Page 61 of The Dysasters

Then someone screamed.

Not a bloodcurdling shriek. More of a confused and frightened squeal for attention.

The music stopped.

And then there were gasps followed by chairs scraping the pavement and rushed footsteps beating into the gravel in sharp, staccato crunches.

Foster didn’t want to pull away, didn’t want to stop the sweet exchange that had her nerves alight with the promise of their future. But she had to. Something was wrong. She could hear it in the way the people ran through the parking lot and the yells coming from behind them—coming from Sabine and Finn.

Keeping her tucked against his side with his arm snuggly around her shoulder, he turned them to face the fields behind the barn-like store. And there, descending on them against an angry red setting sun, was a wall cloud spewing the hollow point of a deadly funnel—a funnel that was coming directly at them.

18

TATE

“Fuck! No no no no no. This shit isnothappening again!” Tate’s voice was strong and serious, and didn’t shake at all—even though his insides were spinning around in a weird rush ofohmygod I just kissed Fosterandfucking tornado is going to kill us all!

“Tate! Foster! You gotta do something!” Finn spoke fast and low.

“Get out of here. Now,” Tate told their friends.

“Okay, yeah. Let’s get back in the truck. I’m sure we can outrun it,” Sabine panted, looking wide-eyed and truly terrified.

In his imagination Tate could see the two of them crushed in the middle of a mound of vehicles… just before they exploded…

“Tate!”

Foster’s voice brought Tate’s mind back to the present. He met her haunted gaze.

“There isn’t time to run,” she said.

“Hey, wake up you two! We need to get out of here!” Sabine cried.

“No. Not by driving,” Tate said. “The parking lot’s already a traffic jam. None of them are going to make it out of here.”

“Listen up!” a man’s voice boomed over the band’s loudspeaker system.“The Bennett Farm across the street has a root cellar! Everyone over there! Hurry!”

The panicked tide of people shifted direction, and instead of bottling up the parking lot, people climbed over Bella’s fence, crowded through the gate, and poured across the little two-lane road as the sky opened and rain began to pelt them along with the whipping wind.

“Go!” Foster told Sabine and Finn. “Get to the cellar!”

Finn and Sabine nodded and, holding tight to each other’s hand, started to rush off, but Sabine pulled them to a stop to shout over the wind. “What about you two? You stay out here you’re going to get killed!”

Tate and Foster shared a long look. He nodded, understanding the wisdom in Foster’s serious green eyes, and then he told Sabine, “We’re going to stop this tornado from killing anyone.”

“But how can—” Finn began, but Foster cut him off.

“Don’t worry about that. Just get out of here. Tate and I can handle this.”

Then, very deliberately, Foster took Tate’s hand, and squeezed it before looking up at him with those eyes and that beautiful, honest face. “We can do this. We can save these people.”

And suddenly Tate believed they could do it—they could save them. “Together,” he said. “We’ll save ’em, like we couldn’t save our parents.”

Holding hands, Tate and Foster walked in the opposite direction everyone else was running. They walked around the rear of the store and directly for the diving funnel.

“Okay, tell me again about how you got the willows to be your air orchestra,” Tate said. His voice was calm, but he and Foster were clinging to each other’s hand as if they were living lifelines.

Foster didn’t look at him. She stared at the funnel. He could feel the trembling of her body through their joined hands.