“Regan!” Josh yells, as the funnel cloud moves toward me at full speed. “Lay flat on the ground and get as close to the firewall as you can!”
Ignoring Josh’s warnings, I run my fingers around the rough-hewed edges of the letter. As the D begins to glow, the winds hits, plucking me off the ground and throwing me into a whirlwind of debris. Around and around I spin, my body feeling like it’s being ripped apart. And suddenly I’m tossed on the ground, spit out of the tornado. But I can’t move. The winds are still swirling around me, holding me down. With great effort, I manage to pick my head up and look back toward the wall. I’m relieved to see Josh, on his hands and knees, seemingly unharmed, as he fights to make his way toward me, slowly battling against the wind.
Behind him I see that the word “Land” has aligned vertically, just like I thought.
The letters begin to fade away as the bricks in between them disintegrate, turning an ethereal blue.
“The wall!” I scream.
It’s too small for a door. More like a tunnel, or a portal to the other side of the firewall.
I try to move again, but it’s as if the tornado is purposely holding me in place. The color of the portal begins to change, its gauzy blue tint turning gray, once again becoming part of the wall.
It’s closing. If we’re going to go, we need to go now.
“Josh—leave me. Go!”
But he doesn’t listen.
In an act of what looks to be extreme concentration and strength, he pushes himself to his feet, facing me.
“No!” I shout. I don’t want him to come after me. I want him to get through that portal.
But his eyes never leave mine. He charges toward me, the wind looking like it might pull the skin and muscle right off his bones. He grabs me into his arms before turning around and hurtling us both through the fading blue portal.
We land on a hard, granitelike surface and the door hardens back into a wall, as if closing us in a tomb. I blink, my eyes adjusting to a strange fluorescent light.
“You okay?” Josh murmurs.
I nod, pushing myself up. I glance at my throbbing leg, trying not to let on how much it’s hurting. The dirty bandage is torn, exposing the wound underneath. It has stopped bleeding, but it’s oozing some kind of dark, goopy fluid.
As for the rest of me, my clothes are ripped and torn from the tornado and I can see fresh cuts all over my limbs, but I’m surprisingly relieved. At least we’re out of the rainy cold and have made it into the tunnel. Except it’s nothing like I expected.
We actually seem to be inside a small box. Tiny dazzling blue and green lights fill the walls, giving everything, even us, an ethereal turquoise glow. It’s not long before the lights on the far side of the wall blink in succession, and a panel, just large enough to crawl through, opens, revealing a flight of steep steps.
The tunnel looks like the box, only round and long, continuing forever. The same blue and green lights are embedded on the walls and ceiling, covered by a clear protective acrylic. The farther we walk, the more it feels like we’re going in circles.
The same curved ceiling. The same curved floor. The same curved walls.
“Do you think Patrick can still see us in here?” I whisper. I’m following behind Josh, my hand loosely holding on to the hem of his shirt as he leads us down the narrow tube.
Josh answers my question with a question. “Do you smell something?”
He’s right—an acrid scent is filling the air. Then I see a thin white cloud floating toward us, as if confirming my fear.
Smoke.
“Come on,” he says, grabbing my hand, yanking me forward.
I hobble after him, the temperature and smoke increasing with each turn of the tunnel. I start to cough, my throat scratchy and raw.
“Pull up the collar of your shirt and breathe through it,” Josh says.
When I yank my shirt over my nose, I trip over my feet, but luckily I catch myself on the slick sides of the plastic tunnel.
Odd.
Was I able to touch the sides before?
I continue onward, my wrists bending slightly as my arms shake with anxiety. Soon I can feel the top of the tunnel touching my head, and my stomach clenches hard. With each hurried step, the winding tunnel is narrowing and the smoky heat intensifying. I bend down, trying to wrangle my body within the confined space, and before we know it, we’re crouching lower and lower until, finally, the tunnel is so small we can’t stand anymore.
“On your knees,” Josh says, dropping down. “It’ll be easier to crawl.”
But he’s wrong. With my sore leg and all my cuts, it’s definitely not easier. I’m wincing and trying to keep my whimpering to myself as I move forward. My eyes burn and my head pounds as the air becomes toxic, the white cloud of smoke practically strangling and blinding us. I can barely make out the lights on the tunnel walls, or even Josh’s figure.
“Hold on to me, Regan,” Josh pleads through a cough, urging me to move as he tugs me along by the arm. “Do you hear me? Hold on!”
For a moment, it dawns on me that we’re going to die in this tunnel.
And then I see it, straight ahead. A sliver of black.
I know Josh sees it too, because he gives me an especially hard tug. “Come on!”
I follow him, blindly making my way through the smoke. The sliver of black is actually framing a panel at the end of the tunnel. There is no handle, no way of pushing it open. Josh bangs his shoulder against it. Once, twice . . . nothing.
I hear a deafening boom, and whip around. Beyond the last curve, the fog is gone and the tunnel is filled with orange. Before I have time to react, a gigantic fireball turns the corner, a sphere of flickering flames heading right toward us. I reach for Josh, but he’s gone and so is the door, total darkness filling the empty space where it once was. I hurtle myself forward, plummeting into nothingness as the tunnel explodes behind me. I fall no more than ten feet, landing in soft marshy ground and tumbling down a barren hill. The back of my head raps against the earth several times as I stretch out my arms, clawing with my hands for anything that might stop my momentum. When I finally roll to stop, I’m so dizzy and nauseated I must push myself onto my knees so that I can heave. All that comes out is spit and my breath, which is raspy and thin.
I sit back, my eyes blinking rapidly. It’s very dark out here, so I guess they’re readjusting after being in the bright blue tunnel. As I wipe moisture away from my lips, it sinks in.
I’m out of the tunnel. Beyond the firewall.
We made it.
“Josh?” I say through a sidesplitting cough.
My vision is still pretty hazy. Maybe I’m temporarily blinded from the smoke?
“Josh!” I yell, louder this time. When I stand up, each muscle in my body cries for mercy.