The Band

It’s a wheat field she stands in, the waist-high golden stalks swaying gently in the summer breeze and brushing against her slightly faded blue jeans. As she gazes into the sky, she admires the aerial grace of two aircraft that fly high above the horizon.

From her perspective, the jets appear to be no larger than two dots in the stratosphere as they seem to dance around one another while they execute their aerial maneuvers. She smiles, clearly entertained by the sight.

Suddenly, the two planes shoot across the sky and are quickly gone from view.

The young woman now drops her eyes back to Earth and catches sight of a black pickup truck in the distance. She watches as it approaches, traveling down the dusty road at the edge of the field, bouncing over the bumps and making its way toward her. It pulls up right in front of her and stops abruptly. The driver looks out the window right at her. It’s an older man with wrinkles that define his rugged facial features. Yet the wrinkles, along with a full head of thick gray hair seem to have a complementary look on him. He has a hurried look on his face.

“Daddy?” The young woman says, now with a look of concern on her own face. She senses the anxiety in her father’s demeanor with a slight overlay of fear. “What is it?”

“Get in the truck, honey.” He says calmly but with a clear tone of urgency. “We have to go now.”

Her face changes instantly from inquisitive to positive, for she knows exactly what her father is talking about. “Where is it?” Her next question proceeds, as she looks around and across the vast field.

“It’s coming behind us.”

She looks out toward the end of the dirt road from which her father came. The road seems to stretch all the way back to the horizon. Suddenly, from behind the horizon a large cloud begins to form. It starts out as a light gray, but then rapidly turns to dark gray as it gets bigger and bigger with each passing second.

With no further questions, she dashes toward the truck.

The cloud slowly rotates clockwise, pulling the winds from the far corners of the skies toward itself.

She flings the door open and jumps in, slamming it behind her.

The cloud gains power rapidly, doubling, then tripling in size, its rotation also quickly gaining momentum.

The old man floors the gas pedal and the tires scratch against the dirt as they spin.

The cloud blacks out much of the sky in its immediate vicinity over the horizon and a broad, thick, dark funnel blasts down from its center, all the way down to strike the earth directly below.

The truck takes off down the trail as the cloud and its funnel, now ominous, black and enormous in size, violently spin round and round as they race up the road.

The woman and her father can hear the wind howling behind them like a mad monster as the funnel seems to be intelligently and deliberately chasing them. “Intelligently and deliberately?“ The thought flashes through the young woman’s mind. No, it can’t be, she quickly concludes, fighting off hysteria and focusing on remaining calm and objective as her father had always taught her from when she was just a little girl.

The truck reaches an asphalt road and the father pushes it to go even faster. The woman looks at the speedometer. Her fingernails dig into the cab’s leather upholstery as she sees the needle reach 100 and climbing. The whirling funnel maintains its close proximity, about 500 yards or so back.

The father can see their destination now just up ahead.