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

getting. If it was less, then he had a valid complaint. But he sure wasn't saying that.

“I'm sorry that you don't want to retrain, but it’s paid training. Don’t you also want to leave your mountains intact for your future generations?”

For that family he was worried about starving?

“Coal is what my family has done for three generations!”

She didn't have a response to someone so entrenched and unwilling to budge. She understood family loyalty. Her family were scientists. Joule felt that research and building were in her blood. Her grandfather had been a Navy CB—construction batallion—a coveted spot. Her great grandfather on the other side had been an engineer in World War II. So she understood the idea of generations following in footsteps. But a four-generation chain didn't seem that long. Was three really a full “family tradition?”

“Well, if your family is in energy,” she tried again, “you would still be in energy. You’d still be providing power to the community.” She almost added, It’s a noble position, but she'd really had enough of Jerry. She tried to change the topic once again. “We need to get out of here.”

“It's your fault. All these tornadoes. You people brought them here.”

“What?”

“This is what happens when you mess with God.”

Joule shoved her hand into her pocket, stroking Toto for the requisite help to her bite her tongue and not lash out the way she wanted to. “This is a tornado. It’s a weather system, a meteorological event, not revenge.”

“So, you’re one of them atheists, too?”

“No!” she blurted out, quickly and handily. “I just don't believe in a God who takes revenge on his own people! And I don't believe in a God that gets mad at us for trying to do better by the earth He gave us.”

“He gave us coal!” Jerry replied.

“Well, he gave us the damn sunlight, too! And we're supposed to be the stewards of the earth, aren't we? Strip mining the mountains hardly seems like the right way to do that.”

She wished she'd had something better. But her chest was heaving with anger, and her short temper was keeping her from her best thinking. Joule didn't have a place in her heart for people who thought like Jerry. She fully understood, particularly in agricultural systems, that deities often took the place of meteorological systems. But she wasn't going to take the personal blame for it!

“We have to get out of here. Should we try pushing on the doors together?”

Only silence greeted her in return.

Joule waited a moment, hoping to simmer down and thinking Jerry would come around. When he didn't, she added, “We can die in here together, or we can get out of here together. Should we push on the doors or not?”

“Fine!” He bit the word off, and she wasn’t sure about getting close enough to him to help push on the cellar doors. But the only way away from him was out of here.

It took a moment in the dark to maneuver both of them up the steps, with her on a higher step than him because she was shorter. With one foot low and one foot up a step, she tried to brace herself for a good upward shove.

“On three,” he said, and she was more than willing to let him feel like a big man by running the count down.

But when they pushed, they only managed to budge the doors a little. All that effort for nothing.

“Feels like something's across it,” he said.

Something big, Joule thought, and heavy.

She felt around to the sides of the doorway, wondering if the hinges hadn't given way. Had they maybe borne out her theory that they weren't sturdy?

She wondered if she could pry them off. If so, then they could pull the doors down in. Maybe they could squeeze through whatever was blocking the doors from opening.

“Can you grab me the crowbar?” she asked. “It’s down on the floor, to the left of the steps.

Below her on the stairs, she heard and felt him move. Even through the flexing of the old staircase, she could feel his irritation.

But a moment later, he said, “Here. I'm holding it out.”

Joule waved her hand slowly and gently through the air until she grabbed it. It took another few moments to locate the hinges and to line the sharp edge of the bent end of the crowbar under the metal.

She leaned in, putting everything she had into pushing. Then she tried pulling town on the bar. The hinges didn't budge.

Now, when she ran her fingers over the pieces she could feel the bolts themselves. They seemed to have unusually large heads for a job like this. She wondered how long they were and why someone had felt such a need to protect their rutabagas?

She had a sinking feeling that they were in more trouble than she'd realized.

46

Cage and Deveron dropped over the edge of the Butler house foundation, leaving the steps at the back for those who needed them.

He clicked the button on his key chain, happy when the car beeped back at him and the lights flashed. He opened the back door and spotted the food bag. He must have been looking for it without realizing it, because he was suddenly ravenous. If the feeling was because he was actually hungry, or because he'd finally seen food, or because he was nervous and needed to fuel it in some way, it didn't seem to matter.

“Here.” He’d torn open one of the granola bars and with the other hand held the bag out toward Dev, noticing that his roommate’s hand dove into the bag as quickly as his own had.

Reaching into the second bag in the back seat, he pulled out the water bottles that Sarah had sent along. The first granola bar was gone within a second and he grabbed for a pack of chips and basically poured them down his throat. Crackers came next and then the water bottle was polished off. He couldn't comment about Dev doing