The Tornado Chasers (15 page)

The wind groaned down the stone drop against us, louder now, keener, trembling the stones. The tornado outside was creeping closer. The Warden stood and stared at us, taking each of us into his black gaze, one by one. His eyes stopped on Pete.

‘Put her down,’ he said, his voice a blank.

Pete carefully lowered Ceri to the ground. The Warden looked at us. He was tall and pale, a shop-front mannequin.

And then suddenly his face changed. He stood up straight, and his jaw clenched.

‘Do you have
any
idea how much you’ve frightened everyone?’

His voice was furious. The wind howled down against us.

‘I’ve got two County officers outside, combing the valley for you,’ said the Warden. ‘They’re both standing within a few hundred feet of a tornado right now – because of you.’

He faced us, half cast in shadow. I looked at the man I had been taught to be frightened of. Behind the dark orbs of his eyes it was impossible to see what he was looking at, or what he saw when he looked at us. All I could see was myself, reflected back in his glasses. I looked so much smaller than him.

‘We’re getting out of here now,’ said the Warden. ‘Before …’

‘Before what?’ I said suddenly, cutting him off.

The Warden looked at me, taken aback. I stepped forwards, and stared into his glasses. It was strange to see myself without my helmet. My eyes unafraid.

‘Before the bears get us, you mean?’

We faced each other. The Warden stayed looking at me, his face saying nothing.

‘Yes,’ he said after a pause. ‘Yes, exactly. Before the bears …’

‘We left Barrow three days ago,’ I said, cutting him off again. ‘Do you know how many bears we’ve seen
in that time?
None
. No tracks. No fur. No sounds … nothing.’ I stared at him. ‘I lived in Skirting for
ten years
without once seeing one. Without even hearing anyone talk about them.’ I glared at him. ‘How is that possible?’

The Warden held still, his gaze resting on me, as if deciding what to do.

‘So what’s the truth?’

The Warden stepped back a pace. He took us in.

‘Alright,’ he said. ‘You win. There are no bears in the valleys.’

The others stared at him in shocked silence. Callum stepped forwards, his head shaking.

‘B-but … there
must
be,’ he stuttered. ‘When the tornado hit the bear sanctuary in High Folly, they …’

‘There is no village called High Folly,’ said the Warden. ‘No bear sanctuary either. They were all made up. Just a story.’

Orlaith stepped forwards, looking him in the eye.

‘You lied to us?’ she asked.

The Warden waited for a moment, thinking this over. Then, very slowly, he nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We did.’

He fell silent. The wind roared above us again, and the tunnel walls trembled. The tornado was getting closer. Ceri suddenly flew forwards.

‘Well, you won’t get away with this!’ she cried. ‘Not any more! If you think I’m going to let my little sister grow up like that, thinking there’s something out there to be afraid of …’ She punched the air triumphantly. ‘When we get back to Barrow, I’m telling everyone! The parents, the press, the teachers … everyone! They’ll all know about what you’ve said, before …’

‘Ceri.’

Ceri stopped. Orlaith had put a hand on her shoulder.

‘They already know,’ she said quietly. ‘They’re all in on it.’

Ceri stood for a moment, stupefied. Her eyes widened.

‘But … but my parents …’

‘All of them,’ Orlaith repeated.

The tunnel filled with another freezing bite of air. The Warden folded his hands.

‘Barrow was built for parents who want to protect their children,’ he said. ‘After the last tornado hit, a lot of people felt none of the villages were safe any more. Even though the stormtraps could keep tornadoes at a safe distance from any village, people were convinced they weren’t enough. So they decided to make a village that was completely secure. A place where no child would ever risk getting into accidents, or misbehaving, or going missing. Where they were kept indoors
with curfews and Storm Laws. Where they were too frightened to ever risk their lives.’

He stepped towards us again. We shrank back to the wall.

‘And to stop them from leaving the village, they started telling stories. About bears in the valleys that ate children. That stalked the streets each night. Finding those who disobeyed the laws. Punishing those who were curious.’

‘And the County Detention Centre,’ said Orlaith bitterly. ‘That helps keep everyone in line, does it?’

The Warden thought about it, and nodded.

‘Most children, yes. Those who work out the truth, though … well, we send them lots of different places. Villages outside of the valleys. Anywhere but Barrow.’ He sighed. ‘As for the five of you …’

Orlaith suddenly ran forwards and shoved him, hard. The Warden looked at her in shock. Her eyes were furious.

‘You coward!’ she spat. ‘You know about all this, and you do nothing about it?
How can you
…’

The Warden didn’t even pause.

‘Because I know what it’s like to lose someone you love,’ he said.

The wind suddenly blew up our backs, heaving back
up through the tunnel. The Warden loomed over us.

‘You wanted the truth,’ he said, ‘and I gave it to you. And now – it’s over. Your adventure is done. I’m taking you to the County Detention Centre, and I’m doing it before
that
–’ He pointed up the stone tunnel, where the tornado roared and bellowed against us – ‘gets any closer!’

He reached out to us.

‘Take my hand,’ he said.

Not one of us took it. I looked at it, hovering alone in the air before us. I thought of all the times I’d been told to take an adult’s hand. Because they knew what they were doing. Because they’d keep us safe. Because they wanted to help us. I never once thought that I’d ever have to question what adults told me.

I looked up at the Warden, at my face reflecting in his glasses.

‘No,’ I said. ‘We’re not coming with you.’

The Warden’s mouth flickered for a moment. He did not move his hand.

‘I’m going to explain this one more time,’ he said. ‘And I’m going to explain it very carefully, so that you understand exactly what I’m saying.’

He reached into his suit. With the careful and deliberate movement of a hunter he drew out a black
baton and held it out in front of him. It was made of hard metal, and glinted in the light.

‘Take my hand,’ he repeated.

The wind shrieked down the tunnel, and this time it was so strong that the very clothes on our bodies trembled, and for a moment the glasses seemed to lift from the Warden’s face. It was as if the power of the tornado itself was somehow filling us from the ground up, entering our blood and trying to take us to somewhere or something undiscovered. I looked up at, at the man behind the glasses, and I saw his eyes were frightened.

The five of us held hands, and stood in front of him.

‘We’re not coming with you,’ I repeated.

The Warden looked at us in shock. Then he took a step back, and raised the baton above his head.

‘Have it your way,’ he said.

And with a sudden great howl of wind the baton was plucked straight out of the Warden’s hand.

We gasped. All six of us watched the baton shoot up the stone tower, clattering against the jagged rocks. Our mouths fell open.

‘What the …’ the Warden managed.

And then he couldn’t say anything any more, because the wind in the tunnel screamed so loud our ears rang,
and the air was drawn straight out of our chests as if by force, and with a great lurch each and every one of us was thrust spiralling up through the stone tunnel.

The floor disappeared below us. We tumbled up, clutching each other’s hands and shrieking in amazement. The Warden scrambled hopelessly in the air below us, trying to grab hold of something. The baton bounced against the walls above us, flying towards the opening in the roof like it was little more than a twig.

‘W-what’s happening?’ I gasped.

‘It’s the tornado!’ Orlaith laughed, pinwheeling beside me. ‘The wind in the valley outside … it’s sucking us straight up the tunnel! We’re going to make it …’

‘
No!
’ came the Warden’s voice from beneath us.
‘I’m not letting you go!’

With a great lunge the Warden heaved through the air and clamped his hand around Pete’s leg. He started heaving the five of us down.

‘Oh no!’ Ceri cried. ‘We’re going to fall!’

She was right. With the Warden hanging on to us we were too heavy, and our climb had slowed. I looked down in terror. The drop back to the stone floor was a long way down.

‘Stop!’ I begged. ‘You have to let go or you’ll kill us all …!’

Slowly, bit by bit, the clutch of wind in the tunnel dropped. Soon, it would break completely. The walls came to a stop beside us. The Warden grit his teeth.

‘I’m – not – letting – you – go!’
he cried.

CLANG
.

There was a sharp noise above us, and then another, and another. We looked up just as the Warden’s baton spun lethally back down the tunnel towards us. It missed Pete by a hair’s breadth, and with a sickening
CRACK
struck the Warden right on top of his head. He gave a short cry of pain, and immediately let go of Pete’s ankle, plummeting to the floor below.

The second he did the wind bellowed through the stone tunnel again, we lurched back up. The stones around us trembled with the strength of the tornado. Orlaith clutched onto us tightly.

‘This is it!’
Orlaith screamed.
‘We’re going through the roof! Hold on!’

Our ears popped, and our heads buzzed, and our hearts felt like roaring engines inside of us, and together we were flung up, up past the jagged rocks that stuck out at all angles and tumbled through the hole in the ceiling, screaming and laughing in disbelief. And then we were flying through the valley outside, the wind freezing and powerful and somehow coming at us in all directions,

flinging us back down to earth …

I crashed down onto the grass of a hillside, sprawling into rocks and tumbling down the slope until I came to a stop. My whole body sang to me.

‘
Owen!
’

I pushed myself up from the ground. Behind me, the others had clambered to their feet and stood facing the horizon in a line. Their hair and clothes whipped around them, and their mouths hung open. I turned around.

The tornado before us filled the width of the valley. Above it lay jet-black clouds, shot through with veins of deepest red like a sky made of burning coals. Around it in every direction lay a spiral of trees, cars, bricks, animals, tankers, rocks, statues, chimneys and barbed wire that had caught in the vortex, spinning and spinning and crashing against the valley’s sides, shredding them to dust. But at the centre of it all, like a shape in the fog of a glass, was a spiralling white core of pure wind, goring through the earth, a wall of destruction that headed straight for us.

We were being dragged towards it, our feet slipping and stumbling along the grass. The wind was unbelievable, the sheer power of it tearing at the skin on our faces. And it was growing. I turned to the others.

‘This is it!’
I screamed.
‘Do we still do it?’

‘Are you kidding?’
Orlaith cried out.
‘We can’t go back now, Owen!’

I shook my head.
‘I mean …’

‘I
know
what you mean,’
she shouted. She fixed me with one of her looks.
‘But this is about more than taking a picture now. And I’m saying: we can’t go back.’

I looked at her in shock. She kept her gaze fixed on me, without blinking, her face terrified and delighted all at once. She really meant it. The tornado bellowed through the valley towards us, the ground either side pelted with car doors and garden gates that smashed into the ground beside us and missed us by inches. I turned to the others. They looked frightened too.
I
was frightened. I don’t think I had ever been more frightened in my life.

But I had never felt so alive.

‘All of us?’
I said.

Ceri and Pete nodded, their breaths short, their eyes wide and their faces flushed. They understood. Only Callum stayed still, staring at the distance.

‘…
Callum?
’ I said.

His eyes were fixed onto the tornado that roared towards us. He was breathing in and out, in and out, and he was trembling. I had never seen him so frightened. I
reached out and took his shoulder.

‘Callum.’

His eyes shot back to me, desperate, terrified.

‘You don’t have to come with us,’
I said.
‘We won’t make you. You’re one of us. You can go if you want to.’

He looked back at me, his chest heaving, his eyes torn.

Then, he swallowed, and shook himself.

‘No!’
he cried.
‘I came here to chase a tornado, and I’m going to do it!’

He took our hands, and held them up to the storm.

‘Because we,’
he shouted,
‘are Tornado Chasers!’

‘And we are not afraid!’
we all screamed with him.

At that moment the wind bellowed against us, and we were flattened straight onto the ground. I tried to cling onto the grass but it gave way in my hands, the soil scattering and soaring through the air towards the storm. We were being dragged towards it.

‘I can’t hold on!’
I cried.

A hand grabbed mine. I looked up. Pete was clutching a rock that lay at the cave entrance, and was holding onto Ceri. Orlaith held onto one of Ceri’s leg braces with one hand and Callum with the other, who held onto me.

And then I realised that I was being lifted straight off the ground, and so were the others, trailing in a line
from Pete like a kite in the wind. The world seemed to turn upside down, and the force of it crushed us from all sides, spinning us around and around and pressing against us. Thunder and lightning exploded above us. It was like the world was breaking apart.