Aftermath Read online

  Of course, this also meant that the school bus wouldn’t be running.

  Syd was already gone, so Maddie would have to drop Henry off at school on her way in to work.

  Again.

  These storms were becoming a serious pain in the ass.

  And she wasn’t alone in feeling that way. People in the county were really starting to chafe under the cumulative weight of these monster weather systems that kept rolling through, night after night. It was clear that Mother Nature was on the rag about something—and everyone in the Southeastern United States was bearing the brunt of her wrath.

  Syd had already packed Henry’s lunch. His Transformers lunch box sat atop the kitchen table next to his favorite denim jacket and a handwritten note. Maddie picked it up.

  Eat something, Stretch. I mean it.

  She smiled and walked to the fridge. Maybe some yogurt would be good?

  Or not.

  She sighed and leaned her head against the massive door. All they had was Greek yogurt, and she hated Greek yogurt. She liked the fruity kind—the kind that didn’t really taste like yogurt.

  But those days were long gone. Syd had her own ideas about things. And just because—one time—Maddie had an insignificant test result that hinted at borderline high cholesterol, she now was consigned to endure life, subsisting on a diet of nuts, twigs, and lawn clippings.

  She closed the fridge and looked around the kitchen.

  There was a bowl containing some of those mini-bananas. She wrinkled up her nose. What were those about? They were just creepy—and too reminiscent of those mutant ears of baby corn that sometimes showed up in bad Chinese food.

  She sighed.

  It’s not like a damn bowl of Fruity Pebbles once in a while would kill her.

  She got an idea. She walked across the kitchen and called up the back stairs. “Hurry up, Henry! If we leave now, we can stop at Aunt Bea’s and get a biscuit.”

  After a moment, she heard the sound of his little feet pounding down the big center hallway. He appeared at the top of the stairs with Pete in tow.

  “We’re not supposed to go there,” he said. He started down the stairs.

  “Use the handrail, buddy,” Maddie reminded him. “And who says we’re not supposed to go to Aunt Bea’s?”

  “Syd.”

  Maddie was confused. “When did Syd tell you that?”

  Henry was now on the bottom step. He looked up at her. “This morning. She said you’d wanna stop there if you had to take me to school again.”

  Maddie rolled her eyes. Clearly, this was a damn conspiracy.

  “Can I have a banana?” he asked.

  She sighed. “Why not?” He ran across the kitchen toward the bowl of fruit. “Have two,” she called after him.

  “Can Pete have one?”

  She thought about that. “How many are left?”

  He counted. “Four.”

  She hesitated.

  Nah. Too obvious.

  “How about we give him a dog cookie, instead?”

  Henry smiled. “Okay.”

  She walked to a large canister on the counter and got out a big Milk Bone. Then she turned and picked up Henry’s lunch box and jacket. She opened the door to the porch. There was a low rumble of thunder in the distance.

  Great.

  “Come on, buddy. Let’s boogie.”

  On her way out of the house, she wondered if Freemantle’s had any more of those fried apple pies . . .

  SYD SHOOK HER head. She didn’t know who had the brilliant idea to start having these band rehearsals at seven-thirty in the morning, but, plainly, they were sadists who knew nothing about life in the country. Or about what it would be like to try and command the attention of thirty-two teenagers before breakfast.

  Roma Jean had picked this semester to switch from the clarinet to the tuba, and she wasn’t tall enough or coordinated enough to manage the damn thing. She kept hitting Jessie Rayburn on the back of the head with it when they practiced marching in formation. And that was only half the problem. Jessie played the marimba, and Roma Jean’s tuba shouldn’t have been anywhere near the percussion line.

  Syd didn’t know which noise was more annoying—Roma Jean’s playing or Jessie’s whining. Frankly, it was a tossup. Even Fergus Wainright’s saxophone—which was remarkably like the cry of a bull moose on the first day of spring—sounded good by comparison.

  She’d had just about enough of this for one morning. Besides, she hated “Guantanamera.” Why on earth had Phoebe Jenkins picked this to be the school band’s signature tune?

  She clapped her hands. Roma Jean kept playing. Well. Roma Jean kept doing what passed for playing. Syd stamped her foot—hard.

  “Let’s take five, okay?”

  Outside, there was a boom of thunder that shook the building. The lights in the big gymnasium flickered. Syd could hear something hitting the roof—loudly. She looked up at the metal trusses.

  Hail. It was hail.

  There was more thunder. The lights flickered again. Then they went out.

  Over the din of the hail, she heard something else. Something that made her heart skip a beat. It sounded vaguely familiar.

  A train. It sounded like a train.

  Shit.

  DAMN THAT DOG.

  He’d been outside for ten minutes now, calling for her and looking beneath every object large enough to conceal the fat Papillon.

  He knew her. He was sure that she was perched someplace, just out of sight, calmly watching him yell and stride around like a lunatic.

  She probably had his fucking emery board with her.

  He took another look at the sky. It was a freakish, green color. That couldn’t be good.

  If she got wet, it would take most of the morning to comb out the tangles, and he didn’t have time for that. The inn was empty today, and they were having all the upstairs carpets steam cleaned.

  “Astrid! Where are you? Come on baby . . . come to daddy.”

  Damn Michael for somehow managing to leave the kitchen door ajar when he left that morning for Wytheville. They had a big wedding party coming in early tomorrow, and he had insisted on getting to the farmer’s market as soon as it opened.

  Of course, he probably also insisted on hitting the Dunkin Donuts, which was always open. That passion of his was starting to bear fruit, too. None of his clothes were fitting anymore. Last night, he wore a tan polo shirt—which was too tight—and his waistline looked exactly like one of those damn crullers.

  They were going to have to have a serious talk about his diet.

  And about how he kept leaving the damn doors open.

  “Astrid!”

  Where the hell was she? God, this dog was fucking stubborn. He should’ve named her after Maddie—they both had slabs of granite between their ears.

  He walked further away from the house, along the crushed gravel path that led down toward the river. Sometimes she liked to sun herself near the big benches in the clearing.

  He took another look at the sky. There wasn’t any sun this morning. It was actually getting darker. And it looked like it was about to cut loose with . . . something. High in the trees, the leaves were shaking like torn pieces of paper. A gust of wind came out of no place and slammed into his back, nearly knocking him off his feet. A hard rain was falling now. The massive drops left comically-shaped wet spots all over his shirt. Something sharp stung his face. He noticed it piling up all around him and plucked a chunk of it off his shirt.

  Hail. Jesus. Huge hail. He’d never seen it this big.

  The wind was roaring now. The noise was making it hard to think. He began to panic.

  “Astrid!”

  He felt something brush against his leg. He looked down. Astrid sat, placidly staring up at him with an expression that seemed to say, “Where in the hell have you been?”

  He snapped her up into his arms and turned back toward the inn.

  Then he saw it.

  “Oh, my god.”

  O
ne of his brand-new, fiberglass porch urns hit him dead on and knocked him beneath one of the stone benches. His last thought, before he lost consciousness, was that he’d left the iron on.

  MADDIE TOOK THE gravel road that ran along Elk Creek, since Powerhouse Road had washed out. It took longer to reach the school going this way, but she really had no choice.

  They topped the rise near the Cox barn, and big chunks of ice pelted the Jeep like stones. She knew she had to pull over, or the vehicle would be damaged beyond repair.

  The wind picked up, and its roar was deafening. She didn’t like the way the sky looked, either. It had turned an eerie, greenish color.

  “Hang on, buddy,” she said to Henry, who was strapped into the back seat. “We need to stop for a minute until this hail lightens up.”

  “Okay, Maddie,” Henry replied. “It’s really loud.”

  She nodded. “It sure is. But I think if we sit here for just a minute, we can . . .” Something bounced off the hood and came to rest against the windshield. Maddie stared at it with amazement and confusion as it hovered there. It was a license plate. “2BAD4U” it proclaimed. Then, just as quickly, it was gone.

  Ahead of the Jeep, she saw the leading edge of an enormous, swirling cloud of debris near the barn, headed straight toward them.

  She unclipped her seatbelt and threw open her door.

  “Henry. Unbuckle your seat belt. Now!”

  She ran to the back door and grabbed Henry as he fumbled with the buckle. He tried to reach for his lunchbox as Maddie pulled him out of the Jeep.

  “Leave it. Just hang on to me as tight as you can.”

  She ran from the Jeep and headed for the deep ditch that ran alongside the road. She put Henry down, climbed on top of him, and grabbed hold of a large tree root that projected from the side of the ditch.

  “Hold on, buddy. Just stay still, and we’ll be okay.”

  Henry said something, but Maddie couldn’t hear him over the roar of the storm. She hugged him tighter.

  She felt things hitting her back and raining onto the ground all around them. The wind was like nothing she’d ever experienced before. Dirt, rain, and hail hit them from all sides. She held onto the exposed bit of tree root so hard she could feel the wood biting into her palm. She was afraid the slender handhold would snap, and they’d be pulled up into the maelstrom. The roaring went on and on. Something sharp struck her leg, and pain shot through her like it had been stabbed with a hot poker. Still she held on.

  Then, just as quickly as it came, the noise abated, and the wind and rain stopped. She lay still on top of Henry for another full minute, before she felt that it was safe to move.

  Somewhere in the distance, she could hear a bird starting to sing. She raised her head and looked around them. The landscape had been completely transformed. Dirt and debris were scattered everyplace. The road ahead of them looked pockmarked—like it had been bombed. The Cox barn was gone, and so was her Jeep.

  “Maddie? What was that?” Henry’s small voice was muffled as he still lay beneath her.

  She rolled into a sitting position. The pain in her leg was excruciating. A jagged piece of red metal lay in the ditch beside them. Her pant leg was stained with blood.

  “I think that was a tornado, sport. But it’s over now.” She tried to sound calmer than she felt. She pulled him into a sitting position and ran her hands over his face and arms. “Are you okay? Did you get hurt anyplace?”

  He shook his head. Then he looked around them.

  “Maddie? Where is the Jeep?” He pointed across the road where they had parked. Nothing was left but a pile of mud and debris.

  She pulled him against her side. “I think the storm took it.”

  He looked up at her with confusion. “Where did it take it?”

  She pointed over the hill. “That way, I think. Toward the . . .”

  Oh, Jesus Christ.

  She closed her eyes.

  The school. It was headed toward the school.

  “DROP YOUR INSTRUMENTS and get into the hallway. Now!”

  Syd was frantic and doing her best to herd the students out of the dark gymnasium. She knew they had to move fast.

  Someone was crying. Jessie, she thought.

  The building started to shake.

  “Run! As fast as you can—into the hallway. Now!”

  She ran behind them, pushing at the stragglers.

  Ahead, she saw Lila Freemantle, Roma Jean’s cousin, struggling to haul her kettledrum along with her.

  Syd reached her and took hold of it. She pulled it from her grasp and tossed it aside.

  “No,” Lila cried. “My parents rented that, and they’ll be mad if it gets ruined.”

  “Lila. Leave it! Run! Now!”

  Syd grabbed her by the arm and pulled her toward the exit door.

  Two of the boys stood just inside the hallway that led to the main school building, holding the doors open for them. Syd pushed Lila through the door and turned back to make sure no one else was lagging behind. She thought she saw someone cowering next to the bleachers.

  “Close these doors and get away from the glass. Lie down on the floor and cover your heads with your arms. Do it now!”

  The boys looked at her reluctantly, then obeyed.

  Syd turned and ran back across the floor toward the bleachers. She could feel the building shake. The floor seemed to be moving beneath her feet.

  She reached the small figure, hunched over and struggling with something. It was Roma Jean. Even in the faint light, her red hair seemed to glow. She was whimpering.

  Syd grabbed her by the arms. “Roma Jean. We have to run. We have to get out of here now.”

  Above them, the windows broke. Bits of glass and plaster dropped to the floor around them.

  “I can’t, Miss Murphy.” Roma Jean sobbed. “I fell and got caught in my tuba. I can’t stand up.”

  It seemed like the entire world was shaking. The roar of the wind was ear splitting. Syd could see things moving. Band instruments were sliding across the floor toward them.

  Syd lifted the tuba away from Roma Jean’s shoulders, then wrapped her arms around her from behind and drug her toward the back of the bleachers.

  Syd heard a loud boom as the roof blew off. A tidal wave of debris surrounded them as the walls collapsed.

  Chapter 2

  MICHAEL WAS DRIVING down U.S. 21 as fast as he could, which wasn’t very fast. The road was too strewn with debris. Already, he’d had to stop twice to drag fallen tree limbs out of the way. The closer he got to Jericho, the worse it became. There were whole swaths of land that just looked . . . broken. Like some gargantuan Rototiller had roared across it and churned up everything in its path.

  That’s it exactly, he thought as he crept along. It’s like the world got turned inside out.

  His anxiety increased with every click of the odometer. He tried David’s cell phone number for the twentieth time. No answer. No answer at the inn, either—just a busy signal. He knew that likely meant the phone lines were down.

  Small wonder.

  This storm damage was like nothing he’d ever seen before. Trees were twisted and snapped like matchsticks. And the oddest part of it was the way the road weaved in and out of the destruction. He was certain that from a birds-eye view, the terrain would look exactly like an unraveled garment. All he could think about were those hot summer months in South Carolina, when he’d work second shift at the textile mill with his mother. When the humidity was really high—which it was most of the time—the knitting machines would be prone to jam, and it could take half an hour to extract the tangled wads of fabric from the looms. Half an hour that they didn’t make production, so they’d have to work a longer shift to make up the lost time. But the ripped and frayed yards of half-woven cloth that got yanked out and discarded looked exactly like this landscape: once tidy and regular patterns of color and texture that nature had transformed into a warped and unrecognizable mass of thread. No order. No harmony. No
patterns that made sense anymore.