Windfall

Interlude

As the storm approaches the islands, it picks up speed, traveling at fifteen miles per hour, but by now it’s so huge that the increase in speed means little.

Anything trapped in its path is in for the worst. Winds at the outer wall whip ahead at pulverizing speeds, and their forces are so great that they actually press down the waves, creating greasy-smooth swells that hump in huge shudders toward the horizon, a slow-motion shock wave that is an indicator of just how massive that explosion in the clouds really is.

There is no force in nature so huge, so unstoppable, and so intelligent as a hurricane.

Rain begins to fall on a massive scale. On the ocean, there’s no way to measure how much water is plummeting from the lead-thick sky, but anything on the surface that disappears into the shimmering black curtain of the storm will never be seen again The force kills fish under the surface of the sea. There’s no wreckage in its wake; it churns everything in its path to pieces, digests it, and feeds on the pain. The sea left behind the storm is glassy-smooth, shocked into silence. The water is forgiving. Its wounds heal quickly.

The shore won’t be so lucky.

Those curiously ribbonlike swells roll toward land, traveling impossibly fast—flat humps that reach shallow water and roar into explosive life. The waves shatter with stunning force against rock, sand, flesh. The smashing force comes in wave after ever-building wave, monsters fleeing a greater terror behind.

As the winds increase, trees rip free of ground that has held them safe for a hundred years or more.

As the storm approaches the first large island, the storm swell raises ocean level by more than twenty feet, and many parts of the land are already sinking into the sea.

Nothing can survive this one.

It is not lethal.

It is legend.