High on the AOC wall were a series of displays from the outside surveillance cameras. One of them pointed east and showed the ground out towards Sedalia. Or, it would, normally, but now the scene was different. The sky had blackened over until light levels had dropped to night-time conditions. Even so, the camera was showing three massive tornadoes bearing down on the base, their fearsome funnels illuminated by the almost continuous lightning discharges. The sight was awesome, even the tornadoes that had destroyed Greenburg hadn’t matched these monsters.

“They’re EF-5s for sure, no doubt about it. I’d say they were F-6s on the old Fujita-Pearson scale.” The meteorologists voice was awed. Those funnels must be three quarters of a mile across. Lord knows…” He was interrupted by an exaggerated barrage of throat clearing from around the room. Mentally he dope-smacked the back of his head, he came from a family that had taken its Baptist religion seriously and The Message had hit them all hard. One of his aunts had even laid down and let herself die just like it had demanded. Now the truth was known, nobody in his family believed anything any more and they looked on their dead aunt as the worst kind of fool. Even so, changing the speech habit of a lifetime took doing. “Sorry. I have no idea what the wind speeds in those things are, over three hundred miles per hour, I’m sure of that.”

The funnels swelled quickly until they filled the screen. By that time the sky was so dark it took Cochrane a few seconds to realize that the television camera had ceased to function. The room was filled with a dull roar, the floor shaking despite the depth to which the facility had been buried. That, if nothing else, told Cochrane just how much energy the storm was containing. The television screens were all blacked out, he guessed the cameras had been destroyed but then he saw a shadow moving on one and realized it was just the conditions out there. “Have we got a night vision option on camera five.”