Trees were whipping back and forth at the roadside like damned souls frantically flagging down a lift. Another great sheet of cloud-to-cloud lightning arc-lit the zenith, and, incidentally, also lit an F-1 that was striding knee-deep through the forest alongside them, not fifty meters away. The spike was just churning along there, spinning like a black cone of wet rubber and methodically tossing a salad of smashed tree. She saw it again, three more times, in three more lightning flashes, until it meandered out of sight.