Race the Sky Read online

  Table of Contents

  Race the Sky

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  About the Author

  Race the Sky

  Secrets of the Elements Book I

  By Michael Galloway

  © 2016 by Michael Galloway. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without written permission from the author.

  www.michaelgalloway.net

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, locations, or events is entirely coincidental.

  All Scripture verses taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  Chapter One

  John Sayers took one look at the afternoon sky and knew he was in a race against the clouds, the clock, and his own fear of failure. He stayed up late the night before studying atmospheric computer models, forecast soundings, and radar replays of the previous day’s storms. Even with meticulous planning, there was an uneasy uncertainty that he was not in the right location because the previous storms laid down numerous outflow boundaries. Such boundaries interacted with storm fronts in unpredictable ways, but he hoped today would be the day the power of physics finally cracked the code of the heavens.

  Yet physics equations were only as good as the data that fed them. To get good data, he built dozens of plastic and paperboard hobby rockets in his garage with his friend James Yancey. Each rocket could fly a few thousand feet into the air and carried a payload of a dozen Ferganut pellets. Each pellet was a dime-sized sphere that would ride the wind and transmit location, speed, and pressure data back to a tracking antenna mounted in the bed of his pickup truck. It took weeks of frustrated field testing, two trashed launchers, and long nights of software coding to perfect the rockets and the launching system. With the window of summer still open, now was the time for a technological triumph built around black powder and fire.

  He reached into the back of his truck and withdrew a dusty black duffel bag. He set the bag on the ground, unzipped it, and pulled out the first orange-and-white rocket. He cradled the rocket with trembling hands, adjusted one of the fins, and slipped its launch lug onto a launch rail. He pulled the other rockets out and slid them onto their rails one by one. Together the rails formed a battery, which held six rockets in all, and the entire assembly was aimed at the middle of a whirling gray wall cloud that was less than a half mile away.

  He attached the ignition wires and alligator clips to each rocket and then returned to the driver’s seat. Next to him on the center console was a laptop computer with a tangle of wires that ran through the back window of the truck and out to the rocket launcher.

  He locked the system camera onto the base of a thunderstorm cloud to the northwest. The storm was on the southern end of a broken line of supercells that stretched from Alexandria, Minnesota, to just southwest of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Although the line chugged to the east at twenty knots per hour along a slow-moving cold front, now was no time to hesitate.

  He glanced at his laptop and then at James’ laptop, where the latest radar imagery was displayed. James, also known as Captain Avalanche, was in his late twenties and had short black hair, a round face, and a sharp wit. Captain plundered a bag of Doritos and stared out the window as if lost in thought.

  “What’s the velocity on this one?” John said. “The base’s lowering pretty fast.”

  Captain looked over to his left and then stared intently at his laptop. “Seventy knots of gate-to-gate shear and climbing fast.” He looked up. “With a slight turn to the south.”

  John watched as the wall cloud continued to churn. Black wisps of dust rose up from a nearby field, eager to make the final spiraling connection. Low-level scud drifted toward the storm as if it was a dragon inhaling and rearing back to strike. He pulled out a handheld control box which had a safety key, a large red circular launch button, and a joystick to aim the launcher. He rolled down his driver side window and stuck his head out for a better look.

  The prairie grass around them leaned into the storm and appeared darkened as if was consumed by a much larger shadow. Despite the strong pull of the inflow winds, he hoped the rockets would stay on course and plunge into the core of the storm. With a flick of the finger he tapped the joystick and the rocket launcher pivoted in response. “Ready to fire,” he said before tapping it one last time.

  “Punch the core, John. Punch it!” Captain said.

  John turned the safety key and then slapped the launch button. The first rocket hissed out of the launcher and drew a jagged smoky arc as it rose to meet the base of the storm. Every thirty seconds he tweaked the launcher position again and lobbed another rocket into the sky. Although the rockets soared out of sight, in seconds multiple bright green dots appeared on his laptop screen as the sensors were ejected by the dozen.

  A bolt of lightning crunched into the earth two hundred feet in front of them. The ensuing shockwave of thunder rattled the loose change on the dashboard but John was unfazed. As the data streamed in, he looked over at Captain. “If this keeps moving south of east, where will it take us?”

  Captain studied his map and then looked out the window to the east. “Near Canton. Then into Flatfoot, Iowa.”

  “Flatfoot? Never heard of it.”

  “You’re not from around here are you?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Captain gave him a shocked look. “Some people say Flatfoot is about nothing but farming and livestock. But everyone around here knows their real claim to fame.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Oh, c’mon. It’s home of the world’s largest bale of hay.”

  “They keep records for that?”

  “Apparently.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I saw it on a sign the other week. It’s in a giant glass case on the north side of town.”

  John shook his head. “How big is Flatfoot anyway?”

  “About 3,000 people.”

  John wondered in silence if the town had an adequate siren system. He had encountered more than a few towns in his travels that had no civil defense siren system of their own. The thought of trying to outrace this storm to warn them made him wince. He climbed down out of his truck, picked up the launcher and slid it into the back of the truck. He secured the launcher with bungee cords and locked the tailgate.

  Soon, he headed back south on Interstate 29 and in minutes he turned down a highway that ran east toward Flatfoot.

  Captain glanced back at the storm. “Power flash.”

  “Already?”

  John checked his rearview mirror as a light gray narrow funnel formed underneath the wall cloud. Flatfoot was a good twenty-five miles out but he knew there would be at least a couple of north-south county roads he could take before the storm descended on the town.

  “What are the options?” He said as he tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

  “There are
four roads ahead. Two highways and a road that runs right through the middle of town.”

  John waited for Captain to finish his thought. When nothing happened, he said, “and what is the fourth option?”

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  “What if it gives us the best angle?”

  “No, John. Stick to these three. Good escape routes, too.”

  John counted the roads off one by one as the miles wore on. He slowed the truck and watched as the funnel connected to the earth. It took on the form of a narrow, bright gray, swiftly-spinning cylinder. “This could be a drill bit in the making,” he said. “Keep watching it.” In the distance, John spotted the probable fourth option: a poorly marked dirt road that ran between two farm fields. He let it pass.

  Captain took a deep breath. “Debris in the air,” he said as he gazed through the rear window. Dozens of cornstalks were whipped up into the air like green party streamers although it was doubtful anyone was celebrating.

  Giant raindrops splattered on their windshield as John slowed the truck to forty miles per hour. He hesitated to use his wipers at first since the windshield was spotted with bug muck. When he finally caved in, it took a dozen shots of wiper fluid just to clear a spot big enough to see through. More than once, he wheeled around a pothole in the road but kept on a beeline for where the tornado would be in ten minutes or less.

  A flock of objects soon gathered around the twister, rising and descending like restless gulls. Out of the spiraling debris something dropped into the bed of the truck with a loud bang. Captain spun around to find the source of the sound. “There goes someone shoe. Converse hi-top. Black with a touch of mud.”

  John rolled across the bridge that spanned the Big Sioux River and pulled over onto the shoulder on the other side. Just before the twister crossed the river it obliterated a barn into a swarm of splinters.

  “What are you waiting for? You never hesitate,” Captain said.

  John looked over at his laptop and studied the data coming back from the Ferganut sensors. The meso inside the thunderstorm gathered strength and showed no signs of weakening. He turned to Captain. “I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

  Before Captain could react and after the barn crashed back to the ground, John stepped on the accelerator again and found what he was looking for. Rain pelted their windshield harder now. As the storm approached, it started to take a gradual turn toward them. When he was within fifty feet of another dirt road, he slammed hard on the brakes and veered left. A hundred feet down the potholed road, he noted a yellow warning sign that read “minimum maintenance road”.

  Once he was about a mile from the twister, he stopped the truck. He scooped up his Canon camera from the backseat and stepped out to take a few shots. Captain took a few of his own, but from the middle of a neighboring muddy field. Fresh black topsoil spiraled up and into the base of the storm like stripes on a barber’s pole. In less than a minute, a once invisible circulation on the fringes of the twister condensed and it nearly doubled in size.

  John’s ears popped and the ensuing sound of the twister reminded him of a set of rapids he visited as a kid. The rapids were on a river next to his parents’ vacation cabin and he remembered how his mother used to yell at him to back away from the riverbank for fear that he would fall in and be swept downstream. In the middle of the rapids was a whirlpool and he often wondered what it would have been like to reach out and let danger run through his fingers.

  The scene in the sky today was different of course but the currents were just as violent. He snapped two dozen pictures because he knew time was short. The environment further south of the storm had higher CAPE values and more moisture to work with in the lower levels. If his reading of the sky was right, this storm could go on for another twenty minutes and leave a lot of carnage in its wake.

  As the wind and rain picked up around them, they raced back to the truck and set their cameras into the backseat. John wheeled the truck into a nearby cornfield to make a u-turn and then returned back to the dirt road. He could feel the truck tires slip in the mud and so he tempered his speed. In his rearview mirror the twister reached the edge of the road.

  Without thinking, he punched the accelerator. The truck lurched ahead but the right front passenger wheel caught the edge of a pothole. Laptops went airborne. Drinks went flying. The basketball hi-top bounced to life in the bed of the truck. Next came the ditch and an explosion of mud on the windshield.

  In desperation, John stomped on the accelerator again, but this time the rear tires threw up a fountain of slime. The black lid of a portable barbecue grill ricocheted off the hood of the truck and rolled around on the ground, pushed along by rear flank downdraft winds.

  He shifted his truck into four-wheel drive. What should have been an easy escape soon turned into a four-wheeled adventure in grave digging. He rolled down his window and looked around. He was sure the outer circulation of the tornado would soon be upon them, but when he looked back, the funnel suddenly disconnected, leaving behind multiple dangling shreds of cloud above and chaotic whirls of dust below.

  “That should have kept going,” John said with a hint of disappointment in his voice.

  “At least it didn’t hit the town.”

  “Yeah, but it should have kept going. It had lots of CAPE to work with. Good inflow. The nearest storm was just starting to pop twenty miles to the southwest. The ones to the north…” His voice trailed off.

  Captain threw his head back and laughed. “We got our shots. We got the data. Isn’t that enough?”

  “No. This doesn’t make any sense.” He opened up his door and climbed out to survey the ruts his tires made. He reached into the bed of his truck and pulled out the basketball shoe. Its laces were gone and the insole was caked with mud. He tossed it into the ditch and got back into the driver’s seat.

  “Did you figure it out?” Captain said as he wiped the Dr. Pepper off of his window and his pants with a roll of paper towels.

  “The storm or the ditch?”

  “The ditch.”

  John nodded, put the truck into reverse, and turned the wheel hard to the left. He rocked the truck back and forth until he was able to pull up and out of the ditch. Once he was back on the road, he stopped, picked up his laptop off the floor, and glanced at the latest radar refresh. Then he switched to the Ferganut sensor data and watched as the bright green dots lost altitude and fell out of the clouds one by one. The meso collapsed without explanation and like the sensors, his hopes of a successful data set crashed back to earth. With a frown he drove back toward the main paved highway.

  “John,” Captain said as he looked at his screen. “It happens. This isn’t the first time. Won’t be the last either.”

  “No, there’s something funny going on with this.”

  When they reached the paved road again, he drove only a quarter mile before stopping to talk with another group of chasers. He recognized one of the drivers as Tom Landon, someone he went to school with back at the University of Nebraska. He thought about driving away instead, but it was too late now.

  Tom stepped over to the driver side window to shake John’s hand. “Duct Tape Guy, how are you? How’s Captain Avalanche doing?”

  “It’s Data Guy,” John said.

  “I couldn’t save him today,” Captain said as he pointed his thumb back at John. “No matter what escape routes I give him, he just has to take the minimum maintenance road. Every. Single. Time.”

  “At least our pictures end up on the news,” John fired back.

  “Did you get good shots? That one ended before we could get set up,” Tom said in an irritated voice. He walked toward the back of John’s truck. “What is that?”

  “It’s a little side project.”

  “That’s why they call him Data Guy,” Captain said.

  “Oh, yeah? What is it?” Tom said as he eyed the device.

  John took a deep breath and put his hand on the gearstick. “It’s a rocket launch
er.”

  “Really? I thought you were supposed to shoot rockets on a sunny day without any wind. You know they have clubs for that kind of stuff, right?”

  “He punches the core,” Captain said.

  Tom backed away and looked at his traveling companions. One of the passengers was a male student just out of high school and the other was a girl who looked barely old enough to be his girlfriend. “So you’re trying to blow up tornadoes now? Doesn’t seem possible with that setup. Where’s the duct tape?” That last comment drew a laugh from the girl.

  Captain glared at Tom and then motioned for John to drive off. John wanted to tell Tom about the sensors and the data just to rub it in but took the cue instead. “We’ll see you around.”

  “Take care, Duct Tape Guy,” Tom called out.

  Captain waved him off. “Let’s go, John.”

  John drove off but glanced at himself in the rearview mirror. He was lean and strong, with brown eyes and short brown hair but as of late he had not been eating right and his cheekbones were gaunt. Despite being in his mid-twenties, his eyes looked like those of a seventy year old man. He had not shaved in two days. “Duct Tape Guy? Is that what they’re calling me now?”

  Captain took a sip off of his Dr. Pepper. “Some people just don’t know when to shut up.”

  John studied the storm as it shrouded the town of Flatfoot behind curtains of rain. He then eyed the sky to the southwest. A new cumulonimbus tower was going up but he doubted it would produce anything but hail and high winds. One look at the radar told him the line of storms was undergoing a character change and becoming a wind event. Since he did not want to risk getting blown off the road or chase gustnadoes, he decided to drive away from the action.

  “John,” Captain said as he adjusted the angle of the screen on his laptop. “It’s going to be okay.”

  Chapter Two

  They drove back in silence toward Sioux Falls. With the setting of the sun, and the limited hours in small town establishments, John knew it was now or never to get something to eat. After passing on a few fast food chain restaurants, he settled on the China House Restaurant in Canton.