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Chapter One
My
very first tornado shreds the grass of the plains.
I
stand next to the van, mouth dropping open, heart pounding. It's the moment I've been waiting for. I’ve saved the money for years and begged my
uncle to book us for the Wild Weather Storm Chasing Tours.
Uncle
Cassius gasps next to me, equally in awe.
It barely cuts over the wind rushing towards the distant funnel. Waves of grass bow down to the twister,
whipped down by the surrounding air flying in to feed it. The perfect white cone stands out against the
coal sky, slim and graceful. A skirt of
dust spins around its base, signaling
its dance through a field a few miles away.
The wind snaps against my jeans, pulling at my new Wild Weather Tours
T-shirt.
"Beautiful!" Kyle, our storm chaser guide, snaps a photo
for his website. He steals a glance at
me and smiles. The wind ruffles his
ash-blond hair. Wrinkles form around his
eyes. He's all enthusiasm, joy that
we've found our prey. "Don't worry.
We're safe. It's heading to the
east. It'll pass no closer than a couple
of miles to our north."
I
want his job someday.
"I'm
not scared," I said, but my shaky voice betrays me. Who am I kidding? Kyle's an experienced chaser--twenty
years--but this is a real tornado. In
person. Live. I never realized it would be this intense,
this breathtaking. A hollow feeling
fills my stomach like I'm plunging down the first hill of a roller coaster. It is
scary…but fun.
My
parents would murder me and Uncle Cassius both for sneaking away on this trip. If they find out we’re not really in Disney
World being bored to death by Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, well, it’ll be way
scarier than this storm.
The
tornado curves, almost like it's leaning to the side for a better look at
something. At us? It's a weird thought, one that makes me
laugh. The thunderstorm spins slowly
above it, low and menacing. Thunder
claps. It's enough to remind me that the
storm in front of me isn't just beautiful.
It's a predator, entrancing like a cobra and ready to strike.
Good
thing there's no houses or buildings in its way. Only farmland stretches from horizon to
horizon.
"Allie. Forget your camera?" Uncle Cassius points to my pocket and
smiles. It’s a tense smile. So I'm not the only one with some nerves
going.
Camera.
Yes. Duh.
I
pull it out of my pocket and fumble with the slim case, fingers hunting for the
button. The camera zings to life. Behind it, the tornado looms a bit larger,
gaining strength and racing across the ground.
More dust kicks up around the perfect white of the twister.
"Now
I can really prove to everyone at
school how crazy I am." I give
Uncle Cassius a nervous chuckle. The
camera trembles in my hands as I catch the tornado in my view, click, and seal
it in my memory forever.
I'm
having the most insane summer vacation of my entire high school. I can’t wait to share this with Tommy and
Bethany. Bethany’s going to beg for all
the details. Tommy will tell me that I’m
the bravest, most awesome girl he knows.
I’ve
got to get me and the tornado in the same picture and send it to them
tonight. I dig in my other pocket and
hand my phone to Uncle Cassius.
“Photo.”
He
takes my phone. “Stand back.”
I
do. Now the wind blows my hair back like
it’s trying to pull me away, but I stand there, moving to the side so Uncle
Cassius can get the whole picture. I
force myself to look at my phone in his hand.
It’s not easy when there’s a twister just a mile or two behind me,
ripping up the earth.
“Got
it!” Uncle Cassius waves me back.
I
join him and glance at the phone for just a second. I’m on the screen, dark hair wild and
flying. The tornado looms large behind
me like it’s looking over my shoulder.
It’s the most awesome picture ever.
Tommy’s going to love it.
I
lift my camera for another shot, backing up to squeeze the tornado into the
viewport. I click another picture and
lower the camera again for another look.
My
heart jumps.
The
tornado looms larger, taller. Kyle holds
his hand up to his face, squinting for a better view. Even Uncle Cassius goes quiet, stiffening and
taking a step back towards the tour van.
All
at once I understand.
The
tornado has changed course.
Kyle
turns. Real fear widens his
features.
"Get
in the van," he shouts.
I
turn and grab the door, yanking it open.
Uncle Cassius pushes me from behind, making me vault into the van. “Get in, Allie!”
The
roar behind me builds, like boulders rushing down a mountain towards me. The wind whips my hair back, trying to pull
me back out of the van. It feels like
the twister's right behind me already, coming down for the kill.
I
slam the door on it. Uncle Cassius moves
out of my view, running around the van to the other door. The funnel's much bigger behind the window,
so close that I can't see the top of it anymore.
Uncle
Cassius jumps in through the opposite door and snaps on his seat belt next to
me. Kyle starts the van up, punches the
gas, and gets us back on the road to nowhere.
I
put my camera on the seat. My hands
fumble with the seat belt. The van
speeds up and the inertia makes me sink into my seat. Uncle Cassius says something else, but it’s
lost on me. The specter of the tornado
closes in, whipping across the field towards us. I've heard of tornadoes making sudden turns
like this but I never realized it could happen this fast.
It
rips across the field. My heart beats on
a runaway course. My mind locks into
overdrive. I feel like that news crew
they always have on tornado shows, that one that survived by hiding under that
overpass. Will Kyle make us get out and
climb under one? They're actually bad
places to hide. That news crew got off
lucky. Kyle knows better. He's been chasing storms longer than I’ve
been alive.
Only
green and yellow fields spread out ahead.
There’s no shelter for miles. The
storm radar on Kyle's laptop is covered in ugly red and orange blotches like
Nebraska has sores.
A
hole of panic opens up inside me and for the first time, I regret coming on
this vacation.
"Can't
you go faster?" Uncle Cassius leans
forward in his seat, gaze hard, arms trembling.
His glasses are coming down his nose, ready to fall off. His normally neat Yoda T-shirt is sweaty and
sticking to him so much I can see his ribs.
Uncle
Cassius never loses his cool.
Ever.
Not
even when I crawled into the dinosaur display at the museum when I was six and
climbed up the back of the Stegosaurus.
Not even when I tried to stand on his porch when I was eleven and watch
hail the size of tennis balls rain from the sky.
Outside,
the tornado grows so close that I can only see the bottom half of the
funnel. The van bounces along every
speed bump on the highway, every uneven spot.
My stomach heaves. I'm going to
be sick right here. It's my stupid fault
we're in this mess.
"I
don't understand." Kyle punches the
gas harder, making the van jump. He
turns his head like a guy possessed by a demon, eyes widening. "The tornado should not be moving this
way."
He's
right. It shouldn't. For the tornado to turn and come right at us,
it would have to drag the whole storm with it.
But it’s still coming. It makes
no sense.
The
funnel reaches the road behind us, twisting harder, kicking up earth higher and
higher. We've gotten out in front of
it. I breathe a sigh of relief. Kyle and Uncle Cassius do the same. It'll cross the road and forget all about
us.
Kyle
lets off the gas a little and the whine of the engine calms some. "We're safe now. That was highly unusual. I've never seen a tornado turn like that in
my career." There's a hint of an
apology in his voice.
"Well,
that was a close one, wasn't it, Allie?"
Uncle Cassius hugs me from the side.
"Yeah,"
I say, willing my heart to slow down. At
least I can think straight now. Can I
even do another two days of this?
Wow,
what a dumb idea this was.
But
I still can't resist another look at the storm.
I turn as far as my seat belt allows.
My
guts fall out of me all over again.
The
tornado's still on the road, bigger than ever.
It can't be.
The
twister has turned again. It's coming
right up behind us. Rolling earth eats
the entire highway. There's tornado
taking up the whole view of the back window.
Dust rips to the sides. The
bottom of its funnel spins with fury, big enough to swallow a house whole. Its roar screams against the outside of the
vehicle, shaking the seat, pushing the whole van to the side.
It's
no longer beautiful.
"Ohmigod,"
I say, sucking in a breath.
"Um…Kyle? Um…”
"I
know!" he snaps. His knuckles turn
white on the steering wheel. The van
lurches again but he maintains control.
"Allie,
get down!" Uncle Cassius pulls me
towards him. The seat belt cuts into my
shoulder.
What
good is it going to do? If the tornado
lifts the car--
I'm
going to die.
I
begged to go on this trip and now Uncle Cassius is going to die too.
The
windows shatter with a deafening boom and the wind screams in my ears. AllieAllieAllieAllie…
I
can't breathe.
We're
floating.
Uncle
Cassius shouts something. Kyle
yells. If I'm screaming, I can't
tell. The storm's sucking it right out
of me. Windy hands seize my arms, my
legs.
They
pull.
My
safety belt snaps open, whipping against my leg. I scream with the sting. The seat disappears under me and the van door
rips open.
I'm
flying.
The
tornado's ripping me right out of the van.
The
world turns to a white and brown roar.
The van's gone. I have no time to
cry out to Uncle Cassius before the world snaps to black and silence swallows
me.
Chapter Two
"Kind
of unusual to get a teen girl in."
It's
a man speaking with a faint Southern drawl.
He's close but distant in the darkness.
I can't tell where, exactly.
There's not much of me left to think right now.
I’m
on my back. Floating.
"It
doesn’t matter." This speaker's a
woman, with a voice so smooth it might be made of silk. There's something about it that seems
familiar and not in a good way.
"It’s another one closer to our goal."
"Well,
not too many girls go out and chase.
Just saying."
Go
out and chase. What does that mean?
I
groan and climb a couple of steps into consciousness. I'm still lying face-up, but there’s nothing
under me. No, two people are carrying
me. Hands grasp my ankles. Someone else has their hands under my
armpits. Grass tickles my back. I’m facing the sky.
I
manage to open my eyes. They're sore,
stinging as the sunlight stabs into them.
A
man with a gray beard and overalls has my ankles. He’s walking backwards, carrying me
along. If I was lying in bed, he’d be at
the foot of it. I can’t see the woman,
but she keeps her arms locked under my armpits, supporting me, keeping me above
the ground. They’re carrying me the way
two people would carry a heavy table.
My
limbs ache. Invisible needles poke at
every muscle in my neck. I turn my
head. Groan. The sky's clear, with only a few steamy white
clouds moving out. The sun beats down on
me, forcing me to squint. I breathe
in. The air's muggy like it's just
finished raining.
Or
storming.
Oh,
god.
The
tornado.
I
survived and these people must have found me.
I
crane my neck back and look up at the woman who has my arms. It’s no easy task.
She's
upside down to me, swaying back and forth and making me motion sick. She's way too thin to be carrying me without
breaking a sweat. I can only make out
her chin. Long brown hair hangs over the
top of her white summer dress. Something
about her makes my insides crawl. A
gremlin way back in the confines of my mind waves its arms and screams at me,
but I can't make out what it's saying.
The
rest of me wakes up, and with thoughts of Uncle Cassius.
A
fist of terror squeezes my heart so tight that I cry out. I squirm in their grasps. "My uncle," I manage. "Have you seen him?"
The
woman's chin faces forward. She's
ignoring me. She shoots the man a look,
but he shakes his head. "No
need," he says.
"Tornado,"
I say. "My uncle. It got the van. He was in there. Have you seen him?"
Panic
takes over and I thrash, not caring if these people just saved my life. "Where is my uncle? Did you see him? He might have got thrown out of the van. We just got hit by a tornado. A tornado,
for crap’s sake!" Nothing. I kick, trying to loosen my legs from the
farmer's grip. "Let go.
I can walk on my own!”
"I
didn't expect her to wake up so soon," the woman says. “I was hoping she wouldn’t.”
I
twist my arm. It doesn’t budge from her
grip. "Let me down! Where's
my uncle?"
Again,
no answer. They walk faster and tall
grass slaps at my back, poking in through the gap between my shirt and my
jeans. The sun beats down on my eyes. The last of the clouds drift away, leaving no
cover from its spotlight. A building
bounces into the bottom of my vision, covered in crumbling red paint. Its roof sags on one side. An old barn.
I've seen dozens back home in Wisconsin.
This one looks ready to blow down the next time a grasshopper sneezes.
“Are
you taking me to the hospital? And my
uncle too?”
“Faster,”
the woman says.
The
barn draws closer. An open door looms
dark and empty ahead of me. The musty
smell of hay and dirt assaults my nostrils.
They're taking me in there.
God.
These
people aren't saving me after all.
They're
kidnappers.
There's
no other reason for this. They must be
psychos like those mutant hillbillies from that one movie. The barn's going to be full of jars of eyes
and noses and all sorts of sharp, scary farm tools.
"What are you doing?" I yell, hoping
that someone, anyone can hear me way out here.
My throat burns with the force of my screaming. “Did you see anyone else where you found me?”
The
barn blocks out the sun and I'm in darkness.
“Uncle
Cassius!”
There’s
no light except for pinpricks that shine through the old walls and a circle of
blue sky at the peak of the barn's roof.
I blink and my eyes adjust. The
floor's clean, perfect concrete. All the
hay’s been swept up against the walls.
No bloodstains. It doesn’t
reassure me as much as I want, though.
"Lay
her down," the woman orders. It's
clear she's in charge here.
They
lift me higher. The roof gets closer for
a second. They move me to the side and
set me back down. My back meets a table
with a cloth on it. Or a slab. I’m not sure.
I’m still looking up. The woman
keeps her grip on my arms, pushing down tight enough to keep me from breaking
away. The man does the same with my
ankles. They’re holding me down to some
kind of altar or slab or something. The
hole in the ceiling lets a beam of light down.
It lands on my chest, forming a ring of light on my Wild Weather
T-shirt. Or is it a target?
I
bite my lip, keeping the screams in. I
can't let them know I'm scared. It's
what psychotic people want when they do this stuff. I have to keep my cool and find a way out of
here.
"Okay,"
I say, trying to collect myself.
"Why are you holding me here?
In case you haven't noticed, I just survived a tornado and my uncle's
missing. I want some answers."
The
woman looks down at me, keeping her elbows locked and holding down my
arms. She's strong, way stronger than
she should be, and her face is smooth and sharp in a way that's borderline
creepy. It almost looks like a
mask. "You're about to join the
family that you've always wanted."
The
words stun me into silence. They make no
sense. These people are nuts. Insane.
I have the family I want.
And
if I don’t get out of here, my parents will remember me as a liar. I’ll leave them with nothing but pain and
betrayal. And Uncle Cassius--
"I
need to find my uncle. Now!" I glare up at the woman, making my neck cry
out in pain. She stares down at me with
eyes that match her hair color. Her face
is unreadable, blank. Something's very
familiar about her. "I need to call
my mom and dad. Why are you holding me
here?”
The
woman blinks. "Because you're drawn
to the fury of nature.”
"So
what?" I thrash against their grips.
"Why do you even care? Let
me out of this disgusting barn.”
A
million awful possibilities race through my mind, all of them the stuff of
nightmares. I stare at the circle of
light above me, praying for the barn to come down on my captors' heads, praying
for anything to happen.
"Be
quiet," the woman orders. She
closes her eyes. Mutters something. Bows her head down in reverence.
Wind
snaps through the barn. The hole in the
roof darkens from robin's egg to gray-blue, then to black. It grows in size, taking up more and more of
the roof. The shingles vaporize before
my eyes, flying away and breaking into millions of pieces until nothing's left
above me but a ceiling of thunderstorm.
Clouds roll and push against each other, aimless, so close that if my
arms were free, I might be able to stand on the table and brush them. The air roars and trembles.
"What--"
I start.
A
paralysis steals over my body, freezing me, turning me to stone. The clouds above begin to twist. They're in the barn with us, blocking out the
world above. My heart races, and for a
moment I'm back in that van, floating, flying.
The
dam holding back my terror breaks and I let it all out.
"Uncle
Cassius!" I look side to side in
the vain hope that he'll be there, running in to get me out of this, but only
darkness closes in. The old man grits
his teeth, holding down my legs. The
woman does likewise, eyes closed so tight her face wrinkles.
"Somebody!" My screams echo off the walls.
The
clouds above spin faster, tightening, forming a cone that points at my
heart. A roar fills the barn,
threatening to tear it apart. It’s the
same roar I heard on the other side of my blackout.
It's
a miniature tornado, but it's somehow more terrifying than the one that chased
the van. It descends, hungry, spinning
faster and faster. The strength of the
sky drains straight towards me.
The
funnel of rage lingers inches above my heart as if making a decision.
I
scream.
And
scream.
The
cone slams into my chest.
My
body lurches. The storm drives its way
in, building the pressure inside me and sucking the breath from my lungs. My captors release my arms, but it's too
late. The clouds grow lower, the tornado
shorter, as it all forces its way into me, down my arms to my fingertips, my
legs to my toes. The storm rages inside,
pushing against the borders of my body.
I close my eyes, willing it to stop, wanting to scream but unable--
Silence.
My
body trembles. I lift my arm and it
flops to my chest. They’ve let go of
me. I can move now. Run for it.
I open my eyes, catching a glimpse of the hole in the roof once again,
and try to stand.
Instead,
I fall. Concrete meets me. All the strength's gone from my body. I gag.
Heave. My stomach rolls. The world fades, turning gray and darkening
to black.
"What
did you do to me?" I manage, slipping away.
A
hand grabs the back of my shirt. "Very soon," the woman says. "You'll know."
