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

and looked back, the darkness had crept even closer. “Jerry. You need to look behind us.”

She felt the tractor change motion, maybe he’d downshifted or something. They slowed, though he didn’t bring them to a complete stop. Joule could feel the motion through the machine as he shifted in the seat.

“Oh, that's not good. It's behind us, though.”

“Not for long. It’s moving toward us fast,” she told him, able to see a change even from when she'd said his name to when he made his declaration. “Seriously, watch it.”

He must have looked forward and back a couple of times, keeping the tractor on the road and giving her another “hold on!” which she bounced her way through again.

“Yeah, that's bad. We need to find a place to stop.”

Having Jerry agree with her only made her feel worse. But he faced forward again, picking up speed and seeming to try to get ahead of it, even if the vehicle had a max speed of twenty.

They were simply too slow.

She watched the clouds line up and begin to roll. If it was possible, they were organizing the ions inside her to do the same thing, and Joule fought the urge to barf.

The funnel of clouds first formed sideways, then it bent its twisting, dark gray tail downward until it hit the ground.

“Jerry!” she yelled it at the top of her lungs as the wind picked up and Toto dug tighter into her shoulder. “We just got another one!”

38

“Turn it up. Turn it up!” Cage hollered into the car, waving his hand toward Deveron.

His friend handled the radio controls while Cage kept his eyes on the road. He couldn't afford to look away. Possibly damaging the car, or—worse yet—getting themselves into an accident would only compound their troubles.

The sky had turned steel gray in an instant as he watched in the rearview mirror and Cage wondered if Joule had possibly survived the first tornado, only to get killed by this new one.

The voice came through the radio in clipped but measured tones. “A funnel has touched down north of Horton. This sighting is reported by several local residents, though at this time we have no official confirmation or rating.”

As the announcer repeated the wording slightly slower and a little more clearly, Cage flicked his eyes to Deveron, who shook his head in return. That's where they were headed—north—where they had previously hoped Joule and Izzy would have been dropped. Now, he wanted to be wrong.

Was the funnel ahead of them? There were trees on either side of the road now, too tall for them to see more than the dark clouds looming at the edges of their vision. And there was more darkness gathering behind them. Cage’s eyes flicked to the rear view again… were funnels forming back there, too?

Holy crap, it seemed they were coming from every direction.

And what was with this day? They'd already had three!

He must have said it out loud, because Dev responded, “Apparently, it's common to see them in clusters.”

“What?” Cage swerved at the last moment around a darting squirrel. The last thing he needed was animals jumping out and making the already obstructed roadway into even more of a hazard.

As he and Deveron righted themselves from the jerking motion, Dev answered, “I looked it up before moving here. The F scale. About the tornado they had here before we arrived.”

Cage had done a little of his own research, too, but got the feeling that he and Joule had decided that the area was relatively tornado-safe. It was the whole reason Helio Systems was building the array here. So, he'd been prepared for dust devils, maybe the small kind of funnel that might twist the young trees, but not more.

As he drove into the darkening skies in front of them, the forests gave way to open land. In the not-too-far distance, he could see the roll of clouds forming as if an unseen baker's hand was curling dough.

Not learning more had been a mistake.

“They can drop right down on a sunny day,” Dev was still telling him. “They can roll and turn sideways until they touch the ground. They can get bigger, smaller, lift up, touch down, jump, split, and collide.”

Cage wished his friend would stop talking. He didn't need any of this. He didn't need to understand that, as he watched the clouds in front of him, they could become deadly in moments. What he’d already seen today was enough—and why in hell wasn’t it over yet?

“See? We're watching it right now,” Dev was still explaining. He leaned forward, one hand braced on the dash, the other pointing. “I don't know exactly what the pressure systems are—like which ones are which—but you can see where they collide and the clouds fold under and roll. Now it's just a question of whether a funnel tips down and touches the earth.”

Cage felt his entire body tense. He'd been worried about the darkness behind them, but what was in front was now moving much faster.

The day suddenly looked like dusk. The clock in the car told him it was merely three in the afternoon. He'd seen storms roll in fast before, but this was different. Normal storms affected an entire area and spread their damage across as much as of the land as they could. Houses and structures stood or failed based on their integrity, not so much on the whim of the storm choosing to leave some places intact or focus all their rage on another. Tornadoes were more like lasers; they could pinpoint targets and completely obliterate them. They could leave another place, ten feet away, completely unharmed.

As the two watched, the funnel did exactly as Deveron had described: the left-hand side of it slowly tipped down to earth until it was perfectly vertical. As it hit the ground, it kicked up a skirt of dust and debris. Though still too far away for them to pick out any individual objects, he could see that it