“Point taken, Chuckie. Nice imagery.”
Chuck slowed the Expedition and examined the GPS mapping system he’d mounted on the dash. “There should be a county road running westward coming up shortly,” he said.
Ty, suddenly engaged in the chase, leaned forward from the rear seat. “There,” he said, pointing at a barely readable sign a hundred yards ahead on the right.
Chuck braked and flipped on the turn signal. He steered onto the county road and accelerated, the SUV’s tires hammering over some sort of grating separating pavement from hard-packed gravel.
“What was that?” Gabi asked.
“Cattle guard,” Chuck said.
“There was a warning sign back there,” Ty said. “We went by it a little fast for me to read.”
“Probably just telling us to watch out for livestock. Don’t want to go one-on-one with a Texas Longhorn out here.”
“How long will it take us to get around the backside of the storm?” Ty asked. Stormy stood on the seat beside him, bristling at the storm that continued to launch broadsides of lightning.
“Maybe twenty minutes,” Chuck said.
“Be dark in thirty.”
“I know, I know.” Chuck pressed the accelerator to the floor. “Maybe we can make it in fifteen.”
The storm was now to their left. Another overshooting battlement popped from its top. “Thing’s gonna drop a tornado any time now,” Chuck said, unable to hide the excitement rippling through his gut. “We’re gonna be on it this time.”
It felt almost like old times, back in the heyday of Thunder Road Tours, back when all he had to worry about was the adrenalin rush of the chase. Better than sex, some chasers used to say. Not really, but he had to admit the heart-pounding rush of a pursuit lasted longer. And you could do it more than once in a short time.
He held the Expedition at 60 mph on the narrow road. If he did hit a Longhorn, there’d be ground beef as far west as New Mexico.
Gabi peered out the driver side window at the storm. “We’re almost abeam of the rear of it,” she said.
“Okay, we gotta get south then,” Chuck responded. “Look for a road. Anything. Even if it’s not paved.”
They raced westward for several more minutes until Chuck spotted a track, loose gravel and dirt, running south through the grassland. He whipped the SUV onto it and slowed, allowing the Lincoln and two camera rigs to make the turn and catch up.
Again he accelerated. The Expedition bounced and weaved over the rough road spewing a long rooster tail of dust in its wake. The running lights of the pursing trucks dimmed to small yellow orbs, like iridescent wolves’ eyes looming through dense fog.
Metcalf called again. “Christ-on-a-crutch, Chuckie, what are you doing?” he bellowed. “Slow the fuck down. We aren’t driving demolition derby vehicles.”
“For shit sake,” Chuck shot back. “Quit whining and put the pedal to the metal. We aren’t gonna get many opportunities, but this is one. If one of your rigs gets a paint chip we’ll find a MAACO. And one more thing, see if you can figure out a way to get your cameras up and running in less than 15 minutes. Out here the special effects won’t wait for us.”
The small caravan pulled within earshot of the seething black supercell. Thunder rolled over the prairie in a continuous crescendo. Discrete spears of lightning, clearly visible now, jumped in jagged bolts from cloud to ground and cloud to cloud in a relentless electric barrage.
They crossed in back of the storm, careening through grassland that had been pummeled flat by rain, hail, and wind. The odor of damp vegetation, mud, and ozone permeated the air. The vehicles slewed back and forth on the wet gravel now littered with melting hailstones. Shallow drainage ditches on either side of the road ran full with fresh rainwater.
Once south of the storm’s swath, Chuck turned eastward, again paralleling the storm. Beneath the supercell, several pendants hung from the rotating wall cloud—low, black, menacing.
“Get Metcalf on the walkie-talkie,” he said to Gabi.
She made contact and again held the phone for Chuck. “Get ready to act fast,” he said, his voice loud with excitement. “Once we gain a little ground on the storm, we’ll stop, set up, and hope for the best—or worst. Can’t guarantee an EF-4 or -5, but we’ll get something. This thing’s ready to spit out a tornado.”
“Leaning forward in the foxhole, Sarge,” Metcalf responded.
“Keep the link open.”
“Roger that,” Metcalf said.
Chuck shook his head in mock dismay. “He must work a lot of war movies.”
Gabi smiled, nodded, and placed the phone in her lap, angling it toward Chuck. Lips pinched together, she gazed intently out the window. “We’re running out of light,” she said.
“Yeah, yeah. I know.” Back on dry gravel and dirt now, he mashed the gas pedal to the floor and pulled ahead of the supercell. The camera trucks hung doggedly on his tail, easier now that a stiff wind feeding into the storm cleared the slipstreams of dust off the road.
He spotted, in the gloaming, what appeared to be nothing more than a footpath through the grass leading toward a hillock. “Follow me,” he yelled at Metcalf through the phone-cum-walkie-talkie. “I think I see a spot we can shoot from. If you guys can hump it and get your cranes up in ten minutes, we got a chance.”
He whipped the SUV onto the path and plowed through the grass. He glanced at the wall cloud again, could see grass and dirt being sucked toward its base by a dagger-like funnel, white with condensate. The embryo of a twister. It would pass about a half-mile north of them.
The Expedition dove into a gully thick with grass and spring wildflowers. Chuck felt the vehicle slip sideways near the base of the depression before its tires found purchase and climbed toward the top of the low hill. He glanced in his review mirror and saw Metcalf’s SUV swerve, too, before regaining its forward momentum and following Chuck up the hill. The silver camera truck followed.
Chuck stopped his SUV at the crest and leapt out. Metcalf and the camera rig pulled in behind him. Two men bolted from the camera truck’s cab and clambered onto its bed.
The headlight beams of the fourth vehicle swept up the hill, then arced sharply off to the right and canted downward at an awkward angle.
“What the hell happened?” Metcalf, now beside Chuck, said. The roar of the increasing wind whipped his words into the maw of the storm.
“Dunno,” Chuck said, his optimism suddenly deflated like a balloon jabbed with a pin. “Let’s get down there.”
He took off in bounding deer-like strides down the hill, trying to follow the track the vehicles had carved through the sea of grass. Metcalf lumbered behind him, followed by Ty, Gabi, and Stormy.
The white camera truck, its Diesel thudding at idle, titled at a precarious 40-degree angle on the edge of a damp swale. Scrawny, isolated oak trees marked the perimeter of the depression.
“Hidden side-slope in the grass,” the driver of the truck, Ziggy, explained. “Didn’t see it.” He squatted down and examined the position of the vehicle. “I think I can get it out,” he said. “I’ll put it in four-wheel and try to ease it up the slope. Hopefully it won’t lose traction and slip farther down.”
Chuck glanced at the top of the hillock. The crewman from the silver truck appeared to be mounting the Panavision on the crane. Lightning from within the bowels of the supercell backlit them in almost continuous white and blue brilliance.
“Tornado!” one of the men yelled. He pointed off into the distance. “We’re gonna miss it.”
“Get the friggin’ camera up,” Metcalf screamed in return.
One of the men cranked the generator and the crane began to lift.
“Shit,” Metcalf said. “It’ll be too damn dark by the time they can shoot.” He turned his attention to the listing truck and Zi
ggy. “Get this piece of crap outta the ditch.”
Ziggy, a tall black man with dreads and tattooed biceps, glared at Metcalf but didn’t say anything; he merely nodded, then after Metcalf had turned away, snapped off a mocking salute.
Stormy growled, a low, menacing rumble. She stopped and cocked her head as if listening for something hidden in the wind or camouflaged within the rumbles of thunder.
“Jesus,” Metcalf said. “Now what? She gotta take a dump or something?”
Stormy ceased growling, walked toward Chuck, and let loose a series of short, sharp barks as she stared into the gathering darkness. The fur on her hackles bristled. A warning.
Chapter Twelve
WEDNESDAY, MAY 1
IN RESPONSE TO Stormy’s warning growl, Chuck scanned the sky above and to the west. Had he missed something? Another storm? Nothing but the evening star met his gaze. The sky behind the supercell remained clear. He looked up the hill again. Had the tornado changed course? No, the men in the camera truck would have warned them. Well, maybe Stormy just didn’t like being in the dark in open country.
A faint vibration from the ground rippled up through Chuck’s legs. He looked around to see if anyone else had felt it. Apparently not. Ziggy, in the truck, eased the vehicle forward; Metcalf, outside the cab, shouted useless instructions. Ty and Gabi watched in rapt attention.
Stormy, growling again, her tail tucked between her legs, moved away from Chuck and sniffed the air. She paused, then backpedaled toward Chuck.
Chuck squatted, put his hand on her head. “What is it girl? Something out there?”
The vibration came again. A little stronger, a bit more persistent.
Ty removed his gaze from the truck and looked at Chuck. He’d felt it, too. The solider in him sensing something. He walked toward Chuck. “What’s that?” he asked when he reached his father.
Chuck shrugged. “Hey, Jerry,” he yelled at Metcalf. Have Ziggy turn off the engine a minute.”
“Turn it off?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I’m just exercising my authority, that’s all.” Dipshit.
The Diesel clattered to a stop. Now the only sounds were the thrum of the generator on the other truck, the occasional rumble of distant thunder, and the rush of wind through the prairie grass.
One of the men from the truck on the hill called down to Metcalf. “Got about 60 seconds of the twister, but it was pretty damn dark. Nice effect with the lightning illuminating it, though.”
“Was it a monster?” Metcalf yelled back.
“Don’t think so.”
Metcalf walked toward Chuck. “Strike two, Chuckie. Now what’s with interrupting our effort here? Okay if I get my truck outta the wallow?”
“Just hold on a minute, will you. And listen.”
“For what?”
Chuck placed his forefinger over his lips.
Metcalf muttered something, then fell silent.
Stormy paced in circles around the group, which was now clustered together. Except for the headlight beams of the white truck, and the lighting from the truck on top of the rise, darkness had taken over. Not total. Shapes and forms remained visible, but not detail.
Stormy ceased barking and in slow, measured steps, tail still between her legs, head lowered, ears flattened, crept away from the damp swale, toward the east. A low rumble, not thunder, more like a low-pitched, steady hammering, drifted through the deepening blackness.
Chuck tensed. The others heard it, too, looked to him for answers.
Certainly not a storm. He tried to process the sound, identify it. Nothing he was familiar with.
He looked at Ty, Ty at him. “Don’t like it,” Ty mouthed.
Now, something else. Snorts, grunts. Faint.
“Oh, Jesus,” Chuck said. “Up the hill. Now.”
“What the fuck is going on?” Metcalf demanded.
“Up the hill. Run.”
Sam had warned him this morning. Beware the thunder, but neither of them had really known what it meant. Native American folklore? A throwaway line? No, not out here on the Oklahoma prairie. He understood now. The cattle guard. The warning sign. Not for Longhorns.
The group sprinted through the grass, toward the crest of the rise. Gabi stumbled. Chuck lifted her. Got her moving again. Halfway up. Chuck stopped. Turned. Where was Stormy? There. In the depression, holding her ground in front of the truck, ready to challenge whatever was coming. He knew she didn’t stand a chance. He whistled. Then bellowed: “Stormy, come!”
She didn’t move.
“Stormy!”
She took a step toward him.
The ground shook in a steady, rolling beat now, like a low-grade earthquake growing in intensity.
Explosive, guttural exhalations and drumming reverberations filled the darkness with a netherworld sense of danger and fear. Chuck struggled to breathe, to get his words out.
“Stormy!” he called again. More pleading than demanding. He looked to his left, toward the source of the approaching cacophony. Just enough light to see the grass rippling, parting, flattening.
The first of the beasts burst from the grass. Massive and dark with great shaggy heads and short horns. Dozens upon dozens more followed, dust rising from their hooves like black mist. Snorting, bellowing, grunting.
The lead wave of animals was almost upon Stormy before she realized her folly. She pivoted and dashed toward Chuck.
The stampede, a throwback to a time when millions of American bison roamed the Great Plains, thundered into the swale. The living flood widened, filling the shallow gully, flowing over the lower reaches of its slopes, almost to where Chuck stood riveted to the ground by the stunning sight.
Stormy, in a desperate uphill run, knifed through the tall grass toward him, avoiding the sharp hooves of the lead animals by mere inches. Panting, she dropped to her stomach near Chuck’s feet and issued a series of pro forma, winded barks at the invaders.
The nearest of the bison—nearly a ton apiece, Chuck judged—swept by within yards of him. He could smell the dirt and dung that clung to their tangled fur, hear their heavy expulsions of breath, sense the herd instinct of fear that propelled them forward.
As an entity, the stampede flowed into, around, and eventually over the camera truck, sending it tumbling deeper into the swale. Over the din of the charge, Chuck heard Metcalf screaming. Suddenly the man was beside him, bellowing in his ear. “Do something, do something!”
“Okay.” Chuck turned and walked toward the summit of the hillock where the rest of the group waited.
“Chaz, goddamnit, this is your fault,” Metcalf called after him. “That’s about two mil worth of hardware that just got turned into scrap metal by Ted Turner’s pets.” He dashed after Chuck, stepped in front of him, whipped off his fisherman’s cap, and threw it on the ground. “Whaddaya think, dimwit, we came out here to do a fucking remake of Dances with Wolves?” Spittle flew from his mouth and clung like dew drops to his thick beard.
Chuck lowered his head. Metcalf’s anger was not misplaced. He, Chuck, had screwed up. In the excitement of the chase, he hadn’t realized, at least until after the fact, that he’d led the team onto the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, located in the center of the Osage Nation, home to 2500 American bison.
“We’ll get a tow truck out here in the morning,” Chuck said, his voice barely above a whisper. He continued up the hill, Stormy trotting behind him.
When he reached the top, Gabi walked over and laid a hand on his shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “Who could have foreseen something like this?”
“Sam Townsend,” he whispered. He held Gabi in his gaze. “Remember? The last thing he said on the rez this morning before we left was “Beware the thunder.” And his dream. He told us about
his dream, seeing us swallowed in a cloud of dust. That’s not possible is it? Dreams can’t really foretell—”
Metcalf interrupted, verbally pouncing on Chuck once more. “How in the hell am I gonna explain this to our insurance company?” he yelled. “They gonna believe some Bozo led us into the middle of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and Bison Stampede?” He stalked away grumbling, “This is just unbefuckinglievable, just unbefuckinglievable.”
“Come on, Metcalf,” Gabi said. “How could he have known—”
“He’s our fearless leader,” Metcalf snapped. “He’s supposed to know!”
Chuck shuffled toward the Expedition. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Leave it to me to pick a loser,” Metcalf called after him.
Ty fired a verbal volley at Metcalf. “Okay, give it a rest, buddy.”
Chuck, a bit surprised, looked in the direction of his son, but Ty chose to ignore him. He opened the rear door of the SUV and herded Stormy into the vehicle without speaking further.
Chuck settled into the driver’s seat, glanced in the rearview mirror at Ty, and started to say something but decided against it. What the hell. It had been that kind of a day.
Distant lightning, the last hurrah of the departing supercell, flickered across the prairie, painting the swaying grass in dissipating neon whiteness. A chorus of coyotes yelped in counterpoint to the final echoes of thunder.
The rumble and quake of the stampeding bison faded, too, like a BNSF fast freight hurtling down the rails and disappearing into the night. A metaphor, perhaps, for the likelihood of ever realizing a million-dollar payday.
Chapter Thirteen
THURSDAY, MAY 2
THE OWNER OF the Tulsa body shop where the damaged camera truck had been towed came out of the garage area shaking his head. “Buffalo stampede, you said?”
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