The Tempest by A.J. Scudiere (best books to read in your 20s .txt) 📕

to be safer than being out in the open. Once again, she had no qualms about breaking in. No one seemed to be here. Had rural Alabama simply fled during the storms?

The house looked almost too easy to break into. There were too many windows that looked like real glass. A large bay window had graced the front and even the back door had nine panels across the top. She could break one out and undo the locks … too easily.

If the twister came through, it would pop this house like a packing bubble and all that glass would go everywhere. The cellar was definitely their best bet. She scanned the area, not sure what she was hoping to find until her gaze fell on several fist-sized rocks and she reached down to grab one.

She was going to have to take her hand off the kitten. What if he ran?

But as she looked up, she realized Jerry, too, was looking for rocks and saw that they had each found one about the right size.

Joule had to pray that Toto stayed put in her pocket as she hauled the rock back and brought it down to bash at the lock. She aimed away from the curved part, hoping to snap it free.

The lock wasn’t anything spectacular, maybe just a good high school gym locker kind of combo lock. Beside her, Jerry brought his smaller but pointier rock down onto the lock.

The cellar doors shook with each hit. The old plywood was thick and sturdy but it had seen better days. Though it took more tries than she liked, and the lock never loosened, it eventually disintegrated. The metal fell into several pieces. The tumblers inside would have enticed further examination on any day that a tornado wasn’t bearing down on her and the leader of some semi-violent protesters.

Joule fumbled the curved bar with heavy fingers, pulling it through the eyes bolted to the doors and chucking the damaged pieces aside. Together, she and Jerry lifted the doors and she spotted even more old school construction in the opening.

A tilted, ladder-like frame held slim steps made of two-by-sixes. They looked like they would at least bend if not maybe split with her weight, let alone Jerry's. Taking the first step downward, Joule felt the board flex beneath her boot. Her hand darted into her pocket and felt nothing but fleece.

Where was Toto?

She turned frantically as she tapped at her pockets, hoping she’d simply chosen the wrong one and he was on the other side, or somehow in a cargo pocket on her pants. Her eyes frantically scanned the yard, but ran into the bulk of Jerry, who blocked almost all of her view.

Even as she began to panic, she tapped at her jacket all the way across her chest and up to her shoulders where she found the tiny kitten. He had his claws dug into her shoulder, holding on tightly. She didn't even feel any of it as her sudden-onset panic at losing him quickly faded.

“Toto,” she whispered in relief, and he replied with a frantic, “Mrrwow!”

Yes, there was a tornado bearing down on them. She could only get them both into the shelter of the cellar and then hope that the funnel skipped over this house.

Breathing out, she turned again and bolted down the steps with Jerry on her heels.

41

As Cage listened, the whipping sound of the wind outside turned slowly to the rumbling grind of a funnel on the ground nearby.

All the motion inside the shelter slowly came to a stop. He stood in the middle of the space, feet apart, as if he expected the ground to shake beneath him. And honestly, if it did, it wouldn't surprise him.

In the corner, the mother had stopped reading and now gathered her children close into her arms, their faces buried in her jacket. Cage only counted two kids now. The other two must have returned to their own parents, likely out of fear.

Dev looked to him, as if to say, now what? And Cage wondered what they'd done.

They were here—kindly offered an inside position in a very sturdy tornado shelter. As he looked around, he told himself that they would be okay. This place was built for exactly this problem. He didn't have any doubts that everyone down here would make it through whatever might pass overhead.

It might sound awful. Hell, it already did. But the walls would hold.

William Butler had already lost one family member. He wasn't going to lose anyone else.

But Cage and Dev had left Sarah behind at the house. She didn't have a room like this, only the rented Hideaway’s central bathroom. The windows were newer, not glass but a polymer resin. Did that make them better or worse? He didn't know.

Sarah had only one usable arm. Had she managed to get some windows open and keep the pressure in the house from building up? Again, he didn't know.

How far had he and Deveron driven? Were they far enough away that maybe this thing wasn’t even anywhere near her? There were no answers.

As he looked back to Dev, he could tell his roommate was having the same concerns about Sarah. And the problem was, with Sarah, it had been a choice. Joule and Izzy had been literally ripped from their hands. They'd done everything they could to stay safe, and they'd lost. But with Sarah, they'd made a foolhardy decision, thinking that the worst was over. And they’d bet that Sarah would be okay at the house by herself. Now he feared they were going to lose that bet.

She'd insisted the phones would get hooked up quickly, but that wasn't happening now. Could they even make it back to the house to check on her? What would the roads be like after another sweep of the havoc? The noise was making it clear that—even if this storm didn’t hit this house or their house—things would be worse when they got out.

He turned again to