The Breathtaker (29 page)

6

S
OPHIE TOUCHED
the naked-feeling spot at the base of her throat where her locket used to be. Rick had told her to wait in the Doppler van, that he’d fix it real quick; but when he came back out of the wind facility, he didn’t have the necklace with him. “We’ll pick it up on the way back,” he’d promised her. That was twenty minutes ago.

Now they were heading west on the I-40, and Rick was going on and on about tornadoes—blah, blah, blah—and the only thing she could think about was her missing necklace. She never should’ve given it to him in the first place. “What?” she said distractedly.

“Catastrophic.” He wiped a spot on the windshield with his thumb. “Cataclysmic.”

“You really like those cata words.”

He laughed.

“You’ve gotta admit,” she said while an echoey thunder rolled across the plains, “storm-chasing’s a pretty weird hobby.”

He shot her a glance. “They’re all heroes in my book.”

“You’ve got a book?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a book. And a motto.
Cogito, ergo zoom.
”

“‘I think, therefore I chase.’ See? I’m no slouch myself, you know. I almost got killed chasing an F-2 the other day.”

“I know. You told me. And the reason you almost got killed is because your friend Boone Pritchett doesn’t know his ass from helicity. You hungry?”

“No thanks.”

“Because there’s a candy bar in the glove compartment. Go on,” he said. “Help yourself.”

“No thanks.”

“Really. Don’t be shy.”

She clicked open the glove compartment and fished around for the candy bar, mostly out of politeness. She wasn’t that hungry, but she peeled off the wrapper and took a bite, anyway. “It’s getting kind of late,” she said. “Don’t you think?”

“Nah. Best part of the day. Besides, these are dream conditions. You don’t want to pass up an opportunity like this, do you?”

She shrugged. “Guess not.”

“Go on. Eat up. You’ll need your strength.”

She took another bite and was beginning to have serious doubts about the whole thing. Regrets. Rick had been so persuasive back at the house. He’d promised to call her father; he’d even written the note himself. “I dunno,” she said, thinking about her father and how upset he would be. “Maybe we should just blow it off.”

“Are you kidding? We’ve got another forty minutes left before sunset, and even then—uh-oh. Don’t look now, but an eighteen-wheeler’s trying to run us over.”

In the side-view mirror, she could see a cobalt-colored Mack truck bearing down on them.

“Lucky for him I’m a nice guy,” Rick said, easing his foot off the gas. “If I see a big rig gaining on me, I’ll reduce my speed by five or ten miles and let him pass. You don’t want him just sitting there on your ass.”

The Mack truck roared by on the left, honking its horn.

“Like I don’t see you, you mesomorph!” He flipped a switch and the flat fifteen-inch LCD screen mounted above Sophie’s head lit up. Across the display screen, a repeating radar loop flashed mostly red. “Wow. Look at all those East Texas beasts,” he said. “Time to head north.”

“North?” She looked at him, confused. “But I thought we were going to Aberdeen.”

“Nah, Texas is bush-league. We’re taking a different route to paradise.”

She rested the candy bar in her lap, no longer hungry.

“See these two storms?” He pointed at the LCD screen. “See the one further north? That’s what you’d call a mother-ship storm. Once the cap breaks, it’s gonna grow explosively. I predict we’ll be playing with this baby very shortly.”

“But aren’t you supposed to quit when the sun goes down?”

“What’re you, chicken?”

She shook her head, feeling light-headed all of a sudden. She looked down at the candy bar. Her brain was numb.

“I thought you wanted to see a tornado up close and personal, kiddo?” he said.

“I did. I mean, I do.” Her facial muscles knotted. “I guess.”

“You guess?” His eyes dwindled in their frowning sockets. “Didn’t you just say to me, ‘You ain’t no slouch’?”

“I’m not, but…”

“But what?” He looked at her sideways. “You’re not going soft on me, are you, Sophie?”

“No…”

“Because you’re the one who begged me to take you storm-chasing in the first place, remember?”

“I know.” She shot him a sidelong glance. “But…”

“But what? What’s all this ‘but’ crap?” His look was a challenge. “Don’t put me in a black mood, kiddo. You don’t wanna see me in one of my black moods.”

She curled her arms around her chest, feeling dizzy. Something was wrong. The interior of the van was freezing because he had the a/c cranked so high. They passed a deserted gas station, its metal sign swinging to and fro in the wind. She didn’t have a clue where they were anymore. The rain was clicking and tapping against the roof like little claws.

He glanced at her, his knuckles going white on the wheel. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“No,” she said softly. “That’s okay.”

There were dots of pink on his cheeks as if, deep down, he were holding himself very tenderly. “Can I trust you?” he whispered. “With a secret?”

She closed her eyes for a second, not wanting to hear any secrets.

“Remember how my father died?”

“Yeah,” she said.
The tornado, the wheat, the barn.

He grinned, coaxing a smile out of her.

“What?”

“I lied.”

“What d’you mean?”

“He died in a tornado, but under different circumstances.”

She was getting drowsy. The droning engine was making her sleepy, and the rain had turned the air purple. “I don’t get it,” she heard herself say.

His face showed both discomfort and excitement. “Lemme put it this way.” He glanced at her through parted lashes. “My father was a thief.”

“What?” That got her attention.

“A house burglar.”

“Really?”

“He’d rob houses during a tornado watch or warning. Now, before you go judging me… wouldn’t you lie, too? If your father was a thief instead of a cop?”

She took a confused breath. She really didn’t understand where this conversation was headed. She tucked her hands between her knees, the air inside the van so cold you could see your own breath.

“Doesn’t matter how he died,” he said. “The fact remains, he got what he deserved.”

She eyed him through a haze of drowsiness. “How can you say that?”

“Don’t you believe that some people are so evil, Sophie, they deserve to die?”

The silence that followed made her scalp prickle. It was hard to stop watching the horizon. She couldn’t help but be mesmerized by the swirling, dangling clouds. All she could hear was the drumbeat of the rain and the steady
clip-clip-clip
of the windshield wipers. Something had turned in him, she didn’t know what. She had a vague sense that she might be in danger, but all she wanted to do was close her eyes and fall asleep, worry about it later.

Rick spoke with a slight hesitation. “You should’ve seen me back then. I was the nicest kid on the block. The Boy Scout next door. But then over time, I built up a real hatred for the world, you know?”

She drew very quietly into herself and tried to become invisible. Her eyes swept to the street. They were off the I-40 now, sailing past wild prairie and abandoned houses like the bones of ruin, fallen-down corrals and rusting crew-cab pickups. She had no idea where they were on the map. The rain made a steady hammering sound, while all around them, thunder crashed like the boom of the surf.

“I didn’t start out that way,” he went on. “I started out soft and open, like you. Well, maybe not exactly like you. You fit in, right?”

She didn’t answer.

“I never fit in. Oh, I can fake fitting in. I can fake it pretty good. But it’s like you’re on the outside all your life, looking in.” He studied her face as if he were deciding whether or not to go on. He held out his hand. “See that?”

She remembered: The finger was bent at the tip, permanently deformed from flying debris.

“He did that to me.” He rolled up the sleeve of his flannel shirt so that she could see several dime-sized scars on his arm. “He’d burn me with his cigarettes whenever I misbehaved. He decided early on that I was incorrigible. I had to ask his permission to use the bathroom. If I forgot to ask permission, he’d burn me with his cigarettes.”

Her hands felt as tiny as paws in her lap.

“But that’s nothing compared to what happened when I
really
screwed up.” He looked at her. “By the time I was your age, I didn’t have a single tooth left in my head.”

“What?” She sat rigidly upright.

“One tooth for each bad deed.” He clacked his teeth together. “Any stupid mistake. Any insubordination, and he’d yank another tooth out of my head.”

She stared at his mouth, and it was true—his teeth didn’t seem quite real. They were too perfect. Too white.

“All growing up, I’d look in the mirror and think I was dead,” he said. “I was small for my age, bowlegged. I got picked on a lot. I wore long sleeves in the summertime so the other kids wouldn’t see my scars. I can’t remember ever being happy.” He stared at her fixedly. “But I wouldn’t trade what I’ve become… what I’ve evolved into… for anything in the world.”

She could hear her own heart thudding in her ears.

“There was this chair up in the attic, a very special chair reserved just for me.” The van’s engine droned hypnotically behind his voice. “He’d strap me into that goddamn chair and leave me there. He’d let me wait with my awful fears. I’d wait all by myself, scared out of my wits, imagining the worst. The chair faced a window, and I’d watch the wind stirring the wheat outside. I thought it was God, writing me messages with his finger.” He laughed. “I thought He was trying to tell me something.”

She idly picked at the peacoat’s big navy buttons, trying to blot him out.
Take me home, take me home…

“To this day, I can’t stand being confined. I won’t fly. And I absolutely refuse to wear a seat belt.”

She noticed that he wasn’t buckled in.

“I’d sit there staring at new cells developing along the horizon… and back-sheared anvils… and sheets of rain flapping across the plains…”

Her hair fell loosely, hiding her face.

“Waiting for him to come upstairs and do bad things to me. Up those attic stairs,” he said. “He’d come at me with everything he had. If I cried out, he went at it harder… he’d pour whiskey over my face and down my neck… grab the pliers. I’d be screaming the whole time. After a while, you learn to shut down emotionally. You stare out the window and start to see things.” His voice grew hushed. “I remember my first tornado. It was just
rrrr, rrrr, rrrr
. A puny, rope-sized F-1, but to me it was a real beast. I was strapped in that chair, helpless, when suddenly I realized…
I wanted to be that thing… that breathtaking thing…
wanted to rip through the wheat and roar toward the house and kill everything in my way, including my old man. We watched the wheat get completely demolished. Dad started crying. And I said to him, ‘Don’t worry, Daddy, we’ll put it back together.’ But inside, I was thinking that I’d destroyed his wheat.
Me.
I’d put that look of torment on his face. And it felt so fucking good.”

A large silence.

He turned to her. “Are you mad at me?”

“Why?” she asked with veiled eyes. “Should I be?”

“I dunno. You seem kind of distant.”

She was feeling smaller and smaller. “Well, I’m not.”

“Did I scare you?”

She hesitated, not knowing what the right answer was.

“I didn’t mean to scare you.” His expression changed. His eyes grew warmer. “I had this dream last night, Sophie. About the two of us.”

She glanced at the door handle. Stared at it. They were doing sixty, and there was nothing around for miles. Literally nothing but grass. Should she jump?

“Sophie?”

She folded herself into silence.

“Buckle up,” he said as they swerved full bore around the Mack truck. “You’re in for the ride of your life.”

7

B
ARRELING WEST
on the I-40, Charlie was forced to slow to a crawl when a TV truck decided to park in the middle of the highway and block the oncoming traffic while the cameraman set up in the passing lane, since they needed a dramatic backdrop for the reporter broadcasting live feed. Charlie jabbed his horn repeatedly, then wove in and out of traffic, saying, “Excuse me! Excuse me!” Finally out of sheer frustration, he veered onto private land and cut across a field doing 40 mph.

When he got back on the highway, he was crying. Pathetic. Tears streaming down his face. Voices whispering inside his head.
Don’t let the models do the forecasting for you. Use them selectively. They’ve burned many.
Why tell him this? Why give him any advice at all? What was Rick trying to do? Was it a miscue? Did he somehow sense that Charlie would fail? That his gut would mislead him? The Panhandle and Aberdeen were hotbeds of activity tonight. Why shouldn’t he follow everyone else’s lead? Maybe that was exactly what his gut was telling him to do.

Tears of frustration streamed down his face, while the voices continued to give conflicting advice.
Check it out yourself. Just drive straight into Texas, son. This is where fate steps in.
He tapped the steering wheel with anxious fingers, trying to concentrate. He’d been monitoring spotter reports from as far away as Clarendon, Texas, where a huge storm system was spewing out F-1s and F-2s, weaker tornadoes that touched down harmlessly and dissipated quickly. Every chaser on the planet, it seemed, was tearing a new asshole into East Texas—porcupine trucks, Explorers, Chrysler New Yorkers, a big old Impala with the Road Runner painted on the hood. And what was Charlie doing? He was en route to Aberdeen, just like everybody else.
Aberdeen’s the place we wanna be, son.

I’d advise you to listen to your gut…

He cast a feverish glance at the equipment inside the truck—a laptop computer, an Internet-by-satellite service and a ninety-nine-dollar portable clip-on DSS dish used to download information. His father carried basic gear. A regular cellular modem that didn’t get any better than 9,600 bps, which meant that if you were out of the coverage area or in heavy radio congestion, you were flat out of luck. A CB radio. Charlie recalled Willa’s advice:
CBs aren’t used as much these days, but truckers are everywhere and they’re better than the weather forecasters as to road conditions and the looks of the sky. Remember to ask questions. They can be your eyes and ears.

He fumbled one-handed with the laptop and downloaded a weather update from the National Weather Service. The forty-eight-hour satellite imagery showed an impressive air mass approaching from the west near Aberdeen. The radar showed big red splotches moving southwest to northeast, covering all of East Texas and parts of Oklahoma. He could hear thunderboomers way off in the distance.

Follow your gut.

His gut was confusing the hell out of him. He needed an expert, somebody who could walk him through this nightmare. He needed Willa.
Willa.
God, he hoped she was okay; she seemed fine when he’d left her. He groped for the cell phone and hastily dialed her number but got no response. He hung up and tried the station house.

“Mike? I need you to track down Willa Bellman for me. I think she might be en route to the hospital… Mike?”

Through bursts of interference, he heard: “. . . Chief?… they had to call off the choppers… sky’s getting hairy…”

“What?”

“. . . canceled the choppers… we’re not…”

“I can’t hear you!” The phone spit static in his ear. “Mike? You’re breaking up,” he said, his own sour breath rebounding off the receiver.

“. . . called highway patrol… don’t think…”

There was a final spritz of noise as their connection was severed. “Fuck!” He was outside the coverage area. He tossed the useless phone away and searched the sky. Where was he going? Where the hell was he going? He squinted at the overcast. Blanks. He was drawing blanks all over the place. He tried to stem the rising tide of panic, while memories of Sophie came and went like the checkered images of a movie montage, washed in shadow.
Skinny, freckled, walking on the balls of her feet; laughing, crying, shrinking from strangers. Sophie in her Xena costume, trying to look ominous. Her funny little smile. Bubble gum, flip-flops, school plays; Sophie in the spotlight, her small face growing pale onstage as she forgot her lines. His heart aching for her. Fearing for her.

Checking his rearview, he noticed a refrigeration truck bearing steadily down on him. “Look at this lunatic, right on my ass…”

The refrigeration truck clipped his mirror, practically blowing out his windows and giving him the impression that he was standing still. The wind rocked the Loadmaster as the truck roared past, hammer down. Once it’d cleared his hood, he saw the “Will Have Sex for Beer!” bumper sticker.

Cranking the CB and scooping up the hand mike, Charlie said, “Hey, where’s the fire?”

The driver of the rogue vehicle came back over the radio with a simple “What’s your handle back there?”

Charlie didn’t have a handle.

“Who’s that sweeping the leaves behind me?”

“Burned-All-Over,” he finally said.

“Come back on that? Somebody walked all over you.”

“Burned-All-Over,” he repeated angrily.

“Appreciate it, Burned-All-Over. This here is Reefer. I’m on my way to shaky town via Lubbock. Wolfgang Puck wants his arugula freshly picked, you know. Watch out for the picture machine up ahead at mile marker one-six-oh.”

“I need help in locating a vehicle,” Charlie said.

He listened to crackling static while gazing at the gentle roll of land beyond the hypnotizing
slush-slush
of his windshield wipers. There was nothing but grass on either side of the road, wild grass that ran before the wind in great strings of air, great flapping sheets. Scuds of rain crackled against his windshield, creating a tent of sound. He tried to keep the hitch out of his voice as he keyed the mike again. “I said I’m looking for a brown Doppler van with ‘Environmental Sciences’ stenciled on the side.”

“Haven’t seen any Doppler trucks…”

“Van… a brown Doppler van… This is an emergency.”

“Sorry, driver. Gotta shake the leaves. Channel 9 is reserved for emergency use.”

“Channel 9?”

The CB clicked and went silent. Charlie watched the refrigeration truck hydroplane into the rain, then he swerved into the breakdown lane and let the truck idle, while other chase cars continued to pass by on the left.
Zoom, zoom, zoom.

Charlie tapped his holstered handgun, and the fear hit him all over again. It sank like a hot rock in his gut. He didn’t want to think about her. If he thought about his daughter, he might lose it completely, and that wouldn’t do anybody any good. He sat searching the steel-colored sky to his west, then slowly honed his gaze northward, where darker clouds pulsed with lightning. The sky looked more promising to the northeast, for sure. He didn’t get it. Why was everybody and their mother heading for Texas tonight?

He flipped the channel selector on the CB and transmitted a message. “I’m looking for a Doppler van.” He gave details. Kept it short. “Anybody? I’m looking for a Doppler van with ‘Environmental Sciences’ stenciled on the side… a brown Doppler van… This is an emergency.” A few people responded, but no one had seen any Doppler vans in the vicinity.

He dunked the mike back in its metal retainer and lowered his forehead onto his fist. “Whoever said ‘No news is good news’ is an idiot,” he muttered. The sound of his own voice made him angry. He thought about the corpses they’d found with pieces of flying debris sticking out of them at odd angles. Shame burned across his scalp. He wouldn’t let Rick harm his daughter. It became a sticking point in his heart. He wasn’t about to let anybody hurt a hair on her lovely head.

His brain felt scorched. His eyes were in a permanent squint. He could feel pins and needles in his legs from where his circulation had been compromised. These tiny agricultural communities in northwestern Oklahoma consisted of little more than a farm equipment store and a string of roads reeling out into the grasslands. He scanned the horizon, nothing but prairie and telephone poles for miles around. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. On the radio was the chasers’ anthem, “Bad Moon Rising.”

Trust your gut.

The overcast sky had a sculpted appearance, the horizon turning progressively more ominous toward the north, where the revolver-colored clouds were veined with lightning. Up through the ugly cloud bank, he could see a mass of ivory-white storm clouds shooting up like an A-bomb. You needed three things to make a tornado, he recalled: sufficient moisture, dynamics to lift the air and jet streams to provide wind shear, which would help create rotation. A combination of perfect timing, positioning and good fortune. He had a gut feeling he should be heading northeast, not west; against all expert advice.

Trust your gut.

The very thought made his skin crawl. What if his gut was wrong?
Follow the yellow brick road.
Which way? On a bare-naked hunch, he released the hand brake, looked over his shoulder, put the truck in reverse and took the nearest exit off the interstate. He headed east for several miles before the panic began to set in.

Wrong way, wrong way… turn back. Go to Aberdeen, you loser. Don’t lose her.

He checked the map on the seat beside him and followed his finger northeast of his current position. He switched channels on the CB again, keyed the mike and said, “Breaker one-oh. I’m looking for a Doppler van in the vicinity of Erick or Texola…”

Follow your gut. Take a chance.

A pale blue El Camino whizzed past him in the westbound lane. “Hey, breaker, you lookin’ for a tornado?” the driver said.

“Yeah, anything.”

“I just got a call from my nowcaster. He says all this hyped-up stuff over Texas is dying out but that something truly awesome is popping to the north of us.”

“North?”

“Up around Sweetwater. My nowcaster tells me a tornado warning has just been issued. I’m gonna bug out… Good luck!”

Charlie hit the gas, looking for an exit that would take him north to Sweetwater. After a few minutes, darkness seized the sky. It got so dark he needed a flashlight just to read the road map. Several other chase vehicles shot past him in the opposite direction. The direction of Texas. He felt a nagging doubt.

He switched back to channel 9. The first rule of radio courtesy was to listen before you transmitted, but Charlie committed the cardinal sin and interrupted again. “This is Burned-All-Over, I’ve got an emergency request…” He made his announcement again. Listened to scattered voices. “. . . roller skate, greasy side up…” CBs used radio frequency waves that traveled from transmitter to receiver in a fairly straight line near the ground. Maximum range was twenty-five to seventy-five miles, depending upon the terrain and the vehicles’ antennae. Only one person could transmit on a channel at a time without creating chaos.

Now a deep male voice squelched the static. “Burned-All-Over? This is Spare Wheel. You lookin’ for a Doppler van?”

Charlie snagged the mike. “You’ve seen it?”

“Five minutes ago… Let’s move to one-two.”

In some neighborhoods, channel 9 was used as a calling channel, which meant that after making contact, you were to immediately move to another channel so that everybody in the neighborhood could monitor channel 9 and increase the chances of an emergency call being heard. Charlie switched to channel 12.

“Where?” A spike of static made him jump. Multiple voices crackled competitively over the radio speaker, while he fiddled with the old analog controls. “Hello? Say again, Spare Wheel. Somebody trounced all over you.”

“. . . heading north…”

“Which way?” Fear thickened the words in his throat. “I didn’t catch that.”

“Heading north on Route 30,” the trucker broke in. “I don’t run Route 30 very often, it’s a real boardwalk. There’s a pothole every five inches.”

“Route 30?”

“Three miles west of Sweetwater. Those weather weenies from Dryden Tech don’t know shit. All the action’s in Aberdeen today. He must have his head inserted firmly up his ass.”

“Thanks a million.” He dunked the mike back, put the truck into high gear and drove east until he intersected Route 30 at a perfect right angle. Then he drove north… north… speeding over potholes so large you could go fishing in them. What if he was too late? His heart clenched.
Hope to God… hope to God… don’t let it be too late.