Microburst

A classical, high-intensity microburst dropped out of the thunderstorm cell above them and killed the bus.

Worden and MaryLiz had met only yesterday, at the start of this five-day bus junket to visit remote little towns and scenery in the southwestern desert. For her it was relaxation after six weeks of hard work – she was British, this was the end of her annual buying trip to the USA. Despite missing her husband and two teenagers back home, she was taking this extra time because she had never seen a real desert. For Worden, it was just a chance to get away from the office and back to countryside he enjoyed, without having to think or drive. Sitting together by accident at the first breakfast, they found one another to be extraordinarily compatible souls. For Worden, MaryLiz had all the necessary attributes – witty, well read, intelligent and personable. It didn't hurt at all that she was also quite pretty – short blond hair, no makeup, clear skin. Plus slim, slightly busty, and at 35 near enough his own age – fifty something – to be genuinely interesting. Touch oriented, too – and comfortable with it: enroute into lunch that first day she had taken his arm without it being offered. She in turn found him engaging – surprisingly well educated and traveled – and well-mannered – for a Yank. A pleasant surprise, a bonus.

The tour stopped on day one at several minor remote towns and some fine landscape. They took dinner together, went their separate ways to their assigned rooms. In the early-morning pre-breakfast cool they met for a run – to her pleasant surprise, she found him as attractive physically as she did mentally. Their running styles and speed were compatible. Two miles out of town, they encountered a large rattlesnake mid-asphalt, using yesterday's residual heat to warm itself against the morning chill. She had never seen such a beast – he caught it, a skill learned in high-school field biology class, showed it to her in up-close detail, then they trotted out into the desert a quarter mile to release it far from traffic. After breakfast they boarded the bus together, she took the outside seat at a huge picture-window, he sat beside her on the aisle.

Brassy still skies were the morning's weather offering – Worden had grown up in Tornado Alley, northeastern Kansas, and opined that there was a hellacious thunderstorm brewing. She doubted it – there wasn't a cloud to be seen, she observed. By midafternoon, she had conceded the point. The bus was belting down the road on a course gently converging with the razor-sharp edge of a huge and clearly violent weather front – dominated by the biggest anvil-shaped thunderhead cloud Worden had ever seen. It towered hugely over them, over the entire landscape. He guessed it topped out over sixty thousand feet. Within and beneath it, lightning flared continuously, air-to-air, air to ground. Over the bus's road noise they could hear the increasing rumble of nearly continuous thunder.

It was a Great Mother of a storm, he told her. MaryLiz was fascinated, Worden was privately concerned but not yet worried. The road curved left around a smallish butte and suddenly they were aimed straight under the anvil, directly towards the most intense lightning. It was still miles away, but the road vanished disquietingly beneath the storm, disappearing into the sheets of rain as if behind a stage curtain – there was no gradual transition from "in-view" to "disappeared" – the change was like a knife-edge. MaryLiz quickly discovered that massive lightning displays at five miles are an abstraction, an art form – but as the distance decreases, things get much more personal and much more real.

The wind hit the bus head-on like a wall of mush. Worden was astonished – extensive experience with storms on the Great Plains, and at sea as well, let him guess the wind-speed at over a hundred knots. And no rise-time, either – it arrived as a step-function, blasting with it the accumulated junk of desert and mankind alike as bouncing, wind-powered shrapnel. And the wind's note was rising steadily. The bus groaned, slowed, the driver downshifted repeatedly. The wind increased steadily – it was insanely strong. Passengers were getting scared now - MaryLiz, wide-eyed, clung to his arm, looking back and forth between his face and the suddenly berserk outer world. The driver had them nearly down to compound low gear – lucky the wind was from dead ahead. Even so, even at their magnificent new top speed of about ten miles per hour, the bus shivered and shook from the blast. Worden was now worried- he stood, trotted to the front, suggested to the driver that they stop in the shelter of one of the overpasses they could see ahead, just short of the squall-line. They were substantial structures, low concrete-and-steel arcs thrown over the interstate, carrying four- or six-lane "farm roads". Old Federal pork projects. The driver readily agreed – it was about a mile to the nearest one, he would stop under it. Worden returned to his seat, explained his concerns – storms like this were loaded with tornados and violent, variable winds. Under a bridge lay a much higher level of safety.

The bridge was only a hundred yards ahead when it disappeared into the wall of rain as the bottom edge of the anvil-cloud covered them, making instant dusk interrupted by blue-white flashes every other second. Far above, in the anvil-top, a mile-wide bolus of dense, very cold air plummeted downwards. It hit to the bus's left, half a mile away, going over 200 miles per hour. When it hit the desert, it splattered sideways like a fire-hose stream against a brick wall. No longer a downdraft, but a radially-outwards burst of high-velocity air – sure killer for any low-altitude aircraft that caught it as a tail-wind – an instant, utterly irrecoverable dead stall into the ground.

Worden saw it coming – sort of. Something changed in the blurry view outside, he had time to yell "Holy shit, hang on!" The twenty ton bus heeled to starboard as quickly as a yacht in a squall. The suspension made peculiar groaning noises as the weight came off the left, fully onto the right wheels. Slamming thuds signaled the suspension fetching up against the stops – no more extension. The microburst got its fingers beneath the frame and heaved. For a moment they were poised on the right wheels, passengers tumbling and screaming. Then the tires blew and the bus yielded to this strange concatenation of forces, slowly rolled to lie down in the ditch on its side, almost with a sigh. It took no time at all for the bus to scrub off its ten mph's worth of momentum, plowing ahead like a beaching whale. As the bus settled, its frame twisted mightily.

Worden was an experienced sailor, had followed the slow roll with his feet, was standing on the aisle-arm of the seat on the other side, holding a terrified MaryLiz in her seat. The twisting frame popped the big window loose – it was designed as an emergency exit, and it was determined to do its duty. The wind caught its edge, lifted and separated. Like a silicon sail blown from its boltrope, the window blinked out of existence as if down a black hole – to be replaced by a truly Noachian flood of ice-cold rain. Rain and a howling maelstrom of wind invaded the bus, stirring and floating all the loose detritus of forty tourists suddenly upended. It looked like the inside of a jetliner during explosive decompression. The wind's shriek was incredible, as was the downpour - in five seconds Worden and MaryLiz were as wet as if they'd just been through a fundamentalist baptism, her single-layer linen dress plastered to her body like paint.

Beside them, perhaps twenty yards away, the storm deposited a lightning bolt into a tall highway sign: one metal leg vaporized, the wind took the sign off the other, brought them a strong whiff of ozone. And then, moments later, the acrid reek of diesel fuel. Worden had to scream at her to be heard: "Outside! Gotta go get into some real shelter. NOW!" She looked confused, so he continued as he gripped her to shove upwards – "Tornados – lots of them in a storm like this. They can roll this bus down the road like a tin-can. Really BAD for the contents! Don't try to stand, just down flat on the side and hug the bus and wait a second for me." She nodded, found herself being shoved into the torrent of air and water by his hand between her legs, cupping her mound. The hand and its placement hardly made an impression. As her head cleared the window-hole, the storm took her sunglasses as a souvenir, then she was lying on the side of the bus with her feet to the wind, her skirt over her head, ice-water raindrops hitting her bared skin hard enough to cause pain. And wasn't there supposed to be hail, also? Good GOD! She'd never even imagined such a storm.

Worden appeared: less stunned than she, he noted with a tiny mental grin the purple thong that was all she wore below the linen. Then he grabbed her wrists mountaineer-style and slid her down the roof to the ground, followed her under his own power.

In the ditch, hand in hand, they struggled to keep their footing as she blindly followed him through ice-water already inches deep and rising noticeably. He couldn't see the bridge, but knew it wasn't far, knew which direction. Knew they had to get there. More lightning above them, two more strikes off to the side – no thunder, they were too close for that, just ozone and a strange momentary hissing sizzle above the wind. An overhead air-strike lit up their little universe. Ten more yards to the bridge. The wind was STILL rising – well up into the high hurricane range. Maybe over 120 knots now, Worden thought? Perhaps a good deal higher? Who could tell? – and it certainly didn't matter! Lucky there wasn't any hail yet, hail would be literally deadly at this wind speed. They were bent almost double, crabbing, working their legs through molasses.

Gasping and clawing, hanging onto one another for dear life, they staggered into the partial wind-shadow of the overpass. Despite the horizontal rain, it was dry just a few feet in from the edge. For a minute they knelt side-by-side, sucking in air in huge draughts. Then Worden led them through the whirling eddies, up into the armpit of the structure, where the underside of the roadway met the top of the sloping embankment. There were the usual signs of occasional campers, but nobody home. Highway maintenance had been lax, apparently for years – creosote bushes and dry tumbleweeds were mingled in a Minotaur's maze of intricate passageways. Soda cans and newspaper dangled like odd fruit. Worden and MaryLiz crawled, pushed into the tangle together, found a level spot reached by only a few scattered icy raindrops and forty or fifty-mile gusts.

A genuine safe-haven, a private circle of bare, hard-packed dirt five feet or so wide. Lightning was almost continuous and all around them - the thunder and wind shrieking together nonstop – how long could the storm continue increasing in intensity? Worden stood, shouted that he should go back to the bus, see if anyone needed help or was hurt. As he spoke, twenty feet above them on the roadway lightning exploded a telephone pole, sent a five-foot chunk over the edge to bounce across their field of view. It was as if the storm were angry with them for making it to safety, a petulant child throwing its toys about in a fit. The wind snatched away the hundred-pound scrap of wood between flashes.

MaryLiz was terrified but logical – she yanked him down to her and screamed "No! You'll get killed. No Mister Macho heroics, please! There's nothing we can do until this all ends! Stay here with me!"

She was right, of course. He dropped to sit beside her, she threw herself against him, buried her face in his neck, tried to crawl inside him. He cradled her tightly as the lightning continued unabated. There was a real difference between simple worried fright and abject terror. She was shivering from the cold soaking, and shaking violently atop it from fear and adrenalin. Suddenly she turned to press full-frontal against him. Her mouth went to his, wide, wet, hard, almost desperate. He was taken aback for a moment – but then responded properly. He understood thoroughly the aphrodisiacal properties of danger in general, and of thunderstorms in particular – back in high-school in Kansas it led to what kids called "Storm Fucking".

Her hand between them cupped his full-blown hardon – the touch yielded his first conscious realization of his own arousal. She pulled her face back slightly – pupils dilated, their faces were intermittently welding-arc blue. "Fuck me! Please? Now!" Gusts of wind eddied around them, rattling the enclosing brush. His hand joined hers, together they got his erection out through the fly of his Levi's, the little brass zipper-teeth raking down the sides of his cock, then biting sharply into the base. She lay back, dragged him atop her into the wide vee of her legs. Together their hands pushed her panty crotch to the side and abruptly he was inside, she was engulfing him. He lay warm and thick atop her like a protective insulating blanket, separating her from the weather's outrage.

He was sure he'd never been harder in his life; MaryLiz was as wet as any woman he'd ever entered, and she-tiger ferocious in her need - thirty seconds, and she climaxed. Not once, but nonstop. With her legs wrapped around his hips, he let her lead, hovered largely motionless above her as she drove herself upwards onto him and kept on coming. When she paused to breathe, he was done waiting, let himself go and came as hard as she had. She clutched him to her, shifted her mouth to meet his again, and sucked air in through his nose. Nonstop lightning prevented talk for another minute as they re-oxygenated. Then, before he could say anything, she looked up, grinning happily at him from too close to focus and asked, at full volume, "You're still hard! Could you manage another go?"

He nodded, almost shouted to be heard – "Of course! All yours, whatever you wish." Like an accomplished team they rotated him onto his back without losing contact. She sat astraddle as his hands rucked the sodden dress up around her waist, cupped her buttocks, spread them wide. The cold wind whirled down her cleft and over his cock as she rode him, cock sliding in and out as if in warm oil. Behind her, his hands found the waist elastic of her thong: she barely felt it part, felt the slither of the fabric as he pulled it from between them and discarded it far out into the wind – a sacrifice to the gods, perhaps? It, too, disappeared instantly. Spatters of cold rain drifted over them in the wind, long-dead tumbleweed twigs scraped and poked deliciously. Creosote bushes snapped and added their odor to the lightning's ozone – old railroad ties would never evoke quite the same effects in either of them.

His fingertip investigated their bodies' juncture, wetted itself in her juices as she rocked, found her anus, pressed, testing. Atop him her eyes were closed, lip between her teeth, her hands braced against his pectorals. The fingertip slipped inside, her eyes flashed open in sudden consternation. "I've never..." she started to say. He couldn't hear her, understood anyway as the lightning lit up her face so he could read her expression, shushed her with a fingertip, slid out of her, pressed cockhead against her virtual nether opening. She shook her head. "Just DO IT!" he commanded. "You're in charge. You'll come harder than you ever have, I promise. DO IT!" MaryLiz wondered for a flicker of time just why she trusted this man in so many ways, so suddenly, so deeply? Then she sat. The virtual opening became real. Entry was breathtakingly easy, deep, effortless, as if they were a pair replete with decades of practice. Gasping hard she cycled up and down once, twice – on the third, her clit settled against the rough fabric of his fly, she rocked hard against it, and started to come again in huge, spasming, clenching knots. He was right about the intensity.

The lightning kept on illuminating them at random as she worked, eyes tightly closed, lower lip between her teeth. The wind-roar was holding firmly at a numbing throb as he slid his hands up her front, under the blouse, pushed her bra up over her boobs – breasts in full erection, hard as any man's cock, pointed nipples like tool-steel – they should be leaving bloody gashes in his cupping palms. Each adamantine tip now lay snugly between a pair of milking, rolling fingers. She flashed momentarily on his technique – he KNEW her body, what it needed! Perhaps he knew too much? Or was that possible? He squeezed her hips hard, almost a command, and in response she drove downwards. Her bottom opened almost eagerly as she settled her entire weight upon him, impaling herself with the full length. Her toes cramped now, her body was nearly done for the moment. Nearly but not quite. He shouted up at her to open her eyes, to look at him. She'd never, ever, had the courage to watch this closely, never been invited to peer into a man's soul as he came, never let a man look into herself either. She did it – she could see him only in the intermittent arcings, his pupils were wide. Eyelock – she wondered if he could actually see into her, the light was mostly from behind her head. Didn't matter. She was coming yet again when he heaved up violently – as he came hard, hot and deep inside her bottom, he yelled up to her - "Scream! Scream when you come! It's the only time you'll ever be able to do it!"

Staring down into his eyes, coming in perfect time with him, she did so without losing that incredible eyelock, a long, wailing alto shriek, matched with his deeper braying rasp. Their howls finally died away and left her collapsed and spent atop his chest, wrapped in his arms. Moments later, as if a switch had been thrown, the storm began to lose ferocity. He held her atop him, gentlemanly rearranging her wet-wash skirt to cover her buttocks as he softened slowly inside her.

Five minutes later, the winds were down to mere storm level, the lightning had moved to the horizon – thunder continued, but without the edge of explosive, crackling close proximity. They sat up, rearranged themselves.

Suddenly shy, into the deafening near-silence she muttered "This is really NOT very typical behavior for me, you know."

He lifted her chin, kissed her properly and deeply. "Not mine, either..." he said: "Exceptional circumstances, exceptional people. Possibility of dying – so some fairly unusual behavior is to be expected. And I for one thoroughly enjoyed myself. How about you?"

She grinned, blushed brightly squeezed his hand and leaned hard against his side: "Oh, my, yes indeed!"

Walking hand-in-hand through the now intermittent rain, they arrived back at the bus to find everyone outside, clustered, talking excitedly. Their absence hadn't been noticed, and they were no more bedraggled than anyone else. The driver and a couple of men had clambered back in, retrieved his bullhorn and passenger list. He stood atop the vehicle, announced sadly that it looked as if they were going to have to shoot poor Bessie the Bus, then did a nose-count. Nobody lost or missing, no real injuries – a few lost or broken spectacles, a sore wrist or ankle. On the interstate, vehicles and help were beginning to accumulate. Worden and MaryLiz joined a line passing luggage and personal hand-baggage from bus to road.

"Aurora Hotel... it's in the next town, twenty miles – AURORA, like in borealis!" So shouted the driver, time and again as people accepted rides. A big four-door work pickup stopped, driven by a jovial-looking, very thin, very old man, offered room for four, two up front with him, two back in the rear seats with his pair of black Labs. The dogs were purely friendly, excited. Plenty of room in the truck-bed for four peoples' luggage. MaryLiz and Worden climbed in with the dogs, whose large and active presence – and disbelief in squatter's rights – gave a perfect reason for MaryLiz to sit on Worden's lap. Up front, the man was engaged nonstop with his other passengers and their stories.