CARRIE SAW THE funnel and clutched Beth’s hand in a fierce grip.

Behind them, through the door that led to the chapel, came raised voices. Alarm. Pastor Willard was speaking loudly, urging for calm…

“We have to get out of here,” she said, surprised at how level, how reasonable, her voice sounded, when inside panic whipped through her chest and stomach faster and more urgently than the thrashing storm outside. “We need to get to the cars and get the hell away,” she said more insistently, as if giving instructions to hardened soldiers instead of scared bridesmaids wearing dresses of cauliflower blue.

Beth and Trish nodded. Fear held fast in their eyes, but their mouths were set with determination and forced calm. Trish grabbed her clutch and tucked it beneath a bared arm. Carrie had a beat to think how beautiful she looked in that moment.

“I don’t have anyone here, I’ll take your mom and nana with me…” Trish said, then hesitated. “Where do we go? We should meet…”

Carrie thought for a moment. “City Hall,” she said, remembering what she’d been taught as a child, if ever caught in a storm near town… “There’s a shelter at City Hall.”

“Why don’t you come with us?” Trish asked, already moving for the door.

“I have to find Parker, I’ll leave with him,” she said, the words coming automatically. She tasted the lie on her tongue as she spoke it and was surprised at what her true thoughts were, the face her mind conjured the second she realized the peril was real. That their lives were in danger.

I have to find Eli.

She pulled Beth’s arm and went quickly through the door, Trish already ahead of them and calling for the older women to get in motion.

Carrie entered the nursery to loud voices. Trish was gently lifting a complaining Nana from a chair in the corner, and her mother was at the door, yelling at both of them, tears in her eyes. “I don’t understand… Carrie, what’s happening?”

“A tornado, mom. Just east. A big one.”

“Oh my God…” her mother said, then held a breath, sniffed, and straightened. “Okay, let’s all go, come on.”

“I’ll meet you,” Carrie said, and went to her mother and hugged her fiercely. “I’ll go with Parker. I’ll be fine. Now come on.”

Carrie yanked open the door that led to the foyer. She had one last moment to think, despite her fear and the impending danger, that her wedding day was over. Vanquished in an instant. There were no ushers to take her elbow and lead her to the aisle. No turned, expectant faces watching her step gracefully through the small chapel, toward the handsome groom, the smiling pastor. There would be no veil covering her face, no ring on her finger, no vows spoken.

They stepped out of the nursery. Directly across the foyer, at the end of a short hallway, another door swung open, breaking Carrie’s momentary reverie. A man walked out.

Parker.

He stopped short, met her eyes, then looked down and away, as if ashamed. She noticed his face was smeared with… is that blood?

Behind him came Brock. He saw Carrie and froze, mouth agape, as if already searching for an excuse to whatever new mess they’d gotten into.

She took a small step to the side, just slightly, in order to make out what lay on the floor through the open door behind them. A shock of blond hair. A face, bloodied and beaten, resting against the carpet, one blue eye wide, and then wider.

“Oh God, no…”

She took a step forward, her face already burning with the heat of fury, her heart pumping hard beneath the white fabric of her tight dress. Parker was already raising a hand toward her, as if to say: now just wait a second, it’s not what you think, baby…

Carrie had just started across the foyer, fingers squeezed into tight fists, when Pastor Willard strode between them, a large group of wedding guests on his heels, quickly filling the space between bride and groom. Tears spilled down Carrie’s cheeks as she tried to cross the space, push through them, toward Parker, toward the bloodied Eli that lay hurting on the office floor. The pastor had been heading for the exit but stopped when he saw Carrie fighting her way toward him. His alarmed face went slack with worry.

“Carrie, darling, it’s okay. Look, I know this all seems horrible right now, but it’s going to be all right. Please don’t cry,” he said, and gripped her by the arms, held her fast.

She looked at him in amazement. “It’s not that…”

But he only nodded, squeezed her arms so tight she felt the pain of his hard thumbs digging into her biceps. “I know you’re scared, honey. But there’s nothing to worry about. We just need to get to shelter, underground…”

Outside the wind grew with such force that the building shook and rattled. The warning siren still wailed but it was muffled now by the battering hail and the whipping howl of the wind. The front doors of the church began to clatter, as if poltergeists were on the other side, slapping their ghostly hands against the sun-bleached wood from their mad purgatory, desperate to reach the living.

“Damn,” Pastor Willard whispered, and released his hold on Carrie. He raised his arms up high, addressed his gathered flock. “All right folks! Let’s do this orderly now, we got time. Let’s get to the cars safely and get to the shelter in town, that’s the safest place…”

“I got a storm cellar a half mile from here!” yelled Mr. Daniels, who owned a modern ranch up Route 33, settled nicely within three-hundred acres and a hundred head of milking cows. “I can fit at least twenty of us.”

Pastor Willard nodded, as if placating a child who was showing off his newest finger-painting. “That’s fine, Bob, just fine. Now, let’s move orderly, okay?”

The church doors battered their frames, harder by the second, the wind screeching outside the thin walls like a swarm of banshees. Pastor Willard nodded to his flock one last time, turned, and stepped briskly to the entrance. He pushed the arm-bar that unlatched the door.

There was a sharp BANG that made Carrie jump despite the other commotion. The door had whipped open, torn from the pastor’s hands and slung hard against the outside wall by a violent slap of wind.

“Oh!” he cried, and reached for it, as if to pull it closed again. People began to surge, to shove at him from behind. “Just wait a damn second!” he roared, trying to be heard over the tumult. The wind pushed his silver hair away from his head, flowers blew off a nearby table, and Mrs. Hallemann’s wide-brimmed hat flipped and soared like a wobbling flying saucer back toward the chapel. Hail spattered the floor of the entryway, sprinkling across the blue-gray carpet of the foyer like beads spilled from a pearl necklace.

Something outside cracked louder than thunder. A hand grabbed Carrie’s arm and tugged her backward. She had time to see the pastor struggling with a man in a dark blue suit. A woman was fighting to get past them both, pulling a little blonde-haired boy with her, the terrified child screaming at the top of his lungs.

The roof above Carrie’s head exploded. The wall above the doors burst inward with a plume of drywall dust and splinters, blasting a cloud of debris into the foyer.

The mighty oak had been ripped free of its poisoned roots and now finished its fall, the enormous trunk crashing against the aged doors with the bulk and velocity of a school bus dropped from the sky. Pastor Willard, the man in the blue suit, and the woman holding the hand of her tow-headed child evaporated in a floor-shaking crunch. A dousing spray of red mist decorated the people surging forward in crimson, coating their faces, their fine dresses and suits.

Carrie fell hard to the ground, pulling Beth down with her, and noticed her dress had gone from white to pink, the blood that burst from the crushed bodies of the pastor and the others, like juice from a fat grape, had coated her from toe-to-chest. She opened her mouth to speak but was surprised – and a touch concerned – when nothing came out but an incoherent wheeze.

The reasonable part of her brain, the logical override that had been flipped to extinguish the unbelieving sensory organs, stared blankly at the exit, now blackened by the bark of an oak tree high as a man, littered with pieces of church. And churchgoers! part of her mind insisted. But she shoved that thought away, let logic take the controls once more.

As you can see, dear, Logic said, its inner voice steady, almost relaxed in its precision, the exit, quite obviously, is now blocked. And time, I fear, is of the essence.

“There’s a door in the back!” someone yelled, but now things seemed lost. Carrie realized, quite lucidly, that things had suddenly spiraled completely out of control.

The panicked mob surged back toward the chapel, colliding with those who had either waited patiently or were trying to push their way into the foyer to see what the hell had happened. The two forces collided and there were more screams—men yelling, children crying, women clawing to get through, to get back, to get OUT.

Carrie felt arms reach around her waist from behind and try to lift her to her feet. But she couldn’t move, couldn’t think of what to do with her legs, with the muscles of her body. How do I stand? she thought, and looked at her blood-smeared hands in a daze, as if the answers were written upon dripping palms. She watched, emotionless, as a little girl in a pink dress and white leggings fell – no, was pushed – into the edge of a pew, her head smacking the dense wood hard enough that Carrie heard the thud of impact amidst the chaos. The girl fell to the ground and was stomped upon like a rag doll, her mother Mrs. Baker, I think, yes, Mrs. Baker my senior high school teacher I loved her she always brought in cookies on Fridays was trying to yank the girl to her feet, screeching and baring her teeth at the others crowding past her in a frenzy for escape.

More hands grabbed Carrie and this time she was able to find her feet, allow herself to be lifted from the floor. Her mother stared at her, shook her, pleading. “We’ve got to go, honey! We’ve got to get out of here!”

Carrie nodded and started to let herself be pressed toward the chapel, where the crowd heading toward the back had soundly defeated those who had been heading toward the front. She spun her head back toward the hallway, toward the office where she had seen Eli lying on the floor. But she could not move, could not free herself as she was shoved mercilessly forward, into the chapel where people were filling the aisle, tearing to shreds the white paper runner that had been laid for her walk to the altar. Others were climbing over the backs of pews, rushing toward a distant door…

The tall arched windows that lined the east side of the church burst inward as one. Shards of glass flew like a hail of bullets toward those trapped inside. More screams rang out and a few people collapsed, grabbing at their heads, at legs, at necks. One woman had both hands over her face, an inhuman howl coming from within, blood spurting between her knuckles.

“Oh no!” her mother screamed from beside her. “Oh God, no!”

Carrie turned toward the windows. The view of sky and cornfields had been obliterated by a funnel wider than a football field. It filled the world. She watched in stunned amazement at its sheer power, at the fibrous musculature of the churning air, blackened and pulsing, and hungry – God help them, it was hungry.

The building shook, and Carrie saw pieces of the church vanish, sucked away, pulled toward this embodiment of earth’s vengeance, this smoky, churning fist of a deadly god. She raised her eyes to the ceiling as part of the chapel’s roof blew apart and vanished. Those nearest the gaping hole were pulled into the air, as if lifted by invisible rope.