He joined her at the vis-screen and for a few minutes they stared out as the sky grew darker. Winds buffeted the train. Then the rain started, lashing the roof with a drumming sound. Sheets of grey moved across the vast plains on either side of them, waving through the sparse grass and kicking up dust where land was too dry to maintain much plant life.
It grew so dark that Byron turned on a small stained-glass lamp on the piano. She took a red velvet seat by the vis-screen, watching the storm develop outside.
Part of the cloud off the right side of the train began to spiral downward in a thick funnel. A matching funnel rose up from the ground, and for a moment she thought they would meet. A crack of thunder shook the walls of the train. The cloud dissipated before the funnels touched. Then slightly to the left, another part of the cloud dipped down, churning. Lightning flashed overhead. A second funnel churned up to meet the one from the ground, brown dirt spiraling. The two funnels met, twisting and gaining velocity and diameter, grinding along the prairie.
“Tornado,” she breathed, watching to see which direction it would move. It churned and tunneled toward them, and H124 stood, alarmed. Then a second funnel cloud touched down just to the right of the first. It spiraled and shifted, great clouds of dirt shooting up into its mass.
“Halo?” Byron said from the other window. “This doesn’t look good.”
She went to him, kneeling on the seat in front of the other vis-screen, seeing three more funnel clouds touching down along the horizon. They spun and churned, sometimes moving toward each other, at other times parting and digging up paths in opposite directions.
As she watched, two of the funnel clouds dissipated, and a third dwindled to a narrow twister. Suddenly the two returned with renewed fury, churning due south, heading straight for them. She felt the train accelerate and imagined Grant in the engine compartment, pushing the Big Worm faster to try to outrun the storm.
But two funnel clouds closed in from the north, gaining speed, their bases growing wider and wider until they were massive black and grey funnels of charcoal. One grew so close she could see the debris cloud circling on the outside of the main funnel. Pieces of old wood, rusted metal sheets—the debris of a long-gone civilization picked up and hurled through the sky like a giant swinging a morning star. For a moment she thought the funnel might miss the train. Grant had picked up considerable speed, and the tornado shifted directions, moving parallel to the track for a solid fifteen seconds. But then it changed course again, its bottom twisting and bending, churning up earth on a direct collision course with them.
Outside, a loud reverberation thundered above the roar of the train’s engine, like another train was barreling down on them.
The train shuddered, the metal groaning like a living thing. “It’s going to hit us!” she cried, bracing herself against the back of a couch.
As it churned past their car, the debris cloud narrowly missing them, she heard impacts on the train’s exterior. Metal pinging against metal. Dull thunks of wood striking the armor. On the vis-screen, the debris cloud wound closer and closer to them. Then it moved slightly off, giving them some breathing room. It had barely missed them. The real gravity of the situation hit H124. It had missed their car, but was heading straight back where the A14 stood exposed on the cargo platform.
“We have to move to the rear of the train!” she shouted to Byron above the roar of the storm. The engine thundered, pushed to its limits. “It could hit the A14!”
She raced to the rear of the dining car, pressing the door control there. It whooshed open, and she ran through the dining car, finding Raven at the far end, already pushing through to the next car with Dirk.
“If that thing hits the A14, this whole mission will have been for nothing!” Raven yelled, echoing her thoughts.
They reached the cargo car. Outside they could hear scraping and crashing as objects slammed into the side of the train. The car groaned, and H124 felt its weight shift. Suddenly the floor grew unsteady and lurched up at the far end. The tornado was going to pull them right off the tracks, A14 and all.
Chapter 6
H124 stepped into the space between the cargo car and its neighbor. At once her hair pulled upward, whipping around in the wind. Her ears popped. Raven emerged, his long hair instantly drenched, wet tendrils lashing out. She peered up at the ladder leading to the cargo platform. “What do we do?” she yelled over the roar of the tornadoes.
“We have to check on it,” Raven called back.
Behind them Byron and Dirk stood in the doorway, rain soaking their faces. Raven gripped the ladder on the cargo car and climbed, his shirt buffeting his back as the wind tore at it. Once his boots cleared the ladder, H124 climbed up. As soon as her head crested the top of the car, she gasped. The debris cloud of the funnel was too close. She could see it churning just a few feet from the train, jagged pieces of metal whipping around at tremendous velocity, along with rocks and rusted debris. One of the securing chains had snapped off the A14 and now whipped around in the wind, lashing out. The A14 clattered on the platform, the strength of the tornado exerting tremendous force on it, trying to draw it near the edge of the train.
The funnel cloud angled away from them, but a second tornado had touched down, moving on a collision course with the train.
“If we could just get that chain refastened!” Raven called out in the wind. A brilliant flash of lightning lit up the dark afternoon, and a second later an ear-splitting crack of thunder rent the sky. Between the jarring motion of the train and the wind, H124 could barely stay standing. She went down on one knee to steady herself as Byron and Dirk climbed over the top of the ladder and joined them. She pointed out the broken securing chain just as a second one tore loose.
Now the A14 rattled on the platform, its wings tipping back and forth, and with a jarring rend of metal, it moved a foot toward the tornado, sliding on the platform.
Raven studied the flapping motion of the chain, and with a decisive strike lashed out his hand and grabbed it midair. He held onto it, pulling it taut. As he scanned the platform for the ring to attach it to, H124 saw that it had been snapped off at its base. Only the broken stem of the bolt remained.
“We’ll have to replace it!” she yelled over the din.
“This one, too!” Byron shouted, pointing at another snapped off connector ring. He stood in front of a second whipping chain, waiting to seize it when he saw the opportunity. But it flapped around violently, and more than a few times it almost slashed him across the torso.
“I’ll get more rings!” Dirk shouted, returning to the ladder and climbing down out of sight.
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