The next morning, the sky looked like someone had drop-kicked a blender full of gray paint across the horizon.

Mark, sipping lukewarm gas station coffee and staring up at the swirling cloud cover, muttered, “That’s not ominous or anything.”

Jonah climbed into the van with a breakfast burrito the size of his forearm and said, “I don’t know if it’s eggs or glue, but I’m committed.”

Rico slid into the front seat, glancing at the radar on his phone. “Uh… guys? There’s a big red blob headed our direction. Like, storm-chaser-big.”

Cassie leaned over. “Define ‘big.’”

“Like… biblical.”

Gabriel, already vibrating from his third can of Monster, grinned like it was Christmas morning. “Sweet. Let’s race it.”

Thane, who was trying to refold a road map with claws and mounting rage, growled, “We are not racing a tornado, Gabriel.”

Maya, buckling in behind them, smirked. “That’s what cowards say.”

The van rolled out of town just as the first fat drops of rain started to smack the windshield. The wind was howling before they even hit the state line. Lightning split the sky like angry punctuation. Thunder followed immediately after, rattling the dashboard and causing Jonah to choke on his burrito mid-bite.

They hadn’t even gone ten miles before a weather alert blasted through every phone in the van.

“TORNADO WARNING. SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY.”

Cassie, deadpan: “Great. Anyone bring a storm cellar?”

Gabriel, nose practically on the glass: “That cloud is spinning! SPINNING!”

Thane: “If you open that window I will rip the handle off.”

Mark’s voice came over the backseat comms: “Left side. Funnel cloud. Confirmed.”

A collective “SHIT!” rang out from every mouth in the van.

They found “shelter” in the loosest sense of the word: a crumbling roadside attraction called Big Pete’s BBQ & Gift Barn—complete with a ten-foot fiberglass pig statue, a half-toppled billboard, and one terrified old man in a rocking chair on the front porch who just nodded solemnly as the band spilled out of the van and into his life like a caffeine-fueled tornado of their own.

Inside, the decor looked like a pig exploded in a Cracker Barrel.

“Y’all here to buy jerky or die in the storm?” the old man asked.

Thane snarled. “Can’t it be both?”

The lights flickered. The wind roared. Something slammed into the side of the building—hard.

Everyone went still.

Cassie stared at the windows. “…Was that a cow?”

Jonah peeked through the blinds. “No. Worse. It was a porta-potty.”

The building groaned. The roof shuddered.

Mark, deadpan: “I’m not dying next to a shelf of bacon-scented candles.”

Gabriel, now huddled under a table with a bag of peanut brittle: “At least the WiFi works.”

Thane stood in the center of the store, arms folded, dripping wet, glaring at the sky through the warped glass like he was ready to fistfight the weather.

“I swear,” he muttered, “if that funnel cloud touches our truss rig, I will hunt it.”

The old man took a sip of iced tea and added helpfully, “Tornadoes don’t like angry folks. They go where the vibes are bad.”

Thane didn’t blink. “Perfect.”

Thirty minutes later, the storm finally passed. The sky cracked open to blue like nothing had happened, as if the tornado had just been stopping by for a sandwich.

The van was still intact.

Mostly.

There was a single lawn chair wedged into the front grille, and one of the side mirrors now hung by a cable like a sad earring. But it still ran.

They all climbed back in.

Nobody spoke for five miles.

Then Jonah said, “…I dropped my burrito.”

Gabriel replied, “I dropped my soul.”