Storm Runners

Chase’s go bag—which, as ordered by his father, contains three days’ worth of emergency provisions and tools—stays ever at his side to protect him while he’s on his storm-running adventure. It also serves as a kind of rabbit’s foot against trouble, offering him a feeling of security. Chase isn’t fearful—far from it—but he has lost his mother and sister and nearly lost his father to accidental fates, and anything that makes him feel secure against danger is welcome. His go bag, and his preparedness in general, create enough of a feeling of security that he can afford, from time to time, to think about his family members’ deaths without reeling with confusion or ducking away from the issue before he can resolve it in his mind and heart.

Hurricane Emily looms over the story. It’s a Category 5 storm, the most severe type, referred to at one point as “the storm of the century” (91). As it approaches from the west, its threat growing by the hour, the storm—whose name, by chance, is the same as Chase’s recently deceased mother—is the looming disaster that John needs for his work and that both he and Chase must navigate and survive. Emily’s path surprises the experts and strands Chase and his friends, who must use all their resources to find their way home through the storm. Emily thus makes a mockery of the pretensions of TV forecasters, bureaucrats, and weather experts. Chase and John, prepared for anything, sidestep the bad advice and do what they’re trained to do. The hurricane drives the plot by forcing the characters to respond to its extreme conditions. It also represents fate in the sense that John uses it: If something in nature hunts you, it will find you, and, once within its grip, all a person can do is adapt and endure.