Work Text:
Tyler’s new to this world, and he knows it.
It’s late summer, he’s only a couple weeks removed from finishing his undergrad degree at UofA. He knows better than to be chasing alone, but he can’t help himself. The late-season death ridge is descending, and save for a few extra-season fall storms, this might be his last chance to chase before returning to the “real world.” (Whatever that means for a newly minted meteorologist with a long rap sheet of bull riding head injuries.)
He’s been ansty all summer. He thought perhaps having the piece of paper that proved he knew as much as he claimed would settle him some. But if anything, he feels even more compelled to be out in the thick of things. He’d spent long enough in a classroom or a library reading about the thing he loves, he wants to be out there seeing it for himself.
Even Boone, who this summer has been spending more and more time away from his stall mucking and road show duties, couldn’t join Tyler on this chase. Tyler doesn’t blame him, living expenses are just that: expensive. If the two of them want a shot at building something for themselves, at least one of them needs to be gainfully employed.
Even so, he feels a little pang of regret when he looks over to the beat up laptop parked in Boone’s spot in the passenger seat. On the screen of the laptop is a four-panel quadrant view of the same map of central Oklahoma. Each panel has a sprinkling of bright shapes and colors, each in their own unique color palette, giving Tyler a couple of different ways to visualize the promise of storms stretching out his windshield. None so far had anything in particular that looked interesting. He desperately hoped that would change. It was still relatively early in the day, plenty of time left for the sun to continue heating the landscape and adding instability to the mix of ingredients necessary for a tornado.
To his left, he can see an aging crop duster flying low above the unmoving wheat fields, dragging a plume of mist behind it as it sprays careful rows across the field. Tyler recognizes the opportunity; he’d spent a lifetime watching crop dusters zig zag across the landscape, spraying pesticides onto the countless soybean fields of Arkansas.
He spies a small rise in the road just ahead and pulls off to the right side. Stepping out of the car onto the dry gravel, he leans against the hail-dented door of his pickup truck and watches the plumes of mist behind the crop duster curl back on themselves and fall gently to the field below.
The air is heavy and unmoving, keeping the trail of mist trapped low to the ground, perfect conditions for crop dusting. Not necessarily so perfect for thunderstorms. Squinting into the bright blue of the late morning sky, he searches for the flat-bottomed puffs of castle-like cumulus clouds that would signal the beginning instability necessary for storm initiation, but there’s not much out there.
The crop duster finishes the row and begins to climb a little before making a wide turn back to the field to start a new one.
It’s a little late in the morning to be crop dusting, he thinks, watching the faint mist descend on the field.
As the pilot completes the leg of the turn and dips back down again to start spraying, Tyler notices a faint flourish in the mist that indicates the stirring of wind. He stares hard at the plane as it begins spraying, hoping he’s not just seeing wake turbulence from the plane’s passing. Sure enough, as the sprayers mounted on the back of the plane open again, he can definitely see the mist getting kicked up in little eddies and swirls as the sun-baked air from the ground below begins to rise.
He stands there for a while longer, watching the pilot make slow, graceful turns over the field, each sprayed row taking longer and longer to fall completely to the ground below. Gravel crunches beneath his feet as he turns to walk around the front of his truck to the passenger side and opens the door. Spinning the laptop in the seat, he refreshes his radar feed. While it struggles to load on the ancient wireless internet USB he has plugged into the computer’s only remaining working USB port, he pulls up the NWS homepage on his cracked phone. It takes him no time to navigate across the site to pull up a map of weather reporting stations, and he checks nearby dew point temperatures. They’ve increased a bit since he last looked at the map while eating breakfast at a combination gas station-cafe.
More good signs.
Looking back to the laptop, the radar loops have updated and loaded, and he finds himself looking at a few notable “blips” of potential storm cells growing not far from his location. He steps away from the cab of the truck again, this time looking across the hood back toward where the crop duster had just been spraying. The plane is gone now, presumably back to the airport to wait for better spraying conditions, a faint haze still visible above the field where the mist is slow to fall to the ground. He bites his lip and works hard not to get excited at what he’s seeing. A few unassuming cumulus clouds have already appeared on the distant horizon.
He takes one last scrutinizing look at the sky around him, gauging the direction for the best chances of storm initiation. This time, he doesn’t necessarily see anything that tells him to head in a particular direction; instead, he chooses to trust his gut and go to where he thinks he’ll find the most action.
Hoping back in his truck and pulling back out onto the narrow road, he tunes his CB radio to a NOAA station and listens as the stilted, automated voice reads through the forecast discussions for the day. He hasn’t traveled far when the voice cuts out and he hears what he’s been waiting for. A familiar tone begins to rattle out from his truck speakers. He doesn’t have to guess what he’s about to hear next when the automated voice begins to read.
“The National Weather Service has issued a tornado warning for…” He’s not listening anymore, and he quickly yanks the wheel and pulls the truck off to the side. He moves fast as he refreshes the NEXRAD data feed on the laptop, next pulling the NWS website back up on his phone. Immediately, he sees the bright red polygon drawn onto the map of Oklahoma. He drums his fingers anxiously against the wheel while he waits for the radar loops on the laptop to load.
Sure enough, a small, isolated cell has started to show signs of rotation in the velocity returns. The red and green half circles close together to form a couplet.
Another good sign.
He notes the location, pulling it up on the ancient GPS unit mounted to the dirty dashboard, pausing with mild frustration to try to wipe some of the smeared fingerprints that can only be Boone’s from the unit’s scratched screen. In no time, he’s speeding off again, adrenaline spiking as he feels the thrill of the chase descend into his chest, a cloud of dust trailing behind his truck.
He’s not aware of exactly how long it takes him to drive before he begins to see the impressive cumulonimbus cloud take shape outside his hail-cracked windshield. It’s dark at the base, hazy curtains of rain hang below the now-impressively large structure. He can feel his world narrowing focus as he homes in on this particular cell. Not only is it starting to tower over the landscape, but its anvil top has already flattened and is quickly spreading laterally.
This cell is initiating fast.
He’s tense in the driver's seat, only slightly unnerved by the speed with which this storm has grown. The rain curtains brush the landscape below and he notes how remarkably low the base is, obscuring the horizon until there’s virtually no separation between the cloud base and the ground. He’s straining his eyes for left to right motion, but there’s so much precipitation and he’s still too far out to be able to discern much. If he didn’t know better, he’d say that something big was building in this beast, but he forces himself to reserve judgment for what he can see and not what he feels.
The CB radio is still droning with the tornado warning, and he only takes notice again when he hears the words “Particularly Dangerous Situation.” He can feel his heart stutter a little and his hands begin to sweat as he grips the steering wheel. Reaching over, he hits the keys that refresh the NEXRAD without looking at it. In a moment, he’ll look, but for now he can’t tear his eyes away from the road ahead of him. He unconsciously leans forward to peer further out his spider-cracked windshield.
In the distance, where the cloud and the ground seem to have been smashed together, he sees one…two…three bright teal power flashes.
This is no longer a good sign.
Power flashes mean there’s something strong enough in that storm to violently separate the power lines that snake across the flat landscape from their transformers. More than one power flash means whatever he’s looking at is big enough to blow multiple transformers.
He’s suddenly aware he’s holding his breath now. He refuses to admit that he’s beginning to feel an icy tingle of real fear in his hands and feet, and forces himself to take a steadying breath. He’s long since mastered his own fear, both in bull riding and tornadoes, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel it anymore. He feels the truck lurch as he steps harder on the accelerator. He doesn’t notice when he passes a large gravel turnout with a singular white van parked in it.
The road he’s driving on changes texture, and suddenly he’s aware that it's slick with mud, loose gravel, and clods of damp plant debris. He looks to his right and sees what he thinks is a large roll of hay looking partially disintegrated resting in an open field in the distance.
He’s forced to take his foot off the accelerator and slow down as the road is more and more cluttered with wet and unrecognizable debris, the landscape around him gradually turning a muddy red color.
He spares a moment to glance to the passenger seat at the computer screen now looping the NEXRAD radar returns. He’s startled to see the velocity has increased in his little rotating couplet, and it's increased a lot. He’s certain he’s wrong as the colors indicate wind speeds of over 200 mph gate-to-gate velocity, assuming he's doing his outbound and inbound wind speed math correctly in his head.
His first instinct is to disregard this as an error, 200 mph winds are in EF5 territory, and there hasn’t been a single EF5 at all in the last two seasons. There’s no reason to think there would be one now. But he can’t deny the tongue of fear in his belly that threatens to consume him if he’s not careful.
The texture of the road changes again, and now he’s certain that he’s looking at debris from a tornado. Bits of wood, bent metal, and other unrecognizable debris litter the landscape now, and he’s forced to slow to a stop. In the distance he can see what he thinks is a highway interchange. To his left, far out in a muddy field, there’s a crumpled lump of metal that could have been a car. He stares at it for a lengthy moment, his truck idling quietly in the still air. Pieces of lightweight debris float gently down to the ground around him.
He knows now, without a doubt, that he’s looking at the damage path of a severely destructive tornado. He cuts the engine of his truck and strains his ears in the resulting silence, listening for sounds of distress. He hopes against hope that the silver lump of metal didn’t have people inside. Regret pours in as he realizes he’s alone, unprepared, and unsure of how to help. He ignores how his hands begin to shake and slowly pushes the door open and steps out into the alien landscape.
It looks like a horror film. Whole trunks of trees ripped from the ground and scattered across the highway, roots exposed, rippling with torn fabric and bent sheet metal. Unrecognizable piles of wet mud, fencing, plastic, and tree limbs are strewn across the road surface. His boots scrape as he takes an uncertain step forward. He doesn’t know where to start.
It’s certainly not the first damage path he’s stumbled upon in his admittedly limited chasing career, but the only experience he has with a damage path this extreme is from the backseat of his aunt’s Dodge Stratus when he was 8.
He blinks a few times. No, he’s not thinking about that right now; he has to focus. Focus on what? Where do you even start with devastation this widespread?
His eyes scan back and forth, looking for movement. There's a moment where he almost thinks he’s gotten lucky, that whatever monster did all this damage managed to avoid taking any human lives in the process.
His heart drops down into his boots when he hears something scraping against concrete, and in the distance he sees a pale flash of dirty yellow moving down the embankment of the highway interchange. He watches for a moment, hoping it's falling debris or an animal, and before he’s fully aware of it, he’s trotting forward toward the overpass.
As he closes the distance, he realizes it's a person moving down the concrete. They reach the bottom in a crumpled heap. He runs. Before he can get there, they’re making their way unsteadily to their feet.
“Hey!” he shouts as he gets close enough. Their back is to him, and they straighten up with a wordless whimper and slowly turn to face him. His heart catches in his chest when he realizes it's a young woman. She looks every bit like she just went through a tornado, hair wet and hanging limply around her face. She’s covered in bits of mud and grass, and a weak stream of blood pulses from a nasty gash that runs the length of her thigh.
“Are you okay?” he asks when he finally reaches her.
The moment it's out of his mouth he realizes how woefully inadequate a question it is. Her mouth hangs open like she’s trying to say something, and her eyes dart around over his shoulder, looking for something. She takes a trembling step forward and stops, her hand touching the gash where the bottom of her shorts were ripped along with her thigh. She touches it like it's the first time she’s noticed it's there, and a pained gasp escapes through her open mouth.
“Hey, hey, okay,” Tyler says, trying to keep his tone soothing and neutral, closing the distance between them. He grasps her elbow as she wobbles a little.
“What’s your name?” he asks, hoping to get more than just noises from her. She looks up at him and Tyler’s heart clenches painfully; the lost, detached look in her eye revealing the depth of her shock.
“Are you alone?” he tries again, and her eyes flutter closed. She makes a breathless whine, almost infant-like in how helpless she sounds. Tyler swallows hard against a lump that's formed in his throat. She sways and he grabs her other elbow to steady her.
There’s a beat where Tyler has no idea what to do. He wishes more than anything that he had Boone with him. Between the two of them, Boone is the one certified in first aid, having pulled him out of the ring enough times when he was still riding.
“Okay,” he says, not really sure who he’s talking to, “that’s okay.”
He lets go of one elbow for a moment, shrugging out of the flannel he was wearing, keeping hold of her other elbow as he works his other arm out. Once he’s worked it free, and he’s sure she’s not about to tip over, he carefully drapes it over her wet shoulders. She swims in it, and again he fights the lump in his throat.
“We’re gonna get you some help, okay?” He dips his head to try to make eye contact with her, but her eyes are wandering, scanning the horizon.
He bites his lip, trying to think through what he should do next. He expects to hear sirens any moment now, a tornado this big doesn't pass through without escaping the notice of local authorities. But for now, the gentle flapping of sheet plastic in the light breeze and her labored breaths are all he can hear.
It takes him another long moment, but eventually he decides that standing here among the wreckage and debris isn’t helping either of them. He moves to wrap one arm around her back, to begin guiding her toward his truck. As his arm brushes her shoulder blades, a keening whine escapes her still open mouth, and she gives a violent shudder. He immediately lets go.
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry,” he says, trying to ignore the way his voice cracks. “I just wanna get you sitting down in my truck. Is that okay?”
Again, he ducks his head to try to catch her wandering eyes, but she’s so lost that he doesn’t think she sees him. What he really wants is to scoop her up right there and run her into the nearest emergency room, but he recognizes that he needs to be gentle here.
He reaches out again and takes careful hold of her limp hand. He takes a step forward, but she remains frozen in place. He gently tugs on her hand, and she takes an unsteady step forward with her uninjured leg. Another tug, another step.
They work out a rhythm like this, a slow, limping march back toward where he’s abandoned his truck in the middle of the road.
Tug, step. Tug, step.
It takes them a long time to reach the truck, and when they finally do, Tyler lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. He lets go of her hand for a moment to yank the passenger side door open and clear off the seat. He snaps the laptop shut and not-so-carefully frisbees it into the backseat of the cab.
Turning back to her, standing there in his flannel, he takes her hand again and pulls her toward the seat.
“Can you sit down for me?” he asks, more tender than he would have thought possible. She finally drags her eyes away from the horizon to look between him and the passenger seat. She lets out another pained noise, but says nothing. It takes some maneuvering, but eventually he gets her to where she’s facing him, her back to the passenger seat. He’s able to take her waist and gently lift her up into the seat.
Once she’s settled, he pulls open the door to the backseat and begins rummaging around for something that would resemble a bandage large enough to cover the still weeping wound on her thigh. He spies his overnight bag and pulls out a clean white undershirt. He also snags a fresh water bottle from the plastic wrapped flat that they keep on the floor of the cab.
When he makes his way back to her, she’s shifted a bit so she’s leaning sideways into the back of the seat. Her breathing has slowed and her eyes flutter closed.
“Hey,” he says gently, so as not to startle her, “eyes open, okay? You can’t sleep yet.” He steps closer to examine the bloody path that travels almost all the way up to her hip. He’s honestly surprised she hasn’t lost more blood, given the size of the injury. Unscrewing the bottle cap, he gently takes her hand and places the bottle in it, wrapping his fingers around hers until he’s sure she has a solid grasp.
“Take a sip,” he encourages, and she looks blankly at the bottle in her hand. It takes a little nudge, but eventually she’s able to take a shaky sip. He takes back the bottle and screws the cap back on, placing it on the dashboard. “It’ll be right here when you want it.”
He returns his focus to her leg. He cups his hand behind her knee, and as gently as one would hold an infant, he’s lifting it, watching her face for pain. When she whimpers, he makes a soft noise and works as quickly as he can to get one end of the shirt tucked under her thigh. Just as slowly, he lowers her leg back down and wraps the shirt around her thigh as tight as he dares.
She lets out another pained whine and reassurances fall out of his mouth without thought. “Easy, easy, it's okay.”
He finishes wrapping the shirt, tucking the other end under her thigh to secure it just as the first distant sirens can be heard.
“You hear that?” he says. “Help is coming.” Her eyes flutter closed again. He takes her hand and gives it a soft squeeze.
“Not yet, sweetheart. You gotta stay awake a little longer.” He’s not sure where the pet name comes from, but it feels right in this moment.
His eyes drift up and down the length of her, searching for more injuries. He’s genuinely startled as his eyes land on the tiny golden necklace that sits askew around her collar bone. Hanging from a delicate chain is a small shaped pendant, wouldn’t you believe it, in the shape of a tornado symbol for synoptic maps.
His heart gives an awful lurch as he realizes what it is. It’s absolutely possible that it’s a coincidence, but something in him tells him that it isn’t. It’s a token of her love for the very thing that just completely turned her world upside down. The very thing he was out chasing today. The very thing he loves.
Was she out here on purpose? Had she been chasing the same storm he had? He didn't think he saw any cars, but a glance over her shoulder reminds him of the unrecognizable lump of silver metal resting in the field. He swallows hard and tries to wonder what he would do if he were in her position.
He certainly wouldn’t have gotten under an overpass, he knows this much, but as he looks around, he realizes she must not have had many options.
He shudders to consider what choices he might have made if Boone had been in the truck with him, if they had gotten into a spot with no shelter. It’s almost too difficult to consider, so he chooses to focus on the woman in front of him.
He’s still watching her slowly breathe and blink bewildered in the passenger seat of his truck, lost in thought, when the police car rolls up behind him.
Things happen fast after that: an ambulance is right behind the police car, and she’s moved from his passenger seat to the rear of an ambulance by more sets of careful hands. Before he knows it, she’s gone.
The police officer claps him hard on the shoulder. “You did good, son,” he says before setting off back into the debris to search for more victims.
Suddenly Tyler is left standing alone. He climbs back into the driver's seat of his truck, but he doesn’t go anywhere immediately. He sits there, quiet for a long time. He looks to his right and sees where a dark stain of blood has soaked into the passenger seat, as if to say, “this was real, I was here.”
He fishes his phone out of his pocket and hits redial. After the third ring it picks up.
“Hey there Ty! How’s it going? You see any action?” Boone’s voice chirps brightly. Tyler has to take a deep breath before speaking.
“Hey, Boone, listen. I want to make some changes to the truck”