On the radio, they hear the incongruously cheery sound of a plinking mandolin. Tim studies the DeLorme map and reconsiders his options. There is another way, though the risk is still high. He’ll have to leave the sure footing of pavement for a gamble on gravel. He drives thirty feet up the road and takes the next left, leaving the highway. “We’ve got some gridded roads,” he reasons. “I’m going to go north.” He’ll use 424th Avenue, a dirt farm lane, to get ahead.
But before he drives much farther, Tim slows. Through the passenger window, no more than a third of a mile out, he sees the hamlet of Manchester, a huddle of oak, cottonwood, and whitewashed two-story farmhouses surrounded by wheat fields, the seed heads wicking gold in the sun. The minivan rolls to a stop.
“It’s going north,” Porter says. Neither speaks for a moment.
“It’s going to take the town,” Tim replies.
They watch the pretty old houses, the barns, the constructs of men standing pitiful and small in the growing shadow. First, a power pole leans and falls. A barn cants over, then its roof sails away. In milliseconds, the rest of the structure follows. A cottonwood, some one hundred feet tall, that has given shade to generations is flung to the earth. Now the tornado comes to the closest house. It isn’t the roof that fails first. The entire two stories of it buckle so quickly as to be nearly imperceptible. The steeply pitched roof comes to rest on the ground. Then it is lofted several hundred feet into the sky. They hear none of the crack of splintering lumber, just the toneless, high frequency of white water, omnidirectional and immense. The funnel fills with white drywall, shingles, shredded pieces of insulation, large tree branches. They hang suspended, glittering in the sun. The destruction of Manchester—established with its own post office shortly after South Dakota’s statehood a century before—takes only seconds.
As Tim and Porter resume the chase and gain distance, they glimpse the storm’s totality playing out over a span of miles. The clouds are drawn to the core like water to a sink drain, then pulled into the tornado and centrifuged out. It is a sight into which one could lose oneself, but there is no time to linger. This road extends in a straight line to the north, but it won’t intersect with the tornado. The storm is still bearing away from them to the northeast. That means Tim has to take the upcoming right, eastbound on 206th Street, and haul ass in front of the wedge over to 425th, the next north-south road. If he leaves enough distance between them and the tornado, he can drop the probe and turn north onto 425th before it’s too late.
In other words, they are about to enter a race they can’t afford to lose. One flat tire, one spinout in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and they’re done for. But Tim may never get another chance like this—not this season, maybe not ever. He studies the map. “There’s another crossroads in about a mile. That’s where we’re headed to. We’re gonna be sitting in rain for a little bit.”
Tim hits the gas, and the race of his life begins.
As soon as they enter the rain curtains surrounding the tornado, the tires begin swimming over cake-batter mud. Even by Tim’s standards, this is madness. The road is a boggy mess. While he struggles to keep the minivan from sliding into the ditch, the tornado outline that had been so crisp begins to fray in the rain. There’s a corollary of rule number one: keep your distance, especially from rain-wrapped tornadoes.
“We’re losing visibility of it. Are you going to deploy in the rain?” Porter asks in disbelief. This is like playing chicken with a train they can’t see. The minivan is fishtailing now; the road is getting worse.
“Yep,” Tim replies.
“You don’t have much time, Tim. Do not get stuck.”
Tim doesn’t respond. The rain is easing up now. The ragged, dusty wall bearing down looks different; it has narrowed, hardened, its outlines growing laminar, almost glassy. At least they can see it again. Tim hits 206th and hooks the right turn east.
“This is too dangerous,” Porter says.
“It’s all right,” Tim says evenly. “It’s still about half a mile out.”
As the tornado draws nearer, its smaller features—aspects of its ground-level flow, where radial winds hurtle into the vortex and suddenly turn and spiral vertically—come into view. They see the dust rise and wrap around its back side. Black sod hangs in suspension around the funnel like swarming flies.
They are closing in on the intersection with 425th Avenue, and so is the beast. The road ahead, to Tim’s relief, is paved. They’ll be able to make their escape to the north in a hurry, staking their lives on the proposition that the tornado will continue to bear away to the northeast.
“Here we go,” Tim says.
He can see his deployment site, just before the turn.
It is seconds away.
Now.
He slides to a stop near a dense row of poplar, behind which is a farmhouse neither of them notice. The minivan’s sliding door slams open, and Tim removes a probe.
“Tim.” Porter’s voice takes on urgency as he watches dark shapes translate across the tornado’s face. “We don’t have time. We don’t have time. Seriously.”
They are being tailed by Peter, the NatGeo photographer, whose guides are growing deeply uncomfortable. Tim is so focused on his goal, it seems to Gene Rhoden, that he has blinders on. Floating debris tumbles only a couple of hundred yards out, pieces of trees and the next farmhouse over. The smaller, granulated detritus has already begun to flutter just beyond Porter’s window, like large snowflakes.
Tim is aware only of the tornado and
