The Four Winds

“Mom!” Loreda screamed. “What’s happening?”

Elsa couldn’t see her daughter; that was how dark it was. She couldn’t see her own hands.

Tony slammed the door shut behind them. “Rose, help me with the windows.”

“Loreda,” Elsa yelled. “Put on your gas mask. Get to the kitchen. Sit under the table.”

“But—”

“Go,” Elsa said to the daughter she couldn’t see.

Elsa and Rose felt their way from room to room, closing the windows and covering them and pressing newspapers and oilcloth in every crack and crevice.

They kept their supplies—Vaseline, sponges, bandannas—in a basket in the kitchen. Elsa carried it through the inky dark and found a flashlight, clicked it on.

Nothing. Just a click.

“Is it on?” Rose asked, coughing.

“Who knows?” Elsa said.

“We need to get under the table, drape it with wet sheets,” Rose said.

Something hit the house hard, a terrible thwack. Window glass shattered in a series of loud cracks and clattered to the floor.

The front door was ripped open. The swirling, biting black monster of a storm whooshed inside, hitting so hard Rose stumbled sideways. Tony raced over to shut the door again, and threw the bolt shut.

They found the buckets they kept filled with water in the kitchen and soaked some sheets to drape over the table and then dampened sponges and pressed them to their faces, breathing hard through them.

Elsa heard Loreda breathing heavily through the gas mask. She crawled forward, found the kitchen table. Pushing chairs aside, she crawled underneath it.

“I’m here, Loreda,” she said, reaching out.

Elsa felt Loreda take her hand. They were sitting together, side by side, but couldn’t see each other. Thank God Ant wasn’t here.

Rose and Tony squeezed in under the table, past the draping of wet sheets.

Elsa held her daughter close as boards were ripped away and windows broke.

The walls shook so hard it seemed the house would shatter.

Suddenly it was freezing.

* * *

ELSA WOKE TO SILENCE; in it, she heard the wheezing cant of Loreda’s labored breathing through the gas mask. Then, a scuttling sound—a mouse, probably—coming out of hiding, scurrying over the floor.

She pulled down her crusty, dirt-filled bandanna and peeled away the muddy sponge she’d been breathing through. Her first unprotected breath hurt all the way down her throat and into the pit of her gnawing, empty stomach.

She opened her eyes. Grit scraped her eyeballs.

Dirt blurred her vision, but she could see the dirty sheets draped around them, and her family, tucked in close to one another. Whatever it was, it was over.

She coughed and spat out a blob of blackish-gray dirt that was as thick and as long as a pencil nub. “Loreda? Rose? Tony? Is everyone okay?”

Loreda opened her eyes. “Yeah.” The gas mask turned her voice raspy and monstrous.

Tony slowly lowered his bandanna.