Chasing Storm (11 page)

I load the car and head off straight away. The rain’s coming down hard now. The wipers can’t keep up. It’s just like first day I was stranded.

It’s funny how everything has come full circle now. This was supposed to be a rebirth, a clean slate from which to build a better life, but as usual I’ve just fucked everything up. I come in, Cyclone Alice, and things crumble. That’s all I’m good for.

I pass the Welcome To Rosie sign and watch it shrink in the rear-view.

Once again I’m travelling away from my problems instead of tackling them head on, but maybe this is for the best. Was it a mistake to come to Rosie at all, to dredge up the past and find him along the way?

It’s too much for me to take in.

I turn on the radio, but it’s breaking up, turning into static.

It starts to really come down.

What is it with roads and rain around here?

I’m another few miles down the road when the rain becomes torrential. The wipers flash back and forth at full speed, the window Storm taped up beginning to come away at the corners and flap.

Storm.

A robotic-sounding voice breaks through the static on the radio.

This is a tornado emergency warning from the National Weather Service. A tornado emergency has been issued for Sackville County until 5:45PM Central District Time. A funnel cloud has been spotted in the immediate vicinity that poses a life-threatening risk. Take cover now. Move to the interior room on the lowest floor of a sturdy building. Avoid windows. Protect yourself from flying debris…

Something hard hits the back window, shattering it and spraying tiny fragments of glass throughout the cabin.

Not again. Jesus.

I pull to a stop in the middle of the road and scream as a sheet of iron cartwheels down the road and wind rushes through the interior.

I release the door handle and the entire thing swings out and bends against the wind. I come out of the car and almost collapse forward the strength of the wind is so great.

Where the hell did this come from?

There’s an odd whistling noise coming through the rain. I squint my eyes and spin around in the middle of the road. I see it past the trees and rise to the right. The whistling sound grows behind me, a force growing in magnitude.

I turn and my breath catches.

The entire horizon is blotted out by a storm, a giant funnel cloud just about to kiss the ground. The size of the thing staggers me, its sheer might and majesty right before my eyes as colors collude into an ominous green mass the size of a stadium.

It becomes clear: If I don’t find shelter, I could well die out here.

I look around, but there’s nothing. Yet again I am in the middle of nowhere.

“Fuck!” I cry, getting back into the car and turning around.

Heading back to Rosie’s the only option.

But the closer I get, the more the dark mass of clouds approaches from the side until it’s right in front of me, cutting off the road.

I see the funnel through the rain, teasing the ground again. It’s fucking monstrous.

Warnings continue to tumble out of the radio, static hissing and cutting off the voice.

I bring the car to a stop and turn around again. There’s nothing I can do now but go forward.

I drive at full speed, the poor motor straining and bouncing off the rev limiter. The tires hover above the surface of the road. I hang over the steering wheel, praying.

Another group of clouds move in ahead, moving fast. In no time they’ve blocked the road ahead and it dawns on me I am surrounded.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I’m about to drive forward and take my chances when a car comes sliding up beside me.

Dan?

I don’t know how he found me, but I’m really happy to see him now.

Dan pops the door open of his patrol car. I can’t hear him through the window, but his message is clear. “Get in!”

It takes effort simply to open my door the wind is so strong. Outside, I’m forced to plant my feet into the ground and lean into it to even get the door of the patrol car open. I slam the door closed and the din is momentarily blocked out.

“How?”

“Your dad.”

“But the road’s blocked at both ends by the storm. It’s making the groundfall, the twister.” I’m pointing ahead at the growing blackness.

“There’s an access road just a mile back behind us. It loops up behind the town heading west. We can still make it.”

He spins the car around as the wheels struggle for purchase and flattens his foot. The car fishtails across the road as we hurtle towards the tornado. It’s in full swing now, a tube of grey and black ripping the earth apart.

“We’re not going to make it.”

Dan squeezes the steering wheel. “Yes, we will.”

The tornado approaches, filling the entire windscreen and horizon ahead.

Dan doesn’t let off the throttle. “Just a little bit longer.”

“Dan!” I scream, as a giant sheet of metal collects with the roof of the car, peeling off the emergency lights.

There’s a sharp explosion from under the hood and the car suddenly swerves across the road. Dan wrestles with the wheel but the car skittles off into a divot on the side, the wheels spinning freely in the mud.

“Ah, hell!” he says, slamming the wheel.

He picks up his radio receiver. “Officer 1-15, a mile south of Dead Mans Pass. Requesting assistance, over.”

“All units unavailable,” comes the reply. “Find shelter and report.”

“Copy.”

Dan throws the radio against the dash. “Fuck! Come on.”

He opens his door and we both get out, rain like wet needles pumps en-masse from the sky. I wipe the water out of my eyes as we ring around the car.

It’s not the engine. The front tire’s twisted clean off the rim shredded by a six-inch strip of what looks like part of a windmill.

There’s a solid boom behind us. We both turn to see the twister begin to touch down in the distance, a giant funnel of sickly green spiraling towards the ground. A fireball twists into the mass. It’s huge.

Wind and rain whips at us from every angle.

Dan comes up to my ear, hand on my back. “It’s not safe here.” He’s yelling at the top of his voice, but it’s drowned out by the storm. A deep panic begins to set in and I remind myself to act calm. I risk another glance back at the twister just to see it flip a barn whole, the beams swirling up into the tempest. For a moment I’m frozen by its power. “Oh god.”

Dan spins me by the shoulders, eyes wide and alert. “There,” he says, pointing to a house in the distance. “Go!”

I turn and run. He’s right behind me, pushing me forward as my shoes sink into the mud.

The wind increases, a terrible howling over-riding everything as the storm moves on.

“It’s coming right for us. Go, go, go!”

My legs pump harder, but even the sight of the house is obscured in the rain and wind.

I lock focus and channel everything I have into the action of getting there.

I look left just to see the twister cut a swathe across the corn fields down the road, yellow, green and the earth itself added to its swirling mass.

Dan gives me another push from behind and the house looms ahead in the blur.

“To the right!” Dan screams from behind me, and I break right, running to the back of the house.

The wind abates slightly as we come up to the side of the structure.

Around the back the doors to a bunker set out a small distance from the house are flapping open and shut.

“Get to that bunker!”

We’re both stooped low, fighting against the gale. I can no longer run. My legs burn like hellfire just as I come to the doors and tumble down the stairs to splay out into the dirt at the bottom of the bunker, grit under my knees as I stand and help pull Dan down into the darkness.

He stumbles back upstairs as the whistling increases in velocity and a sudden gust of dirt and foliage is cast into the pit with us.

With a great heave he lifts the two doors back into place and slides the bolt through, the sound, wind and rain shut out and nothing but pure darkness is all around us in the hollow space.

A torch light comes on. Dan makes his way down the stairs, huffing. “We’ll be safe here until it passes.”

He casts the light around the room. It’s more of a hole than a bunker, barely big enough for the two of us. There’s a shelf at the back filled with what looks like tins of beans from the ’70s, rope, a lamp and box of matches.

Dan pulls the lamp and matches down, striking them and getting the lamp cooking until it lights the bunker with an eerie warm glow.

There’s a cut on Dan’s cheek. I move my finger towards it, but he flinches away.

“It’s fine,” he says. “Just a little cut.”

“Did you see the size of it?”

He nods solemnly. “Biggest damn twister I’ve ever seen, and bearing right down upon us. A few more minutes…”

We both know what might have happened if we didn’t find this shelter.

The howling outside becomes an animal, stalking around us. The hinges on the doors strain, but the bolt holds firm.

“Is that going to hold?” I ask.

Dan takes off his Stetson, placing it with reverence on the shelf. “I sure as hell hope so. I don’t know about you, but I have no intention of being sucked up into that thing.”

Time passes quietly. We don’t speak, the elephant in the room larger than the both of us.

“Why?” Dan says finally, sitting on the lower stair. “Why him, huh?”

I sit down against the shelf. There’s no answer I can give him I know will suffice. “I don’t know.”

“Out of all the guys in Rosie, New York even, hell, the world, and you have to go and get with a lowlife like that.”

“He’s not a lowlife.”

“Oh yeah, and you’ve been back, what, a few days and you’re suddenly an expert on Millertown boys? Let me tell you a few things about your mystery man. His daddy was a thief, a drug-dealer, one of the worst, and a drunk. His mommy wasn’t much better, spreading her legs for anyone with two coins to rub together. Like I said, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, not with any of them. Break-and-enter, possession… he was booked for it all. He’s scum. The world would be better off without him.”

Maybe he’s right. It occurs to me I don’t really know Storm. I don’t know where he came from or where he’s been, only what I feel for him, the heat that cleaves us together.

But the people in Millertown. Every one of them vouched for him. I could see the sincerity in their eyes. He’s more than his father. I know it.

“I can’t help the way I feel, Dan,” I tell him. “Do you think I’ve pictured myself with a guy like him? No, never in a million years,” and I see the loss in Dan’s eyes of what we could be together, the family we might have and the life yet to be led, and it would be a good life. He’s a good man, after all. He could satisfy me sexually, but it’s not the same. Why, fuck it? Why can’t it?

Dan stands, pacing, as the doors to the bunker buckle and shake again. “Just tell me what you see in him, that’s all. I don’t want to stand here and cuss at you. It’s your life. I just want to understand.”

So I try. I try to break it down for him. “When we’re together…” I start over. “Storm, he’s just… he’s the sun, and I have to touch it. I have to touch it even though I know I’m going to get burnt.”

Dan laughs. “Do you know how cheesy that sounds? I could give you everything.
I
can be that man. Can’t you see that?” He’s reaching down, holding me by the shoulders, but I pull his hands away, holding them before us, running my thumb over his palm. “I know, Dan. I know, but I have to make this mistake.”

He slumps back onto the stairs and nods, defeated. “Well, I won’t be around to pick up the pieces. That’s all I’m saying. If you choose him, you choose him. I won’t, I can’t, take you back.”

A hot tear trails down my face, drifting from my cheek to impact in a rosette against the dirt below. “I know.”

Dan lets out a long breath.

The doors to the bunker bump and judder again, but this time with much greater force.

Dan stands, moving up the stairs.

The whistling is building to a crescendo outside. Even down here in the earth the storm is a physical force, far larger than any of us, terrifying in scale.

I snap upwards at the sound of a voice in the ruckus outside.

I move to the bottom of the stairs, cupping my ear. “Did you hear that?”

The voice comes again, clearer now.

Dan struggles forward to the doors. “What the hell?”

A solid
knock knock
comes on the panel of the doors and Dan jumps back.

There’s no doubt about it.

Someone’s out there.

“Hey!” comes the cry.

“Someone’s out there, Dan.”

“Yeah, yeah, I can hear it too.”

“Let me in! Open the doors!”

Dan squeezes himself onto the top stair and pulls the bolt back. The doors burst upon and I have to reach back for the shelf the suction outside is so great.

Dan reaches a hand out to pull the stranger in. I look up just in time to see them enter from the top, a man grasping Dan’s arm as they’re dragged inside. The wet, wind and cold enters with them, the man resting on the top of the stairs as Dan struggles to close the doors again, grunting with the effort of getting the bolt back in place and then collapsing exhausted in a soggy heap.

My eyes adjust to the lamp-light and I flinch back in recognition.

Dan notices it at the same time.

It’s no stranger.

It’s Storm.