Funnel Vision by Chris Kridler

Author:Chris Kridler [Kridler, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-9849139-2-3
Publisher: Sky Diary Productions

“You know what this is?” Robinson looked north into the oncoming blast, holding onto his hat, as his baggy khaki shorts and black T-shirt whipped in the wind. He and Judy stood in the center of a desolate intersection of three dusty farm roads that cut through emerald green grass and brown fields. Nearby, a tiny, abandoned stone house with roof and windows gone stood next to a stripped and skeletal tree and a rusted old plow, the only signs of long-gone life here. All this flat spot in northern Kansas needed was a talking scarecrow.

“What would you call it?” Judy replied to his query, shouting into the growing gusts. Both had their video cameras on tripods, facing the undulating wall of reddish-brown dust moving ominously toward them.

“This is a haboob!” Robinson said.

“Maybe it’s a derecho!” Judy replied.

“A gust front?”

“The end of the world?”

“This is so Dust Bowl,” he shouted back, thrilled at the sight.

The rolling gust front stretched from horizon to horizon, a seething mass of dirt and wind. It was the colossal blowout of the line of storms, which had collapsed all their energy into this rampaging outflow. Now the derecho was gaining power as it rolled south, carrying curtains of earth with it.

Judy could feel her adrenaline rising with the wind. It was the same feeling that made chickens hide and dogs howl, she suspected, a natural reaction to the drop in pressure and nature’s keening.

They’d done a quick check on their phones during a stop in the last town, and the radar loop showed the storms melding and expiring, throwing down this violent line. It was nearly all wind. So they hurriedly drove west, away from civilization, and found this photogenic open spot. Here, they would let it overtake them.

As the gust front got closer, Judy began to see more detail — the blue-green in its depths, the ruddy roiling of the dust at its base, the occasional dark gustnadoes spit out in front of it. It was glorious.

“This would make a great horror movie,” Robinson said as he turned his camera to catch a gustnado off to their east.

“The Wicked Wind of the West,” Judy said in her best dramatic-narrator voice, snapping still photos of the roofless house with the monster behind it.

“More like northwest,” Robinson said. “Hey! You can film me! I’ve been wanting to make a short film. It’ll be funny.”

“What are you talking about?” Judy asked. They were getting hit by the first flecks of dirt and pebbles and grass from the gust front. It was nearly upon them.

“Just film me. Your camera is better than mine. You’ll know what to do.”

“OK,” Judy said, already grabbing her camera. She tossed her tripod in the back seat of his car and hopped in the passenger side as the dirt started stinging their bare legs and faces.

“Here!” Robinson said, handing her his camera and hat as she got in. “Stow these somewhere.” He tossed his tripod in the back, then slammed the door and

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