Vortex

by Vanessa Acton

  “Yes!” whooped Sam. “That—was—awesome! We were right inside it! Good work, J.J.! That turned out to be a great position!”

  “Don’t thank me,” said the driver. “Thank these random people. They’re the reason we stopped here. If we’d kept going, we would’ve overshot.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Sam. For the first time he seemed to remember that he had guests. He flashed a smile that reminded Blair of Theo, her mom’s new husband. People with that kind of smile weren’t just in a good mood. They assumed you were in a good mood too. “Nice to meet you, folks. I’m Samir Chaudry—call me Sam. And that’s J.J. Lyman in the pilot’s seat. And our radar wizard is Silent Ron.”

  Blair hadn’t even noticed the guy in the front passenger seat. He turned around long enough to give a quick nod. Silver hair, glasses, no smile. That was all Blair saw before he turned back around.

  “Um,” said Blair. “Hi. I’m Blair O’Neill. And these are my brothers, Logan and David—”

  “What is wrong with you?” David cut in sharply. It felt like ages since he’d said anything. At first Blair thought he was talking to her, but then she realized he was glaring at Sam. “What kind of stupid stunt was that? We all could’ve been killed!”

  “First of all, that ‘stupid stunt’ was part of our job,” said Sam. His voice was calm, almost dismissive. “We’re professional storm chasers. Not amateurs. We know what we’re doing.”

  “No sane person would get that close to a tornado! Not even a storm chaser!” David was shouting now. Blair couldn’t remember the last time he’d lost his temper like this.

  “Most chasers wouldn’t,” Sam replied smugly. “But we’re not most chasers. And secondly, you guys probably would’ve been killed if we hadn’t come along. Care to see what shape your own vehicle is in now?”

  He unlocked the side door and pushed it up.

  Blair crawled over some wires and hopped out of the vehicle. David and Logan followed.

  No more rain or hail now—just quiet air that smelled of wet dirt.

  The tornado was moving away from them. Even as Blair watched, the funnel transformed—narrowing from a thick V-shape to a stringy, skinny coil. Slowly it started to curl up from the ground. As if someone had tossed a rope out of the sky and was now pulling it back up. The tail danced in the air as it retreated upward.

  The road was littered with trash. Hay bales, wooden fence rails, roof shingles. Where had this tornado been before it reached them?

  A power line lay in the grass, its wire snapped.

  David’s car was gone.

  Blair swore. She thought of her purse, tucked under the front seat. The snacks in the glove compartment. Her bridesmaid’s dress in the trunk. And then: How are we going to get home?

  She fought the urge to cry. Instead she looked at David. “Dave, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Her brother shook his head, his expression numb again. “Not your fault, Blair. Not your fault. We’re all here. That’s what matters.”

  “Ahem.” Sam cleared his throat loudly.

  Blair turned to him. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  “Our pleasure,” said Sam. “Can we give you folks a lift somewhere?”

  “No need,” said David coldly. “We called for an ambulance a little while ago. We’ll just call again.”

  Blair had forgotten about his arm. She looked at the bandage. To her relief, no blood was seeping through it. Then she thought about her own cuts and bruises—from the shattered glass, the giant hail, the debris that had hit her. She and Logan should probably get some first aid too, just to be on the safe side.

  “Gonna take a while for emergency responders to get out here,” Sam pointed out. “Closest town is Aura. And this area’s crawling with supercells. Another vortex could form any minute.”

  “Seriously?” said Blair. “After we already had two tornadoes that close together?”

  Sam laughed. “You’re not from around here, are you, sweetheart?”

  Blair gritted her teeth. “One: don’t call me sweetheart, or anything else in that category. Two: yes, you can give us a lift.”

  “Blair—” David started.

  “Dave, we can’t just stand here in the middle of the road for the next half hour. It’s not safe. And at least their ride has, like, metal plating.”

  Sam’s eyes flashed with pride. “Ten thousand pounds of steel armor. Bulletproof windows. All-wheel drive. Best place to be in bad weather, aside from underground.”

  David closed his eyes briefly, then looked at Sam. “Fine. You can drop us off in Aura.”

  “We’re not going to Aura,” said Sam cheerfully. “We’re heading where the action is. Where to next, Ron?”

  Inside the vehicle, a booming male voice said, “Hatchville.”

  5

  Hatchville.

  Where Blair’s mom lived.

  “I thought the storm system was moving east,” said Blair. Her voice came out sounding angry. Which was probably better than sounding terrified. She suspected Sam didn’t have much patience for fear.

  “It is moving east,” confirmed Sam. “But all the good stuff is still happening to the west of us. Couple of EF-3s already today. Might get an EF-4 or even an EF-5 if we’re lucky.”

  “Lucky?” David burst out. “Are you out of your mind? The damage an EF-5 can do is—”

  “Unbelievable,” Sam finished for him. “We know. That’s why we want to get footage of it. Plus, see these things here?” Sam pointed to the white tubes attached to the back of the vehicle. “These are wireless probes. We launch these into the path of a tornado. Then they transmit data back to us. Data for science. Experts use that to learn more about how tornadoes work. Could save lives one day. Anyway, point is, Ron says things are looking juicy near Hatchville. So we’re going to Hatchville. And we don’t have any time to waste.”

  Blair could tell that her brother wasn’t done arguing. But Sam was at least partly right. They really couldn’t afford to waste time. David wasn’t going to bleed to death in the hour it would take to reach Hatchville. But if they stayed out here in the open . . .

  “Well, how convenient,” she said, working hard to keep her voice neutral. “Our mom lives in Hatchville. We just came from there. You can take us back. Thanks.” Blair got back into the vehicle first. Logan followed her. David hesitated another minute, then gave in.

  “Hit it, J.J.!” Sam called as he closed the side door.

  The vehicle sprang forward. It moved fast, for something so bulky. The O’Neills sat on the floor again, scrunched among equipment on all sides. Sam settled into his chair and studied a screen mounted to the back of the driver’s seat. “You can stay on this road the whole way to Hatchville, J.J. Unless we see anything we wanna chase.”

  Sam reached for a duffel bag that was zip-tied to the front seat. He pulled out three fluffy towels and tossed them to Blair. “Dry off, my friends. And here’s the first aid kit. Use some antiseptic wipes for those cuts. Your face is pretty scratched up, missy.”

  “Blair,” she corrected him, taking the kit he gave her. Bigger and fancier than the O'Neills' first aid kit. Which was now lost, along with everything else in her brother’s car.

  “Right, knew it was something short. You thirsty? Hungry? Nothing but the best for any passenger of the Boss.”

  “That’s what you call this thing?” said Logan, rubbing a towel over his wet hair.

  “Oh yeah.” Sam spread his arms as if he could wrap the whole vehicle in a hug. “Once, this was an ordinary SUV. Now it’s a state-of-the-art Tornado Intercept Vehicle. Chasing storms since 2013, baby.”

  David made a disgusted noise in his throat. Blair shot him a questioning look. She would’ve understood if he’d been shaken up, but she hadn’t expected him to be so—hostile.

  She decided to do what she always did when David was upset: change the subject. “So this is what you do for a living?” Blair asked Sam as she toweled off.

  “Yep.
We’re making a documentary. Got the funding through some online kick-starting. Our goal is to get as close as we can to tornadoes—while staying safe. And we’ve gotten some amazing footage lately. This spring and summer have been our best season yet.”

  Blair swiped an antiseptic pad over the cuts on her arm. She used a fresh pad to dab at her face. The cloth came away red. For the first time, she felt the sting of the cuts. “And those probe things?” she asked.

  “Oh yeah. That’s the scientific part of the job. We launch those up, and they take all kinds of readings from inside the vortex.”

  “The vortex?”

  “You know.” Sam made a spinning motion with his finger. “Wind funnel filled with dirt and debris, with a hollow core? Ring any bells?”

  Blair gritted her teeth at his tone. She gently felt the biggest cut on her face, deciding if it needed a Band-Aid. Her back ached a little in the spot where some unknown flying object had hit her. She expected to find a bruise the next time she checked in a mirror.

  “Anyway, the probes measure wind speed, pressure, things like that,” Sam went on. “It’s all about figuring out what’s happening in there. There’s still a ton that we don’t know about tornadoes. About how they form and why they act the way they do. Why most of them move northeast but some will randomly change direction. Or why some grow to be two miles wide and stay on the ground for almost an hour, when most don’t do that. The more we know, the easier it is to predict a tornado. Warning people sooner means fewer casualties. Wins all around.”

  “And I’m sure you make plenty of money selling the footage you get,” said David dryly.

  “You bet.” Sam didn’t seem to notice David’s attitude. Or he chose not to care. He flashed his shameless smile again. “Plus, we’re making a profit from the web series now.”

  “That’s more of a win for you than for humanity,” David pointed out.

  “Sure, but who’s keeping score?”

  David’s nostrils flared. “Let me check your bandage,” Blair said quickly. It still looked secure. Hardly any seepage. Blair wished she could see what was going on inside her brother’s head just as easily. But she had no idea why he was being so confrontational with Sam. She’d hardly ever seen David this worked up.

  “But my dream,” Sam continued, “is to get inside the eye.”

  Blair knew he was waiting for one of them to ask What’s the eye? He was having too much fun showcasing his mission. Meanwhile her family was still bloody. So she just said, “Mm-hm?”

  “The eye of the tornado.” Sam’s voice was hushed but intense. “Dead center. Hardly anyone’s been inside it and lived to tell about it. Maybe two, three people in the past hundred years. You get footage from inside the eye of the tornado, and you become legend.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet it’ll go viral on the Internet for a whole fifteen seconds,” muttered David.

  “Whatever. See what you think when my documentary wins, like, ten Oscars. Hey, Ron. How long before the action hits Hatchville?”

  “Probably forty-five minutes. Hour at most.”

  The fear surged back into Blair’s stomach. That was her mom’s town they were talking about. Her mom’s house . . . “Mind if I make a call?”

  “Not if you keep it quick. We’ve got a lot going on in here. Ron’s monitoring radar, I have to navigate, and we need to listen to the local weather reports. Gotta keep the background noise to a minimum.”

  Blair turned to Logan. “Hey, can I have my phone back?”

  Logan fished it out of his jeans pocket and handed it over. Blair noticed that his hand shook a little. She scanned him for untended cuts, but he’d cleaned up well. “You okay?” she asked.

  He nodded. She smiled as if she believed him. Then she glanced at her phone. Stroke of luck: it had service again.

  Her mom picked up on the second ring. Blair updated her as quickly as possible—which wasn’t easy, because her mom kept interrupting with little shrieks. “Oh, Blair! The car’s completely gone? I can’t believe this! That could’ve been you! You could’ve—”

  “Yeah, but we’re fine,” said Blair firmly.

  “Even David? You said he got cut.”

  “He’s doing okay. He’ll need stitches. But I’m keeping an eye on the bandage in case he starts bleeding again.” She expected David to react when she mentioned him. But he was just staring blankly at the robot-camera. His anger and aggression had disappeared as suddenly as they’d bubbled to the surface. What was going on with him? Had he hit his head somehow? Was this a concussion? What were the signs of a concussion . . . ?

  Focus, Blair scolded herself. Talk to Mom. “I’m worried about you and Theo, though,” she went on. “Sounds like you might get some tornadoes of your own. Within forty-five minutes.”

  “We’re expecting that. Happens all the time. It’s unusual for them to be forming this early in the day, though. If I’d known you were going to get caught in this—”

  “You couldn’t have known,” Blair cut her off. “It’s not your fault, Mom.” She couldn’t help glancing at David. In his opinion, almost everything was their mom’s fault somehow.

  “Where are you now?” her mom asked.

  “We’re heading back your way,” Blair told her.

  “What? How?”

  Blair glanced at Sam, who was giving J.J. directions. “We’re with the tornado chasers.”

  She heard her mother suck in her breath. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Blair sighed. “Neither does Dave. Neither do I, actually.” Still no reaction from David. Either he was deeply fascinated by that robot-camera, or he was totally checked out.

  “Can’t you have them drop you off at the closest town?” said Blair’s mom. “I can come get you—”

  “That’s an even worse idea,” Blair said. “You shouldn’t be going anywhere with the weather this bad. And the only towns between here and Hatchville have a population of, like, ten. They don’t have their own emergency responders. They don’t have hotels. What would we do? Knock on some stranger’s door and ask if we can share their storm shelter?”

  “But these storm chasers—they’re taking risks. They could put you in danger. If I just—”

  “Mom. Stay where you are. Don’t leave your house. That would put you in danger. We’ll be okay. We’re only an hour east of Hatchville. We’ll be there before you know it.”

  Her mother was still protesting when Blair said “Gotta go now, love you,” and hung up.

  “An EF-4 touched down just south of the state line,” said Ron. He had an amazingly deep voice. The kind of voice that could do dramatic voiceovers for movie trailers: IN A WORLD . . .

  Sam whistled in appreciation. “I bet Gehrig’s team got a slice of that. But I’ve got a good feeling about Hatchville.”

  Blair suddenly felt sick to her stomach. This guy was excited that a tornado might hit her mom’s hometown. He actually envied other teams of storm chasers that might be closer to the action. Blair found herself echoing David’s earlier question: What was wrong with this guy?

  Logan had a different question. “What are those numbers you keep saying? Like EF-4 and whatever?”

  “That’s how we rate tornadoes,” said J.J. from the front. “The Fujita scale, invented by a brilliant scientist named Ted Fujita. It measures how destructive a tornado is. EF-0 is the least destructive, and it goes up to EF-5.”

  “So what was that tornado we ran into back there?” Logan asked.

  “That was a little guy—an EF-2 at the most. Wind speeds of about 115 miles per hour, I’d guess.”

  If that was an EF-2, the one we ran into earlier must’ve been a baby, Blair thought. A very destructive baby.

  “Still fun, though,” added Sam. “We were in an awesome position. I bet we got some great footage.”

  “Yeah,” snapped David, out of nowhere. “Great footage of something that trashed other people’s lives. Well done.”

  Sam held up his hands in a sarcastic surren
der gesture. “Whoa, chill, man. We’re not happy that tornadoes cause damage or that people get hurt. But storms like this happen whether we watch them or not. Might as well get the most we can out of them.”

  David opened his mouth to respond. But at that moment, Ron’s voice boomed through the vehicle.

  “Guys, we got another one.”

  6

  Blair half-stood, trying to see out the windows. “Where? Where is it?”

  She felt as if her stomach was inside a washing machine, getting churned around. A fast, confusing, painful spinning. But also weirdly . . . exciting.

  “We’re not in range yet,” said Ron. “Big wall cloud about fifteen miles north, guys.”

  “Okay, let’s do it,” said Sam. “I’ll find you a road, J.J. Sit down, sweethea—” He paused when he saw the look Blair gave him. “Ahem. Blair. Make yourself comfortable.”

  “We are comfortable,” David told him—not convincingly. “But we’d rather be safe. Can’t you just head straight to Hatchville?”

  Blair could tell that Sam was only half-listening. “Aw, where’s the fun in that?” he said.

  “We’re not having fun!” David exploded. “Nothing about this is fun for us! We’re shaken up—cut up. We’ve lost our car. And now our mom’s town could be in danger—”

  “Look, I get it.” For the first time, Sam sounded truly annoyed—offended, even. “But my mission is to study and film tornadoes. And I’ve got a news flash for you. Everything that’s happened to you today? It’s happened to a lot of other people in this area. You’re not special. And you’ll be putting yourself in a lot more danger if you leave this vehicle now. So just sit tight. We’ll get you to Hatchville.”

  David clenched his teeth but didn’t say anything else.

  Sam hunkered down over his roadmap screen. “J.J., there should be a dirt track coming up in about five hundred yards. Turn right and stay on that . . .”

  Blair watched as the three team members worked. Ron explained what he was seeing on his radar screen. Sam navigated. J.J. turned off the highway onto a path that felt much bumpier. And above them, the clouds hovered. Blair kept glancing up through the window in the roof. It was like watching the troublesome kids when she lifeguarded. She had no doubt that a disaster was looming. She just didn’t know when it would happen or how it would play out.