Tsunami
A low, sickening vibration rose through the soles of my feet. It was the earth screaming.
The rumble built like a tank grinding past at arm's length. It didn't fade. It grew, rolling through bone and muscle, and in a single heartbeat it became a colossal roar that shook the world.
The ground heaved like a living beast. I dropped low on instinct and pulled Wolf against me—he was pressed tight to my side, trembling from nose to tail.
The growing tremor began to shake the entire farmhouse, a fine, relentless shudder. Windows rattled in their frames. Things hung on the walls swayed, ready to fall. From inside the walls came a nauseating crack and splinter, and the window glass shrieked as if it were about to burst. In the distance, the water tower rocked unsteadily against the sky.
A terror unlike any disaster or war I had ever known settled over me. It felt as if a giant had seized the entire land in one hand and was shaking it in a frenzy.
A stretch of time that was both brief and endless—a stretch of hell—finally passed. When the earth's rage subsided, silence came down with the dust.
Only after the worst of the shaking had gone through did people begin to spill out of the farmhouse and the caravans, gathering one by one in the front yard.
Dave was supporting his terrified mother. Frank had his wife and son locked in his arms. Raven and Chloe made no effort to hide the fear on their faces. Gunner, Mike, Jed and his children—every one of them pale, staring at one another, and not a soul willing to speak first.
They all knew. The terrible prophecy the television had been shouting about had finally come true.
When the last of that awful shaking had faded, Mike broke the silence.
"Everyone, stay calm. The epicenter isn't here. This is just the shock traveling through. Don't panic—let's get to the living room."
His steady voice was enough to bring people back to themselves.
"We'll freeze to death if we keep standing around out here!"
Frank shouted, wrapping an arm around Sarah's shoulders as he led the way back inside. The others followed.
I turned to Jake.
"Jake, get the satellite TV hooked up. We need the news, whatever it takes."
Then I looked at Cody.
"Cody, sweep every radio frequency. Something's bound to come through."
A moment later, the radio crackled to life—a burst of static, then a voice, urgent and strained.
The voice coming over the radio was shaking with fear.
In the living room, no one breathed.
The voice from the radio pressed down on us, cold and heavy, like a judge delivering the sentence of the world's end.
I looked around at the pale faces. I knew fear was a contagion. If I left it alone, helplessness would eat through every one of them.
They needed something to do. Practical preparation for the worst was necessary in its own right—but I knew from experience that the mere fact of having a job was the best medicine there was for fear and unrest.
I turned to Jake first.
"Jake. Get a drone up and assess the damage in the surrounding area—starting with Highway 99."
"No, Boss."
Jake's refusal was unexpectedly firm.
"In a situation like this, the Robinson will be faster and more accurate than a drone. Longer range, much wider field of view."
"Alright. Do it that way."
Jake headed for the hangar with Cody to get the helicopter out. I looked at Dave and Frank.
"You two. All trade with the outside stops now. And I want every vehicle's load checked again so we can move at a moment's notice."
Neither of them spoke.
"And pack the five-ton truck as full as it'll go with produce, emergency rations, and whatever else we've got."
Finally I looked at Mike and Jed.
"Mike, I need the mount for the Mk 48 installed in my trailer's Gun Nest, and the rest of the defensive systems finished today."
Then there was work for Sarah and Raven and the rest of the families as well.
"Please divide the essential kitchen things and supplies we'll need on the move among the caravans, the camper, and the bus motorhome. And if we do decide to go, I'd like simple meals prepared ahead of time that we can eat in the vehicles."
At my orders, the farm came alive with purpose once more. Clear objectives and assigned tasks seemed, if only for a while, to push the fear aside.
Meanwhile, Jake and Cody hauled the small helicopter out of the hangar. Even in the middle of all this horror, the machine was a marvel to the children. Liam and Adam and a few of the others watched from a safe distance, holding their breath.
Jake climbed into the cockpit with practiced ease.
A moment later, the rotor blades began to turn—a slow whup, then faster, whup-whup-whup-whup—until the helicopter lifted smoothly off the ground and rose into the sky.
"Whoa... that's so cool!"
The same gasp of wonder burst from Liam and Adam at once.
When Jake's helicopter disappeared from sight, I turned my mind back to the order of march, and to what we'd have to do to the place if we left it behind.
If we go, I'll need to block the farm access road—or cut it entirely.
I ran through several simulations in my head: the standard travel column, and the combat formation we'd use if we made contact with an enemy.
After some time had passed, the sound of the helicopter came back out of the sky. Jake had made it home from reconnaissance. He climbed down and came straight to me.
"Boss, I surveyed the roads out to about ninety miles. Fortunately, no bridges are down and no sections of road have been washed out. I didn't find any significant earthquake damage."
He paused.
"That said, I did confirm that a few poorly built farm structures—water towers, silos—have collapsed or are listing."
A few more brief aftershocks reached us after that, but we kept our fear in check and worked on in silence.
Before we knew it, evening had come, and we gathered again in the farmhouse dining room. Dave's mother's brief prayer had become a natural ritual, the way our community began its evening meal.
"We thank You for giving us this day our daily bread, and for granting us the strength to protect one another in this harsh world. Amen."
But tonight's meal was nothing like our usual easy gatherings. Everyone ate in silence, eyes on their plates. The terror of the earthquake, and the dread of an unknown future, sat heavy on the table.
We finished carefully, then gathered in the living room as if we had agreed on it in advance. That was when Cody called out.
"TV's back! We're connected again."
Every pair of eyes locked onto the screen at once. What was unfolding there was a vision of hell far worse than anything we had imagined. The world on that screen was hell itself.
Even the anchor's voice was shaking under the weight of the tragedy. The screen showed the collapsed Golden Gate Bridge, and downtown San Francisco drowned where the sea had surged inland.
The picture changed. Through haze and smoke, a drone orbited slowly overhead. It looked as if a god's wrath had erased everything—a graveyard of civilization. High-rises had crumpled like matchboxes. Elevated freeways were twisted and snapped like pulled taffy. Along the coast, the scar of a massive tsunami cut across the land as if some enormous claw had raked the earth.
No one in the living room could speak. Raven and Sarah looked ready to burst into tears. Dave's mother quietly crossed herself. Even the faces of hardened fighters like Gunner and Mike had gone pale and rigid with shock and helplessness.
The news went on.
Even war was powerless before this vast fury of nature.
The screen showed a column of people with no end in sight. Carrying children on their backs, supporting injured family, walking out of cities that had been reduced to ash. Their empty eyes and ruined clothes went out over the airwaves without a filter.
We were about to face a new kind of disaster. Millions of desperate survivors—starving, stripped of everything, willing to do whatever it took to stay alive.
A massive human tsunami was coming.