Excerpt: The Storm

The wind was howling past the old house with the voice of a thousand daemons all screaming for the destruction of life. Rain lashed against the outside of the little house like thousands of tiny bullets, stripping and peeling the paint as it sought a way inside. The winds screamed through the few remaining trees in the area, all but the strongest having already been snapped off near the ground or pulled up by the roots.

It was a toss up which was more dangerous. The snapped ones flew though the air like jagged tipped spears, impaling whatever got in their way. Those with a ball of roots still attached may be moving slower but they stay closer to the ground, hitting like a battering ram.

The house itself was designed to endure the best nature could throw at it... a hundred years ago when it was built. Now it creaked and groaned under strains it was never designed to handle. A hundred years ago hurricanes did not produce two hundred mile and hour winds.

The house was a marvel of safety back in the days before pollution got out of hand. Having been designed back before the rising temperatures and sea levels made the storms so much more potent, it simply was not up to the challenge.

Her childhood home had been retrofitted decades ago after the advent of dark matter generators with their nearly free clean energy. It had it’s own bank of battery cells in the power room behind the house. At least the damage control computers still had power.

Everything conceivable had been done to modernize and reinforce the house against the power of the sea. Then again, that was back when category five was as high as hurricanes went.

The central computer defaulted to safety mode when the power had failed several hours ago. She knew the sensors and back up batteries were well maintained, her father having stressed preparedness on her from a young age.

She knew as long as the power held that the reactive framing was designed to compensate for the winds, diverting the energy of the storm to the foundation, and from there on into the earth.

Her grandfather had even replaced the glass windows with armored Plaz several decades ago, even after others had argued that the cost was too high. As debris kicked up by the storm rattled off them like gunfire she silently thanked him for it.

Deep in the center of the darkened house huddled the young woman. She curled up as tightly as she could in the old steel bathtub, praying it would be enough to keep the storm at bay.

Shaking under the blankets covering her she muttered softly to herself, cursing her own name for deciding to stay. No matter how well designed the house it was never built to handle a monster like this storm, Least of all a direct hit.