Thankfully, Izzy was just held by a lap belt. As the two-by-four split the window directly behind her head, she at least managed to slam her torso forward. Cage and Joule, instantly realizing their predicament, threw themselves toward the sides of the car. He slammed up against the side with no belt to hold him back. For a split second, he thought the car door would fly open from the hit and he would roll across the street as Sarah and everyone else drove on.
But it didn’t happen.
Reality was bad enough. The end of the two-by-four—splintered and jagged—swept through the space their heads had just occupied. The pristine shade of the wood let them know that it had been ripped very recently from the center of a house, untouched for who knew how long until now.
The piece swept through the space in the back seat before clunking against the trunk and disappearing. He would have believed he’d imagined it if not for the spray of window glass that coated his jacket. He’d thought the window was designed to crack but not shatter… the wood must have hit with an incredibly high speed to have peppered the entire back seat in pebbles of safety glass.
Sarah was still screaming at the noise, and even as Joule and Cage fought to sit upright and assess the damage, the car weaved back and forth. Sarah was fighting to keep the small SUV on the road.
“We’re okay!” he yelled, hoping to calm her down even though he didn’t quite know that they were.
He and Joule looked at each other and both shrugged frantically. His sister was okay, and if he was injured, he hadn’t figured out where yet. But as he looked back, squinting against the high wind and grainy feel of the air, he realized they were in more trouble than just two-by-fours shattering the window.
“You can't outrun it!” he yelled again as Sarah twisted the wheel first one way then the other, trying to steady the car on the road. The whole thing bumped as one of the wheels bounced off the shoulder and grabbed at the gravel on the edge for a moment. When Sarah turned the other way, they bumped again, hitting the curb.
Cage suffered a brief bout of fear that the bump would be enough to make them airborne and let the tornado lift them. But the small car slammed back to the road, rocking on old shocks, as Sarah once again screamed, unable to control the vehicle.
Having overcorrected for the last mistake, she had them aimed across the road to the ditch on the other side. There was nothing she could do now, except hold the wheel steady and pray.
Out the front window, Cage watched the truck in front of them manage to stay between the lines, but it disappeared into the distance as Sarah braced against the steering wheel.
He watched everyone in the car tense as the car pitched over the side of the road and nose down into the ditch.
It felt as if they fell forever. Time stretched out as the wheels bumped over ruts and rocks and roots. The only one not buckled in, Cage slammed into the back of Dev’s sear. As the car twisted, he scrambled, grabbing for whatever he could. He held the door handle for a moment, until a bump jerked the handle out of his grip. He flailed, reaching out again, bracing against the side or the ceiling and trying desperately to minimize his impact.
He waited with breath held for the vehicle to flip, but it stayed upright as it slammed nose-down into the ditch. Cage pitched forward, bouncing against the back of the seat in front of him and sliding into the footwell as he watched everyone else get yanked back by their belts. In his peripheral vision, he saw Izzy bend fully forward and then slam backwards, only to fly forward again.
Cage reached out to grab her but realized his own folly as soon as he tried. There was no holding on to anyone or anything in the middle of a car accident. Behind him, the noise grew even louder. And he wasn't sure how, but he managed to distinguish the engine from the surrounding noise of the storm. The car buried its nose in the dirt in a grinding halt and a puff of smoke. It was dead.
But they weren't. Not yet.
Though Cage couldn't see anything behind him with the back window aimed directly upward, he saw the five of them stuck in the car, the others all hanging from their seat belts.
They were nose down and needed a moment to gather their thoughts and get oriented, but they could hear the storm getting closer. The sky was growing darker as he took two breaths, but it was two breaths too many.
Why wasn’t it already on them?
Was it further back than he’d thought?
“Get out! Get out!” Joule yelled, and he could hear his sister reiterating Radnor's instructions from earlier… was it only twenty minutes ago?
“Find a pipe. Find a tree root. Find something you can hold on to. Strap yourself to it, if you can!”
She was already scrambling to get out.
25
Cage felt the car move as he watched Izzy and Joule pushing the buttons on their seatbelts and dropping forward. They were all trying to get out before the car became a casualty of the tornado bearing down on them.
There was no time for pleasantries as he pushed on his door, hoping it would open. It didn’t give, and he wondered if it was dented in from the ride down into the deep ditch.
Joule managed to get hers open, the sickly groan of angry hinges signaling her quick success. With it open, it was now parallel to the ground, and she was testing it to see if it would hold her weight
