Page 6 of Bannerless (The Bannerless Saga 1)

She looked pleadingly at Tomas, who considered a moment.

“You’re a spark, kid,” he said, then to Peri, “I’ll look after her.”

Peri shook her head. “I don’t think—” But Enid had already scrambled up after him. “Fine, then. But don’t get in the way,” she ordered, grabbing a cloak to shove at her. Enid took it, nodding. “Is it okay for the rest of us to come out?” Peri called to the investigators.

One of them looked into the sky and said, “Give it another hour.”

“Right. Enid, be careful.”

“I will.”

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Tomas had been training to be an investigator for the last couple of years. Enid still wasn’t used to seeing him in the brown uniform. He looked almost sinister wearing it; he didn’t smile as much. He wore it now because the other investigators seemed to think they needed the authority. In a disaster, they needed people to follow orders, and the uniform increased the chances of that.

This wouldn’t be the last time Enid followed Tomas on an investigation, but she didn’t know that then.

The rain had turned everything to mud: the garden, the pasture, and the paths between houses—all of it had become a soupy mess, melted brown earth slipping under their feet, a stink of rain and rot rising up. Some of the fencing around the household grounds had blown over. Branches on the big cottonwood in back had broken off, and now hung on by naked strips of torn wood. Cleaning this up was going to take weeks. The plants and vines she’d worked so hard to shore up were all ripped and drowned. Rain still fell, but it seemed tired now. It would have been a pleasant drizzle, if it hadn’t just followed a typhoon. Enid took a big breath of wet air, which smelled strongly of dirt and ozone, but was still fresher than the close stink of heat and bodies in the cellar.

They had a solar car still charged up; Enid perched in the back among the tools they’d brought: ropes, hooks, crowbars, shovels, a first aid kit. Things for digging, breaking, rescuing, and she wondered what they expected to find. She also kept very quiet, surprised that they were letting her come on the trip and determined not to get in the way. To actually be useful. Small price to pay for getting to see what all this was about.

One of the affected households had gotten a runner out to Haven to get help. The investigators had been sheltered at the clinic; one of them was a medic as well. They set out as soon as the rain let up. Still, several hours had passed. Things could have gotten much worse in that time.

After bouncing and jolting over rutted, washed-out roads, slipping in mud, nearly stalling out in places where the road had washed out entirely, the solar car ran out of battery halfway to the plain where the households of Ant Farm and Potter were located. The adults seemed to expect that, merely collecting the gear and setting out on foot. Enid carried coils of rope over her shoulder and hugged the first aid bag to her chest. A lane branched off, emerged from a copse of trees, and from there they looked out onto a wide field.

Plenty and the rest of Haven had been waterlogged and roughed up. But Potter, the first of the households they came to, was shattered. A windmill lay on its side; trees had fallen, tangled roots reaching to the sky and dripping mud. The first plank-board cottage they came upon had completely fallen over. Clothes and pots and glass and furniture lay scattered among broken wood, as if some giant had come and smashed the thing with a hand.

“They didn’t have a cellar,” the bearded investigator said despairingly.

“What did this?” she asked, awestruck.

“Tornado,” Tomas answered simply. While Enid might have known the definition of a tornado, understood the concept of one—a great funnel of wind bridging earth and sky, generated by colliding storm fronts—she had no idea what that meant in reality. What had all this looked like while it was happening? What had the howl of wind sounded like?

The household had two other buildings: a workhouse and a small barn for goats and chickens. The workhouse, little more than a shed, was smashed and blown across half a pasture. The barn was still mostly standing, and they found four survivors there, three adults and a kid of about ten, soaked and huddled together under the wall that had only fallen halfway in.

“Bret and Smoke, did you find them? Did you find them?” one of the survivors demanded as Tomas and the others coaxed them out of their hiding place. They stood blinking into the pale sky, like new chicks.

Since they didn’t have a cellar, they had fled to a nearby ravine for shelter—as low and as close to underground as they could get when the worst of the storm cell had passed overhead. But Smoke had stayed behind to save a few things from the house, fetch water and supplies they would need while they hid, as well as knives and tools that would be difficult to replace. After the howling winds had passed by, the others returned to find the cottage smashed. Bret had urged them to stay sheltered in the remains of the barn while he went to check on their neighbors and then go to Haven for help. He was still at the clinic, his household-mates were relieved to hear. But they hadn’t found Smoke.

While the medic sat with the survivors, tending small wounds and shock, the investigators started a search. Enid helped pick through the cottage’s wreckage. Systematically, starting at one end and working through it together, they turned over boards, broke through walls with the crowbars. The thing hardly seemed like a h

ouse anymore, even when she came across an intact clay vase, still with a soggy flower nestled inside. A rag doll. A woven blanket, matted with mud. A sodden mop of feathers that turned out to be a dead chicken.

“Here!” Tomas called finally, and Enid and the other investigator ran over.

Tomas had broken through a wall to find a body. He knelt to touch it, but with a lack of urgency. Part of Enid told her to hold back, that she didn’t need to see this. She didn’t want to—she should never have come. But she’d wanted to come, she was here—she should see it all.

Caught up in broken boards, the body was of a youngish man, tan skin gone ashen. Half his shirt was torn off, along with the skin underneath it, a great gash across his chest, but rain had washed the blood away. He had shoulder-length black hair and the start of a beard. His eyes were closed, one hand clenched around a hammer.

“Well,” the other investigator muttered. “That’s that, then.”

“Was it blood loss that got him?” Tomas asked.

The older man shook his head. “There’s a wound on the skull, here. Probably a combination of things, when the house came down on him. He shouldn’t have gone back.” He shook his head. “You want to tell them, or should I?”

Tomas answered, “Which would you prefer?”

“I think I’d rather untangle this guy here, if that’s all right.”

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