piles of earth; the pit formed by a single foot of the Storm.
“We were neighbours?” She peered at him, trying to focus. “Before it happened?”
“I guess so.” He’d never seen her before in his life. This woman was a stranger but they were all supposed to be connected by their shared tragedy. Jeff had never felt that way. He was alone with his ghosts.
They stood there for another moment, as if glued together by some sticky strands of time, and then he pulled away. Her arm remained hanging there, the fingers of her hand curling over empty air.
“My children . . .”
He looked into her eyes and saw nothing, not even an echo of her pain. She was stripped bare, rendered down to nothing but this mindless search for things that were no longer here. He couldn’t tell her, she wouldn’t be told. She needed to discover the truth for herself.
“Good luck,” he said, and he meant it.
Jeff walked away, heading towards the ragged hole in the earth where his house had once stood, the great footprint of the beast that had once passed this way. He wished he’d seen it happen. It must have been an amazing sight, to see the buildings flattened by the gigantic beast as it charged through the neighbourhood and towards the city.
He heard the woman’s scuffling footsteps behind him as she moved away. He wished he had it in him to help her. He hoped she would find her children alive, but doubted she ever would. Not even the bodies would remain. Not even bloodstains.
The Storm came, and that was all. There was no reason for its arrival. It wasn’t like the old movies he’d seen as a kid, where an atomic detonation or the constant experimentation of mankind caused a rift in the earth or a disturbance in the atmosphere, and out stumbled a stop-motion nightmare. No, it was nothing like that. The Storm came, it destroyed whatever it encountered, and it went away again, sated.
They were unable to fight it. The authorities didn’t know what to do; the army and navy and air force were at a loss: none of their weapons had any effect on the Storm. So they waited it out, hoping the thing would either wear itself out and tire of the rampage, or move on, crossing the border into another country. Fingers hovered over the buttons of nuclear launch systems. Members of parliament voted in secret chambers. The nation prepared for a great and terrible sacrifice.
He remembered those first surprisingly clear pieces of footage transmitted on the Internet, and then again on the news channels: HD quality CCTV pictures of some great lizard-like beast emerging from the shadows on the coast, a B Movie come to life. But this was not a man in a suit, or a too-crisp GCI image. It was colossal, the height of two tower blocks, one standing on top of the other. Its arm span was a half a mile across, but it barely needed to stretch them so far to tear down a church, a town hall, a factory warehouse. . . . Bullets and bombs simply bounced off its thick, plated hide to create more damage to the surrounding area. Its call was the trumpet of Armageddon. When it opened its mouth to roar, the sound was unlike anything humanity had heard before.
Nobody knew what the creature was, where it came from, why it appeared. The scientists mumbled in jargon, talked about tectonic plates, seismic events, and then finally, they went quiet. They locked themselves into deep underground laboratories to try and invent something that would kill the thing.
And then . . . then it went away, slinking back into the ocean, the waves covering it like a blanket. The sea bubbled. Ships capsized. The coastal barriers fell. The Storm passed.
But the Storm could return at any time. They all knew this, but it went unspoken. There were celebrations, the blockades came down, people started to rebuild what had been ravaged. But somewhere back in the shadows, or under the dark waters, the Storm waited. Perhaps it even watched.
Jeff walked across the roughly turned earth, his
“We were neighbours?” She peered at him, trying to focus. “Before it happened?”
“I guess so.” He’d never seen her before in his life. This woman was a stranger but they were all supposed to be connected by their shared tragedy. Jeff had never felt that way. He was alone with his ghosts.
They stood there for another moment, as if glued together by some sticky strands of time, and then he pulled away. Her arm remained hanging there, the fingers of her hand curling over empty air.
“My children . . .”
He looked into her eyes and saw nothing, not even an echo of her pain. She was stripped bare, rendered down to nothing but this mindless search for things that were no longer here. He couldn’t tell her, she wouldn’t be told. She needed to discover the truth for herself.
“Good luck,” he said, and he meant it.
Jeff walked away, heading towards the ragged hole in the earth where his house had once stood, the great footprint of the beast that had once passed this way. He wished he’d seen it happen. It must have been an amazing sight, to see the buildings flattened by the gigantic beast as it charged through the neighbourhood and towards the city.
He heard the woman’s scuffling footsteps behind him as she moved away. He wished he had it in him to help her. He hoped she would find her children alive, but doubted she ever would. Not even the bodies would remain. Not even bloodstains.
The Storm came, and that was all. There was no reason for its arrival. It wasn’t like the old movies he’d seen as a kid, where an atomic detonation or the constant experimentation of mankind caused a rift in the earth or a disturbance in the atmosphere, and out stumbled a stop-motion nightmare. No, it was nothing like that. The Storm came, it destroyed whatever it encountered, and it went away again, sated.
They were unable to fight it. The authorities didn’t know what to do; the army and navy and air force were at a loss: none of their weapons had any effect on the Storm. So they waited it out, hoping the thing would either wear itself out and tire of the rampage, or move on, crossing the border into another country. Fingers hovered over the buttons of nuclear launch systems. Members of parliament voted in secret chambers. The nation prepared for a great and terrible sacrifice.
He remembered those first surprisingly clear pieces of footage transmitted on the Internet, and then again on the news channels: HD quality CCTV pictures of some great lizard-like beast emerging from the shadows on the coast, a B Movie come to life. But this was not a man in a suit, or a too-crisp GCI image. It was colossal, the height of two tower blocks, one standing on top of the other. Its arm span was a half a mile across, but it barely needed to stretch them so far to tear down a church, a town hall, a factory warehouse. . . . Bullets and bombs simply bounced off its thick, plated hide to create more damage to the surrounding area. Its call was the trumpet of Armageddon. When it opened its mouth to roar, the sound was unlike anything humanity had heard before.
Nobody knew what the creature was, where it came from, why it appeared. The scientists mumbled in jargon, talked about tectonic plates, seismic events, and then finally, they went quiet. They locked themselves into deep underground laboratories to try and invent something that would kill the thing.
And then . . . then it went away, slinking back into the ocean, the waves covering it like a blanket. The sea bubbled. Ships capsized. The coastal barriers fell. The Storm passed.
But the Storm could return at any time. They all knew this, but it went unspoken. There were celebrations, the blockades came down, people started to rebuild what had been ravaged. But somewhere back in the shadows, or under the dark waters, the Storm waited. Perhaps it even watched.
Jeff walked across the roughly turned earth, his
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