David Morrell - Black Evening

"They still haven't reached us," I said. "If you want, I'll try outrunning them."

"Do something ."

I switched off the cruise control and sped to sixty, then sixty-five. The strain of squinting toward the white-hot sky ahead of us gave me a piercing headache. I put on my sunglasses.

But all at once I didn't need them. Abruptly the clouds caught up to us. The sky went totally black. We drove in roiling darkness.

"Seventy. I'm doing seventy," I said. "But the clouds are moving faster."

"Almost a hurricane," Gail said. "That isn't possible. Not in Nebraska."

"I'm scared," Jeff said.

He wasn't the only one. Lightning blinded me, stabbing to the right and left of us. Thunder shook the car. Then the air became an eerie, dirty shade of green, and I started thinking about tornadoes.

"Find a place to stop!" Gail shouted.

But there wasn't one. We'd already passed the exit for the next town, Kearny. I searched for a roadside park, but a sign said REST STOP, THIRTY MILES. I couldn't just pull off the highway. On the shoulder, if the rain obscured another driver's vision, we could all be hit and killed. No choice. I had to keep driving.

"At least it isn't raining," I said.

The clouds unloaded. No preliminary sprinkle. Massive raindrops burst around us, gusting, roaring, pelting.

"I can't see!" I flicked the windshield wipers to their highest setting. They flapped in sharp, staccato, triple time. I peered through murky, undulating, wind swept waves of water, struggling for a clear view of the highway.

I was going too fast. When I braked, the station wagon fishtailed. We skidded on the slippery pavement. I couldn't breathe. The tires gripped. I felt the jolt. Then the car was in control.

I slowed to forty, but the rain heaved with such force against the windshield I still couldn't see.

"Pull your seatbelts tight."

Although I never found that rest stop, I got lucky when a flash of lightning showed a sign, the exit for a town called Grand Island. Shaking from tension, I eased down the off ramp. At the bottom, across from me, a Best Western motel was shrouded with rain. We left a wake through the flooded parking lot and stopped under the motel's canopy. My hands were stiff from clenching the steering wheel. My shoulders ached. My eyes felt swollen, raw.

Gail and Jeff got out, rain gusting under the canopy as they ran inside. I had to move the car to park it in the lot. I locked the doors, but although I sprinted, I was drenched and chilled when I reached the motel's entrance.

Inside, a small group stared past me toward the storm – two clerks, two waitresses, a cleaning lady. I trembled.

"Mister, use this towel," the cleaning lady said. She took one from a pile on her cart.

I thanked her, wiping my dripping face and soggy hair.

"See any accidents?" a waitress asked.

With the towel around my neck, I shook my head no.

"A storm this sudden, there ought to be accidents," the waitress said as if doubting me.

I frowned when she said sudden . "You mean it's just starting here?"

A skinny clerk stepped past me to the window. "Not too long before you came. A minute maybe. I looked out this window, and the sky was bright. I knelt to tie my shoe. When I stood up, the clouds were here – as black as night. I don't know where they came from all of a sudden, but I never saw it rain so hard so fast."

"But – " I shivered, puzzled. "The storm hit us back near Kearny. We've been driving in it for an hour."

"You were on the edge of it, I guess," the clerk said, spellbound by the devastation outside. "It followed you."

My cold wet shirt clung to me, but I felt a deeper chill.

"Looks like we've got other customers," the second clerk said, pointing out the window.

Other cars splashed through the torrent in the parking lot.

"Yeah, we'll be busy, that's for sure," the clerk said. He switched on the lights, but they didn't dispel the outside gloom.

The wind howled.

I glanced around the lobby, suddenly noticing that Gail and Jeff weren't in sight. "My wife and son."

"They're in the restaurant," the second waitress said, smiling to reassure me. "Through that arch. They ordered coffee for you. Hot and strong."

"I need it. Thanks."

Dripping travelers stumbled in.

We waited an hour. Although the coffee was as hot as promised, it didn't warm me. In the air conditioning, my soggy clothes stuck to the chilly chrome-and-plastic seat. A bone-deep freezing numbness made me sneeze.

"You need dry clothes," Gail said. "You'll catch pneumonia."

I'd hoped the storm would stop before I went out for the clothes. But even in the restaurant, I felt the thunder rumble. I couldn't wait. My muscles cramped from shivering. "I'll get a suitcase." I stood.

"Dad, be careful." Jeff looked worried.

Smiling, I leaned down and kissed him. "Son, I promise."

Near the restaurant's exit, one of the waitresses I'd talked to came over. "You want to hear a joke?"

I didn't, but I nodded politely.

"On the radio," she said. "The local weatherman. He claims it's hot and clear."

I shook my head, confused.

"The storm." She laughed. "He doesn't know it's raining. All his instruments, his radar and his charts, he hasn't brains enough to look outside and see what kind of day it is. If anything, the rain got worse." She laughed again. "The biggest joke – that dummy's my husband."

I laughed to be agreeable and went to the lobby.

It was crowded. More rain-drenched travelers pushed in, cursing the weather. They tugged at dripping clothes and bunched before the motel's counter, wanting rooms.

I squeezed past them, stopping at the big glass door, squinting out at the wildest rain I'd ever seen. Above the exclamations of the crowd, I heard the shriek of the wind.

My hand reached for the door.

It hesitated. I really didn't want to go out.

The skinny desk clerk suddenly stood next to me. "It could be you're not interested," he said.

I frowned, surprised.

"We're renting rooms so fast we'll soon be all full up," he said. "But fair is fair. You got here first. I saved a room. In case you plan on staying."

"I appreciate it. But we're leaving soon."

"You'd better take another look."

I did. Lightning split a tree. The window shook from thunder.

A steaming bath, I thought. A sizzling steak. Warm blankets while my clothes get dry.

"I changed my mind. We'll take that room."

All night, thunder shook the building. Even with the drapes shut, I saw brilliant streaks of lightning. I slept fitfully, waking with a headache. Six a.m., it was still raining.

On the radio, the weatherman sounded puzzled. As the lightning's static garbled what he said, I learned that Grand Island was suffering the worst storm in its history. Streets were flooded, sewers blocked, basements overflowing. An emergency had been declared, the damage in the millions. But the cause of the storm seemed inexplicable. The weather pattern made no sense. The front was tiny, localized, and stationary. Half a mile outside Grand Island – north and south, east and west – the sky was cloudless.

That last statement was all I needed to know. We quickly dressed and went downstairs to eat. We checked out shortly after seven.

"Driving in this rain?" The desk clerk shook his head. He had the tact not to tell me I was crazy.

"Listen to the radio," I answered. "Half a mile away, the sky is clear."

I'd have stayed if it hadn't been for Gail. Her fear of storms – the constant lightning and thunder – made her frantic.

"Get me out of here."

And so we went.

And almost didn't reach the Interstate. The car was hubcap-deep in water. The distributor was damp. I nearly killed the battery before I got the engine started. The brakes were soaked. They failed as I reached the local road. Skidding, blinded, I swerved around the blur of an abandoned truck, missing the entrance to the Interstate. Backing up, I barely saw a ditch in time. But finally we headed up the ramp, rising above the flood, doing twenty down the highway.