THIRTEEN Quincy #2
Satisfied with my location in proximity to the storm, I clip a microphone to my collar and swipe over to Instagram to start a live video, ten thousand people joining me within minutes.
“Hi, chasers, and welcome to a spontaneous nightly edition of The Rainy Day Show. I know it’s dark and might be hard to see, but I’m getting ready to track a cell capable of producing a tornado.
Usually when you’re dealing with a system like this, you spend most of your time waiting.
It’s a game of what-if. What if the conditions are perfect for tornadic activity?
What if the area of rotation actually reaches the ground?
What if nothing happens? How long are you willing to wait?
I think this one is going to be good, and I’m bringing y’all with me. ”
I don’t bother with a tripod, wanting to be able to move freely if needed. I switch my phone to my left hand, the sky filling in the frame behind me.
“When we’re studying supercells like this one, there’s not much time before rotation can occur.
It’s just past sunset, and if you look over my shoulder, you’ll notice a greenish tint to the sky.
There are also tall vertical clouds, both of which are meteorological indications of a storm that will likely produce a tornado. ”
I take a minute to study the elements, to get a sense of what I’m working with. The hair on the back of my neck stands up. The temperature drops, and the quiet is unsettling.
The only sound is my ragged breathing, the noise magnified by the stillness around me. I swallow, steadying myself as the belated realization this is the first time I’ve chased a storm of this magnitude alone sinks in.
“Okay. There. There.” I point off into the distance. “Do y’all see that? We have a funnel cloud that’s trying to touch down.”
I watch, mesmerized. I can’t take my eyes off the cloud that stretches from the sky, pulled from a force beyond the earth.
It starts small, barely a wisp of gray before it grows wider.
Stronger and more menacing. The atmosphere changes around it, the green giving way to a nearly pitch-black sky that is as dark as night.
Rain starts to fall in small drops that soak the ground and the top of my head, and I shiver, wishing I had brought a jacket.
“Let’s get closer. The storm appears to be moving east, and my position is more to the northeast. Weather, as we all know, can be unpredictable, so we might need to make some alterations as we go. Stay with me.”
The tall grass brushes against my shins as I walk forward.
I fill the time by sharing the conditions needed to create a storm of this size.
I answer questions that pop up, sharing the most powerful tornado I’ve ever been in (an EF1) and explaining the Enhanced Fujita Scale to everyone tuning in.
I stop when I’m nearly four football fields away from my car.
A roll of thunder vibrates the ground, and I shiver again.
“The funnel cloud looks like it’s touching down now, so we need to—”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
Sebastian’s voice carries over the field, each syllable etched with carefully placed anger.
I roll my eyes and spin, finding him jogging toward me with a soaked shirt and a piece of his hair falling in his eyes.
The camera attached to his chest is already recording, evident by the flashing red light, and I give him a wave.
“It’s about time you showed up,” I call out.
“You sent me on a wild-goose chase, Monroe,” he says when he gets to me.
“All is fair in love and weather, right, Sebby baby?” I toss back, and his mouth twists into the hint of a grin. “How did you find me?”
“You share your location with Mia. I barely had the chance to tell her you could be in danger before she rattled off your general area, and tracking you down was easy when I realized you were fucking with me. I wanted to capture the beginning of the storm formation for the series, but all I have is shitty footage from inside my car. Thanks for that.”
“You’re so welcome.”
A drop of water rolls down his cheek. Another hangs off his nose. Sebastian turns his attention to the sky and fumbles with the binoculars around his neck. “How wide do you think it is?”
“Can’t be more than twenty yards or so, right?” I squint, looking up. “Weird.”
“What’s weird?”
“The path of the storm. Before you got here, it was moving across the horizon in a perfect line, left to right. Now it doesn’t look like it’s moving at all.”
“Holy shit.” Sebastian lifts the binoculars and sucks in a breath. “This thing isn’t a few yards wide, Quincy. It’s closer to half a mile across.”
“What?” I grab his binoculars, not caring that they’re still attached to his neck. “Shit. Look how erratic the subvortices are, Sebastian. There are twins.”
“Never seen twins before. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I think it’s going to be a monster. And you wanted to be out here by yourself.”
“Bigger than the ones that came through Florida in 1998? Those were F3s and—why is it changing directions?”
“Let me see.” Sebastian puts his arm around my shoulders, pulling me close so he can take a turn with the binoculars. “Where is it going? The full condensation funnel is making it impossible to tell what the hell is going on.”
“I haven’t looked at any radar scans today.” The wind picks up around us. Visibility is reduced, and a sheet of rain soaks me to my bones. I have to raise my voice so he can hear me. “Were there any other indications of storms with possible tornadic activity? Has anything else touched down?”
“I, uh, haven’t had a very exciting Saturday night.
” I glance up at him, and he throws a sheepish smile my way.
“I’ve been monitoring the radar scans, and all I could find was heavy rain and hail.
This is—” Sebastian’s hold on me tightens.
Both our phones go off with another emergency notification.
A seek shelter immediately warning, if I had to guess. “We should get to the cars.”
“This could be historic. I don’t want to miss—”
The earth roars around us, drowning me out. A branch from a nearby tree cracks and snaps. Sebastian yanks me back by the belt loop of my shorts a second before it falls on my head.
“Get to the fucking cars, Quincy.”
The insistence behind his demand awakens something inside me. It has me nodding. Widening my eyes when I see the tornado has changed paths again, no longer moving across the horizon but straight for us instead.
“Oh my god,” I whisper, but the rumble coming from in front of me swallows it up.
The rain had shielded the tornado from view, deceiving us, and now I can see how massive it is.
How fast it’s moving, how close it is, and my heart drops to my feet.
We waited too long. There’s no possible way we can outrun something of this size. “Sebastian.”
“Let’s go, Quincy.”
His damp hand finds mine. It’s a promise. An unspoken agreement that we’re in this together, and when he tugs on my arm, giving me the signal to move, I take off in a sprint.
It’s so unbelievably loud, I can’t hear what he’s saying six inches away from me. I can’t hear myself think, but I don’t look over my shoulder. I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll give up.
Forward movement is nearly impossible. Sticks and leaves are pulled off the ground, swirling around us like they’re being called to the sky.
Hail pelts my arms, the back of my neck, stinging like the prick of a needle.
I try to run faster, pushing past the ache in my legs.
The burn in my lungs. I don’t think I’ve breathed in the last thirty seconds, and I can’t find our cars.
All I can see is Sebastian, and the look on his face is more terrifying than the storm itself.
I’m used to him being calm and collected.
The few times we’ve chased a storm together—back in college for a group project and the summer before he left for New York when we ended up at the same weather spotting location by chance—he’s always been the perfect picture of unbothered.
Enthralled by the pandemonium around him and thriving in the unexpected.
Not now.
Now, his jaw is tight. Chest heaving, his grip on my hand is bruising. We’re operating in pure survival mode, but somehow, amid the chaos, he looks so breathtakingly beautiful.
I drag my eyes away from him, gasping when my shoe connects with something solid. I let out a yelp and fly forward, my body tumbling over my feet as I roll across the wet grass.
“Quincy,” he yells, my name ripped from the trenches of his chest. It’s an agonizing, painful thing, a noise I feel deep down in my soul.
I grab my ankle, the pain immediate. A throbbing sensation radiates up my leg, and I fight back tears. “Go,” I tell him. I try to push myself up on an elbow, only to fall right back down. “Go, Sebastian.”
“Abso-fucking-lutely not,” he practically growls, moving at a speed I’m sure is superhuman.
One second, my hand is in a pile of dirt.
The next, he’s lifting me like I’m made of nothing but air and feathers.
Holding me tight to his chest and taking off in a sprint.
I’ve never been so grateful for his athleticism in my life. “You think I’d leave you?”
“I don’t know what I’m thinking.” I bury my face in his shirt, distraught. The cotton might be soaked, clinging to his skin, but it smells like him. Clean, with the trace of spice on the sleeves. Safe. Steady. A hero. “You could’ve used it as payback for sending you to the wrong spot.”
“Storm chasing is sacred, Monroe. A bond between people who trust one another to have each other’s backs. And guess what?”
“What?”
“If you were going, I was going too. Life wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without you around to piss off.”
I don’t know why I’m laughing.
We’re surrounded by danger.
Death is possible.
We’re hanging on by the skin of our teeth, but I’m here. Alive and breathing in the arms of a man who I thought was the one person I wouldn’t want to spend the end of my days with.