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

asked, as if the word had just slipped from his mouth in surprise.

But it was evident in a moment as they found themselves staring down the grille of a large Jeep coming the other direction. As Cage watched, the Jeep driver waved them off and slowly backed up, though it was Cage on the wrong side of the road. However, he was much further around the curve the tree created and he appreciated the politeness.

As he wove past the now-stopped Jeep, the man rolled down the window and flagged him down. Cage put his own window down, curious for only a moment before it came clear.

With very little introduction, the man launched into, “We're looking for my daughter.”

He held up a printed eight-by-eleven picture. But Cage and Deveron both shook their heads. He hadn’t seen the woman. But even as he was thinking it, Dev was already pulling out the picture they’d stolen from the frame on Sarah’s night stand and held it out across Cage toward the window.

Cage showed the picture to the driver. “We're looking for the woman on the left and the one on the right. Joule Mazur and Izzy—Isabelle—McAlister.”

But the man responded as they had, with a sad shake of his head.

“What's your daughter's name?” Cage asked, in case they got so lucky as to find her.

“Julie Jones. Julie Jones McGee.”

They all mutually agreed to look for each others’ lost loved ones, and Cage wondered now how many more encounters like this they might have.

“Get in the glove box,” he ordered Dev. “Write that all down. Add a few identifying characteristics, too. She’s blond, blue-eyed, thirty?”

Dutifully Dev transcribed everything onto the back of a long receipt. But with that job done and possibly pointless, they continued north once again. Still not fast, still hindered by the damage, they passed a half-dozen other cars. Each time, they all slowed down and exchanged pictures and info. So far, nobody had seen Joule or Izzy.

They hadn't gotten out of the car at all.

One of the cars had been a state trooper who'd taken a photo of Sarah’s photo. At least he had the photo. The cell phones were only good as storage units while there was still no wi-fi signal, but Cage filled out forms just as they had at the community center and added Joule and Izzy to what must have become a very long list.

They passed the point where Sarah’s car had gone off road nose-first, in the ditch. Though there were tracks scraping dirt and grass all over where other cars had gone into ditches. But he could tell this one was from their own accident. They'd stopped and looked over the edge and seen the car was still there, nose down and waiting. Nothing had happened—no Samaritan had come by and towed it, but they weren’t surprised. This wasn’t anyone’s priority. They didn't check out the pipe, as no good could come of that.

Then they’d gotten back in the car and driven onward. They stopped for three more cars before Dev got excited and pointed. “Cage, look. That's the tornado path. We can see it now.”

They hadn’t been able to see it clearly yesterday, because there was simply too much debris in the road and along the sides. Now, with the daylight and the cleanup begun, they could catch glimpses. This time, they had a trail to follow, and they tracked it for five miles, Cage watching the odometer as they went, trying to be more methodical than frantic.

“Turn here!” Dev called out excitedly.

The track of the tornado hopped a road that crossed theirs, and on other side, it took an obvious turn and veered toward the east. Cage swung a right onto the small road that wasn't quite as cleared as the highway but was still far more drivable than what he’d seen the night before.

They traced the path of damage as best they could. And when the tornado track crossed the large field, Cage pulled the car to the side of the thin shoulder. They couldn’t just drive through the field. “What do we do now?”

“Maybe we can loop around and pick it up on the other side of the field,” Dev speculated. “It looks like there's a road about a mile up that way.”

Here, the ground was flat for a distance, though Cage seriously thought “a mile” was a big overshoot on Dev’s part.

They tried driving the perimeter of the field, searching for where the tornado path exited. Probably an hour later, they gave up and turned around. “We've got the track right there, but we've got nothing out here.”

They’d never found the other side where the path of destruction exited the field. Had it stopped in the middle? Hopped away? Cage didn’t know, and he still didn’t have cell access to look anything up.

He motioned to Dev to check his phone, which Dev looked at again and nodded. “It’s all good.”

They’d plugged it into the car as soon as they got in, which at least maintained the battery until they got out. They had what they needed.

“I say we go back and we track it,” Cage sighed. It seemed the only option. “We've got the bikes.”

He was glad now that he'd stolen yet one more thing from the bike shop. He had to remember at some point to go back and pay the man for everything. But for now, he was grateful.

“Here, then we need this.” Deveron turned around, rummaging through the bags in the back and producing two water bottles. “We should drink these now and eat now, because we don't know how long we'll be on those bikes.”

Once again, Sarah had set them up with food and rationed out eight water bottles for them. Because his friend was forward-thinking, they were fed by the time they got back to where the tracks gouged the dirt on the other side of the road.

“We just pull off and park here, I guess.” The car wasn't made for off-road driving, and it