Page 74 of Grumpy

The second Kelly threw her door open, the wind ripped it off its hinges. Speaking no longer became an option.

Grumpy unbuckled and reached over to take off Jackson’s so the prospect didn’t have to fumble. The SUV was about to go flying—and they needed to be out of it when it did.

Wind howled like angry wolves being chased by a freight train. Grumpy spotted Kelly further up the road as he exited. Thankfully, Maddie was already out too. She tripped, landing on her hands and knees as the SUV started to move, pulled by a force once thought powered by the mythical gods.

Grumpy threw himself on her, rolling them out of the path of the SUV. It wasn’t airborne yet, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t crush them with its weight. Pain radiated through every inch of his body, but pain was no longer an option. He had to power through. He had to get his daughter off this unprotected ground and into that drainage ditch.

Hands helped him rise. Jackson got Grumpy to his feet, but there was no time to check on Maddie and the babies. Wind through dirt and debris everywhere, making it difficult to see and breathe.

“I’ve got her!” Jackson shouted, bending down. “Go!”

Every instinct Grumpy had ordered him to stay. He could not abandon his daughter—not again. The courts had barred her from him when she was twelve. Would Mother Nature do the same now that she was an adult?

But his training kicked in. Maddie had a better chance of survival with Jackson than she did with him. He would not allow his pride to cost Maddie her life and the lives of her babies.

His legs feeling like they were manacled and chained, Grumpy forced himself to turn and follow Kelly’s path to the culvert. She was maybe thirty feet ahead of him, sliding into the murky water that filled the ditch running parallel to the highway.

It might as well have been three hundred.

Each step was herculean in effort. Powering through the pain pulsing through his body made no difference when his legs physically wouldn’t move as he needed them to.

Jackson rushed past, Maddie cradled like a bride in his arms. Even with the weight of an extra person, he was ridiculously faster than Grumpy or Kelly. Jumping down into the water, he reached the culvert seconds after Kelly did. The pipe only lay a few feet out from under the road. It was a wonder Maddie had seen it at all. Hopefully the road overtop it would help keep it secure.

They had seconds at most before the tornado would be on them.

Grumpy slid into the ditch, the noise around him so enormous that he felt his eardrums scream in agony. The water came up to his mid-calf, indicating a heavy rainfall the day or night before. Head down with his arm up to try to shield his remaining eye, Grumpy trudged forward.

He felt his clothes tearing, trying to obey the wind’s command. His slippered foot hit something unforgiving beneath the water, and he started to go down.

A hand caught his wrist. Grumpy felt himself yanked forward. The metal pipe was small, maybe four feet in diameter, and half flooded with rainwater. He would not have been able to stand up at his full height.

It shook as violently as if it was having a seizure. Sounds amplified, echoes locked in the tube as they fought an escape. Grumpy fell forward, his feet coming out of the water and his slippers sucked away like a vacuum.

Darkness kept him from seeing clearly, but he knew Jackson had gotten Maddie and Kelly inside. He knew it—because the alternative wasn’t an option.

Picking himself up onto his knees, Grumpy felt the water beneath him start to drain. His ears popped as pure blackness fell over them. He recalled hearing that the color people thought of as black wasn’t true black because it didn’t absorb light the way that true black did. This was true black, the utter absence of light, sounds, and shapes. The only reason Grumpy even believed he was still alive was because he could feel the vibrations of the pipe.

The air started to shift, and like the water beneath him, Grumpy felt himself start to be pulled backwards. Fear clenched him. If he was being pulled, then so were Jackson, Kelly, and Maddie.

He couldn’t allow that to happen.

Grumpy forced himself to rise. Like a piece of lint clogging a vacuum hose, he made himself as large as he could, using his own body to plug the hole. Projectiles pelted him relentlessly, but he would not allow himself to be moved. He would rather die than allow this storm to take the love of his life or his daughter and grandbabies from him.

He. Would. Not. Move.

* * *

People talk of the silence after a storm, the absence of anything following such devastating violence. Kelly had thought she’d experienced that effect, usually after a heavy snowstorm or a powerful thunderstorm. This was very, very different. It wasn’t just silence. It was like time stood still and Mother Nature held her breath. Even the cold, murky water at their feet settled.

Kelly feared opening her eyes. She’d just survived something fantastically horrible, and yet she knew others had not. Outside this pipe, was there even anything left of the world?

Beyond fear, though, Kelly wrestled with hate. Hatred for herself. She’d run. Yes, she could argue that Jackson and Grumpy had told her to. But she hated herself for listening. She’d left them behind, all of them. Jackson, Maddie, and Grumpy. What if she could have helped? What if one of them had gotten hurt because she hadn’t been there?

Kelly hated that she’d been so cowardly, because the drainage ditch they currently sheltered in had been her salvation. She’d run for it without looking back, needing to get inside. The pipe was small, but so was Kelly. She’d easily fit, crouching over as she slipped inside as easily as a child in a toy tunnel.

Then she’d turned and waited.

And for several awful seconds, she’d been the only one. Alone in a pipe in a storm. What if the others hadn’t survived?