Free The Hurricane by Hugh Howey Page A

was an iPod , he thought to himself, it would be intuitive.
    He got the dial moving, the digital numbers ticking down,
while he put one earbud in. Carlton patted his shoulder and pointed to the
floor. Daniel sat, and Carlton sat down beside him, reaching for the other
dangling earbud.
    “You mind?” he asked.
    Daniel waved his hand.
    “That’s gross,” Zola said, as Carlton leaned close and
popped the loose bud into his ear.
    Daniel was getting nothing but static. He dialed into the
NPR frequency, and there was something there, but it was too faint to make out.
He started tapping through the numbers, one decimal at a time, while Zola and
his mom dug out bottles of water and passed them around.
    “I shoulda charged this thing up,” Daniel said, noting the
quarter charge on the battery.
    “Wait. Go back,” Carlton said.
    Daniel went up two decimal points. There was a voice behind
a curtain of static.
    “I think that’s a Charleston station,” Carlton said,
pointing toward Daniel’s display.
    “Everyone be quiet,” Daniel said.
    He and Carlton strained to hear.
    ••••
    “What did they say?”
    Zola dug into a box of cheerios and crammed a few into her
mouth. Daniel took a swig of water. Now that he knew the house was open to the
elements, the sound of the wind upstairs seemed closer and more potent.
    “It’s all they’re talking about, of course.” Daniel looked
to Carlton. “Did they say winds up to a hundred forty?”
    “That’s what it sounded like to me.” His stepdad bore a
grave expression.
    “Where’s the storm centered?” his mom asked.
    “It was all in relation to Charleston,” Daniel said. He
wrapped the buds around the Zune and tucked it into his pocket, saving the
battery.
    “I think it’s going to hit just south of us. Maybe right on
top of us,” Carlton said. “They were saying sixty miles south of Charleston.”
    “How far away? Is the worst over?”
    “It had made landfall,” Daniel said, “so it can’t be much longer.”
    “It could get worse before it gets better,” Carlton
cautioned.
    “When can I go see my room?” Zola asked. “Oh my god, my new
laptop is up there! We’re responsible for those!”
    “Nobody’s going upstairs,” their mom said. “And the school
will get you a new laptop if anything happens to that one.”
    Zola looked nearly in tears. She dropped the fistful of
cheerios in her hand back into the box and shoved the box away from herself.
    “How long will that radio last?” Daniel’s mom asked.
    “I dunno. A few hours or so. I’ve never run it all the way
down.”
    “If there’s nothing else we can do, or if you guys don’t
need to use the bathroom, we should probably get some sleep.” Their mom flipped
open her cellphone and glanced at the screen. “It’s almost four, so the sun
won’t be up for another two hours. I don’t want anyone moving around or
exploring before then.”
    “What will we do if another tree comes through here? Or if
the house falls down around us?” Daniel thought about images of demolished
homes on the weather channel, the piles of jumbled building material and
furniture that nobody could live through. He wondered what it would be like to
crawl their way outside in this mess only to search frantically for some place
to wait out the storm. Would they have to lie down in a ditch? Or was that for
tornados? Would they bang on a neighbor’s door like refugees, begging to be let
in? What if someone else all of a sudden banged on their door and said their house had been knocked over and now they had to find room for them and share
food and water?
    “This is the safest place to be right now,” his mom said.
She blew out one of the candles Carlton had just lit and rubbed her hand over
Daniel’s head. “You should try and get some sleep. It’ll make it go by faster.”
    Daniel nodded, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to sleep at
all. His heart was pounding from the adventure upstairs. The noise from