The Drowning Game by LS Hawker

Author:LS Hawker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

THE FIRST THING I thought when I woke up staring at the sky, a wedge of brownish light at one end and black angry clouds at the other, was that I wanted a cigarette. I reached up to scratch my nose and came away with a handful of glass slivers and cuts. In fact, my hand was covered with blood.

I was trapped beneath a dead weight pinning my pelvis to the ground. I lifted my head. It was Petty, lying crosswise over me, her face in the mud.

With a jolt of terror-­fueled adrenaline, I reached forward and shoved, rolling her across my knees and feet, sending missiles of pain up my legs. She ended up on her back, her face clotted with blood and mud. She gasped a gulp of air and her eyes flew open as she sprang to her feet, looking around wildly.

“Dad?”

“Petty.” I got to my feet just as she charged at me. “Petty, it’s me. Dekker.”

She stopped and bent sideways, clutching her side and groaning. “What happened? I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.”

“Tornado,” I said. “We gotta get out of here.”

The tornado siren was still blaring in the distance. I turned in a circle and saw that the tornado had moved us a good fifty yards closer to Uncle Curt’s house, which was still standing, thank God. No doubt Uncle Curt and Roxanne had herded all the cops down into the tornado shelter. Their cruisers were still parked, undisturbed, in front of the house.

The tractor lay on its side ten yards away, the windshield and windows shattered, the metal twisted and crumpled like tinfoil. Its deformed shape gave me the shivers. Petty and I stared at each other in amazement.

We should be dead.

Petty ran toward the tractor and I ran after her. Now that I was up and moving, I felt specific pains. My ankle was the worst, but my right elbow and my neck hurt too.

“What are you doing?” I said.

She looked in what was left of the tractor. “Where is it?”

“Where is what?”

“The laptop.” She ran in ever widening circles. “The laptop!” Her tone was frantic.

“Never mind,” I said. “We’ve got to get out of here before the cops come out of Uncle Curt’s house.”

“I need that laptop!” she screamed.

“Why?”

“Stuff about my mom’s on there. I have to—­”

“No you don’t! We have to go! Now!” I grabbed her arm and made her walk alongside me, and she only fought me a little bit.

“I’ll call Uncle Curt and tell him to go look for it.” Though I knew it was probably destroyed anyway.

I patted my pocket. “Shit,” I said. “My cell phone’s gone.”

Petty didn’t respond.

We trotted toward the road, me glancing over my shoulder at Uncle Curt’s house every few feet. To my heightened senses, everything appeared sharp and vivid, as if I were looking through a magnifying glass. The red of the tractor. The silver edges of the still-­morphing black clouds. The green of the clumpy grass.

I reached into my shirt pocket for a smoke and pulled out the waterlogged and squashed pack.

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