Ozrik
Aweek and a half after the personal interviews, the weather was primed for activity. My eyes burned from too many hours staring at computer screens, analyzing Doppler radar, tracking warm and cold fronts, and reading every update posted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
In another window, I’d done a search on Gale Windrow for reasons I couldn’t explain, except that he’d been on my mind since we’d run into each other in the bathroom at CineVision Entertainment.
Sadly, he didn’t have much of an online presence, so I hadn’t learned much, but I’d found a few pictures on Olivia’s socials and shamelessly browsed between cycles of checking Doppler.
Why this ordinary guy had hijacked my brain, I had no idea, but something about him called to me.
I hadn’t left Lex’s garage for two days.
My mother was driving me up a wall, and the only reason she hadn’t sent out a search party was because I kept in touch enough that she knew I was alive.
Sheriff Barclay would have no qualms about dragging me home by the scruff of the neck otherwise, and it was the last place I wanted to be.
Oil Slick napped beside me in a nest of papers. With her head tucked under a paw, she acted like the glowing light of the computer screen was a disturbance manufactured to spite her.
I ran the balls of my chain necklace across my teeth, clicking them back and forth, while keeping the medical alert charm clamped between my molars.
The dentist’s voice echoed inside my head, warning about enamel damage.
My mother’s horrifying shrieks joined the chorus because what if the necklace snapped?
What if I choked? What if hidden toxic metals leeched through my skin and poisoned me?
Germs, Ozrik. You’re sucking on germs. Do you know where that’s been? Do you want to get sick?
The door leading into the house opened, and in a panic, I closed the Gale tab as Lex stumbled into the garage, looking either mostly drunk or half asleep. Considering I’d lost track of time, it was hard to say.
He wore sleep pants and a tattered hoodie he’d owned since high school. “You’re still here? Fuck, man. Do you ever go home?”
I grunted noncommittally. “That system we’ve been tracking is making noise.
We have a gorgeous supercell forming over the coming hours.
I’ve been watching it tick. Two, actually.
One roughly ninety miles due north, over Harper County.
The other is more promising, about sixty-ish miles northwest, grazing the edge of Lipscomb.
Yawning, Lex stumbled to a bar fridge and dug a bottle of water from inside. “You know, we have alerts set up for a reason.”
When I didn’t respond and kept staring zombie-like at the screen, he elaborated. “So we can sleep. Ever heard of sleep, Oz? It’s this wonderful event we can partake in nightly that is almost as pleasurable as sex.”
“Bring me some water.”
“You’re impossible.” Lex made a noise of derision but delivered a bottle, laying it beside the cat before leaning over my shoulder to study the screens. “Oh wow.”
“Told you. The alarms are ring-a-ding-dinging.” As the radar ticked its sequence, I drew a finger around the two cells. “Here and here. Beautiful, but this bad boy—” I tapped the one in the northwest—“is likely going to catch this updraft.” I drew a line.
“You think it will hook?”
“Yep. Watch how it draws down in the southwest corner. One more tick, and I bet it catches.”
“Hook echo here we come.”
“I’d put twenty bucks on it.”
“Yeees.” Lex head-butted me for no good reason, hard enough that the medical alert charm slipped from between my teeth and fell from my mouth.
“Ow, you fucker.” I wiped saliva from my lips and glanced at Oil Slick, who made a weird cat noise as she tucked her face deeper into the crook of her leg. “Don’t wake the cat. She’s being a saucy prima donna today.”
“She probably wants to go home.”
“I am her home. She wants love and affection, which I give her in spades, but right now she’s sleeping, and will shred a bitch if woken before she’s ready.”
I gave the cat a gentle pet, smoothing her sleek black fur and starting her kitty engine. “That’s a good girl. Lex is an asshole, isn’t he?”
“Aren’t you allergic to cats?”
I snorted. “Depends who you ask.”
According to my mother, I was allergic to everything, but Lex knew better than to say what we were both thinking. The stray had adopted me as her person, and I wasn’t about to throw her out of my life because I couldn’t take her home. We needed each other.
Lex and I watched the radar in silence for a few minutes. It ticked through its anticipated development over the next few hours, showing the likely growth and movement of the two systems. When it updated and added a new segment, I whistled.
“She’s doing it.”
I checked the NOAA, but they hadn’t posted an update in fifteen minutes. The urge to get in the car and go was getting too strong to resist. We had hours to be on site.
“Do we take a chance on this one?” Lex indicated the cell over Lipscomb County, “It’s a mesocyclone in the making. Look at the rotation pattern. It’s strengthening on each clip, and that hook is happening.”
“Fuck. We should be recording this for Charles.”
Neither of us moved to get a camera.
“We should alert the guys,” Lex said. “I have a hunch we’ll be running on this bad boy.”
Ever since our meeting with CineVision Entertainment, the team had brainstormed ways to come out ahead of the competition, so we had the best chance at sticking around and sticking together.
Noah feared that Dennis would seek other chasers if we didn’t agree.
None of us were happy, but since it was my big mouth that had made the proposal, we couldn’t say much when the network countered with a compromise.
Videography was left to us, provided we delivered raw footage regularly. Charles or Dennis—I couldn’t remember who—suggested taking the audience through every stage of our process, which was why we’d already submitted a home base tour the previous week.
Even if this storm didn’t produce, ideally, we should record the breakdown along with our thought process. The more complete our footage, the better we looked. Our interviews had gone well. We had boasted of our experience and shown confidence.
We had to give CineVision quality clips, no matter how redundant, that would hopefully increase our screen time. Better to have too much than not enough.
Lex found a camera, and I dictated what appeared on the screen and why it was significant. Thirty minutes later, I grabbed my phone and called Vern.
“It’s game time, folks,” Lex said to the future audience.
As it rang, I kept my eyes on the computer screens.
“Do you see this? We’ve got something brewing,” Vern said in lieu of hello.
“That’s why I called. It’s go time. That cell in the northwest is going to hook in the next couple of hours, and I want to be there when it happens.”
“The other cell looks promising too.”
I shifted my gaze to the supercell forming farther north. I let the radar cycle, reading the numbers and matching them to the air currents. “No. I say we head to Lipscomb County. We’ll keep watching. If the other one persists into something more, it’s only another forty or so miles north.”
It wasn’t uncommon for several systems to develop across the state simultaneously.
Often, they were clumped together, requiring storm chasers to read the subtle hints of each forming cell to determine where a tornado was most likely to form.
It sometimes came down to hunches and guesswork.
If you chose wrong, you could easily miss an opportunity.
The goal was to pick the cell most primed for activity and dive in.
I gave the camera a face as I got off the phone. “We’re moving out. Got me a date with a cyclone, bitches.” I made a V with my fingers and performed a lewd gesture with my tongue.
Lex laughed. “That will be edited out for sure.”
Vern had volunteered to call Noah and Elliott, so Lex and I packed gear into Black Bug.
Elliott had nicknamed our chase vehicle after Lex’s unveiling a few years back.
She was a rebuilt Lexus GX470 he’d snagged from a junkyard.
Four-wheel drive, V8 engine. Spacious enough, we could set up a base of operation in the gutted back.
It was squishy by the time we packed it full of gear and team members, but it did the job we needed it to do.
Lex had reinforced the exterior, upgraded the suspension, and dropped the chassis so it sat lower to the ground, making us less prone to rolling in high winds.
She wasn’t great on gas, and the lack of seat belts would get us in trouble with the cops one day, but that was a sacrifice we were willing to make for better functionality.
The previous year, we’d given her a paint job, black with lightning bolts slashed across the doors, and our Twisted Fates logo on the hood. She was beautiful.
Lex was our full-time mechanic, and he was always making upgrades. He had plans to improve her road stability, but we wouldn’t risk putting her in the shop until the end of the season.
Oil Slick woke when I pulled the plugs on the laptops. She announced her displeasure before jumping off the desk and prancing away, tail high and ears back in a snoot.
Lex set the active camera on a shelf and aimed it to record us working. He dictated what we were doing.