“We need to find a paved road.” I peer nervously out the windshield, the rain column easy to spot against the brighter horizon. “Today is not the day to get stuck in the mud.”
Wes points to a distant spot where what looks like a stop sign gleams. “That one should be paved.”
Sure enough, the tires smooth out as we hit asphalt. He stomps on the gas, sending us racing closer and closer toward the heart of the storm. The sky is taking on a beautiful if eerie turquoise glow, the colors vibrant above the deep green of the wheat field beneath it. I shamelessly hang out the window snapping photos. Wes is doing the same thing, one hand on the wheel, the other white-knuckle gripping his camera as he takes photos out the driver’s side.
“Tornado!” I shout with glee when I spot a swirl of dust kicking up maybe a mile ahead. “Pull over. It’s right in front of us!”
Sliding his sunglasses up, Wes peers through the windshield. “I don’t think so. Maybe a dust devil.”
“Not the way it’s moving.” I quickly grab my phone and refresh the velocity radar scan, which shows a telltale couplet ahead of us. The distinct delineation of red-shaded winds moving away from the radar and green-shaded winds moving in the opposite direction is a dead giveaway for a tornado. “And not according to this. Pull over or it’s going to be on top of us!”
Wes glances at the radar scan, swears quietly, and then quickly whips the car around so we’re pointing away from the storm when he pulls onto the shoulder. I hop out and take a few steps into a dandelion-covered field. The bright yellow of the flowers pops against the deep bruise of the sky, and whileit’s missing the ruins I was hoping for, the whimsical fielddoesstrike the right note.
And there’s a tornado about to drop right over it.
“I was right!” I point at the funnel, sinking down to one knee to fill the frame with as many dandelions as I can.
“Sonofabitch.” Wes already has his camera raised to eye level. “We got ourselves a tornado!”
The colors explode in my viewfinder, turquoise sky and cheerful yellow flowers, the deep purple-gray of the cloud base and muddy brown of the tornado growing darker by the second.
“It’s going to cross!” Wes shouts over the wind. He gestures toward the road where the stovepipe wobbles closer, shifting from rich brown to menacing black as it sucks up more and more debris. We’re still a solid half mile away, which is about as close as I’m willing to get, but if Wes has any awareness of just how fast we may need to bail, he’s shoved it aside. Instead, he lies down smack in the middle of the road and waits as the tornado tears a path toward the pavement.
“Wes! Get up!”
I’m not sure he even hears me. We’re on a long straightaway, but a car could come through at any moment. I nervously check behind my shoulder over and over, distracted from my own shots. There’s a bright flash and boom as the tornado slams into the power lines, and then it’s spinning across the road in a furious whirl of shrieking wind.
“Wes!” I shout over the noise, eyeing the tornado as it snaps poles like matchsticks. “We gotta go!” Darting an anxious look over my shoulder for a car, I jog over to him and yank on the back of his shirt. “Now!”
It’s another thirty seconds before he scrambles to his feet.“Shit, sorry, I was just in the zone and…” He glances back at the tornado, which is getting bigger. It’s either heading our way or turning into the kind of monster we have no business messing with, and it’s doing it fast. “Fuck, we gotta go.”
His hand is on the small of my back as we sprint for the car, a subtle push to move faster. The eerie whistle-howl of the tornado raises the hairs on the back of my neck. We’re way too close.Thisis the reason Wes has the reputation he does. He gets so absorbed in what he’s doing, so focused on gettingtheshot, that he forgets how quickly a storm can turn on us.
He’s closer to the driver’s side. I don’t argue as we throw ourselves into the car, slam the doors, and peel out before either of our seat belts are fully clicked into place.
A shower of sparks goes up behind us as another telephone pole crashes into the road, uncomfortably close. “C’mon,” Wes mutters, the engine revving as he stomps on the gas. “There was another paved road heading east about a mile south.”
“Yeah, but it’s three miles after that to the next southbound road.” I glance anxiously behind us. The tornado appears smaller, but not by much. We haven’t put nearly enough distance between it and ourselves. “Not a lot of room to run if that thing turns.”
“I think it’s moving north.” Wes flashes me a nervous grin, jabbing the button to lower the window before he sticks his head out to look back at the tornado furiously eating up farmland. “We’re good!”
He’s staring back at the tornado so intently that he doesn’t see the power lines stretched across the road until I shout his name.
We skid to a stop inches in front of the sparking wires. “Put your window up,” I snap, my heart in my throat as I use the mirror to check the tornado’s progress. “We need to get out of here.”
“I can get under them if we go onto the shoulder a little.” Wes points to an opening that might be big enough for us to squeeze through as another shower of sparks erupts from the tangled wires. “Don’t touch anything metal.”
“No shit.” I take a deep breath as he slowly backs up and angles the car to slip under the lines. He’s not entirely calm either, his jaw granite and his knuckles white on the steering wheel, but we manage to clear the debris without incident.
Wes lets out a long sigh as we pick up speed again. “Nothing like a close call to get the heart pumping.” My temper flares, but before I can snap back at him that if he’d kept his eyes on the damn road we would have seen it earlier, he reaches for me with a visible tremble in his hand. “You okay?”
I swallow hard, my heart rate not yet back to normal. “That was close. Too close.” It’s exactly why I didn’t want to get sucked into his vortex.
He nods, his hand squeezing around mine. “I know. I’m sorry. I…I let myself get distracted. You’re right. I should be more careful with you.”
With you.I peer at Wes, wondering why it’s only my safety that seems to be affecting him at all. But there’s no time to wonder with a tornado still devouring dirt behind us.
I refresh the radar, studying the movement on loop and the defined hook that’s powering the storm. The road that Wes mentioned is coming up, and while there’s no guarantee, runningparallel to the tornado is a risk I’m willing to take based on the data. “That left is coming up.”
