Josiah dropped the knife to the floor, stepped over it, and collected his shotgun. Lifted that and swung the barrel to face Anne.
“Go down into the damn basement. I ain’t got time to waste tying your wrinkled old ass up.”
It was only then, the second time that he said it, that she realized exactly what was being offered-the shortwave, the dear old R. L. Drake. A lifeline.
She stood up, legs unsteady after sitting for so long, and, with one hand braced on the wall, went to the basement door and opened it and started down the steps. There was a light switch mounted just beside the door but she didn’t reach for it, preferring to walk down into the dark rather than chance his seeing the old desk with the radio.
He didn’t even wait till she’d reached the bottom of the steps before slamming the door shut. That plunged her into real darkness, and she stopped and gripped the railing. She heard some banging around and then something smashed into the door and the knob rattled. He was blocking the door, locking her in.
She slid her hand along the railing and took a careful step down into the blackness, then another. A splinter bit into her palm and she gasped and stopped. Upstairs Josiah was saying something she couldn’t understand, and then she heard footsteps, too many to be just him. The front door opened and then banged shut. She stood still and listened and when she heard the motor of his truck start, she thought, Oh, no.
They were on the move. He was leaving, and he was taking that woman with him.
Anne had to hurry now.
She took another step, down into the dark.
55
KELLEN AND ERIC WERE still standing in the same spot in the woods when they saw the cloud. The rain was coming down in furious gales and the wind was howling now, sounded like something alive, like something wounded and angry, and it was Kellen who pointed up at a bank of purple clouds that seemed to be separating and joining and separating again, partners in some strange turbulent dance.
“I don’t like that,” he said. “We got to get out of here, man.”
“I need to find that spring,” Eric said, feeling numb as he watched the clouds. “I’m going to need that water, Kellen. It might be the only thing that will work.”
“Then we’re going to have to come back for it,” Kellen said. “We’ve got to leave now.”
Eric stared at the clouds but didn’t move or speak.
“Come on,” Kellen said, and when he pulled Eric away by the arm, it was with the ease of a grown man moving a child. Only when he realized Eric was finally cooperating and running alongside him did he loosen his grip.
“Gonna be slick!” he shouted in Eric’s ear. “Watch your ass. We run fast enough, we’ll be back at the car in a few minutes.”
They ran down the hill and found the dry channel and splashed through it. It was a dry channel no longer-the slab they had used to cross was a foot underwater now. The Lost River filling it from beneath even as the rain attempted to do the same from above.
Eric’s legs didn’t feel steady, seemed to be operating more out of momentum than muscle control, but he kept up with Kellen as best he could and kept moving. Finally the edge of the tree line was in sight, and from there it was maybe a half mile through a field of short scrub pine to get back to the car.
They broke out of the trees into a roar of wind and ran right up to the barbed-wire fence. Eric was ducking to his hands and knees again, thinking, the hell with looking graceful, he just wanted to be on the other side, when Kellen reached down and grabbed the back of his shirt and spoke in a hiss of awe.
“Look at that. Look at it.”
Eric straightened and followed his stare and felt his own breath catch.
From here they had a view out across open fields, and to the west, a ways off but not so far as to feel comfortable about it, a funnel cloud was lowering to the earth. The mass above it was black and purple but the funnel cloud was stark white. It eased to the ground almost peacefully, as if settling down for a rest, and then its color began to change, the white turning gray as it blew through the fields and gathered dirt, sucking soil and debris into its vortex. The air around them vibrated with the distant roar.
“Is it going to come this way?” Eric shouted.
“I think so.”
They stood without speaking for a moment and watched as the cloud churned through the field. The tight funnel shape morphed into something less distinct as it went, circles of debris ringing the base. It crossed the field with apparent leisure. There was a row of power lines just ahead of the road, and when the tornado reached them, the poles lifted from the earth and the lines snapped. When it crossed the road and went into the next field, something lifted it into the air, almost like a bounce. For a moment the base of the cloud seemed to hesitate, as if it might retreat altogether, but then it dropped again and there was another burst of dark gray when it tore back into the land.
“It’s definitely coming this way,” Kellen shouted. “We got to run!”
“We can make the car?”
“Hell, no. Can’t outrun a tornado, man! We got to get down in that gulf. It’s the only place low enough!”
He bent and grabbed the top strand of the rusted barbed wire and lifted, tugged it up and waved at Eric to climb through. Eric scrambled under, then turned to hold the wire for Kellen but saw that he was already across. He really could jump the damn thing.
The gulf was close and it was a downhill run, but the roar around them was getting louder, too. Out of the trees the wind was a stronger force, and Eric realized with a mixture of astonishment and fear that it was actually pushing him off course. They were running in a mad sprint now, and for a moment Eric didn’t even realize that Kellen had hold of his shirt again, was dragging him along. By the time they hit the ridge above the gulf, the horizon line across from them was a wall of black sky.
“Got to get down!” Kellen shouted, and then he put his hand in the middle of Eric’s back and shoved.
The drop-off was sheer and lined with trees, the sort of place you’d walk around carefully on a normal day. Today, Kellen just pushed Eric right out over the top of it and jumped after him.
For a moment Eric was airborne. Then his feet caught the hillside and his momentum sent him into a pinwheel down the slope, branches whipping at him. He was thinking that he’d fall all the way down into the water when he tumbled into the side of a tree. The impact exploded his vision into a burst of white light, but it also stopped him. He gasped and blinked and then he could see where he was-two-thirds of the way down the slope, a good sixty feet from the top of the ridge.
He looked for Kellen and found him fifteen feet farther down, covered in mud and leaves. He was crawling toward the stone cliffs, away from the trees. Trying to get lower. Eric followed, not even bothering to attempt getting to his feet, just sliding on his ass and using his hands and heels to push himself along.
They got most of the way down the slope, about five feet from the waterline, and pushed up against the loose stone wall, where there was an indentation that allowed them to pull back and find greater protection. There was no point in attempting to talk now; the roar had reached a thundering crescendo. It sounded exactly like the train that had blown past Eric on his first day in this place.
They didn’t have to wait long. Thirty seconds, maybe a minute. It felt longer, though, felt like a damn eternity, the way time passed when you were sitting in a hospital watching an ER surgeon approach from down the hall to provide the status of a loved one. Then the storm finally caught them, and the world exploded.
A full-size birch, fifty feet tall at least and with a wide spread of branches, tore out of the earth on top of the ridge and shot into space. It didn’t fall straight down, bound by the laws of gravity, but blew forward before catching on another tree and splashing into the swirling, roiling pool. The water sprayed up and showered them and then another tree was sliding down the cliff face, scattering loose stones in its wake. The woods were crackling with the sound of thick, powerful limbs and trunks snapping in two, and the wind was such that Eric could no longer hold his eyes open against it. He covered his face with his arms and pressed his body back into the indentation Kellen had found in the limestone wall and above them the world screamed in fury.