Rick Mofina: Whirlwind

Kate’s radio beeped.

“We have confirmation that powerful tornadoes have touched down in Lancaster and Wildhorse Heights. We have reports of fatalities and widespread devastation. This could be one of the worst storms ever…”

Kate took a deep breath and concentrated on her driving when her phone rang with a call from Chuck Laneer.

“Where are you now?”

“A little over halfway.”

“Do you see any pockets of damage?”

“No, nothing but black clouds and rain where I am.”

“We need to move on this.”

Kate passed a line of slower vehicles. As neighborhood after neighborhood rolled by she checked her GPS constantly. She was somewhere at the southern point of Kleberg when the squeak of wipers on the windshield signaled that the rain was letting up.

The sky was clearing.

The area was flat, nearly treeless, but it appeared undisturbed. She saw an aging roller-skating rink, an auto auction yard, an ice-cream stand-but no indication of damage.

None.

Fearing she’d missed a turnoff, she consulted her GPS again. Where was the flea market? It should be here.

Her phone rang. Chuck again.

“Kate, where are you…what’ve you got?”

“Nothing so far.”

“You should be-”

“Chuck, you’re breaking up!”

“-we’re hearing that the Saddle Up Center in the market got-”

When the call died, she tried calling Chuck back, but she’d lost the connection.

Traffic ahead was slowing into a stream of brake lights as troopers and sheriff’s deputies were merging two lanes of southbound traffic into one to keep a clear path for emergency vehicles. Kate got into the single slow lane, which soon crawled to a stop.

In the expressway’s grassy median she saw a large upside-down neon sign for Sanchez Restaurant-Fajita Special Today; she saw a partial splintered wooden structure that may have been a roof, then a crumpled van on its side. Cars had pulled over to aid the van’s passengers. Two solid lanes of traffic flowed in the opposite direction. Kate had to do a double take on several pickup trucks. They were loaded with bleeding people being tended to by others.

Oh, my God…

Then her rearview mirror flashed with wig-wagging emergency lights as she heard the siren of an ambulance, no, three ambulances, coming fast behind her in the emergency lane, followed by an SUV painted with the colorful logo of a radio news station.

Kate’s traffic line was inching along. She had to get to the scene.

She bit her bottom lip and made a decision.

When the radio news truck passed, she wheeled her car into the emergency lane and followed it. She traveled for about a quarter mile before reaching a roadblock at a U-turn. Several marked police cars were parked there. Officers were turning traffic around to the lanes moving northbound.

Sheriff’s deputies waived the ambulances and news truck through southbound, but a big trooper in a raincoat stepped in front of Kate’s car, pointed at her, commanding her to stop. Then he leaned into her window.

“You can’t go any farther, miss. This lane is for emergency vehicles only. We need you to go through the U-turn and head back.”

“I know, but I’m with the press and you just let that radio news guy through.”

As the trooper hesitated Kate noticed officers at the patrol cars nearby contending with six or seven anguished people. They were demanding to be allowed through the roadblock. “My father and mother are there…but we can’t reach them on their phone…please let us by-”

Kate’s trooper glanced at the group, then, as he returned his gaze to her, she said, “I have a job to do, too.”

“Who are you with? Do you have some ID?”

“Newslead.” Kate fumbled for her plastic photo ID and chain, showing it to him. “Our stories go across the country and around the world.”

He studied her ID long enough for her to notice he had blue eyes and rainwater webbing down his jawline.

“All right.” He nodded. “I’ll let you through, but when you get to the next point, park to the side. We need the lanes clear for emergency crews.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve seen a lot in my time, but nothing like what happened down there. Brace yourself.”

Wildhorse Heights, Texas

Tense from the trooper’s warning, Kate drove beyond the roadblock.

Her knuckles whitened on the wheel as she navigated around the chunks of plastic, metal and garbage scattered over the two empty southbound lanes. About a hundred yards in, the freeway dipped with a gentle slope, giving her a sweeping view of what used to be the Old Southern Glory Flea Market.

“Oh my God!”

For as far as she could see, the landscape was a graveyard of crushed cars and trucks, punctuated with the ghostly pronglike remnants of trees jutting from a sea of debris.

Small fires flickered amid the destruction.

It looks like a gate to hell .

Ahead, Kate saw the long line of ambulances, fire trucks, police cars and emergency crew vehicles, their lights flashing. She parked between a fire truck and a TV news van. The rain had stopped. She was dressed in fitted jeans and a belted top, but her flat leather shoes wouldn’t do. Metal, wood and glass covered the ground. She got a pair of old hiking boots and woolen socks she kept in the trunk, put them on quickly and tied the laces tight. She pulled on her rain jacket, grabbed her phone and tried to call Chuck. Nothing happened. She tried texting. It didn’t work. No service. The cell towers must be down. Damn . She tested her phone’s camera. It worked. She tested the keyboard, created a file called Storm-1. Okay, she could still write and take pictures.

She gathered her spare phone battery, notebook and pens, slipped the chain with her press ID over her neck and recalled Chuck’s orders.

Get us the facts, the heartbreak and the heroes.

Her pulse quickened as she rushed into the chaos. Rounding a heap of splintered lumber and smashed Sheetrock, she stopped in her tracks at the scene before her.

With a funereal air, two firefighters were placing a yellow tarp over the bodies of four dead people: two adult men and two adult women, side by side on the ground, in a neat row. Nearly stripped of their clothes, their battered bodies were blood soaked. One of the women was missing a foot. One of the men had a shard of glass sticking out of his stomach. Not far off, she saw another yellow tarp on the ground with three more pairs of feet extending from it. Two of the pairs belonged to children.

Kate steadied herself on a picnic table until she found her composure.

She offered a silent prayer for the dead, then thought of her daughter in Ohio, wishing she could be with her now. After blinking back her tears, Kate opened her notebook, made notes and moved on.

I have to do this .

Everywhere, people staggered in wide-eyed shock, shouting names of loved ones at the debris.

Kate came upon an overturned car with a metal signpost rammed through the windshield. The car had a large white X sprayed on it. Two women sat on the ground next to it draped in a tattered blanket. They were on the road but much of the asphalt near them had been peeled away.

She lowered herself and sat with them.

“Hi, I’m Kate Page, a reporter with Newslead. May I talk to you?”

The women were in their twenties, their faces were scraped and their eyes were tearful. One of them gave a little nod.

“Can you tell me where you were when the storm hit and what happened?” Kate asked.

The first woman had short blond hair. She looked at the horizon as if the tragedy were replaying there and trembled as she spoke.