It roared and shouted and moved up onto the land. Whole trees were ripped up by their roots. Tim tripped and sprawled face-first into the dirt. Somebody grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and yanked him to his feet. The rain was so thick and hard he couldn’t see an arm’s length in front of him but suddenly the low earthen hump of the Prof’s house was in sight and the old man, despite his years, was half a dozen strides ahead of them, already fumbling with the front door.
They staggered inside, the wind-driven rain pouring in with them. It took all three of them to get the door closed again and firmly latched. The Prof pushed a heavy cabinet against the door, then slumped to the floor, soaking wet, chest heaving.
“Check . . . the windows,” he gasped. “Shutters . . .”
Hawk nodded and scrambled to his feet. Tim hesitated only a moment, then did the same. He saw there were thick wooden shutters folded back along the edges of each window. He pulled them across the glass and locked them tight.
The twister roared and raged outside but the Prof’s house, largely underground, held firm. Tim thought the ground was shaking, but maybe it was just him shaking, he was so scared. The storm yowled and battered at the house. Things pounded on the roof. The rain drummed so hard it sounded like all the redskins in the world doing a war dance.
The Prof lay sprawled in the puddle by the door until Hawk gestured for Tim to help him get the old man to his feet.
“Bedroom . . .” the Prof said. “Let me . . . lay down . . . for a while.” His chest was heaving, his face looked gray.
They put him down gently on his bed. His wet clothes made a squishy sound on the covers. He closed his eyes and seemed to go to sleep. Tim stared at the old man’s bare, white-fuzzed chest. It was pumping up and down, fast.
Something crashed against the roof so hard that books tumbled out of their shelves and dust sifted down from the ceiling. The lights blinked, then went out altogether. A dim lamp came on and cast scary shadows on the wall.
Tim and Hawk sat on the floor, next to each other, knees drawn up tight. Every muscle in Tim’s body ached, every nerve was pulled tight as a bowstring. And the twister kept howling outside, as if demanding to be allowed in.
At last the roaring diminished, the drumming rain on the roof slackened off. Neither Tim nor Hawk budged an inch, though. Not until it became completely quiet out there.
“Do you think it’s over?” Tim whispered.
Hawk shook his head. “Maybe.”
They heard a bird chirping outside. Hawk scrambled to his feet and went to the window on the other side of the Prof’s bed. He eased the shutter open a crack, then flung it all the way back. Bright sunshine streamed into the room. Tim noticed a trickle of water that had leaked through the window and its shutter, dripping down the wall to make a puddle on the bare wooden floor.
The Prof seemed to be sleeping soundly, but as they tiptoed out of the bedroom, he opened one eye and said, “Check outside. See what damage it’s done.”
A big pine had fallen across the house’s low roof; that had been the crash they’d heard. The water pipe from the cistern was broken, but the cistern itself—dug into the ground—was unharmed except for a lot of leaves and debris that had been blown into it.
The next morning the Prof felt strong enough to get up, and he led the boys on a more detailed inspection tour. The solar panels were caked with dirt and leaves, but otherwise unhurt. The boys set to cleaning them while the Prof mended the broken water pipe.
By nightfall the damage had been repaired and the house was back to normal. But not the Prof. He moved slowly, painfully, his breathing was labored. He was sick, even Tim could see that.
“Back in the old days,” he said in a rasping whisper over the dinner table, “I’d go to the local clinic and get some pills to lower my blood pressure. Or an EGF injection to grow new arteries.” He shook his head sadly. “Now I can only sit around like an old man waiting to die.”
The boys couldn’t leave him, not in his weakened condition. Besides, the Prof said they’d be better off waiting until the spring tornado season was over.
“No guarantee you won’t run into a twister during the summer, of course,” he told them. “But it’s safer if you wait a bit.”
He taught them as much as he could about his computers and the electrical systems he’d rigged to power the house. Tim knew how to read some, so the Prof gave him books while he began to teach Hawk about reading and writing.
“The memory of the human race is in these books,” he said, almost every day. “What’s left of it, that is.”
The boys worked his little vegetable patch and picked berries and hunted down game while the Prof stayed at home, too weak to exert himself. He showed the boys how to use his high-powered bow and Tim bagged a young boar all by himself.
One morning well into the summertime, the Prof couldn’t get out of his bed. Tim saw that his face was gray and soaked in sweat, his breathing rapid and shallow. He seemed to be in great pain.
He looked up at the boys and tried to smile. “I guess I’m . . . going to become immortal . . . the old-fashioned way.”
Hawk swallowed hard and Tim could see he was fighting to hold back tears.
“Nothing you can do . . . for me,” the Prof said, his voice so weak that Tim had to bend over him to hear it.
“Just rest,” Tim said. “You rest up and you’ll get better.”
“Not likely.”
Neither boy knew what else to say, what else to do.
“I bequeath my island to you two,” the Prof whispered. “It’s all yours, boys.”
Hawk nodded.
“But you . . . you really ought to warn . . . your people,” he gasped, “about the ice . . .”
He closed his eyes. His labored breathing stopped.
That evening, after they had buried the Prof, Tim asked Hawk, “Do you think we oughtta go back and tell our folks?”
Hawk snapped, “No.”
“But the Prof said—”
“He was a crazy old man. We go back home and all we’ll get is a whippin’ for runnin’ away.”
“But we oughtta tell them,” Tim insisted. “Warn them.”
