Fear extinguishes thought.
In the past year, not a week had gone by without his father reminding him of this.
Rashawn had just reminded him again.
02:15AM
Tomás slowed the truck and came to a stop a few feet in front of a downed tree blocking the road.
“Guess it’s time to see how a chain saw works in hundred-and-fifty-mile-an-hour winds,” John said.
Tomás was out of the truck before John finished the sentence. John turned to Cindy and Mark.
“Stay put,” he said.
“No way,” Cindy said. “We need to start getting some footage for The Man Who Got Struck by Lightning.”
“Huh?”
“The documentary I’m planning to produce about you.”
“I’m not sure I like the name, or being filmed,” John said.
“We can discuss the title later,” Cindy said. “Grab your camera, Mark.”
Tomás’s yellow form appeared in front of the headlights, holding a chain saw. He fired the saw up, but the sound was overwhelmed by the wind.
John jumped out and joined him. Tomás had brought two chain saws, but they immediately decided it would be safer for one of them to use the saw while the other pulled branches and pieces of trunk out of the way.
“Try not to get blown away,” Cindy said to Mark. “And don’t think news segment. Think documentary. This is not a whoa-look-at-me-I’m-in-a-hurricane-and-I-can-barely-stand-up thing. This is the real deal.”
“The Man Who Got Struck By Lightning thing,” Mark said.
“That’s right.” Cindy had trouble opening the crew-cab door because of the wind. She finally resorted to pushing it open with her feet. She had to hold on to the door handles, then the front wheel well, to keep from getting blown away. Mark had reached the front of the truck and was already filming by the time she got there. He was holding on to the winch with one hand and the camera with the other.
John had been in a lot of storms, but nothing like this. The branches lashed their heads, arms, backs, and legs like bullwhips. There was hardly any need to haul anything away. As soon as Tomás cut through something, it blew off into the darkness.
All John could really do to help him was to shout out when a piece of flying debris was coming his way.
He glanced behind him and saw the camera light. Cindy started to crawl forward, but he waved her back with both hands. They didn’t need her help. Tomás barely needed his help.
02:20AM
When Nicole got about fifty feet from shore, Chase and Rashawn slid down the muddy embankment. Chase waved his flashing headlamp over his head. Rashawn cheered Nicole on as if she were competing in the Olympics. At twenty feet they both waded into the water, grabbed Nicole under her arms, and dragged her to shore. Chase gently removed her headlamp and handed it to Rashawn. Minutes passed before Nicole was even able to speak.
She looked up at Rashawn. “I’m so happy you’re okay. I thought you drowned.”
“I thought you were going to drown trying to save me!” Rashawn started crying.
Nicole took her hand and started crying too.
Chase looked at his watch. He gave them about half a minute, then said, “We have to get off the levee before it collapses. Can you walk?”
Nicole sat up slowly. “I’m not sure. My arms and legs feel like noodles.”
“Let her rest some more,” Rashawn said.
Chase nodded, but he really wanted to get moving. “Rashawn noticed that your light kept disappearing.”
Nicole smiled. “I was getting pushed to the other side of the lake by the wind. The only way to get around it was to avoid it. I started to think about what Rashawn had said about the gators sitting on the bottom riding out the storm. I dove and swam underwater and under the wind. I lost ground every time I came up for air, but not as much as I was gaining. I don’t think I would have made it if I’d waited five minutes more figuring this out.”
Nicole turned her head and looked at the steep bank. “I’m not sure I can make it up to the road.”
“We’ll help you,” Chase said. He and Rashawn got on either side and pulled her onto her feet.
Nicole tried to stand on her own and would have fallen over if they hadn’t caught her.
“We can carry you,” Rashawn said.
“Not up that, you can’t.”
“We’ll get you up there even if we have to drag you,” Chase said. “But the wind’s a lot stronger up on the road.”
“My legs will come back,” Nicole said. “They always have before. How far is it to the farm?”
“After we get off the levee, a couple of miles.”
“My legs feel better already,” Nicole said.
Chase draped Nicole’s arm around his neck. Rashawn did the same with Nicole’s other arm.
On the first attempt they made it halfway up the bank, then stumbled, and all three of them slid back down to the water. The second try wasn’t much better. On the third they were within inches of the top when Nicole’s legs went completely dead. She reeled over backward, taking Chase and Rashawn with her.
“Just leave me here!” Nicole said. “You and Rashawn go to the farm and get my dad!”
“Forget it,” Chase said. “We’re sticking together.”
Rashawn started massaging Nicole’s legs.
“That hurts!”
“Good,” Rashawn said. “It’s supposed to hurt. Some athlete you are. I gotta get the circulation going in your limbs. Push out all that nasty lactic acid poisoning your muscles.”
Nicole knew all about lactic acid buildup, but she was surprised Rashawn knew about it, and what to do to get rid of it. After a long or fast swim the team’s physical therapist always gave her a rubdown.
“How do you know about lactic acid?”
“I told you, you aren’t the only athlete here.”
“We really have to go,” Chase said.
“We aren’t going anywhere until we get some life back into these legs,” Rashawn snapped. “If we’d done this in the first place, we’d be off the levee by now.”
“Rashawn’s right,” Nicole said.
Chase nodded, then looked at Rashawn. “I’ll work on one leg, you work on the other.”
02:35AM
Tomás and John climbed back into the truck after cutting through their third tree. Cindy and Mark had stayed in the cab because getting in and out wasted too much time.
“That should be the last one for a while,” John said, wiping his head with an already sopping towel. “There’s a lake up ahead.”
Tomás put the truck into gear and stepped on the accelerator. The wipers could barely keep up with the rain, and the defroster was having a hard time with the damp heat coming off their bodies, making it nearly impossible for them to see through the windshield.
As soon as they left the tree cover, they were hit by a vicious blast of wind. The truck fishtailed, but Tomás got it under control and pushed ahead. The sheeting rain prevented Cindy from seeing anything out her little side window.
Tomás slammed on the brakes and shouted something in Spanish that Cindy didn’t understand. John began swearing. She understood everything he said.
Tomás put the truck into reverse and backed up twice as fast as they had driven forward.
“What’s going on?” Mark shouted. “Road’s out,” John said.
Tomás drove the truck back into the cover of the trees and stopped. He and John had another short conversation in Spanglish.
“We’re going to walk back up and take a closer look at the levee road,” John translated. “If we can’t get across, we’re going to have to backtrack all the way to where we met up with Tomás and find another way around.”
“I’m going with you,” Cindy said.
“No,” John said. “The little bit of road we’re on might collapse.”
Cindy zipped her coat and pulled up her hood. Mark did the same.
“Suit yourself,” John said.
They got out of the truck. John linked arms with Cindy. Tomás linked arms with Mark. In their free hands they carried heavy-duty flashlights.
They hunched into the powerful wind and shuffled forward. It took them several minutes to reach the break. It was twenty-five feet across, if not more.
John and Tomás got down on their stomachs and crawled to the very edge of the break. They shined their lights under the jagged asphalt and stuck their heads over the edge.
Cindy could not even imagine what they were looking for. It was a dead end. Getting across was impossible.
She looked down the long road and thought she saw something. She wiped the rain from her eyes and looked again.
“John!” John got up.
“I saw a light. Maybe two lights.”
“The power’s out and we’re in the middle of a refuge. No one lives here, which is one of the reasons we came this way. The road to the farm is on the other side of this lake.”
“I saw it too,” Mark said. “The light was a long way off, but I might have caught it on video.” “Where?” John asked. Cindy pointed. “Straight down the road.” John held his light above his head and flashed it on and off several times. No lights flashed back at them.
“Let’s get back to the truck,” John said. “I’m not sure how long it’s going to take to get around this lake. Or if there even is a way around it.”
Tomás jockeyed the truck around and headed back the way they had come.
Cindy tapped John on the shoulder. “What were you and Tomás looking for over the edge of that road? For a second I thought you were trying to figure out a way of jumping it.”
John laughed. “We hate backtracking, but we’re not crazy … well, not that crazy. We were looking at how a levee disintegrates. It’s not often that you get to see something like that. It’s interesting.”
“I’ve got news for you, John,” Cindy said. “You are crazy.” “Nah, we’re storm runners.” “Got it!” Mark said.
“What?”
“The lights. And Cindy was right, there were two of them.”
Mark turned the camera around so they could see the small screen, and hit play. It wasn’t very clear, but two lights definitely appeared at the end of the dark road. They moved from left to right, then disappeared.
“Play it back,” John said.
Mark played it back in slow motion.
“That’s pretty strange,” John said. “I guess I should have been looking down the road instead of under it.”
“What do you think they were?” Cindy asked.
John shook his head. “I have no idea, but weird phenomena happen during storms like this. Most of the time nobody sees them because we’re inside under shelter.”
“Maybe it was a couple of storm runners out for a stroll,” Cindy said.
“Back the truck up!” John shouted.
Tomás immediately put it into reverse.
“What are you doing?” Cindy asked.
“I need to check something out. This is far enough.”
Tomás slammed on the brakes, and John jumped out of the cab with his flashlight and began searching the road. Five minutes later he climbed back into the cab and grabbed his sat phone from the dash.
“What did you find?” Cindy asked.
“Tire tracks. School bus tire tracks. Those lights might have been Chase.”
He punched in Chase’s number.
03:00AM
Rashawn’s massage coupled with Nicole’s determination to get home brought Nicole’s legs back to life. They reached the road on the fourth try with relative ease. Once there, they didn’t hesitate. They locked arms, with Nicole in the middle, and started walking, which got a lot easier when they turned to the left and had the wind at their backs. The only things they had to contend with were downed trees and flying debris. They stumbled out onto Nicole’s road, bruised, cut, scraped, and out of breath, but they were alive, for which they were all very grateful.
Chase looked at his GPS while they took a short rest. He wasn’t sure which part of his body hurt the most. His shoulder and tooth seemed to be in a sharp competition for the top spot.
“Half a mile to the gate,” he said, covering his broken tooth with his upper lip so the wind couldn’t get at it.
“There’s a lot of water on the road,” Nicole said.
Chase had been wet for so long he’d hardly noticed, but she was right. The water was up to their ankles. He tried to picture the long driveway up to the Rossi house and thought it was uphill, but he wasn’t sure. He was so exhausted he was having a hard time focusing. The only things keeping him going were Nicole, who had to be more exhausted than he was, and Rashawn, who had turned out to be a bulldozer of will and endurance.
“Ready?” Rashawn said.
Chase nodded and was about to forge ahead when he felt something tickle his leg. He reached down to itch it and realized what it was. “Wait!”
He pulled the sat phone out of his pocket and took it out of the plastic bag.
“Hello?”
“Where are you?” His father’s voice sounded a million miles away.
“About a half a mile from the farm,” Chase shouted above the wind. “The bus sank.” “Are you okay?” “Yeah.”
“Is the bus driver with you?”
“He’s dead. I’m with Nicole Rossi and a girl named Rashawn. Where are you?” “On the other side …”
“What?”
“We’re … lake … saw … light …”
“Is that your father?” Nicole asked. “What’s he saying?”
“Hang on,” Chase said. He squatted down and pulled the blanket over his head to get the phone out of the wind and rain.
“Are … Chase?”
“I’m here, but you’re breaking up.”
“Get to … We’ll be … as soon as …”
The phone went dead.
Chase put the phone back in the plastic bag and came out from under his makeshift shelter.
“That was my father,” he reported to Nicole and Rashawn. “It was a lousy connection, but I think he’s on the other side of the lake. He may have seen our headlamps on the other end of the levee. He’s going to try to get to the farm. That’s all I can tell you.”
“So that phone of yours works?” Rashawn said.
Chase shook his head. “It worked for about twenty seconds, then it went out. If I can get it dried out, it might come back on. Let’s go.”
They locked arms and started up the road, with Nicole back in the middle, but this time they weren’t holding Nicole up, they were holding one another up. None of them could have made it without the others.
As he leaned into the final stretch with his friends, Chase couldn’t help but think about how the night would have gone if Dr. Krupp had listened to him.
They’d be in the cafetorium in the dark with the wind roaring outside, but safe, uninjured, with their bellies full from raiding the coolers and vending machines.
The bus driver would be alive at home with his family, if he had a family. Chase didn’t even know the bus driver’s name.
And what about his father and Tomás? Chase was certain his father was worried about him, but there was nothing he could do until the storm passed.
Save yourself. You’re no good to anybody if you’re dead … including yourself.
03:33AM
At last they were standing at the gate, almost exactly twelve hours after they’d left the school.
“It’s locked,” Nicole said, obviously upset.
“Don’t you have a key?” Chase asked.
“Of course, but that’s not the problem. The padlock is hanging on the outside. We only lock the gate when we’re not here. That means Dad isn’t here. He must have gone out looking for us.”
“What about Momma Rossi?” Chase asked.
“She would have stayed behind in case the phones came back on and I called.”
“I’m sure your dad’s fine. He probably got forced into a
shelter.”
“I hope so.”
“Do you have a backup generator on the farm?”
“A small one, but it only powers one building at a time.”
“We have three generators in the rigs. Let’s get through and power the farm up.”
Nicole unlocked the gate. They walked through. She closed the gate but didn’t lock it.
The quad was exactly where Chase had parked it, though it had tipped over.
“Do you want to walk or try to ride up to the house?”
“Ride,” Nicole and Rashawn said together.
“That’s what I thought,” Chase said. “But the quad is going to be unstable in the wind with three people on it. We’ll have to keep a low profile. If it starts to tip, just lean the opposite way. No sudden moves. We don’t want to flip it.”
They righted the quad. Chase swung on first, turned the key, then pushed the ignition switch. It didn’t start. With the rain and being tipped over by the wind, it could have any number of problems — none of which he could repair where they were. He adjusted the choke and pushed the ignition switch again.
“We might be walking after all.” He made another adjustment to the choke, then let it set for a minute before giving the switch one last try.
It started … at least Chase thought it started. The quad was loud, but he couldn’t hear the roar of the engine above the wind.
“Do you see the helmets anywhere?” He had left them hanging on the handlebars.
“They’re long gone,” Nicole said.
Chase laughed at himself. They had just spent half the night walking through a hurricane and he was worrying about helmets.
He pulled his headlamp off, handed it to Nicole. He told her to climb on behind him, and Rashawn to climb on behind Nicole.
“Everyone lean forward,” he shouted. “Face your headlamps to the side in opposite directions and keep your eyes open. This way we’ll have a hundred-and-eighty-degree view. If you see a problem, like a big branch flying in our direction, tap me on the shoulder in the direction it’s coming. I’m going to drive directly to the farmhouse to check on Momma Rossi.”