybe just sheltering in a different location—you need to move to the other line. That's the Reconnection line!” She took a deep breath and kept going. She pointed with her free hand as she talked, as though anyone could see her. She was short. But at least she could make her voice carry.

“That line over there is Family Reunion. That’s for families with children that were in a different location when the tornado hit. In all lines, priority is given for missing children first and missing adults second.”

He watched as she took a deep breath, her caramel-colored ponytail bobbing as she geared up for another yell. “The Reconnection line is there. Yes, you can use Reconnection resources to check for friends who aren’t answering their phones—” She pointed again, and Cage thought, That’s dumb, no one’s answering their phones.

As he looked where she pointed, Cage saw what the ranking system was. Family reunification was orange. Missing Persons was red. Reconnection, green.

The woman took another breath, but this time she paused enough to gather everyone’s attention, at least as much as she could in this crowd. “Make sure you're in the correct line. If you're trying to reunite with your family, you need to be over there. This line is to report missing persons. If you don’t have an actual missing person, you will get turned away. You will have to start over in the reunification line!”

It became clear to Cage that this was not their first rodeo.

The local community center was set up for exactly this. They had tents and tables out. People with clipboards or an open laptop or tablet filled two seats at each table, three tables at each tent. A generator sat behind the three tents and each device was plugged in as it was being used. They were organized. They knew what they were doing.

It seemed they’d had this set up for some time, though the crowd felt as if it had doubled in just the time since he and Sarah and Deveron had arrived. The line had moved, shuffling forward while the woman warned them about being in the correct place. He could now hear chugging from the machine, though just barely over the sound of everyone talking at once.

Voices were frantic, mothers listing information about their children, husbands looking for wives. Despite the clear organization, there were no uniforms. Cage suspected that was more an issue of budget in a town this size. The only way to identify if anyone was officially working, was that they carried a clipboard or walked around asking people if they needed help.

As his little trio shuffled forward in the heat again, a short, round man with the ubiquitous clipboard in hand spoke to them. He made quick motions and asked what they were looking for, and in a moment determined that Joule and Izzy did qualify as “missing persons,” since the five of them had been in the same location and the two had actually been pulled away by the twister.

It took another fifteen minutes to reach the front of the line. As time passed—far too slowly for his liking—Cage grew more tense. He wanted to believe he would be better off out looking for his sister himself, but he wouldn't.

He didn't have a car. They'd have to get back to the house first for him to find out if he had a car at all. It was plausible that one of the tornadoes had run through the yard again and ripped up the carport and stolen his car. In fact, it could have ripped apart the entire house. Desperado’s Hideaway might be no more.

Lord knows, as he’d bounced along in the back of the truck with everyone else, grateful that the bouncing didn't exacerbate his injuries, he'd seen enough homes damaged. One would be perfectly intact and the one next to it blown to pieces,