Natural Disaster (Book 3): Storm Read online

  I can see some inflow, but I’m not sure the camera is catching it. And when we drove out of it to take these shots from the south, we hit a strong gust front. I’ll pull up a graphic for you on the front page of the website by the next time we post a vid, so you can see a drawing of what’s happening in there behind all this rain.

  Somewhere up in that dark area, we have vertical rotation, and we have all the ingredients for tornadogenesis. I’m taking over driving duties to get us closer, so Felix can film out the window as we approach the storm, and I’m saying a 60 percent chance of tornadogenesis.

  Everything looks perfect. Doppler is right. Pressure, wind sheer, it’s all right on the money. The only problem I see is, if we get a twister and go in, I think it may be rain-wrapped. It’s an HP—that’s high precipitation—cell. We may not be able to get good shots for you. And that also means that the people ahead of it may not see it coming.

  So we’ll get as close as we can—and we’ll see what we can see.

  Chapter 4

  “What’s that noise?” said Jim.

  “It’s my phone,” Sherryl said.

  “That’s not a phone. A phone sounds like—ring, ring. A phone.”

  She dug her cell out, while Jim tried to imitate a 1965 Bell phone. “Hello?”

  “Aunt Sherryl, it’s Greg. I’m at work and I need a favor. Are you still at the nursing home?”

  “Yes, talking with Jim.”

  Jim said, “What are you doing?” He looked around the room. “Are you talking to me? Who are you talking to?” His voice was getting whinier.

  She said to Greg, “Who has forgotten for a moment what cell phones are.”

  “Ah, not a great day. I’m sorry.”

  “He’s in and out.”

  “Okay, don’t worry about Holly, then.”

  She checked the time. “You need someone to pick her up? I could get there by 3:20, 3:30 at the latest.”

  “Don’t worry about it—not just yet, at least. If there’s no tornado, I’ll get there a few minutes late.”

  “A tornado? Are we under a warning?”

  “Yes, there was a touchdown in Indiana, just over the border, and it may be headed our way. The same storm is coming, at any rate.”

  “Oh.” She wondered if she should do something here—and what.

  “So you stay safe. Is there a basement there at the facility?”

  “I don’t think so, but I’ll check.”

  “Inner room, then, if one comes. Or the bathroom. Just stay away from the windows. Gotta go,” and the phone was dead.

  She tucked the phone into her jacket pocket, wondering what to do first. She’d like to help with Holly, but her first obligation was here. “Be right back, Jim.”

  “Is that a phone too?” he said, his face turned toward the window. He was hearing a siren, a fire truck or ambulance moving through the streets a few blocks away.

  “No, sweetie,” she said, on her way out the door.

  Nothing was happening in the hallway, so she kept going to see if they were doing anything to prepare for the storm. In the central area of the home, staff were pulling residents away from the big glass windows, pushing wheelchairs, assisting people in walkers, trying to get them away from all the glass.

  Sherryl went to the reception desk. The girl was on the phone. When she hung up, Sherryl said, “Do we know for sure there’s a tornado?”

  “The TV and radio say there is one.”

  “My husband can’t move easily on his own. He’s in room 414. If I can get some help with him?”

  “Honestly, ma’am, I don’t know when that’ll happen. They have to move all these people out here back into the hall and—” She stopped to answer the ringing phone.

  “Is there a basement here?”

  The girl didn’t answer. But it didn’t matter. No way could she get Jim all the way to a basement, even if there were one. And she wouldn’t leave him on his own.

  She trotted back to his room. When she went in, she heard the storm siren start up, low at first, then rising in tone to an insistent shrill. Rain lashed against the window.

  “Can you sit up?” she asked Jim, going to his side. “Take my arms, and I’ll help you.” She reached for his hands and tugged.

  He snatched them back. “What are you doing?”

  “I want to take a walk with you.”

  “Where’s my rhubarb pie?” He pushed at his covers. “I’m too warm.”

  She tried to calm herself. Rushing Alzheimer’s patients was about the worst possible thing to do if you wanted them to cooperate. They’d usually go along with slow and sweet, but rush them, get them anxious? Forget it. Her voice was probably conveying her worry, making him less inclined to follow instructions.

  “I’ll raise your bed, and we’ll get you into a wheelchair. Wouldn’t a little walk be nice?”

  “Pie,” he said, petulant.

  “We’ll walk down to the cafeteria, then. Get you some nice pie.” She raised his hospital bed, and his blankets fell away.

  She turned to get the folding wheelchair—his own, not the home’s—tucked against the wall by the dresser. She fumbled getting it open, slammed the foot rests down and wheeled the chair over to the bedside.

  “Okay, let’s see if we can get you in here,” she said.

  He looked mulish.

  Again, she took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. Pretend it doesn’t matter. Then he’ll do it.

  A crack made her jump and look at the window. A branch had gotten torn off a tree and had hit the window. The wind plastered it there. For a second, the green leaves twisted into the shape of an angry face, a jack-o-lantern leer, then the wind shifted and the branch was carried off. She hurried to the window and looked out, but the rain was coming down so hard, she couldn’t see a thing except the sheeting rain.

  Back to the wheelchair. She needed someone to help her, because Jim wasn’t going to be any help. But there was only her. She needed to at least get him away from the window. The hall would be easier, but the bathroom might be safer.

  She pulled the wheelchair out so she could get ahead of it and pulled it back in after her until the footrests nudged her ankles.

  The wind picked up even more, screaming into the window cracks, making her feel like screaming back in frustration as she tried to manhandle Jim to the side of the bed. Her back twanged.

  “Jim. Listen. No fooling, I need to get you into this chair.”

  “I don’t want to. Where are you taking me? Where’s my wife?”

  “I’m your wife. Here, let’s get your legs out from that sheet and over the side.”

  He shoved at her ineffectually, pitiful in his weakness.

  “Oh, Jim.” She sighed, rested a moment, then yanked his sheets away.

  The storm siren cut out at the same time as the lights. The skies were so dark it was like twilight inside the room.

  “Am I going blind?” Jim said.

  “No, hon. There’s just a storm.”

  “Then we should get down cellar.”

  “Exactly. Here. Help me.”

  Finally he quit fighting her and she helped him to the edge of the bed. She hooked the wheelchair with the toe of her sneaker and brought it closer.

  Her back hurt—she’d probably pulled a muscle—and the pain stabbed as she tried to lift Jim. She almost could—he was that skinny. She dragged him out of bed, but she couldn’t fit him and her and the wheelchair in the space and turn around.

  Then the chair skidded away.

  She had forgotten to set the damned brake.

  Unable to stop herself, she slid, her husband in her arms, to the floor.

  *

  Greg hung up the phone with his aunt. He called Malika’s mom and left a message to phone him, in case she came home from school early, and he warned Ms. Jefferson to get in the basement, in case the tornado made it to town. He was about to call the elementary school again when a gust of wind hit them, so strong, it nearly raised the nos
e of the heavy police cruiser off the ground.

  “Whoa,” Massey said. “What the hell—” The car dropped back down onto its springs and bounced. Massey braked. A sheet of rain obscured the view out the front windshield. Massey turned the wipers all the way up, but it did no good.

  “Maybe pull off onto the shoulder,” Greg said.

  “You sound like my wife.” The other man steered the car to the right, and Greg could feel the gravel of the shoulder underneath the right front tire. He couldn’t hear it for the sound of the rain. Massey said, “Man that’s really—”

  Something slammed against the windshield and they both flinched. Whatever it was had been brown and flat, but it was gone before Greg’s brain could register what it was. He said, “Is this a tornado? Are we coming into it?”

  “No. Or if it is, it’d have to be an awful small one.”

  Greg stared out the windshield. “I guess not—it’s just wind coming straight at us, but sheesh.”

  They sat still and watched through the windows for a half a minute, the wipers speeding back and forth but doing nothing to clear the view.

  “I can’t see shit,” Massey said.

  “Me neither.”

  A pickup truck whipped past them on the right, honking, the horn sound Dopplering down as he disappeared into the heart of the storm.

  “Asshole,” said Massey. “I’d like to give him a ticket, driving like that in this storm.”

  “We’re doing no good sitting out here getting rained on. You think we should turn around and get out of this?”

  “Where are we? Exactly, I mean.”

  “I’ll check.” Greg turned on the map. “There’s a crossroad ahead, a quarter mile ahead. County Road D.”

  “I think we should turn on it, see if we can get out of this rain.”

  “I think we should stay off the road, or get creamed by the next crazy truck driver.”

  “You sound like my wife again.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not ever having sex with you, Massey.”

  “Yep, there it is—you just nailed it. The wife trifecta.”

  Greg didn’t want to joke around. He wanted to get back to town. The closer he was to the elementary school, the better he’d feel. He could feel the storm—feel the pressure changing, maybe. Something in his body knew that worse was coming.

  “Radio in,” said Massey. “I’ll drive along the shoulder.”

  Greg got Dispatch on the radio and gave their location. “Any tornado spotted?”

  “The National Weather Service says there’s a hook echo, which means a possible tornado.”

  “They offer a GPS location on that?”

  “No. Let me get a screen up with the radar on it, and I’ll try to give you a rough location.”

  The car was inching along. Massey came to a driveway that forced him back onto the road for a few feet, and Greg turned his head, half-expecting someone to plow into them from the rear. No one did.

  The dispatcher came on, drawing Greg’s focus back to the radio. “I don’t know. I have the radar, I have the streets superimposed. It’s dark red where you are—”

  “No shit,” muttered Massey.

  “—but I don’t see a hook myself, nothing like a comma or a ‘c.’ Not on this view. Maybe they have better equipment there at the National Weather Service. They must know what they’re talking about.”

  Greg said, “Which road is the nearest escape from the red bits on the radar for us? What direction, I mean?”

  “Definitely east. Back toward town.”

  “Okay, because we’re seeing nothing here because of rain. Over and out.”

  Massey had driven into the crossroad, and now backed off it and stopped. “I can’t even see the damned stop sign.”

  “Is the stop sign on this side or the other?”

  “We’re out of town limits. I can’t remember, but I don’t see how it matters. No one can see it, wherever it is.”

  “I guess just gun it. Turn left, and then turn left again at the next mile road.”

  “Okay. Put your tray tables in upright position.”

  Greg braced himself against the dash.

  Massey put on the gas, too much, and the car skidded for a moment before the tires caught. Then he accelerated around the corner and got up to speed.

  “Man, I can’t see a thing. Slow down.”

  “Wait. I think the rain is easing up.”

  It was. The rain was letting up, just a little. The wipers were still going as fast as they could, and for a fraction of a second, Greg could see the nose of their own car. “Maybe we should be on the shoulder again.”

  “I’m moving at 25. I’ll keep going. I think it’s clearing in this direction.”

  The road ahead became visible. A car appeared coming toward them, pulled off, canted to the left but still on the shoulder, its hazard lights blinking. “Should we stop?”

  Massey glanced in the rearview mirror as they passed. “He’s not signaling us. Just sitting there, waiting it out.”

  “Look at this stuff all over the ground.” As the rain eased more, they could see trash on the ground, branches wrenched off trees, cardboard, plywood, a rooster weathervane. “Wind damage.”

  Massey said, worried, “Maybe we were at the edge of a twister, you think?”

  “No,” Greg said. “I don’t think it was.” Rain bounced off the hood. Then he heard the banging and realized it wasn’t rain bouncing but ice. “Hail,” he said.

  “I see it,” muttered Massey.

  They drove into the hail, which got denser though stayed the same size. “Just pea sized,” said Greg.

  “Bad enough. I wish my car were at home in the garage and not outside the station.”

  “Your insurance will cover it, right? And it might not hail back at the station.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the noise of the hail banging on the metal roof. It took another half a minute to drive out of the end of it.

  “I’m up to 35 now,” said Massey.

  “The other road might be coming up soon.” There was a break in the rain—not a full one, just no hail and light rain for a minute—and a little bit of light was making it through the black clouds.

  “There’s the road. And a stop sign on our side.”

  Greg saw something up ahead. “Wait,” he said. “Look up there.”

  “Where?”

  “Up ahead, maybe a mile or so. You see that black patch?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Keep looking, right at the heart of it. There’s a place where the black goes almost down to the ground.”

  They were parked at the stop sign, leaning forward, both of them trying to see ahead.

  “There!” said Greg. “You see that?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I think maybe there’s a tornado in there. In that dense black spot.”

  “I can’t see it. Like a little Wizard of Oz thing, or one of the big suckers?”

  “Big, I think. But I can’t see it clearly, I just think that some of that dark at ground level is moving debris.”

  “Should we get closer?”

  Greg wasn’t thrilled at the idea. “I suppose we should, to make sure of what it is before we call it in and cause a panic. Just be ready to turn tail and run, okay?”

  “Radio in again. So they know where to look for the bodies.”

  “Very funny,” Greg said, and got on the radio, giving their car number and location, telling the dispatcher what was up. “If you don’t hear from us again, then yeah, it’s probably a tornado.”

  “Radio immediately, would you, once you know? We’ll get the storm siren going.”

  They were driving more slowly now. Patches of heavier rain swept by them—a heavy wash, then very little, and another heavy splattering.

  Massey said, “It’s like being under the damned sprinkler.”

  “Wait. Look at that—it is moving. There’s—”

  Just as he said it,
there was an explosion in the dark area, bits of something being flung out.

  “Oh yeah,” said Massey. “That can’t be good.”

  “Is it coming right this way?”

  “Near enough,” he said, mashing down the accelerator.

  “Where are you going? That’s the wrong direction!” Greg’s heart was thumping painfully in his chest as they sped toward the tornado. Not being in control of the car made the fear worse. His throat felt bone-dry.

  “Chill. There’s a driveway there to the left. I’m not going to risk getting stuck on the shoulder when I do turn.” The next three seconds seemed to fill an eternity, then the car was swinging into the driveway.

  Greg kept his eye on the tornado—which still looked nothing like tornados he’d seen on TV. This was just a black patch in the rain, with stuff moving ahead of it, the whirl of debris barely visible through breaks in the sheeting rain. It drew closer, the darkness sweeping over farm fields, a shadow slithering toward them.

  Greg felt the car reverse. Then a lurch, and he was thrown against the seat harness.

  “Goddamn it!”

  Was it the outer edge of the tornado hitting? Were they about to get hurled across the field? Holly’s face flashed into Greg’s mind. He couldn’t look away from the darkness, though.

  “Asshole!”

  What? He shook off the hypnotic effect of the storm and looked at Massey.

  “The bastard hit us!”

  Greg turned all the way around to see a short white van behind them. It had come off the road and had clipped the back of the car. Its bumper had caught the fender. He jumped out and ran back, getting soaked again, waving at the driver, who was inching backward.

  A young man in the passenger seat leaned out. At the same time as Greg, he said “There’s a tornado!”

  Greg walked forward. “Get out of our way,” he said, motioning them back onto the road. Only then did he notice the weird round thing on the top of the van. He got to the van window. Beyond the passenger, he saw a deck of electronic equipment, including a radar screen and a graphic of the storm they were in, red and orange in the center, with a dab of white near the center. “No. Wait. What’s that?”