Chapter Two
As Ashlyn sat in Brandon’s lap, she felt him trembling. Was she really so large that he couldn’t hold her? Ashlyn pulled away from Brandon immediately to stand on the floor, but then she felt that the floor was trembling just the slightest bit.
“Do you feel that?” Ashlyn asked Brandon, looking at him with wide eyes.
Brandon nodded. “I think this hurricane is hitting us in full force.”
Ashlyn took two steps toward the window before Brandon caught her hand. “Where are you going, Ashlyn? You’re supposed to stay away from the windows in a hurricane.”
Ashlyn had never experienced a hurricane before, but Brandon obviously knew everything. “Isn’t that because the wind is so strong? What else are we supposed to do?” Ashlyn remembered watching The Wizard of Oz when she was a kid. Dorothy had been trying to reach a storm cellar. “Shouldn’t we go to the storm cellar?”
Brandon started laughing, and Ashlyn frowned at him. “What? I thought that was what you’re supposed to do.”
“Yeah, if you live somewhere that has firm ground. This house is built high-up. Didn’t you notice? There is room under the house in case the waters rise. If you go under the house, you might drown.”
“Oh,” Ashlyn looked around. “So what do we do?”
“We need to find a small room without any windows that is low down and in the middle of the house. Do you have a flashlight?”
“No,” Ashlyn said. Brandon went into action, taking Ashlyn’s hand and pulling her out of the room.
“That’s okay,” Brandon replied. “I know where some lighting is.” He pulled her along to the living room where a few people were seated calmly while others were running around like scared chickens. Brandon found a few flashlights, and they began walking through the house and finding the only windowless rooms available. People seemed to sense the leadership in Brandon and automatically followed him.
Some people calmly followed “psshawing” the thought of anything actually happening to them. There were two rooms. One was a bathroom, and the other was an empty coat closet. Brandon and Ashlyn got put in the bathroom. As everyone crowded in, Ashlyn began to get this sick feeling in her stomach. It was like she had to go to the bathroom, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to do that in privacy for a long time. Besides, if they couldn’t flush, the bathroom would start to smell.
The floor seemed to tremble again. The wind made a loud whistling sound, and Ashlyn heard something break off in the distance. She sat on the floor next to the sink and waited as Brandon herded the last occupant into the bathroom. There were nine people in the bathroom, and everyone was squished up against each other. Brandon passed out three flashlights and closed the door.
Just as he did that, the electricity started flickering. On, off, on, off. After thirty seconds of flickering, it went off and stayed off. One by one, the flashlights clicked on. “Let’s just turn on one at a time,” Brandon advised. “We don’t know how long the flashlight batteries are going to last, and I don’t want us to use them all at once.” Everyone agreed that what he was saying was a good idea. Only Mark’s flashlight glowed from the corner of the bathtub. Everyone was silent, and Ashlyn leaned her head back against the cabinet.
She could almost sleep if it weren’t for the strong wind that rattled the house occasionally and banged her head rapidly on the cabinet. Ashlyn shifted and rested her chin on her knees. She knew from that moment that it was going to be a long time before they were going to be safe.
“Where is the hurricane passing?” someone asked.
Another voice from the semi-darkness answered. “It’s supposed to pass through pretty close to here.”
“Man, what are we going to do if the camera equipment is destroyed?”
A panic started to rise up in the bathroom as everyone imagined what it would be like to have their work gone. They had uploaded what they had filmed onto an external drive, but the equipment would cost thousands of dollars and take a lot of time to replace. That was when the complaining began.
“How long are we going to be stuck in this bathroom?”
“How will we know when it’s safe to go out?”
“Are you sure it wouldn’t be better to drive away from the storm instead of just waiting for it to hit us?”
Brandon held up his hands and seemed to take charge. Someone shone the flashlight on him like a spotlight, and he smiled. Ashlyn admired his smile from her little corner, where she had managed not to join into the complaining even though it had been very tempting.
“If someone had warned us about the hurricane, and we had been more prepared, then we might have been able to get away in a car. I guess no one here thought it was going to pass so close. But have you seen the rain outside?” A few people nodded. Pamela spoke up.
“It looked like most of the beach was covered.”
“Exactly,” Brandon said. “You guys knew it was going to be raining all day, so you didn’t film this morning. I think it’s been raining non-stop since last night.”
“Thanks, Bozo,” Mark spoke up from the back. “You’re really telling us something new.”
Brandon took a deep breath and continued, smoothly covering over the interruption. “Anyway, I don’t think the rain will let up, and there has already been some flooding, like you saw on the news. So, our best bet is to hold down the fort here and see what happens. As for when it will be safe to go out, I would assume that would be when the house stops shaking.”
Everyone was silent as the wind gave the house a particularly violent shake.
Brandon sat back down, and Ashlyn wiggled over so that she was a little closer to him than she was to Katy. Not that Ashlyn had anything against Katy, but there was something romantic about snuggling up to her man in the middle of a violent storm.
Brandon put his arm around her and gave her a little kiss on her nose. Ashlyn smiled. They might be stuck in the dark bathroom for a long time, but she didn’t particularly care at the moment. She had always been one for adventures. And while this could bring about some serious danger, Ashlyn saw it more as an exciting adventure that they were embarking on.
Some of the cast and crew started playing a game. Apparently, somebody was thoughtful enough to grab a deck of cards as they were being herded into the bathroom. Ashlyn wanted to join in, but the cards were too far away, and the edge of the bathtub looked occupied already.
“Have you ever been in a storm like this before?” Ashlyn whispered to Brandon.
Brandon nodded. “Yes, plenty of times.” Ashlyn was surprised. Brandon didn’t seem like some farmer who frequently weathered hurricanes.
Brandon gave a little laugh. “My family was big for vacations when I was little. We went a little bit of everywhere, as long as everywhere was in the United States. We didn’t have a regular vacation, like always going to the beach, and my parents wouldn’t tell us where we were going until we were on the road. When my brother and I got older, though, we started to learn something about snooping.”
Ashlyn smiled.
“So, I guess you could say that my family was never one to let weather deter it. We had to go the first week of September if my dad was going to get off work, so we always went somewhere that week, rain or shine. I have been through two hurricanes before.”
“Did you ever get hurt?”
Brandon shook his head. “Nope, we just went into the hotel’s lobby or the campground’s group bathroom and weathered it out.”
Ashlyn laughed. “You had to hang out in the group bathroom?”
Brandon nodded. “Yeah, and I didn’t think it was so funny at the time. I was seven years old that time, and because the men’s and women’s bathrooms were separate, I couldn’t go in with my mom. She would have held me and been comforting. My dad just sat on the toilet, reading his magazine. I was quietly crying in the corner, because my brother was young enough to go with my mom, and I wasn’t.”
This time, Ashlyn’s gales of laughter really sounded. Everyone gave her either a disturbed or an annoyed look. Ashlyn turned back to Brandon with amused eyes. “I should have known that you had a fun childhood. You seem like the kind of guy who has weathered a few storms.”