I felt his body pulling away from me. His arms tightened around me, but when I began to scoot forward, he released me altogether and dug his toes into the concrete, leaning into the wind.
“Shep!” I yelled, watching as his fingers turned white, pressing against the ground.
He struggled for a moment to hand me his backpack.
I slid it over one arm and then reached out for him. “Take my hand!”
His feet began to slide, and he looked up at me, recognition and terror on his face. “Close your eyes, baby.”
Once he said the words, he was gone, whipped out like he weighed nothing. I screamed his name, but my voice was lost in the deafening wind.
The air pressure changed, and the suction stopped. I ran down to the bottom, seeing a dark blue twisting rope barreling down the turnpike, tossing semis like they were toys. I crawled out, and then I ran from beneath the bridge, looking around in disbelief, feeling the sting of the rain on every inch of my exposed skin.
“Shepley!” I screamed, bending over. I held tight to his backpack, hugging it to me as if it were him.
The rain faded away, and I watched as the tornado grew in size, gracefully gliding toward Emporia.
I sprinted to the Charger, stopping at the top of the ditch. The turnpike was now a path of destruction with mangled cars and random pieces of debris lying everywhere. The wreckage from the semi and SUV were no longer there, a large piece of tin lying in its place.
Just moments before, Shepley and I had been on a road trip to see my parents. Now, I was in the middle of what looked like a war zone.
The water was still sloshing over the hood of the Charger.
“We were just in there,” I whispered to no one. “He was just in there!” My chest heaved, but no matter how many breaths I took, I couldn’t get enough air. My hands hit my knees, and then my knees hit the ground. A sob tore through my throat, and I wailed.
I hoped he would jog up to me and reassure me that he was okay. The longer I waited by the Charger without him, the more I panicked. He wasn’t coming back. Maybe he was lying somewhere, hurt. I wasn’t sure what to do. If I left to look for him, he might come to the Charger, but I wouldn’t be there.
I sucked in a breath, wiping the rain and tears from my cheeks. “Please find your way back to me,” I whispered.
Red and blue lights reflected off the wet asphalt, and I looked over my shoulder to see a police cruiser parked behind me. An officer hopped out and rushed around, kneeling next to me, and he placed a gentle hand on my back. Reyes was engraved on a bronze name badge pinned to his front shirt pocket. He tipped his blue felt hat, and the bronze star fastened to the front said Kansas Highway Patrol.
“Are you hurt?” Reyes reached out with his thick arms, wrapping a wool blanket around my shoulders.
I didn’t realize how cold I’d been until the sweet relief of warmth sank into my skin.
The officer loomed over me, bigger than Travis. He took off his hat, revealing a clean-shaven scalp. His expression was severe, whether he meant for it to be or not. Two deep lines separated his bushy black eyebrows, and his eyes sharpened as he looked down upon me.
I shook my head.
“Is that your vehicle?”
“My boyfriend’s. We took shelter beneath the overpass.”
Reyes looked around. “Well, that was stupid. Where is he?”
“I don’t know.” When I said the words aloud, a new pain blazed through me, and I crumbled, barely catching myself as my palms flattened on the wet road.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to the backpack in my arms.
“His … it’s his. He handed it to me before he …”
A high-pitch chirp sounded, and then Reyes spoke, “Two-nineteen to Base H. Two-nineteen to Base G. Over.”
“Two-nineteen, go ahead,” a woman’s voice said through the speaker. Her tone was flat, not at all overwhelmed.
“I’ve got a group of people who were taking shelter under the Highway Fifty and I Thirty-Five junction.” He scanned the area, seeing injured people scattered up and down the turnpike. “The tornado passed through here. Ten-forty-nine to this location. We’re going to need medical assistance. As many as they can spare.”
“Copy that, two-nineteen. Ambulances are being dispatched to your location.”
“Ten-four,” Reyes said, returning his attention to me.
I shook my head. “I can’t go anywhere. I have to look for him. He might be hurt.”
“He might be. But you can’t look for him until you get that taken care of.” Reyes nodded toward my forearm.
A two-inch gash had opened my skin, and blood was mixing with rain, streaming crimson from the wound onto the asphalt.
“Oh, Jesus,” I said, holding my arm. “I don’t even know how that happened. But I … I can’t leave. He’s out here somewhere.”
“You’re leaving. You can come back,” Reyes said. “You can’t help him right now.”
“He’ll come here. Back to the car.”
Reyes nodded. “Is he a smart guy?”
“He’s fucking brilliant.”
Reyes managed a small smile. It softened his intimidating glare. “Then the hospital is the second place he’ll look.”
America
I touched the bandage on my arm, the skin around it still pink and angry from being cleaned and stitched. I felt more comfortable in the pair of baby-blue scrubs the nurse had given me to change into than my wet and cold tank top and denim shorts. I had been sitting in the ER waiting room for an hour, still holding the Reyes’ wool blanket, trying to think of how to tell Jack and Deana what had happened to their son—not that I could anyway. The phone lines were down.
The hospital had become a steady stream of the dead or dying, the wounded, and the lost. A dozen or more children had been brought in, covered in mud but otherwise without a scratch. From what I could tell, they’d been separated from their parents. Twice that number of parents had arrived, looking for their missing children.
The waiting room had been turned into a triage of sorts, and I ended up standing against the wall, unsure of what I was waiting for. A very round woman sat a few feet away, hugging four young children, all their faces smudged with dirt and tears. The woman wore a bright green shirt that said Kids First Daycare in childlike font. I shivered, knowing the children she was holding were only a precious few of those who’d been in her care.
My feet began to trudge toward the door, but a hand cupped my shoulder. For half a second, relief and overwhelming joy washed over me like a tidal wave. My eyes filled with tears before I even turned around. Even though Reyes was a welcome sight, the disappointment of him not being Shepley sent me over the edge.
I choked on a sob as my knees buckled, and Reyes helped me to the ground.
“Whoa!” he said. “Whoa, lady. Take it easy.” His thick arms were as big as my head, and he had a permanent deep wrinkle between his brows. It was even deeper now as he watched my state of mind spiral.
“I thought you were him,” I said once I had recuperated, if it were possible after being that devastated—again.
“Shepley?” he asked.
“Did you find him?”
Reyes hesitated, but then he shook his head. “Not yet. But I’ve found you twice, so I can find him once.”
I wasn’t sure if I could feel more hopeless. Emporia had been hit hard. An entire wall of the hospital had been ripped away, insulation and glass littering the ground. Cars in the parking lot were stacked on top of one another. One was sitting in the branches of a tree. Thousands of people were without power and running water, and they were the lucky ones. Hundreds were without homes, and dozens were missing.