Michael Koryta - So Cold the River

And so he sat there helplessly, impotently, as the Ranger roared up and then passed him. Eric was staring inside the cab, trying to catch a glimpse of Claire, but what he saw when the truck shot by him made him give a low shout of fear and slam on the brake pedal, bringing the Oldsmobile to a stop in the center of the road.

Campbell Bradford was driving the truck. Not Josiah, but Campbell, hunched over the wheel in his dark brown suit and bowler hat, his mouth twisted into a grin in the quarter second when Eric had met his eyes.

Josiah saw the Oldsmobile pull out onto the road and he was so stunned, so momentarily hopeful, that he almost hit the brakes. Danny? But then he got it, understood what must have happened, and tightened his hands on the steering wheel, laid his foot heavier on the gas pedal.

He ain’t stopping us, boy, Campbell whispered. We’re going home, and that son of a bitch is not strong enough to stop us. He doesn’t have the will for it.

Indeed, he did not. Josiah kept the speed up and the wheel held dead-on center and clenched his teeth, ready for a collision, but Shaw stayed in his own lane and let the Ranger thunder right by him. Didn’t even try to do anything, just sat there behind the wheel of Danny’s Olds and watched Josiah pass by.

Told you, boy. Told you. He doesn’t have the will, and neither does anyone else. You think those police can stop us right now? Not a chance. They ain’t strong enough. Ain’t nobody in this valley strong enough.

There surely was not. Josiah was flying now, open road ahead, the world yielding to him in the way he’d always known it would.

Dumping the woman in the road had freed him from the first pursuit car, and he’d avoid those that would attempt to join the chase. He’d drive west and take the back roads, a no-brainer as there would be more police near Orleans, and if he drove toward them, he’d make it easier for them. Drive away from them and they’d have to give chase.

He was back on the road to the gulf now, Wesley Chapel a white speck beneath black sky in the distance. Down to the chapel, then bang another left, and keep pushing west at as fast a speed as he could manage. That was all he had to do.

Lightning flashed again, and around him the fields shone with the deep, lush green you could only ever see beneath a storm. He couldn’t believe just how green everything looked. Above him, something seemed to be opening in the dark clouds. The storm breaking up, maybe. Yes, even the wind had died off. Everything around him was still. That expected furious storm wasn’t going to come to life after all.

But something was happening in the sky. He had only a sense of it at first, some swirl of light, and then he blinked and looked up and to the left and saw that something strange was happening in that clear circle that had formed in the center of the clouds. Something was… lowering. Yes, a cloud of pure white was dropping down from the center of the dark swirling ring above it.

A thin white rope descended almost all the way to the field ahead, then held. Hesitated. The top end of it whipped around a little and the bottom rose with it, and Josiah was sure the thing was about to retreat when it dropped with sudden strength and a spray of brown soil shot into the air. The windows on the truck were vibrating now, and the trees alongside the road were bending with the force of the wind once again. Only they were bending the wrong way, he realized, they were leaning in toward the cloud instead of away from it.

For a moment he let off the gas. He was beside Wesley Chapel now, where Danny had pulled in and watched a tornado go by, and now Josiah was staring down another one. He’d heard plenty about such storms-they weren’t uncommon in southern Indiana-but he’d never seen one himself. The thing looked nothing like the funnel shape you always heard of. No, it was just a rope. A white rope connecting earth to sky, and moving forward. Moving east. Moving toward him.

He raised his eyes to the rearview mirror and saw Danny’s car coming on down the road. Shaw had turned around and started in pursuit of him. What in the hell did he think he could do?

Still, he was catching up. The tornado sat no more than a half mile away now to the west, the direction Josiah needed to go. It was moving but without great speed. Seemed relaxed, almost. Low-key about the way it was tearing through the land. He watched it come up on one lone tree, saw the treetop bend toward it, and then the cloud was over it and the tree disappeared from sight. An instant later it had cleared the tree, and the trunk remained, but almost all of the branches that had made up the top were gone. The cloud chewed back into the farmland.

It looks like a power washer, Josiah thought, it looks exactly like a damn power-washer jet. A thin white rope with an invisible and incredible chisel at the end of it, blasting that field away like it was so much dirt on a deck board.

He looked in the rearview again and saw Danny’s car closing in fast.

Can’t just sit here, boy. Work left to be done, isn’t there? You bold enough to do it? You got the strength, the will?

Sure he did. Sure. Josiah turned left, away from the chapel, and laid into the Ranger’s accelerator once again. Ahead of him, the tornado was nearing the road. The base of the white rope had turned brown, and Josiah could see an outer ring of debris circling it. Some awful large objects in that outer ring. All around him the air hummed with a mighty locomotive’s roar.

Danny was right, he thought, damn things really do sound just like a train.

He could see the spot where the cloud was likely to cross the road, and he knew that if he made it there first, he’d be fine, and Shaw, still trailing behind, would likely be dead. It was a teenage boy’s game, nothing more, a bit of that old chicken run. Wasn’t nobody else had Josiah’s nerves in the game back then, and wasn’t nobody else who had them now. He eyed the likely intersection between storm and road and put the full weight of his right leg into the gas pedal, heard the overextended six-cylinder moaning.

You make it through, boy, you are home free. That storm will block everybody trying to come at you from the east, don’t you see? The road will be yours. Just got to make it, just got to show the strength and will, keep those hands steady on the wheel and the foot heavy on the gas…

He was right alongside it now, and when he chanced a final glance up at the rearview, he saw Eric Shaw was falling back. Slowing down, afraid to take this run.

“We knew that,” he said. “He don’t have the strength of will, does he, Campbell? Man doesn’t have what we have.”

The truck was at eighty-five now and no more than two hundred feet from clear of the storm. The driver’s window clouded over with brown dust and then the windshield was covered, too, and Josiah couldn’t see a damn thing but that didn’t matter, because he knew the other side would be clear. He let out a howl of pure pleasure and bent over the wheel, knowing that he’d made it. Wasn’t another man alive would have taken this drive, but he’d not only taken it, he’d made it.

That taste of pure victory was the last thing he knew in the instant before the truck began to slide to the left, and he had time for just one more thought, a final, unspoken question: Why am I moving this way? This isn’t the way I wanted to go…

This tornado didn’t have the funnel shape of that first one, looked like an angry white whip, and Eric could not believe it when he saw the pickup turn left and head directly toward it.

“What are you doing?” Eric said. “What are you doing, you crazy bastard?”

The Ranger was accelerating, speeding into the storm, which was now almost to the road. Eric blew through the stop sign and swung left as well, sped up for a moment, and then saw what would happen and let his foot off the gas pedal, saying, “Don’t let it, no, don’t let it…”