A couple of Notes:
1. There are some episodes of physical abuse mentioned in the story. They were not committed by the main characters, but a word of warning going into the story for those that want to avoid it.
2. It's been a few years since I've been back to Kansas, so my apologies if my geography is a little wonky.
Glenn - Late July
"Come on, you piece of shit, move!" Glenn pleaded as he had the pedal of his tractor to the floor. It wasn't fair to his loyal farming implement, but he felt like he was barely moving faster than he was capable of at a dead sprint. His heart revved high enough that he feared he may pass out from the terror of the moment. Glenn was living out an all too familiar nightmare that had haunted him for the better part of two decades.
Giant shards of ice clinked off the cab as enormous hail dented every square inch of the blue sheet metal.
Thank goodness for the thick glass.
The rain was already hard enough to navigate through without a hail-spidered chunk of broken glass blocking his view. He tried to keep himself from paying too much attention to the ominous stove-pipe-shaped cloud bearing down on him from behind. If he did that, he'd lose himself to panic.
Nothing I can do but drive!
A ditch might be a better idea than the high tractor, but they were overflowing with water and chunks of spiky ice.
The skies were clear a half hour ago! It's too late in the season for this bullshit!
Tornado season for the region was typically from April through early June before things got hot and dry, but the funnel closing in on his farm evidently didn't look at the calendar.
Glenn's life flashed before his eyes as panic flooded his neurons. There was Grandpa and the farm, the loving countenance of his mother that he barely remembered, and the red-with-rage face of his father. The one memory that kept replaying in his mind was one of the worst of his life. Lisa had been his world and his everything, but Glenn had to shoo her away as if she were a pest.
It was better for her.
He lied to himself.
"One more intersection, and we'll get to the barn." Glenn regretted surveying the corn in the furthest field on the property and was doubly angry about taking the tractor out there instead of the much nimbler UTV in the barn. The work he thought he was going to get done this afternoon hadn't been delivered yet. He'd been on the phone with the trucking company when he heard the first crack of thunder. By the time he got to his tractor, the sirens were wailing in warning.
There was no stop sign in Glenn's direction, and he was driving an enormous, bright blue tractor, but the red Xterra that took the corner on two wheels hadn't noticed. Glenn beeped his horn with heat. The vehicle looked familiar, but his brain couldn't make connections while overwhelmed with terror.
"Maniac! It's a dead end this way!" The vehicle was too old for the cadre of professional storm chasers that seemed to bloom like fungus whenever the weather turned foul. He didn't mind the news stations that were trying to keep the public warned, but the amateurs all too often got themselves hurt or killed. Worse still was when something they did effected innocent people who were trying to take shelter from the storm.
People often ended up confusing his driveway for a road and had to turn around in his yard. It was bad enough that he usually had a brightly colored, reflective closed gate, but it was a hassle to shut behind him when he took the larger equipment out. There'd be no way for the car to quickly turn around as he followed it to the barn, but they wouldn't be outrunning the tornado anyway.
As soon as he got the tractor over the dense concrete that spanned the ditch, Glenn set the brake, turned off the engine, and flew out of the cab. The tractor was massive but would be nothing but a plaything to the swirling cyclone bearing down on them. The hail had slacked a little, but he'd still likely have a couple of welts on his back.
"YOU'RE BLOCKING US IN!" A woman's voice yelled from the cracked passenger door of the Xterra.
"There's a shelter in the barn! Go!" Glenn yelled back. The ghostly wails of faraway sirens were barely audible over the clacking of hailstones on metal and wood.
You can't outrun a twister.
His Uncle Mack tried a decade ago. Or at least that was the best that the investigators could ascertain from cellphone records. He was driving down the highway when a powerful storm struck. His car ended up miles from the road, twisted into a shape resembling a pretzel. Glenn didn't like to think what the man must have felt as his car flew several hundred feet off the ground, knowing that it wasn't going to be good when his wheels hit the earth again.
"We can make it!" A second female voice joined the first, but they were getting out of the truck and moving.
"Go! That thing's a beast. There's no running!" Glenn looked back as death loomed toward them. In the minutes that he'd been driving, seeing the thin rope tornado inching over the horizon like a grim reaper, it had morphed from rope to stove pipe; now it was a thick and sinister wedge of swirling black, brown, and green. Sparks of light issuing from its base came not from lightning but from power flashes as it destroyed powerlines. Chunks of black and green whirled around the condensate.
Is it ripping the topsoil out of the fields? Or maybe it's asphalt.
The most violent of tornadoes had been enough to tear through even roads. Any pothole or weakness could be exploited by the terrifying strength of the winds and pressure.
Glenn's heart was pounding like a bass drum played in the cadence of a snare. He checked to ensure that the two ladies were following him as he sprinted for the barn. Two figures followed close behind, wrapped in colorful beach towels.
The shelter could more than withstand whatever Mother Nature had planned. His great-grandfather had designed it originally to withstand not the wrath of nature that was looming over them but man's most terrible invention.
Some would have called his great-grandfather paranoid for spending so much effort on a fallout shelter smack dab in the middle of the country, but he'd known that it was an aviation manufacturing hub. In addition, there had been a SAC bomber wing with requisite nuclear weapons, and the farmland harbored more than a few minuteman missile silos.
It had long since mostly given way from its atomic area beginnings to become a well-stocked tornado shelter. Glenn grabbed the key from above the workbench, leaped down a flight of darkened stairs, and slid it into the lock even with his shaking hands. Grandpa had him practice getting into the shelter since he was a kid. It helped him deal with the anxiety that had plagued him since before he found out what happened to Uncle Mack. That incident had reinforced a deep-seated dread he'd always remembered.
The ground started to rumble as Glenn spun the device that reminded him of a door between bulkheads in submarine movies. It wasn't the moving of the mechanics inside the portal causing the shaking but the encroaching behemoth. The tools on the wall started to flutter as the wind rushed through the barn.
"Go! The second door's not locked, but I need to seal this one." Glenn motioned for the two women to run.
There was no argument, only terror as the ladies rushed past him. Far louder than the wailing of tornado sirens was the roar of the coming beast. It was the monster that had haunted his nightmares for more than a decade.
This is it.
Glenn thought as he slammed the door shut behind him.
Glenn nearly fell as he slipped on the hard diamond-plate steel beneath his mud-caked boots. The two girls held the door for him as he sprinted through and slammed it with all his body weight. He'd lost a lot of mass since his offensive linemen days, but he'd gained muscle from time in the gym and working on the farm. Without asking, the ladies twisted the wheel to snug the door tight. Six thick steel shanks sank into reinforced concrete cubbies that were designed to take a nearby atomic blast.
When watching interviews of tornado survivors, Glenn was struck by their explanations of the sound when the tornado passed over them. There were numerous colorful descriptions, but the one that he heard over and over was that it sounded like a freight train. As a kid, he'd thought that included the whistle that they made before they crossed an intersection. His grandfather had to disabuse him of that notion with a laugh and then an honest conversation.
The commotion above them sounded not like a single diesel locomotive but a swarm of them. Metal twisted and groaned as dust deposits rained from the ceiling. Glenn cleaned and restocked the shelter every spring, following his grandfather's example, but he hadn't thought of tackling the decades of dust on the bowed metal ribs several feet overhead.
"Is this going to hold!?" One of the women yelled over the intense cacophony. Glenn could feel the scared girls huddled up against him as if the fallout shelter turned storm sanctuary wasn't more extensive than the apartments he had in college.
"It's designed to survive nukes!" Glenn's attempt at reassurance wasn't whole-hearted. He'd had nightmares for years that his life would end this way, and today felt like the reckoning.
When Glenn thought that the noise couldn't get worse, the ground shook as it sounded like the entire barn collapsed atop the shelter. More metal groaned like a submerged vessel under the weight of the sea before there was an even louder thud that had Glenn praying that his predecessor's hard work was to the required spec.
As eerie as the booms and groans of metal, nothing compared to the dead silence that descended after the last big boom. All three must have been holding their breath.
"You two okay?" Glenn finally asked to ghastly stillness.
"Y... yeah." Gasped a meek but familiar voice.
"I'm all in one piece." The other woman didn't have any commonality prickling in his mind.
"Can we get out?" asked the familiar voice.
"Probably." Glenn dug his phone from his pocket. "Light switches are behind you."
"Are they going to work?" The second woman questioned.
