Lucky Forever - Cee Bowerman Page 0,57
off the horse and she ran to join the other one at the fence, both of them agitated by the weather now. I took her hand to run inside the barn when all the other horses rushed out in a line. I realized that Lexi and Leia must have opened the stall doors on their way to the cellar, so I let go of Sierra’s hand and ran to open the gate for them to escape if they needed to.
I grabbed Sierra’s free hand and ran with her toward the barn just as the rain stopped and so did the wind. It was deadly quiet all of the sudden, the only sound was the horses hooves as they ran out the open gate. I took a second to look over my shoulder right before we headed inside and saw a funnel drop down onto the field across the road from us.
“Oh, my God!” Sierra screamed from beside me, right before I jerked her into the barn and ran for the open door of the shelter.
I urged Sierra down the steps ahead of me, glad to see that Leia had already turned on the lamps we kept down there just for this purpose. I stepped down onto the ladder as I reached over to grab the metal door. When I glanced back out the open barn doors, I saw that the funnel was growing and it looked like it was headed straight for us.
“Daddy!” Leia cried as I slammed the door over my head and spun the wheel to seal us inside. I jumped down to the concrete floor and Leia threw herself at me. “Oh, my God, I was so scared.”
“It’s alright, pumpkin,” I whispered. “We’re all okay now.”
Lexi was sobbing in Sierra’s arms and I held Leia to me as I moved closer to them and pulled them into my arms.
After a minute or two, I pulled back and urged them to sit on the benches that lined the walls on either side of our shelter.
“Looks like we’re going to be eating our dinner inside after all,” I tried to joke. The girls were still sniffling, but their crying had stopped. They were sitting on each side of Sierra now with her arms around them. “Let me get the scanner turned on and we can see what’s going on.”
“That was terrifying. And beautiful,” Sierra admitted. “But it was a lot more terrifying than it was beautiful. Jesus, I can’t catch my breath.”
“It’s okay, baby, just take some slow breaths. We’re safe down here, we’ll figure out what’s happening around us, have some snacks, and deal with whatever happened up there in a bit,” I told her as I reached for the scanner we kept on the shelf.
I popped the batteries into the back and it instantly started squawking. The automated voice warning everyone to take shelter immediately echoed through the concrete room causing Lexi to start sobbing again.
“You have your phone on you?” I asked Sierra. She shook her head. “That’s okay, the radio is enough.”
“Is it going to take us up in the sky?” Lexi whispered.
“No, baby,” I bit my lip so I didn’t laugh at her question. “That only happens on television and movies. We’re underground. And if it decided to take the barn above us, we would have already heard it happen. My guess is that it either went back up or it turned and missed us.”
“How long do we stay down here?” Sierra asked.
“Once the coast is clear, the radio will come on with the regular guy at the station. We’ll give it a little more time and then I’ll open the door.”
Leia jumped when the handheld radio in her lap beeped twice. Before she could pick it up I heard Grunt’s voice crackle through.
“Check in, we’re clear here, out.”
“I’m good,” Nicole chimed in.
“Safe here,” Leia held the button down and talked before she released it.
“I just went up and the sky is clear,” Grunt told us. “Safe to come out. I have nine horses in my backyard that belong to you guys.”
Lexi’s hand went over her mouth in relief that the horses were there together.
I took the radio from Leia and asked Grunt, “Are any of them injured, over.”
“Fuck if I know!” Grunt said from the radio. “There’s a goddamn turkey that tried to bite me, I can tell you that.”
The four of us laughed, in relief and at Grunt’s angry words, and Sierra hugged the girls close to her sides before she got