Martha hurried to the bottom of the stairs and aimed her flashlight upward. The bulkhead doors were flexing, the hinges screamed, wind whistled through the cracks like a high, angry scream.
"Get down!" Martha shouted. "Leave it! The inside door! Use the inside door!"
Dean didn't move fast enough. None of them did. Because in that split second, the storm decided to take what it wanted.
The bulkhead ripped open. A blast of air exploded down the stairwell, snuffing the flashlight beam into wild jitter. Dust and leaves and bits of something sharp whipped into the basement like a thrown fist.
People screamed. Helmets hit the floor. Someone's shoulder slammed into Martha's chest and she stumbled back. The roar outside turned into something closer, heavier, like the tornado had leaned down and was breathing right into the opening.
"Inside door!" Martha screamed, voice raw.
Dean lunged down the steps, grabbed the reinforced steel door at the bottom, and heaved it shut. Two riders threw their weight into it with him. The door slammed with a metallic boom that rang through the room like a bell.
The latch didn't catch. Martha's breath stopped. The door shuddered as pressure hit it from above, trying to force it open like the storm had fingers. Dean's face went tight, veins standing out on his neck.
One of the riders planted his boots and pushed harder, teeth bared. Martha shoved past bodies, reached for the sliding bolt her husband had welded on years ago, and yanked it across with both hands. Metal scraped metal.
The bolt dropped into place. For half a second, everything held. Then the entire basement vibrated as the tornado arrived on top of them, and the steel door bucked like it wanted to tear free anyway.
The steel door held, but it didn't feel like safety. It felt like a fistfight with the sky, everyone leaning their weight into a single seam of metal while the whole world tried to pry it open.
The basement shook so hard the shelves rattled like teeth. Mason jars chimed against each other. A can rolled off a stack, clanged, and disappeared into the dark.
The air changed, sharp and dusty, like plaster had been ground into powder above them. Somewhere overhead, wood cracked with a long, sickening snap that made several riders flinch as one. Martha kept the flashlight low to save the batteries, its beam wobbling across boots and knees and frightened eyes.
"Stay down," she ordered. "Nobody stands. If you're near the door, you hold steady. If you can't hold steady, you get out of the way."
Dean didn't answer. He couldn't. He had one shoulder jammed into the steel, his hands gripping the frame, jaw clenched like he was biting down on pain.
Two riders braced beside him, faces tight, boots skidding on concrete as the door bucked again. A rider in the middle of the room, thin, younger, with a fresh-looking patch, started to rise on instinct.
"Sit," Martha snapped.
He froze, then sat so hard he nearly fell backward. The roar above them swelled to a pitch that didn't sound natural. It wasn't just wind. It was everything the wind had stolen, boards, shingles, gravel, maybe pieces of somebody's fence, whipping around at impossible speed.
It screamed against the foundation. It punched the house. It dragged something heavy across the yard with a grinding scrape that went on and on until it ended in a crash that made the basement lights, already dead, flicker in their broken sockets like they were trying to come back out of fear.
The older man with the wrapped knee whispered, "Jesus."
A woman rider near him reached out and grabbed his hand. Not romantic, not dramatic, just human. Their fingers locked like anchors.
Martha forced her breathing slow, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Her late husband had taught her that during the first big storm they'd ever ridden out together. "Keep your air steady, Marty. Panic makes mistakes."
She didn't allow herself to think about him beyond that. Thinking was for later. Right now, she had seventy-nine bodies in her basement and one door between them and a tornado that sounded hungry.
A metallic shriek cut through the noise, one of the bulkhead hinges upstairs giving up. The sound was so sharp it made everyone wince. Dust sifted from the ceiling in a steady stream and landed on shoulders like dirty snow.
"Cover your mouths," Martha said. "T-shirts, bandannas, anything."
Bandannas appeared instantly. Sleeves came up. A row of patched riders, faces half covered, eyes narrowed, suddenly looked less like a club and more like a unit in a war zone.
The door shuddered again. The bolt held. For a second, it felt like the pressure eased. Then came a hit so hard the whole room rocked.
The concrete floor didn't move, but every person felt it anyway, like their bones had been rung like bells. Someone screamed from the back. Another voice shouted, "We're buried!"