Free The Hurricane by Hugh Howey

said behind him.
    Daniel startled and nearly fainted. He felt Carlton’s hand
on his shoulder as his stepdad aimed his own light past and added it to
Daniel’s.
    “That’s the old oak out front,” Carlton said, more awe in
his voice than fear. “We need to get downstairs.”
    Daniel nodded his agreement. The two of them turned and
hurried back toward the stairs, the wrath of the storm outside threatening to
send another tree their way. The door to Zola’s room slammed shut as the wind
swept through the house. He and Carlton thundered down the steps, their lights
jouncing, their hands sliding along the railing, drowning out the scampering of
smaller, no less frightened feet up in the attic.

13
    “Dude, your room is toast.”
    Daniel and Carlton squeezed back into the bathroom, which
smelled sulfurous from freshly lit matches. Zola looked to Daniel, her face
pinched in confusion.
    “It was a pretty good sized tree,” Carlton told their mom.
    “What do you mean toast ?” Zola asked.
    “You’d be dead right now,” Daniel said. He didn’t say
it to torment, more out of shock and awe and from his pounding heart.
    “ Dead? ” Zola howled.
    “Daniel, don’t do that to your sister.”
    “There’re squirrels everywhere.”
    “Mom!”
    “Daniel Stillman!”
    “Everyone calm down,” Carlton said. He turned off his
flashlight and set it on the counter. Daniel’s mom was sitting on the edge of the
tub; his sister knelt on the floor amid a tangle of pillows and blankets. Her
eyes were wide and fixed on Carlton.
    “What happened?” she asked.
    Carlton lit another
candle. “A tree fell into the house,” he said. He looked to their
mother. “It went through the dormer in Zola’s room, but it looks like—”
    “There’re squirrels in my room?” Zola howled.
    Carlton showed her his palms. “Everything’s gonna be okay,”
he said, but Daniel knew he was just placating her. There was no way to know if
everything was going to be okay. How did they know where the storm was exactly?
It could still be miles away. The eye wall could be barreling right for them.
    “My Zune,” he said, shrugging off his backpack and setting
it down on the floor.
    “Is the house okay?” his mom asked.
    “It’s holding up the tree, but I’d say the worst of the
impact is long over.” Carlton paused. “The damage from the rain isn’t going to
be good.”
    “The insurance is up to date. I remember writing that check
just a few weeks ago. This wouldn’t qualify as flood damage would it?”
    “I don’t think so,” Carlton said. “I’m not sure.”
    Daniel dug in his bag for his Zune. It was yet another
humiliation in his life. All his friends had iPods, and every connector to
everything in the universe seemed to be designed for Apple’s ubiquitous device.
His aunt’s car even had an iPod dock, even though she didn’t own one.
She had bought him the Zune for Christmas, then asked him to plug it into her
car and play some of his favorite music. Daniel had to weasel his way out of
telling her she’d bought the wrong thing and had done his best to sound
grateful for the gift. He didn’t even like pulling it out in public and had
bought some white earbuds so it would look like an iPod if he kept it in his
pocket.
    But it did have an FM tuner, something many of the
iPods didn’t. Daniel had never used it before. He powered it up while Zola
begged Carlton for more details about her room. Their mom had to tell her that
she was most definitely not going up there to see for herself.
    “Does anyone know any FM stations?” Daniel asked. He
couldn’t personally name a single one. The rare times he listened to music in
the car, he just tapped the search button from one commercial to the next until
he found an actual tune.
    “NPR is ninety five point seven,” Carlton said. “I think one
of the AM stations has a duplicate signal on the FM range somewhere.”
    Daniel struggled to figure out how to adjust the frequency. If
it