“GUYS—” yelped Logan. “It’s actually moving toward us! It’s coming right at us!”
“We noticed!” Blair snapped.
“It’s moving fast!”
“Go, Dave!” Blair stopped trying to keep her voice level. “Go, go, go!”
“I’m going!”
Blair felt the car speed up, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. The tornado was bearing down on them. With each second, it filled more and more of the view from Blair’s window.
“We’re almost to Aura,” David said.
Blair heard—and felt—the wind pick up. Rain started battering the car. David switched on the windshield wipers and kept a tight grip on the wheel. Blair could tell he was struggling to keep the car from swerving.
Even the voice on the radio sounded urgent now. Blair heard blips of information through the static.
. . . reports of multiple touchdowns in Mathison and Tate counties . . . take shelter . . . very dangerous situation . . . tornadoes on the ground . . .
Logan had stopped filming. He seemed to be looking up something on his phone. “We need to take shelter in a ditch!” he shouted.
So now he was taking this seriously? Blair twisted around to look at him. “Do you see a ditch? Tell me where you see a ditch!”
“We have to find low ground!”
“There is no low ground! This whole area is completely flat! There’s nowhere to take shelter!”
“We can’t outrun that thing!” Logan yelled. “It’s right on top of us!”
“I know!” she yelled back.
The realization hit her in the gut, then traveled up to her throat, burning in her mouth like vomit. We’re not going to make it to Aura.
The rain was coming down in a thick, slanted curtain. The road in front of them became a blur. Blair felt the car losing traction, sliding on the slick concrete. David slowed down, clearly afraid of spinning out if he drove too fast.
Then, a huge tree branch slammed into the car. A spider-web of cracks shot across the windshield.
Before Blair could even scream, the branch was gone—blown away from the car as fast as it had been blown toward it.
Blair curled up in her seat, knees tucked against her chest, hands over her face. “Dave, stop! Just stop! You can’t—”
Every side window in the car shattered at once.
No time to react. Glass showered over Blair. She shrieked, more from shock than pain, but the howling wind drowned out the sound she made. She felt her ears pop.
David was shouting at the top of his lungs—loudly enough that Blair easily heard him through the vacuum in her ears.
“Are you guys okay? Are you guys okay?”
The car had stopped. The windshield wipers—one warped, one mostly gone—swept back and forth with a high-pitched scraping noise. The rain was still coming down—coming through the broken windows now, stinging as it hit Blair’s skin. Shards of glass dusted her whole body. She saw a few small scratches on her arms but didn’t feel them. “I’m okay,” she croaked. “Logan?”
She turned to look at the backseat. Logan stared at her, stunned. “I think my phone is gone.”
“Forget your phone, idiot! Are you hurt?”
“Uh, no? No, I guess not. There it goes.” He pointed to Blair’s left. Blair turned back around. Through the splintered front window, she saw the tornado moving away from them. Its outer edge must’ve just grazed them as it crossed the road.
“Man, that was close.” Blair looked over at David—and almost screamed again. “Dave! Your arm!”
Her older brother stared blankly at the blood running down his right arm. “Piece of glass must’ve hit me,” he said in a dull, distant voice.
“You think?!” Stop that, Blair told herself firmly. You’re panicking. Focus. Remember your first aid training. “Let me see it.”
“Let me just turn on the emergency lights—”
“David! Let me see your arm!”
The blood wasn’t spurting—good. That meant the glass hadn’t hit an artery. But the cut went deep, and the bleeding was steady. Must be a vein. “We need to put pressure on that. Where’s the first aid kit?”
“Uh, somewhere in the trunk, I think.”
“Okay, hold your arm above your head.” She grabbed it and lifted it for him, then took his other hand and clamped it on top of the wound. “Press down as hard as you can.” She reached across him and hit the button to pop the trunk. “I’ll be right back.”
Blair didn’t stop to take a breath before she opened the car door. That was a mistake. The force of the wind and rain hit her full force now. The tornado might be gone, but the rest of the supercell thunderstorm still hovered overhead.
Blair braced herself against the car as she staggered around to the back. The emergency lights blinked feebly onto the rain-soaked road behind her.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen another car. Were the O’Neills all alone out here? Was everyone else in South Dakota hiding underground?
The hail started just as she raised the trunk’s lid.
The first chunk hit her in the shoulder. Then three more, bam-bam-bam on her head and back. Then a shower. It felt like being pelted with golf balls. Blair instinctively held a hand over her head to shield herself, but that was pointless. She needed both hands to sort through the mess in the trunk.
So much junk in there. Their overnight bags. Her bridesmaid’s dress, zipped up in its garment bag. A spare tire, a case of soda, spare blankets. A stuffed animal?
The hail hurt. Globs of it landed in the trunk, as big as her fists. Where—was—the freaking—
There. A little white box with a red cross over the lid. Blair grabbed it, heaved the trunk closed, and ran back to the front seat.
Inside, David was doing a terrible job of applying pressure to his cut. His arm wobbled in the air. He looked close to passing out. Blair ripped open the first aid kit. “Logan, call 911,” she barked.
“I don’t have my phone! It went out the window!”
Blair pulled her own phone out of her pocket and tossed it back to him. Then she leaned toward David and pulled his arm toward her. Still a lot of blood. Technically, she should clean the wound first, but she didn’t see any obvious dirt. More important to stop the bleeding. They could do a thorough cleaning later.
Blair slapped a gauze pad over the cut and pressed down hard. Behind her, Logan spoke into her phone.
“Hi, I—I guess we need an ambulance? We almost got hit by a tornado and all the glass in our car shattered, and my brother got cut . . . Hold on. Blair! Where are we?”
Blair glanced at the car’s GPS and told him their exact location, which he repeated into the phone.
Hail bounced off the cracked windshield, pounded on the car’s roof, came through the glass-less windows. A few chunks of ice landed in Blair’s lap. She kept pressing down on David’s cut, still trying to keep the arm elevated.
Ahead of them, off to the left, the tornado was thinning out. It narrowed to a ropey strand of air. Almost fragile-looking. More importantly: it kept moving away from them—heading northeast, toward the flat horizon. Keep going, Blair told it silently. Don’t come back this way.
“We need to get out of here,” David said. But his voice sounded confused, almost hollow. Not like a guy who was holding in his real feelings. More like a guy whose feelings had short-circuited. He’s in shock, Blair thought. Maybe I’m in shock too. Do people in shock know they’re in shock?
Her brother reached weakly for the steering wheel with his good hand. “You can’t drive like this, Dave,” she said sternly. “And the car’s not really drivable. But the tornado’s gone. We’ll wait for an ambulance to get here . . .”
Logan interrupted her. “I just lost the call! Blair, your phone’s not getting any service.”
Blair took a deep breath. Stay calm. Do what David would normally do. “The storm could be messing with cell phone towers. But they know where we are. They’ll be here soon.”
“Okay. Yeah.” Logan suddenly sounded much younger. “You guys are soaked.”
Blair glanced back at him. “So are you. I should’ve grabbed those extra blankets from the trunk. Sorry.”
“I’m fine,” said Logan. His voice wavered.
Blair tried to smile at him. “Good job with the call.”
She checked David’s cut. The bleeding seemed to have slowed. Gently, she moved David’s hand over the gauze to the spot she’d been pressing. “Hold that right there,” she said.
Back to the first aid kit. Roll of gauze: check. She wrapped it tightly—but not too tightly—around David’s arm. Scissors: check. She cut the gauze strip. Adhesive tape: check. She secured the gauze in place. Done.
“Okay.” Blair let out a long breath. “That should be fine till the paramedics get here. Just keep it up like that, to be safe.”
“BLAIR!” Logan screamed. “There’s another one!”
He was pointing out the back window.
Blair expected to spot another slender funnel dropping out of the sky. Instead, she saw a much thicker swirling mass. Like a fat, black V jutting up from the ground.
Up from the ground. It had already touched down.
The dust cloud at its base held countless dark specks, floating like confetti. It took Blair a second to realize those specks were pieces of wood and metal—objects the tornado had picked up in its path.
Blair’s mind was racing.
They couldn’t wait for the ambulance. They couldn’t wait for anyone. They had to move—now.