Hugh Howey - The Hurricane

A billion faces were pointed his way, but Daniel saw his sister’s first. The look of raw horror on her face, of absolute disgust, gave Daniel a fever. He wilted. The laughter was background noise to the knowledge that he’d never be able to look at her or ever talk to her for the rest of his life. He wondered how that was going to work out for the next year. He would have to run away from home and skip college. He was now homeless.

Daniel turned and ran toward the front door, his panic pure comedic gold for the others. Cellphones flashed as they captured the moment for all eternity. Daniel fumbled with the door, his mind already racing with how many Facebook status updates he was about to become the featured attraction of. He would never be able to go to school again. He would have to move. Some other family would have to adopt him. His life as he knew it was over.

He finally got the fancy lever on the door figured out, and a gust of air forced it open. The door flew out of Daniel’s hands and slammed into the small table in the foyer, seeming as if his rage had done the damage. Daniel pushed out into the wind, leaving the blasted thing open, and looked to his phone again, hoping Hunter would be able to come and get him immediately. His brother was gonna kill him for this.

A branch overhead snapped in the breeze. Kids along the driveway were yipping and yelling over the howling wind, clutching their hair and purses. Daniel stood there, waiting for a bar to appear on his cellphone, when a flash of blue lights appeared down the cul-de-sac. A police car rolled up to put an end to the worst party of Daniel’s brief life.

Two cops got out, cones of bright white light emanating from their hands. The flashlights spun over the party scene and bobbed their way toward the front door. Daniel froze on the stoop. Inside, he could hear the laughter and fun disintegrate into panicked curses. The stomping of running feet melded with the bass thumps. Faces appeared in parted blinds. Plastic cups rattled on hardwood.

“What’s your name, son?”

A searchlight shone in Daniel’s eyes.

“Daniel Stillman,” he blurted out.

He was naked on Facebook. He was going to jail. His mother would have to get witch doctors to resurrect him, so she could kill him after he had killed himself.

The officer squeezed a device on his shoulder. “We’ve got the boy,” he said, which puzzled the hell out of Daniel.

“Where’s your sister?” the cop asked him. The other cop banged on the open door before barging in. Daniel heard him shouting for the music to be turned off, which it quickly was. With the bass gone, the howling wind became clearer and louder. Upstairs, there was the thunder of frightened kids scampering.

“She’s inside, I think.”

“Stay here,” the officer said.

“Is something wrong?” Daniel didn’t know why, but he had a sudden pang of fear that something bad had happened to his mom. Why were the officers there for him, specifically?

More blue lights pulled up in the cul-de-sac. Daniel could barely hear the thump of their car doors before more flashlights jounced through the swirling wind and toward the house. He waited on the stoop while cars were cranked, kids piling into vehicles, officers shining lights on faces so that they seemed to hover over the ground, bodiless. A complex weave and shuffle of parked cars began, of kids checked for varying levels of sobriety, of two boys led off to one of the police cars. Someone drunkenly tried to crank their car twice, setting off a buzzing rattle. Jeremy Stevens’s party was disintegrating, but with something like a controlled chaos. Like a forced evacuation.

“Daniel!”

He turned to see Roby and Jada sliding out the front door around a cluster of other kids.

“What the hell?” Daniel asked. His mind was still spinning with panic, embarrassment, and confusion.

“They’re saying the storm turned, that we need to get home. C’mon, Jada’s gonna drop you—”

“I can’t.” Daniel shook his head. “Zola’s here, and the cops are looking for her. They told me to stay.”

“The cops are looking for you ?” Jada asked.

Daniel noticed for the first time that two of her buttons were fastened to the wrong holes, giving her shirt a large, open wrinkle. A wave of jealousy crashed over all the other emotions he was feeling.

“Maybe your parents sent for you,” Roby said. He looked out to the end of the cul-de-sac. “They seem more interested in getting us home safely than busting up the party.”

Daniel saw that he was right. His mom’s car was with Hunter, his stepdad’s in the shop, so he had to—

He fumbled in his pocket for his phone. “I’ve gotta tell Hunter,” he said. Daniel vaguely recalled that this was why he’d come outside to begin with. He watched his empty bars, waiting for them to return.

“I’ve got nothing,” Roby said, looking at his own phone.

A branch snapped off up in the trees and crashed into the yard. It sounded even worse and closer for not being able to see it.

“Let’s get out of here,” Jada said, tugging on Roby’s arm.

“You coming?” Roby asked.

Daniel looked back toward the front door. “I can’t, man. I’ve gotta wait for Zola.” Daniel looked down at his backwards shirt, the smell of beer ripe from his spill. “I’m so fucked,” he said.

“I’ll text you as soon as my cell works.”

Jada pulled Roby down Jeremy Stevens’s front steps.

“You guys be careful!” Daniel hollered after them. He shielded his eyes as a blustery gust churned up the dirt and sandy gravel trapped in the pocket of brick by the front door. More people spilled out and filed past, most of them holding and cursing their cell phones, the fun and excitement drained out of the air, leaving just the howling wind to chase them all home.

“I guess my mom called you?”

Daniel sat in the front seat of the squad car. He faced the side window as he spoke to keep his beer breath from puffing over toward the cop. Zola sat in the back, snapping her phone’s keyboard open and shut, over and over.

“I’m friends with your dad,” the cop said. “We had calls from quite a few concerned parents, actually, so I was heading this way anyhow.”

“You know my dad?” Daniel asked. He somehow doubted that, unless fingerprinting had been involved.

“Stepdad. Sorry.” The cop glanced over at him. Daniel saw it in the reflection of the window. “Carlton and I went to school together.”

“Why won’t my phone work?” Zola asked. Daniel turned and saw her leaning forward, her fingers wrapped around the open window of the Plexiglas barrier rising up from behind the seat.

“One of the towers lost power, and there’s too much demand—” The officer glanced back at Zola. “There’s a ton of people trying to make calls all at once. Don’t worry, they’re working on it.”

“So the storm’s heading this way?”

Daniel peered through the windshield at the dimly lit trees bending on the sides of the road. Branches and leaves were already scattered along the shoulder and on the pavement ahead. It looked like any one of the dozen tropical storms and near-misses he’d seen while growing up in Beaufort. The city hadn’t had a direct hit since the fifties, hadn’t had a major pass since Hugo. This was supposed to be just another windy weekend in an unusually banal hurricane season. Downed trees and lots of rain and excellent surf—

“It looks like it’s heading right for us,” the officer said. “As soon as I drop you two off, I’m hunkering down with my family. Lots of folk are trying to evacuate, but it’s too late to do that safely. The interstate is jammed.”