“What are we going to do?” I ask with a flutter of panic as the town’s warning siren continues to wail.
“Basement,” Sheryl replies. “Call Bailey, let her know.”
Dad whips out his phone again and ushers me toward the door under the stairs.
Why do we have to let Bailey know our every move?I wonder as Dad hastily fills her in.
The answer, I realize, is probably so the emergency services know where to find us if our house is flattened.
Terror momentarily locks my feet in place. I’ve seenTwister. This is happening.
I’ve never experienced a tornado warning. Sheryl had some close run-ins when she was growing up in Oklahoma, a state that’s right in Tornado Alley. Her father moved her family to Indianapolis for work when she was a teenager and she had a couple of near misses there too, and also with Dad in Bloomington. But somehow, the thought of a tornado siren in a populated city seems less scary than hearing one out here in the middle of nowhere. I feel very vulnerable.
Someone pounds on the door. Dad hurries over and wrenches it open to reveal a senior woman in a bright pink raincoat standing there with water running off her hood.
“Quick,” she urges. “Come use our shelter!”
“Thank you, Peggy!” Dad gushes with relief. “Grab your coat, Wren. Let’s go!”
As soon as I pull the hood of my gray coat over my head,the wind rips it off again. Leaves are being torn from the trees and my mid-length brown hair is whipping round my face like I’m Medusa with a headful of snakes.
Peggy is sliding behind the wheel of her Gator—a small green utility vehicle—and there’s enough room for two more people to squeeze onto the front bench seat beside her, but before I can get my head round the idea of climbing into the sodden, open loading bay, I hear a sound that is all too familiar.
A mud-splattered white-and-yellow motorbike roars into our drive, sending a cascade of rainwater hurtling outward as it skids into a one-eighty and jolts to a stop. I leap backward, but too late: I’m soaked from the knees downward. I’m wearing a skirt, but the socks beneath my ankle boots are drenched.
“Get on,” the rider commands, his face half hidden by the dark green hood of his raincoat.
Sheryl and Dad are already clambering onto the front bench of the Gator.
My heart is rabbiting against my rib cage as I hesitate, eyeing the cargo space behind them. The siren is still sounding in the distance.
Peggy sets off and I catch sight of Dad’s pale face, wrought with anxiety as he looks back, shouting words that are snatched away by the wind.
“Wren!” Anders yells, because, obscured though his face might be, ofcourseit’s him.
“Bloody hell,” I mutter, my butterflies spiraling into a frenzy as I hoick my leg up and over the back of his bike.
It’s not a beast of a machine, not like the ones you see out on the road, but the navy seat is higher than it looks and the rain coating it seeps straight through the fabric of my skirt.
I’ve barely placed my hands on Anders’s waist before the motorbike lurches forward, almost sending me flying straight off the back.
There’s nowhere to put my feet, so I grip him hard, too shocked and breathless to cry out as he tears down the dirt road, water and mud splattering in our wake. The sky is dark and there’s an eerie, greenish tinge to the clouds.
Up ahead looms the big red barn I saw last night, but Anders turns right well before it, down a tiny dirt track between the farmhouse and a field of maize.
The house mirrors the barn in style and color, but that’s all I have time to notice.
“Go,” Anders orders, nodding toward Dad as we pull to a stop at the back of the house.
Dad and Sheryl are out of the Gator, the latter running across the sodden lawn after Peggy while Dad frantically beckons to me. Peggy and Sheryl reach a mound about twenty feet away, which has a metal door built into its side at a forty-five-degree angle. It opens to reveal a dark tunnel and the glowering face of a man I don’t recognize. He holds out his hand to help Sheryl inside.
I scramble off the bike. Peggy is looking over at us anxiously, but Anders is not getting off his bike.
“Are you coming?” My pulse is racing.
He shakes his head. “Not yet.”
“Why not?” I ask with alarm.
