“Shit!” She pounded her hand against the steering wheel and tried to remind herself to stay calm. Her palms started to sweat as she held up her phone again, moving it around the car, trying to get a signal.
As she reached into the back seat, staring at a glowing screen, she saw it. Somehow through the wind and rain, she saw it. A light. A small, amber, glowing light fixed to the top of a pole that was rocking back and forth with each gust of wind.
She might not have been country smart, but she was smart enough to know that if there was electricity running to that pole, there was probably somewhere to hide up there.
Cami flipped the switch from two-to four-wheel drive on her SUV and threw it in reverse, driving backward until she saw the lane. Her intuition was right. As she drove up the muddy path, a two-story farmhouse came into view. The windows were dark, and from what she could make out, a few were broken. It was abandoned.
A small barn sat on the corner of the property. The door that once closed off the building was hanging to the side, appearing to have been broken years before the storm had hit. She pulled her vehicle into the barn and let out a sigh as the old roof blocked the heavy fall of rain. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.
Exiting her vehicle, she looked down at her phone. A signal. One bar. She didn’t know if it would go through, but she tried to call Kyle’s number anyway. Maybe he knew where this place was and he would come to rescue her. She figured he was pissed at her for blowing him off, but there was no way he’d leave her out there alone in the middle of a tornado.
“This is Kyle. Leave a message.” She heard his voice and her heart raced as she started to leave him a message.
“Kyle, it’s me. I’m so sorry I haven’t returned your calls.” The rain started to let out as she paced the dirt floor of the barn. “I was coming to see you and I got lost trying to find your house. GPS says I’m at 640 East Road.” The winds calmed. She stepped out into the open air and looked around. Maybe the storm was over?
“I think the storm’s letting up. When you get this message, please call me back. I’ll wait here until I hear from you.”
That’s when she heard it. A sound she’d heard so many people talk about, but never actually experienced. Like a freight train running at full speed.
It was too dark in the distance to see where it was coming from, but she knew it was getting closer. With her phone still to her ear, she said something she’d never said to anyone—something she feared she’d never get to say again. “I love you.”
Epilogue
Kyle
FUNERALS are depressing as shit. Seriously. Why people even have them is beyond me. Standing around in uncomfortable clothes while people drone on about how unfortunate it is.
I mean no disrespect to the dead, but a funeral is so ass backwards. Crowd around and watch as they put the person in the ground then go have coffee and cake? Who the hell thought of that?
In my opinion, there should be music, dancing, cake, and we can skip the morbid gravesite stuff. People should be celebrating the fact that they’re still alive and not the ones in the ground. But no. We all stand around, hurting, grieving. Each of us replaying the last time we saw or talked to that person in our heads. Wondering if we’d have done something different, changed one little thing, if our loved one would still be alive.
Like we have that kind of power. I mean, I’m a confident guy, but even my balls aren’t that big. I believe in God. Or I believe in…something. There’s definitely a higher power that controls this type of thing. There has to be. Otherwise there’d be some kind of order to it. Or no one would ever die. Or we’d all just hit the designated age and drop dead. But that’s not how it works. It’s just the luck of the draw.
One minute you’re here and then you’re off to who knows where. Summer is officially over and it’s time to move on to whatever’s next. College for some. Work for others. Both, maybe. Or neither.
But there are those who don’t get a choice, a few who don’t make it out alive. A knife slices through their lives, cutting it short at sunrise. Before they’ve even really lived. A future that once seemed so bright can be extinguished in a single second.
Heads that were bent in sadness, some shielded by hats and sunglasses, glance up as it starts to rain. More storms are coming. If the weatherman is right, they’ll be here before we’ve even recovered from the last one. A few black umbrellas open, and I want to tell them that their efforts are pointless. There’s no way to be prepared for what’s coming.
Dark clouds gather on the horizon and roll toward us. We’re in the worst possible place. They don’t call it Tornado Alley for nothing.
Yet here we stand. Mourning. Grieving. Too distracted by loss to notice that we’re right in the path of destruction.