“You know, when I was a kid in boarding school, I never imagined I’d end up with a hot, long haired biker,” Sierra laughed. “It never even crossed my mind. My parents would have shit themselves.”
“Luckily, I don’t ever have to meet them, because I doubt I would be nice.”
“Will I get to meet your dad?”
“Of course,” I smiled. “He should be headed home in the next few weeks. He’s been working in Alaska to set up a new system for the last six months or so. He hasn’t been home since.”
“Is he as handsome as you are?”
“I guess,” I laughed.
Suddenly, a huge raindrop hit me in the middle of the forehead and my eyes shot up to the sky. The clouds I had been watching earlier had moved in fast and there was an eerie glow in the sky to the south.
“Babe,” I said as I sat up. “I think we need to take this party elsewhere.”
Sierra saw where I was looking and watched the clouds with me for a minute just as the sirens in town started to wail. Before either of us could stand up, I saw part of the cloud swoop down and start to swirl - the beginnings of a tornado.
“Oh, fuck! Get down into the shelter.” I jumped up and reached down to jerk Sierra up to her feet. I held her hand as I ran toward the corral and started yelling, “Girls! Get off the horses! Leia, take Lexi into the shelter, now!”
I vaulted over the corral fence and grabbed both horses' reins as the girls ran into the barn. I took off one bridle and was working on the next when I realized that Sierra was right beside me.
“What can I do?”
“Get in the shelter, goddammit!” The rain was pouring now, and Sierra and I were both soaked.
“No! I can help!” She shook her head and I cussed some more at her stubbornness while I focused on the buckle that was giving me trouble.
Finally it was off the horse and she ran to join the other one at the fence, both of them agitated by the weather now. I took her hand to run inside the barn when all the other horses rushed out in a line. I realized that Lexi and Leia must have opened the stall doors on their way to the cellar, so I let go of Sierra’s hand and ran to open the gate for them to escape if they needed to.
I grabbed Sierra’s free hand and ran with her toward the barn just as the rain stopped and so did the wind. It was deadly quiet all of the sudden, the only sound was the horses hooves as they ran out the open gate. I took a second to look over my shoulder right before we headed inside and saw a funnel drop down onto the field across the road from us.
“Oh, my God!” Sierra screamed from beside me, right before I jerked her into the barn and ran for the open door of the shelter.
I urged Sierra down the steps ahead of me, glad to see that Leia had already turned on the lamps we kept down there just for this purpose. I stepped down onto the ladder as I reached over to grab the metal door. When I glanced back out the open barn doors, I saw that the funnel was growing and it looked like it was headed straight for us.
“Daddy!” Leia cried as I slammed the door over my head and spun the wheel to seal us inside. I jumped down to the concrete floor and Leia threw herself at me. “Oh, my God, I was so scared.”
“It’s alright, pumpkin,” I whispered. “We’re all okay now.”
Lexi was sobbing in Sierra’s arms and I held Leia to me as I moved closer to them and pulled them into my arms.
After a minute or two, I pulled back and urged them to sit on the benches that lined the walls on either side of our shelter.
“Looks like we’re going to be eating our dinner inside after all,” I tried to joke. The girls were still sniffling, but their crying had stopped. They were sitting on each side of Sierra now with her arms around them. “Let me get the scanner turned on and we can see what’s going on.”
“That was terrifying. And beautiful,” Sierra admitted. “But it was a lot more terrifying than it was beautiful. Jesus, I can’t catch my breath.”
“It’s okay, baby, just take some slow breaths. We’re safe down here, we’ll figure out what’s happening around us, have some snacks, and deal with whatever happened up there in a bit,” I told her as I reached for the scanner we kept on the shelf.
I popped the batteries into the back and it instantly started squawking. The automated voice warning everyone to take shelter immediately echoed through the concrete room causing Lexi to start sobbing again.
“You have your phone on you?” I asked Sierra. She shook her head. “That’s okay, the radio is enough.”
“Is it going to take us up in the sky?” Lexi whispered.
“No, baby,” I bit my lip so I didn’t laugh at her question. “That only happens on television and movies. We’re underground. And if it decided to take the barn above us, we would have already heard it happen. My guess is that it either went back up or it turned and missed us.”
“How long do we stay down here?” Sierra asked.
“Once the coast is clear, the radio will come on with the regular guy at the station. We’ll give it a little more time and then I’ll open the door.”
Leia jumped when the handheld radio in her lap beeped twice. Before she could pick it up I heard Grunt’s voice crackle
