Outrun the Rain

OUTRUN THE RAIN THE STORM BOYS SERIES BOOK 1 N.R. WALKER COPYRIGHT Cover Art: Paper & Sage Editor: Boho Edits Publisher: BlueHeart Press Outrun the Rain © 2023 N.R. Walker Storm Boys Series © 2023 N.R. Walker ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or business establishments, events or locales is coincidental. The Licensed Art Material is being used for illustrative purposes only. WARNING Intended for an 18+ audience only. This book contains material that maybe offensive to some and is intended for a mature, adult audience. It contains graphic language, and adult situations. TRADEMARKS: All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. CONTENTS Author Note Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen The Storm Boys Series Newsletter Sign-Up About the Author Also by N.R. Walker BLURB Tully Larson has loved tropical storms since he was a kid and spent his summers with his dad in the wilds of Kakadu National Park. He’s happiest outdoors, a rough and ready kind of guy who loves the power of Mother Nature and chasing the thrill of electrical storms every chance he gets. Jeremiah Overton, a fulminologist from Melbourne, chases storms for a whole different reason. Lightning has shaped his entire life and he’s driven to study it, to understand it, so heading to Kakadu in the middle of the storm season is a logical thing to do. After all, the Top End is the lightning capital of Australia. Tully wasn’t sure how a week at his remote bunker with an academic type would pan out. And Jeremiah didn’t expect much from the storm-chasing cowboy who volunteered to take him. But both men know all too well that when opposites attract, lightning strikes. AUTHOR NOTE This series is strictly fiction. Actual bureaus of meteorology do not work like this in real life. The author is very aware. There has been creative licence taken in regards to weather tracking, prediction systems, and any/all meteorological practices mentioned herein. It’s just a fun and crazy ride intended for entertainment purposes only. Enjoy! CHAPTER ONE TULLY I sat in my old Jeep Wrangler, waiting for the plane from Darwin to come in. Jabiru Airport was no more than a one-building low-key airport, smack bang right in the middle of Kakadu National Park in the Top End of the Northern Territory. It wasn’t a thriving metropolis, lemme put it that way. The brick terminal building was better than the tin shed it used to be, but still. Heathrow, this place was not. Jabiru itself had a grand population of around one thousand people. Well, that many in the dry season, less in the wet season. The climate up here did funny things to folks, and most packed up and went south for a few months, before the heat and humidity and torrential rain set in. That was when I got here. Because with that heat and humidity came summer storms. Brutal, fierce, electrical storms that rolled in almost every afternoon, dumping monsoonal downpours, and setting the skies on fire with lightning. Which was why I was waiting at Jabiru Airport. A guy was coming up from the Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne. Staying for a week or two to study lightning. Well, he’d already studied it; he had some doctorate or some other fancy title. Well, he had Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology after his name, followed by a whole bunch of letters. He was coming all this way to observe it. To run some fancy tests, or some scholarly thing I didn’t understand. Apparently, he’d put some feelers out in the Darwin scholarly meteorology circles about wanting to spend a week in the wilds of Kakadu National Park studying and observing all he could. I was surprised he didn’t get laughed at, but someone mentioned me—a non-scholarly type who spent weeks chasing electrical storms—and a few phone calls later, he’d tracked me down. I’d told him I wasn’t like those university dicks. I just spent my summers chasing storms because it was fun and because I could. I explained it involved camping out in Kakadu National Park. That there was some hiking involved. That it would just be me and him in the middle of nowhere, and there would be a possibility that we saw no other human beings for his entire stay. He said that was fine. He’d offered me some ridiculous payment, some government study grant, and I told him to donate it to the Kakadu National Park. He did exactly that, and I was all out of excuses. So, despite my best efforts to convince him otherwise, he was getting in today. Doctor Jeremiah Overton. With that name, he had to be eighty. I’d not spoken to him on the phone, only via email with his fancy doctorate signature, but even the way he wrote was very formal. Or maybe that was just the way super smart scientists wrote requests from their fancy science websites. I had no clue. But I was about to find out. The small plane flew in, went careening down the runway, and with a sigh, I climbed out of my Jeep and went inside. At least the terminal was air conditioned. “Afternoon, Tully,” Yasmin said from behind the check-in counter. I gave her a smile. “Afternoon.” “What brings you in today? A person or cargo this time?” “A person.” A person who I didn’t know at all. Hell, I didn’t even know what they looked like, didn’t know what kind of time I was in for. Why had I agreed to this? Regret