At 4:47 p.m., the sky over Hollister, Missouri turned green.

Not gray.

Not black.

Green — the sick, unnatural color that old farmers learned to respect without question.

Eleanor Briggs stood on the sagging porch of the farmhouse she had lived in for nearly seven decades. The Ozark wind moved across the fields in uneasy waves, bending the tall grass flat for a moment before letting it rise again like something breathing.

She had seen storms before.

Plenty of them.

But this color… this color meant something worse.

The sirens had been screaming across Taney County for nearly twenty minutes. The radio inside the kitchen crackled with a strained voice repeating the warning over and over again.

“Confirmed EF4 tornado… wind speeds exceeding one hundred seventy miles per hour… moving northeast…”

Eleanor gripped the porch railing — the same railing her husband Thomas had built with his own hands in the summer of 1972. The wood was worn smooth now, polished by decades of weather and worry.

She had seen this shade of green twice before in her life.

The first time she was twelve years old.

The tornado had flattened her father’s barn in less than a minute, leaving three horses buried beneath a mountain of splintered boards.

The second time she was forty-one.

Thomas had been driving back from town when another storm tore across the county. His truck was found two days later in a ditch nearly half a mile from the road.

The sky had been the same color that day.

And Eleanor had learned something simple and terrible.

When the sky turns green, death is already on its way.

Her farmhouse had grown old with her. Paint peeled from the siding in long strips like sunburned skin. Rain leaked through the roof in three places she could no longer afford to repair.

After Thomas died, the hospital bills had eaten everything.

Insurance stretched only so far.

Grief stretched much farther.

But one thing still remained from the old days.

Beneath the red barn stood the cellar her father had poured in reinforced concrete after the devastating tornado of 1967.

It had saved Eleanor once.

Today, it would have to save her again.

She turned toward the door, already planning the steps in her head.

Grab the radio.

Take the flashlight.

Head to the barn.

Then she saw the headlights.

May you like

At first, she assumed they were farm trucks rushing home before the storm.

Then she heard the engines.

Low.

Heavy.

Dozens of them.

Motorcycles fought the growing crosswind on Route 76, leaning sharply as gusts pushed against them like invisible hands. One bike wobbled violently, nearly tipping before the rider forced it upright again.

They were slowing.

Pulling off the road.

Because there was nowhere else to go.

Just open fields…

and Eleanor’s farm.

The first Harley-Davidson slid onto her gravel driveway with a crunch of wet stone.

Then another.

And another.

Within seconds the yard filled with chrome and leather.

Eleanor’s breath caught in her throat.

The patches on the riders’ backs were unmistakable even from a distance.

Hells Angels.

Every sensible thought in her mind screamed the same command.

Go inside.

Lock the door.