“Stop.” Alice the trucker approached him. “Look, it’s dangerous out there. I get it. You need to find the kids’ grandpa. He’s out there. Probably searching through rubble. Leave the kids, let me drive you in my rig. That road with a twister threat ain’t no place for a Barbie camper.”
Liza added. “I’ll watch them. I swear. I’d feel better if they didn’t go.”
I hated the thought of leaving the kids behind, but it was safer.
“Wait.” Lane held up his hand. “You’re offering to drive us to Wilderado in your truck?”
“Yes.” Alice nodded.
“You just watched me haggle with Skip-a-roo here, why didn’t you say anything then?”
“Because the man needs paid,” Alice said. “Now are you taking my offer or what?”
Lane looked at me and I glanced to Carlie.
“Will you be alright?” I asked her. “Watch your brother if we leave you behind?”
“Don’t be long,” she said. “Please.”
Alice replied. “We won’t be. Now are we going or what?”
Lane wiped up and secured the RV keys, placing them in his pocket, my guess, in case Skip changed his mind. “We’re going.”
✽✽✽
In my mind, we were going to locate Martin somewhere in Wilderado, probably digging through rubble, trying to calm Rosie.
Poor Rosie.
I hoped her daughter and grandchildren were alright, that they made it to safety before the funnels hit.
By my calculation the phrase, ‘lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice’, didn’t apply to Wilderado.
I was confident we’d find him, and he had missed all the destruction that rained down on the western part of the state.
Lane didn’t say much on the drive. He kept looking out the window. There was so much rubble and debris, stuff lifted in the storm and tossed everywhere. It was a litter field of household appliances, cars and furniture.
Alice didn’t drive fast, she drove cautiously, swerving around things that could potentially cause problems if we ran over them or into them. Like a large, stainless steel, stand-up freezer set perfectly straight up in the middle of Interstate Forty.
It wasn’t long, shortly after we passed the ‘Wilderado Ten miles’ sign, before Alice stopped.
Police lights flashed ahead. It was the first emergency vehicle I had seen in it all.
He was pulled sideways across the road and stood by his squad car. Two other cars were parked near him, and several people stood there.
The officer waved his hands.
We had stopped a good distance from him before he started waving. I didn’t understand why he was flagging us.
Alice put the truck in park and opened her door at the same time as Lane.
As Lane helped me out of the truck, I heard Alice.
“Afternoon, Officer, can we get through?” she asked.
“No one is getting through,” he replied.
With Lane, I stepped around to the front of the truck where Alice stood with the officer. I saw the reason.
“Jana, this is insane,” Lane said with awe, stepping forward.
I followed him. Walking through a mine field of dirt and concrete scattered about the road. Stepping closer to the people, it was hard not to see the huge gap in the road. It was ten feet wide, and shallow, but deep enough to be too dangerous to drive across.
It reminded me of the indentation a scooper made in a fresh tub of ice cream. There was no way around it. To the left and right it went as far as the eye could see.
“Twister came through here,” the officer explained. “It came from the south and went straight.”
“Anything on the radio?” Lane asked.
“Nothing.”
The rip in the road was concerning, but it didn’t make me tremble like what I had seen on the horizon.
It brewed quickly. It was hard to tell how far away the storm was. Thick, ominous clouds swirled violently, mixing in shades of gray as lighting snapped horizontally through it at a steady rate.
It was hard to see if bolts were striking the ground. More than likely, they were.
I felt Lane reach down and grab my hand. He squeezed it firmly and held it that way.
We weren’t going any farther. We weren’t finding Martin.
The only choice we had was to turn back.
NINE – PILGRAMAGE
It wasn’t a matter of ‘if’ Martin would come back, it was a matter of when. To me, at least, and I wouldn’t let the kids think any other way.
Lane was more grounded. It wasn’t as if he wasn’t close to Martin. He was just as close as any of us. Martin was like a second father to him. But he believed if Martin was going to return it wasn’t going to be in a time frame conducive to getting the kids to safety. If indeed the Jupiter Project was real.
My husband was believing me more and more. When I didn’t have the binder, he did. Although we both looked for two different reasons. He was looking for what was coming, what was next and when it would occur.
Me, I looked for reasons it wasn’t going to happen yet. That Julius’ time frame of two more weeks was the correct time frame and what we were witnessing was the beginning, but it wasn’t the big hit.
Not yet.
It was probably more wishful thinking, but I was sticking to it.
For over a year I had been planning and preparing. There was no reason I couldn’t come up with a plan that included waiting and maybe even searching for Martin.
First things first. We had to get the kids to the ranch. The house was gone, but the shelter was there should another storm hit. When we returned to the diner after our futile trip, the police officer and six others from the highway followed us.
It truly was one of the only places standing, just as Alice and the injured traveler had said when they arrived.
When we left the diner to head back to the ranch, we left behind twenty people. I didn’t tell them what we knew, nor did I tell the kids how discouraging the trip to find
