“Jump down here, climb over the car and run as soon as you hit the ground,” she yelled, the siren continuing to wail in the background. “Whoever has the keys to the annex go first. We need to take shelternow!”
If there had been only a few people stranded on the bus, then she would have found a way to get them inher car to drive away. But true to what Price had said, there were eleven people crowded inside.
Their best bet was to use her car as a bridge and then run like there was no tomorrow back to the research annex.
She hoped.
Lloyd must have agreed. One glance at the water still going strong around the bus and he was shouting for someone behind him.
A second later a small woman appeared in the doorway.
Speed was the name of her game. She was on the hood of Rose’s car with keys held high on her hands.
“I—I have the keys,” she huffed out, scrambling to Rose’s outstretched hand. When they connected, she pulled the woman easily up the windshield.
“The water isn’t as deep behind the car,” Rose said, pointing to the area just past the trunk. “Be careful and haul ass once you’re down!”
The sound of wind combined with an eerie humidity in the air. The radar played on repeat in the back of Rose’s mind. There was a tornado on the tracker…and that tracking hadn’t been that far away from their road.
The tornado could still turn, though.
It could still dissipate.
It could—
The sound of snapping trees sounded in the distance.
Rose couldn’t see past the bus but there was no ignoring the new urgency.
The people on the bus seemed to feel it too.
Up until then Rose had never met any of the Camden Pharmaceutical staff, and while their storm-panicwas the reason they were all out there now, she had to admit once the crisis had a clear plan, they executed it with surprising efficiency.
Lloyd funneled people around him and down onto the car, Rose helped them over the windshield and roof, and an older woman named Claudia stood in the water just past the trunk, helping those through the transition to the non-flooded part of the road.
Once the Camden people’s feet found solid ground? They ran like the devil was on their heels.
Which, maybe he was.
Rose heard the horribly familiar sound of a tornado headed their way.
They were out of time.
“We have to go,” she yelled up at Lloyd. “Now!”
Lloyd disappeared back into the bus.
Rose was dumbstruck.
A heartbeat went by.
Then another.
It was too much.
“Hey!” she yelled, but her words were ripped up into the cacophony of sounds bearing down on them.
What happened to him?
