They all stood up, stretching their legs, and following her lead. But Joule still asked. “I can use the bathroom now?”
“Good idea,” Deveron replied, clearly having been needing the facilities himself.
But they still waited for Sarah to nod before Joule headed out to the bathroom attached to her bedroom.
“Be careful out there,” Sarah cautioned. “Our first job is to assess the damage.”
16
Cage looked over his shoulder, but nothing was chasing him. He told himself to calm down, but his alert system wasn’t getting the message. He knew about adrenaline, about parasympathetic responses and all the hormones and messenger systems involved… and he still couldn’t turn it off.
He was walking through the field again, the sunshine feeling deceptive on his shoulders now. As if it were just waiting to pounce, to toss a tornado at him. He should be comfortable with traipsing his collections across the open grass to the tent, but for the past several days, he’d fought the urge to flee.
Today, for the first time, the specimens he was carrying weren't fauna, but flora. Beside him, Leah carried her own stack of small boxes with clippings. Seeming to read his mood, she told him, “It's not tornado weather.”
But from the other side of him, Micah added, “But we don't always get them with weird weather. Sometimes they come out of nothing.”
Cage glanced over his shoulder again. That was not comforting information and it didn’t help with his ongoing effort to relax. As each day passed without another tornado, he’d grown a little calmer. He’d believed a little bit more that it would be okay. But he wasn’t there yet, and he was now figuring that it would only be time that really made the nerves disappear.
“They usually come preceded by weird weather, and you can't spend every sunny day petrified that a tornado is going to appear out of nowhere!” Leah shot back. The two were having the argument into the air around him. Cage felt as if he was absorbing their words, but Leah continued. “Honestly, it's just as likely that a hellhound would show up to drag you to fire and brimstone.”
That made his eyes flick directly to her, wondering if she had any idea what the odds of that were. He did. And he sure as shit didn’t want to add the night hunters to this mix.
Though he and Joule had remained jumpy for days after the storm, Sarah had been her usual, calm self. But she was a local and Cage wasn't using her as a barometer. It was these other transplants—others who hadn't been in ‘Bama before—that he thought were getting over it far too quickly. Had they somehow easily survived the disasters that seemed to hit everyone sooner or later? Or was he standing between two incredibly lucky people?
In college, one of his friends had been through an avalanche and a blizzard. Another had lost a good portion of his family to a mudslide. Most of his group had developed a keen awareness of nature and its ability to take away human life in the snap of a finger. They’d been through a lot together. But the weather had been going haywire for quite a few years now. Floods, storms, landslides, and more.
And now, a tornado. It seemed the next thing on his checklist.
“I’ll just count myself lucky that the county repaired the gravel,” Cage muttered. He and his roommates had been able to drive up to the house last night as the work crew had finally made it out to their house and machined the gravel back into the driveway. They'd finagled Sarah's car out of the driveway instead of Joule’s, simply because the undercarriage was slightly higher. Neither of them had the kind of vehicle made for four-wheeling.
Even though it had only hit the end of their long driveway, the “tiny F-1” tornado had come too close to the house, plowing a ten-foot-wide ditch through the gravel. It had even left a trail where it had danced along the edge of the property.
The first trip over the damaged section had been slow, rough going. Sarah had carefully picked her way around through the damage, the car bouncing as it dipped into unseen holes. They’d been worried it would get stuck, and Sarah had quickly declared she and her car wouldn’t do that again.
So the four of them had been walking the length of the driveway and leaving Sarah's car parked at the end of it for most of the week. There hadn’t been much choice, unless they found someone willing to pick up all four of them and drive them into work every day.
“Why did they fix the gravel?” Leah broke into his thoughts.
“Because the tornado ate it. The edges were creepy, super clean cuts—as if made by a machine,” Cage told them.
“Holy shit!” Micah responded. “I didn’t know it hit so close to you. It didn't get your house, did it?”
This time, Cage shook his head. The storm had hit his driveway, and that was close enough.
“You, Leah? Did it get close to you?” Micah leaned forward to see her face across Cage, who still walked in the middle as they approached the tent.
“No. I mean, we went to our safe room and listened to the radio, like everyone else, but I didn't even see it.” She shifted her attention to Cage. “Did you see it?”
“Hell, yes. It chased us down the road. We were on the street when it first hit.”
“Why were you out?” She sounded as if he’d been asking for trouble.
“Because we needed dinner?” he replied, as though it might be obvious. Had everyone else around the area figured out that a tornado was coming? Well, everyone except Sarah, who seemed to otherwise know everything about Alabama life and dangers.
As he thought about it, he realized that maybe he’d been unaware because of the late evening. Or maybe Sarah hadn’t thought anything of the weird weather—maybe Alabama got enough of it
