He jumped out of the truck and unloaded the launcher. He carried it to a point twenty feet behind the truck as Captain unpacked the rockets. John slid each rocket into place and attached the ignition clips. Once they ducked back into the truck, John made sure the road was clear. The air around them became eerily still. Multiple lightning bolts lashed the ground near their position, but John still hoped for the best.
He turned the safety key on the control box and held his right hand over the giant launch button. “3…2…1…” He smashed the button but nothing happened. Looking back, he noticed the main wires leading up to the launch wiring harness were disconnected. With a growl, he went back outside and assessed the situation.
Sure enough, the solder on two of the wires failed. “Captain, check my toolbox. See if I have my soldering iron.”
Captain dug around inside the truck but shook his head no.
“Grab my duct tape,” John shouted as he headed back toward the truck.
“No. Not you. You’re Data Guy, not Duct Tape Guy,” Captain joked as he tossed a roll of tape to John.
“I’m beginning to think it’s a Clark Kent/Superman alter-ego thing now. Turn the safety key back to off, will you?”
John marched back to the wiring harness and drew out a strip of silver-gray tape. He reattached the wires and ran back to the cab of the truck. He turned the safety key again and began another countdown. “Fire in the hole,” he said and this time the rockets fired off one after another.
The first salvo of sensors hit the main updraft of the storm dead on. To their left, a portion of the base of the darkening thunderstorm lowered and a wall cloud began to form. The breadth of this particular wall cloud unnerved John and he turned to Captain.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing? Either that’s a developing meso or one wide wall cloud,” John said.
Captain’s gaze darted from his laptop screen to the sky. “I’ve got exit routes in mind.”
John turned to watch the data pouring into his tracking software. Half of the rockets fired and almost all of the sensors deployed. The numbers were impressive and no longer clipped off, but the inflow velocity made him wonder how big this storm was going to get. He ran back out to the launcher, unhooked the wires, and had Captain help him loft the launcher back into the bed of the truck. He shut the tailgate and then drove south for another mile to take aim at a different part of the storm. They had enough rockets and sensors for two more launches but with the way the sky was beginning to turn he wondered if a third launch would happen at all.
John clicked on a local radio station, waited through commercials, but eventually became frustrated with the programming. “Is that all they are going to talk about right now? A stupid baseball game? Doesn’t anybody ever look out their window anymore?” He then turned off the radio and switched on a VHF receiver that could pick up the local National Weather Service station.
He pulled over again and picked up his laptop. In less than a minute, he fired off a hasty e-mail to the local Weather Service office. In the message he gave them several snapshots of the sensor data his software was tracking. With enough information, he hoped they would take notice.
“Think we should take another shot?” John said as he watched the wall cloud. Swirling scud dangled underneath but struggled to solidify at first. Although the rotation was there something about the lack of development toward the ground made him wonder if the storm was going to produce anything other than hail and wind.
Captain shook his head from side to side. He turned the laptop toward John. “The shear is kinda weak on this one. I think the couplet’s gonna break apart.”
In minutes the wall cloud dissipated and the rain on the leading edge of the storm grew heavier. Despite the vivid light show in the clouds and the occasional bolt hitting nearby, the dynamics were not quite right.
“How’s the one west of Yankton looking?” John said as he started up the truck again.
“Odd.”
“How so?”
“It’s tornado-warned, but it looks like it’s gonna merge with a cell to the north. No confirmation on a touchdown yet either.” Captain took a slurp off of a fountain drink and shrugged his shoulders.
John watched the radar replay a half dozen times before he made a decision. In the last frame he spotted a tiny cell that mushroomed up just to the east of the current storms. It was small, but all three cells seemed to be moving in different directions. “Let’s hit that one,” he said with renewed enthusiasm.
* * *
They drove back to Interstate 29 and rocketed north until they were a few miles south of Worthing, South Dakota. Two of the three storms John recently eyed merged while the third one collapsed. A short flanking line developed that stretched back to the southwest and John could see this combined storm was intent on building its own miniature weather system which could lead to almost anything.
This storm had a well-defined wall cloud which already produced a pair of touchdowns north of Yankton along with damage to a few farms. The radar replays showed a hook echo that kept developing, dying, and redeveloping in the span of twenty minutes. John turned onto a road that ran west toward the town of Davis. “How big is this town ahead?” He asked.
Captain looked up. “Under a hundred.”
“Okay. Let’s roll through and on the west side set up for a launch.”
He drove on toward the storm, but still kept a safe distance of over two miles from the wall cloud. As they approached the town limits he could not see a siren system anywhere.
John rolled down his window and Captain did the same. John drove through the town honking his horn and warning anybody who would listen. Two children were outside now and he hoped the message got through to them and their parents. As he exited the town he heaved a deep sigh.
“What?” Captain said as he readied his video camera.
“I think it’s going to miss them. But look at it now.”
The wall cloud expanded and for the first time in years, John questioned if he was making the right move. He slowed the truck down and pulled onto the shoulder. Then he looked over at Captain’s map. “We better make this quick.”
They ran to the back of the truck and unloaded the launcher. This time John put the roll of duct tape around his wrist and was ready to fix anything that broke. He ran back into the truck and armed the system. Captain dashed into a nearby field and set up his camera and tripod.
John hit the launch button and again nothing happened. He swore and slapped the steering wheel. In seconds he was back at the launcher and found that another wire broke free. Duct tape in hand, he patched it up and tried again.
The inflow winds increased around the truck and he second-guessed himself. He armed the launcher again and hit the launch button. Six more rockets lifted off toward the wall cloud. Several of the rockets wobbled on their trajectories before disappearing into a churning wall of black. The data that streamed in was the best yet and in celebration he pumped his fist. By now, a parade of several small suction vortices danced chaotically about one another in a frenzied circle on the ground underneath the wall cloud. Each vortex only lasted half a minute, but John knew what was coming next.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” He yelled out to Captain.
Captain nodded and aimed his camera at the sky one last time. He held up a hand. “Give me another minute.”
In the distance, John watched as the mini-vortices danced and whirled around each other. Like a thrown switch, they congealed into a larger black wedge whose width looked wildly unstable. The inflow winds around them surged toward the storm and turned the nearby fields into rolling waves on an angry sea. Tumbleweeds whipped by. In front of them some of the dust on the shoulder of the road lifted up toward the sky.
Captain collected his equipment, returned to the truck, and shouted, “Let’s go!”
John wheeled the truck around and charged back through the town at high speed.
“Ow. Watch it, will you?” Ca
ptain said as the move caught him by surprise.
“We don’t have time. Look now.” As John reached the town, the wedge tornado grew by another third and inhaled more dust and crops. Up above the clouds took on a pine green and inky black tinge as if dusk came several hours too early. Seconds later the first power flash occurred and he could see power poles beginning to get pushed over behind them. “Check the radar. Any indication of where this is headed?”
Captain hurriedly flipped through several screens on his laptop. “The warning says northeast right now. It might hit Lennox, but I think it’s gonna turn. I can feel it.”
“East?”
Captain nodded.
John checked his tracking software on his laptop. The data on the graphs startled him. “I think you’re right. Get on the phone and call the Weather Service. Something’s going to change with this in a few minutes. It’s the pattern that Ferganut talked about. He was right.”
“How do you figure?”
“He wrote an obscure paper years ago. He thought he might be on the verge of cracking the code of why some storms turn the way they do. I think we’re gonna prove him right.”
Captain picked up his cell phone and explained the situation to the Weather Service. He grabbed John’s laptop and followed it up with an e-mail full of the proof in pictures.
After they exited the town, in his rearview mirror John spotted hay bales bouncing away from them in a field as if they were galloping toward a barn. “If this turns like we think it will, who else is in the path?”
Captain gave him a dour look. “Davis. Lennox. Worthing. Wick.”
“Isn’t that where that picnic was supposed to be?”
Captain nodded but his eyes did not leave the screen.
Although he watched the road, John kept one eye on the laptop which finished processing the latest round of sensor data. He could not help but think of the violence of the winds involved. The velocities were the highest he ever recorded with his equipment and in that moment, he was blindsided with the thought of Madeline’s last words to him. Thoughts of Rebekah and Madeline swirled about in his mind. Was it really all about the money now? Did he even care if Wick took a direct hit? A part of him worried that if he was driving alone he might want to get as close as physically possible to the twister only to back off at the last moment. Or did he want to keep on driving straight into it?
He took a deep breath. In his rearview mirror the wedge tornado continued to grow as it moved toward a string of helpless small towns. Did Madeline catch a ride all the way to town? Or was she walking along the road somewhere? Had she found shelter yet? Or would she reach her picnic companions only to be greeted by a storm so large it left them nowhere to run?
After reaching Interstate 29, John stepped on the accelerator and calculated the fastest way to Wick. The sky behind them darkened further. The tornado which was once in direct contrast to the wall cloud now seemed to merge with it. It now looked as if the entire wall cloud had sunk down to the ground and was picking up forward speed as well as changing direction.
Pale blue power flashes lit up the bottom of the funnel. John was sure the storm was going to take out the main feeder line running into Wick. As they closed in on the town, John had the distinct feeling they were running out of options.
By the time they hit the outskirts of Wick, the town stoplight was black. All the homes and storefronts were dark. No streetlights lit up the road despite the stark absence of sunlight. Again, John took to honking his truck horn as a means of warning anyone who would listen. “Where’s the park?” He said suddenly to Captain.
“Over on Fourth. Stay on this road for a few blocks, then turn right on Main. Then left on Fourth.”
Large raindrops splattered onto the windshield and immediately John thought of melted hail. He knew the winds would not be far behind followed eventually by the main event. Worse, if the storm was turning slightly east like he anticipated, perhaps only a few drops of rain would fall on the picnic attendees and lull them into a false sense of security.
He tore around the corner and onto Main Street. He swallowed hard as he knew further up the road was the bridge where Rebekah lost her life. With a squeal of tires he charged up the block and slammed on the brakes as he turned onto Fourth Avenue. To the right in Stanton Park, he scanned the crowd for Madeline. He did not see her. He did see Jared stand up in the front of the picnic grounds and command the crowd as if he were conducting an orchestra of the supernatural.
“There she is,” Captain said as he pointed out his window and toward the back of the crowd.
John spotted her and waved, but of course she did not notice. He honked his horn and motioned for her to get into the truck. At first, she ignored him. He held down the horn for a good ten seconds and pointed toward the sky. Getting the hint, she eventually ran in between the trees and over to his window.
“What?” She said. Her eyes simmered with anger.
“Power’s out in the town. Everybody needs to get to shelter now. There’s a huge tornado just over the hills to the southwest. It’s coming this way and it’s getting bigger by the minute. Get in.”
She pursed her lips and then ran back toward the picnic crowd.
Now John wanted to hold down the horn for a full minute, but he knew it would do no good. He watched as some members of the crowd took off for their vehicles in a nearby parking lot while others headed toward the front of the picnic grounds where Jared stood.
Madeline ran back to the truck and jumped inside. “I don’t think some of them get it.”
“Why? What are they thinking?” John said.
“They think the enemies of God are trying to stop them.”
“Is that what he said?”
Madeline nodded.
“Look at them. They’re huddling together,” Captain said as he stared out the window. A knot of picnic goers clustered together around Jared to pray.
John shuddered at the thought of this becoming another “throw the switch” moment for Jared. He wondered, too, if Jared had asked God to restore power to the town as an extra favor.
As John drove off he could see the tornado just about to cross over the hills on the southwest side of town. “Where’s your Mom?” He said with a frantic edge to his voice. His breathing intensified.
“She never showed. I still can’t get a hold of her. I called her friend. But they didn’t answer either,” Madeline said.
“I thought you said she never misses these.”
“She doesn’t. I hope she doesn’t try to show up with someone else.” Madeline gripped the armrest hard and nearly hyperventilated. “How much time do we have?” She said.
“Ten minutes. Or less.”
“Let’s go check on my Mom.”
John agreed until the sound of something hitting the roof of the truck shattered his concentration.
“What was that?” Madeline said, startled.
“Hail.”
Another hailstone smashed into the bed of the pickup truck. John estimated it to be an inch across but he knew bigger stones were on the way. Giant raindrops continued to fall, driven along by a strengthening gale. As he raced toward the southeast side of town several more stones hit different parts of the truck. One baseball-sized stone punched a spider-web-like crater into the passenger side of the windshield. Another stone gashed the far left side of the windshield and knocked a few chips of glass onto his arm.
Madeline screamed.
“We’re safe. We’re safe,” John tried to reassure her. He turned to look at Captain. “Do we have a handheld vacuum? I’ve got glass on my pants.”
“Why are those birds circling?” Madeline said as she strained to look back through the rear window of the truck.
“Those aren’t birds. It’s debris,” Captain said.
Another spiked stone, the size of a softball, pummeled the mirror on the driver’s side and tore it off. “Okay, we’re not safe,” John said. All his years of experience told him they still had a slim m
argin of safety but that this was getting out of hand in a hurry. Up until now he had fought an intense urge to flee town. Another stone bashed into the rocket launcher in the back of the truck and knocked off a launch rail.
“John, you’re gonna want to see this,” Captain said.
“What is it?”
“This thing has got a really violent hook on the south side. And the whole storm is turning with it.”
Chapter Eighteen
The three of them fled to the southeastern part of town, but they had to stop short of Evelyn’s house by a couple of blocks due to the rain and hail. Instead they parked at Brandy’s Skillet, a restaurant on the edge of town, and raced out of the truck. The restaurant had a white wooden fence around its exterior seating section and fortunately, no one was sitting at the tables. A shredded banner that read “Home of the Huckleberry Smoothie” flapped in the wind as it hung over the main entrance. Golf-ball sized hail smacked the pavement around them and John yelped a couple of times as he took shots on the back and on the legs.
As they ran across the parking lot, John noticed Jared’s Jeep pulled up behind them. Not wanting to draw attention to the situation, John directed Captain and Madeline into the restaurant.
Inside, a handful of customers sat at red-and-white cloth-covered tables. The customers and the waitress seemed oblivious to the conditions outdoors. John stood in the middle of the dining area, threw his hands into the air, and shouted, “Everybody get into the coolers in the back! Now!”
Captain hurried Madeline into the kitchen while John stayed a step behind to make sure Jared did not pull anything funny. He turned his back on the group and walked toward the front doors of the restaurant. To a confused couple and the waitress near the front doors he said, “You gotta get out of here and get in the back.”
“Is this a holdup?” The woman at the table asked.
“There’s a mile wide tornado coming down the highway. Get in the cooler or you’re going to get blown away.”
“Not until I finish my hash browns,” the man at the table said. He looked to be in his late sixties and not in a hurry for anyone or anything. He turned away and sprinkled salt onto his potatoes. He then reached for a bottle of ketchup.
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