Chapter Seven
Five months earlier
The first tornado touched down between the county lines. It triggered one of the two sirens in Seven Roads to blare. Rose barely heard the commotion. She was with Doc Ernest in the hospital, looking at the good doctor’s phone alongside Doc-Ernest-in-training, Lily.
“I knew they said the weather was going to get bad, but I didn’t think we’d get tornadoes on top of flash flooding,” Lily said to her mother. Doc Ernest simply shrugged.
“We had a hurricane hit us all the way here a few years back and no one predicted that would rock us like it did,” she pointed out. “Like people, in the end predicting weather seems to come down to fate.”
Rose, standing between them in plain clothes, didn’t know about the fate part but she agreed that being caught off guard by the difference in a weather forecast and the actual weather that showed up wasn’t so rare.
The severity had been slightly jarring, though. If she had known it would turn out like this, she would have spent her off time at home and not taken the drive out across the county.
Rose snaked her hand around to Doc Ernest’s phone and turned the volume up.
She had known the woman since they were toddlers—she’d actually babysat the college-age Lily back when the girl was small.
That wasn’t all that uncommon for the career locals of Seven Roads.
They were born together, grew up together and aged together.
They also attended all the big events together, whether they wanted to or not.
Price had once called it trauma bonding. Sometimes, Rose didn’t disagree.
“It sounds like this tornado is heading away from here and town. Also—given the debris tracker…” Rose tilted her head a little as the meteorologist tracked the radar live.
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s messing up any houses or businesses.
That’s mostly field and trees up until County Road 72.
Hopefully it winds down before it gets to the roads. ”
Doc Ernest and Mini Doc Ernest nodded in agreement. They had each been through a tornado or two before. There was no reason to panic until there was a reason to panic.
“I still bet your sheriff is getting a call or two,” the older woman told Rose.
“That flooding is probably washing out Mrs. Glenn’s driveway and front lawn.
That, plus the sirens, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she hadn’t already sounded her own alarms. That woman could be sitting dry and safe and she’s still going to call for one of McCoy County’s finest to come keep her company. ”
“That’s only because her no-good son up and left her alone after he skipped town with his mistress,” Lily pointed out. “I’d be calling for company too if I was her.”
Her mother gave her the side-eye.
“Gossip doesn’t become you, Miss Ernest. Not even the juicy kind.”
Lily disagreed and the two devolved into a mother-daughter bickering. Rose took the opportunity to step away. She considered calling the sheriff to see if he did in fact need some help before Price’s ID popped up on the phone instead.
“Hey, Wildcard, are you at home relaxing?” Price said in lieu of a greeting. He was obviously outside. The wind tore through his speakers. Rose pulled the phone away from her ear a little.
“No, I came out to eat with Doc Ernest for lunch at the—”
“Are you at the hospital?” he interrupted, volume going up a few notches.
Rose nodded to no one.
“Yeah. I got here before the weather went wonky. Why?”
“This is fate, I tell you what,” Price said. “We got a call for help from those Camden people and, wouldn’t you know it, they’re outside of the hospital’s new research annex.”
There was that talk of fate again. Though the coincidence was there. The research annex was on the back end of the hospital’s lot, a quick drive on a service road away from where she was now.
It was surprising to Rose that the “Camden people”—the staff running the drug trials for Camden Pharmaceuticals—were asking for help.
The research annex had received all kinds of grants and funding to become a gem-in-the-wild, top-notch building.
The staff inside had been rumored to have all glowing résumés too.
Price, however, was quick to explain the reason why the building’s integrity didn’t matter.
“Those workers are all from up North and none of them know how to handle tornado weather,” he continued.
“So, instead of hunkering down, they panicked when they heard the first of the sirens start up. They tried to take their shuttle up to the hospital. Now it sounds like they got stranded on the road that runs between the annex and the county.”
Rose gave a silent wave to the doc and her daughter and headed for the elevators.
“Are there any injuries?”
Rose could bring help to them if needed, but Price told her no.
“Nope, but there are eleven of them. And it sounds like they’re panicking.
The bus blew a tire and that put them snug in a ditch.
We had a car headed that way, but the flooding is slowing us down.
I called on the off chance you were wild enough to be driving around in this weather.
And look at this, you’re now definitely the one closest to them. Is your badge on you?”
Rose confirmed it was in her car. When she was buckled inside a minute later, she threw the lanyard it was on around her neck.
“One of us should be to y’all soon,” Price said as they were ending the call. “Stay safe, Wildcard. And watch the weather. The air still feels weird.”
They didn’t know how ominous those words would later become. Instead, the call dropped, and Rose drove the service road attached at the back of the lot and headed toward the new, fancy, research annex.
She didn’t make it far without stopping.
There were only two ways to get to the high-tech annex—the road from the hospital and the road from the county.
Both converged for a three-way stop surrounded by trees.
Rose understood why the bus had been stranded on the road leading to the hospital.
There was a tree down, blocking the road near the three-way.
She stopped her car and jumped out to survey the damage.
The road was almost impassable, completely so for a bus.
For her old car? Rose decided she could make it work.
And she did. Slowly and with great caution, she maneuvered the flooded shoulder until she cleared the debris.
The parking lot of the annex hadn’t fared too much better.
It was partially flooded and mostly covered in leaves and branches that had been stripped from the surrounding trees.
There was no bus, so she backtracked and went the only direction she could.
The road to the county was as country as they came.
Dirt and gravel and underbrush creeping out.
Trees lining the sides and some old fence, from the property of an owner who had long since passed on, scattered between.
Not exactly a wooded area but enough oaks to shade the road even when the sun was in the sky.
Rose knew the road.
The one she stared at now was unrecognizable.
The hours of rain had seemed to collect solely in this area. She could only see patches of the dirt and gravel beneath the water. She bet that was why the bus had driven where it shouldn’t have. Instead of being within the lanes, it was on the shoulder, sitting at an odd angle.
The back emergency door was open and facing her.
That was when she first saw Lloyd Harrison.
Tall, thin, and wearing an outfit that seemed to come right out of a movie—white lab coat, comically large ID badge and booties still wrapped around the bottoms of his shoes—he looked nothing but flustered as he yelled out to Rose when she stepped out onto the only part of the road that hadn’t yet been submerged.
“We can’t move,” he cried, his voice carrying through the wind. “Our front tire blew, and we can’t drive out of whatever we’re stuck in!”
Rose assumed he had already spotted her badge hanging around her neck but motioned to it all the same.
“I’m a deputy with the McCoy County Sheriff’s Department,” she yelled out. “I’m here to help! Right now, let’s sit tight and figure—”
Rose’s words were strangled by a sound that made her blood run cold.
A tornado siren.
It tore through the air with an eerie echo.
Screams exploded from the bus.
“Keep calm,” she instructed. “Just because it’s going off doesn’t mean it’s near us! It just means it’s in the county.”
To help her point, Rose pulled her phone up and went to the local weather station’s social media page.
She clicked on their meteorologist’s live feed, ready to prove to the panicked people on the bus that they had time to make good decisions.
That this new threat was scary, but not something they had to deal with themselves.
The meteorologist’s face filled her screen, focused and commanding, a map of McCoy County beneath his waving arms.
He spoke and Rose heard him, yet, months later, but she still wouldn’t remember what he actually said. Instead, all her attention had stuck to the red area on the map he seemed to be so concerned about.
It turned out Rose was wrong.
It looked like they didn’t have much time to make good decisions at all.
So she worked with what she had.
Rose flung herself back into the car and hit the gas.
Her old car lurched into the rushing floodwaters with absolute obedience.
If it had been higher, she couldn’t have done it.
And if she hadn’t been so small herself, rolling down the driver’s-side window and crawling up onto the roof of her car would have been harder.
As it was, she managed both actions in rapid succession.
The metal roof held sturdy as she found her balance and turned to face a wide-eyed Lloyd Harrison.
Now there was only the space of her hood between her and him at the back emergency exit.
Rose kept her voice as calm as possible. She also made it as loud as possible too.