OCR Text |
Show Twisters . . . 99 I noticed a Red Cross van which I hadn't seen before. I saw the first-aid station I'd zoomed right by and the medics loading an ambulance* They were sloshing around in water that was ankle-deep in places. About then, a police car limped into the parking lot with its left rear tire flap-which flap-flapping against the wet cement, a sight / would have cracked me up any other time. I was beginning to feel like a casualty myself, though I could see there was no place here for ordinary survivors like me. A kid who can't find his parents isn't very high on the priority list. I stood up, stuffed my shirt in my jeans. I knew I could get back home, and if I crossed Fonner Park it wouldn't be that far. The scary part was thinking what there was to go back to. Not even Minerva . . . I knew it in my bones . . . not even my cat would be there. But home base is home base, no matter how much it's been torn up. Just then a whiff of coffee drifted toward me from the Salvation Army van. What a good smell! It was identical to what came out of our coffeemaker every morning of my life, but I never thought about it before. Now I was thinking about it. Dad says he doesn't wake up until he'8 had a cup of brew. I guess the coffee was waking me up, too, but in another way. It gave me hope, even that thin little whiff I was getting, that things would be normal again. It was while cutting through the vast cement parking area of the racetrack, wondering why Fonner Park had so little damage, that I heard the sound of a truck accelerating somewhere behind me. Two cars had already passed me. People were discovering they could get through this way. I'd been jogging and walking by turns, sailing over the few branches that were down, half-wishing I'd asked those Salvation Army ladies for a sandwich. Suddenly, the sound of that five-liter engine |