Book Excerpt
Black clouds filled the eastern sky, and that made Daniel smile; a storm was coming. He stood out on a small promontory at the end of the island and took another reading from his wind gauge.
Sixty miles per hour. He frowned, not even category 1 strength. All around him was the bounty of nature—palm trees, shrubs, and what have you. He wasn’t a botanist, so he had no idea what some of the others were, and he didn’t care. No, his focus was the storm that was fast approaching.
Sitting down at his table in the tent, he moved one of the rocks he was using to keep the table in place. Writing wasn’t easy; his long black hair kept batting him in the eyes. When he got back to the states, he really had to get a haircut.
“Daniel!” someone cried.
He heard but didn’t reply; he was busy. He needed a more direct reading. Grabbing his gear, he stepped out of the tent and avoided getting smacked by the tent flat whipping about and got another wind reading.
Whoa, it was up to just over eighty! Cool, well into category 1. At this rate, the storm might still be a three or four when it made landfall.
“Daniel!” came the cry again.
He turned around. “Huh, what? Oh, Dave, what’s up man?”
Bolting toward him was his partner, Dave. Daniel had to grin; Dave looked like that old Buster Keaton movie—he couldn’t remember the title. In it, Buster is in a town being hit by a windstorm, and he does the old “walking against the wind” routine—like some mime. Dave was lucky; he was short and a bit on the hefty side, so that made it easier for him to move about. Daniel remembered what the other team members called them: “Rocky and Bullwinkle.” After all, given Daniel’s height and beanpole-like stature, the moniker seemed appropriate.
Finally, Dave reached him. “What the heck are you smiling about?” “What, isn’t this awesome? Look at these readings, the storms almost to category 2, and it’s still miles from making landfall.”
“Yeah, which means we need to take shelter. Come on, you need to think of your safety!”
Daniel frowned. Not at Dave’s insult—he barely took note of that. No, it was his admonition that they should seek shelter; that made no sense to him.
“Dave, this is nature at its purest,” Daniel said, even as the tent next to them twisted and bent. “Raw power, everything that man craves, and you want me to leave?
I’m staying right here.”
Snap. Whoosh. The tent took off, whipping off across the countryside like a kite set free from its master. Daniel bolted to the table to try and rescue as much of his gear and notes as possible.
“Daniel, if you stay here, you’re going to die! Now, either come with me this instant, or I’m leaving. You’re on your own.”
“We all gotta die sometimes, Dave. We come into this world under sentence of death, and the Fates have already set the date and time.”
Dave rolled his eyes. “Fine, man, you’re on your own. The team and I will be in the basement of the hotel, if you change your mind.”
He didn’t wait for a reply, just turned, and headed back. Now the wind was his companion, helping him along the narrow and twisted dirt path that meandered from the adobe building to the open field.
Daniel managed to secure several of his instruments and his notebook, even as the wind picked up again. Now it was gusting to nearly a hundred!
He smiled and thought, Ah, now that was a storm. His glee was short-lived, as an extra strong gust caught him—and whoosh—he was literally swept off his feet. Bam! He slammed into the muddy ground. Oh well, that was the point of these old bellbottom and this tie-dyed shirt—they were expendable work clothes.
Crawling over to a clump of palm trees, he sat with his back against the largest. It was best not to try and stand now. Checking the wind again, he saw that it was now over ninety. Yeah, a good storm!
His face felt wet. Was he sweating? Well, yes, he was, but not that much. He licked his lips and tasted rainwater. Okay, the storm was breaking. Closing his notebook, he pulled out a ziplock bag and stuffed the book inside it.
There, now it was safe. He checked the sky. Wow, was it ever black! Looking at his watch, he saw that it was just about ten. Of course, it was ten in the morning, not ten at night.
A flash, followed by a boom. Wow, that lightning was close. More flashes, the sky almost returned to normal daylight as each bolt danced and arced across it. With that, the skies truly opened up, and the rain fell.
Oh, Daniel truly wished he could write all this down, but his memory was good; he’d jot it all down later. Right now, the important thing was to carefully observe everything that was going on around him. He had to pocket most of his instruments, at this point. The wind was just too strong to chance of loosing them. At this point, the rain was smacking him almost perfectly straight into the face; each drop was like a beesting.
Daniel looked around. He remembered that there was a small cave just a little ways down the bluff toward the beach below the hotel. Yes, that would do. Pushing himself away from the tree, he got down on his belly and began to crawl. The rain continued to lash his face and back. Oh well, at least it’d get that mud off his back. Ah, but now his front was all messed up. What of it? By the time this day was out, he’d be soaked to the skin . . . or dead.
He didn’t care. It was times like this that made life truly worth living, and he was going to relish every moment of the event.
It only took a few minutes to reach the cave, the brush and shrubbery whipping and lashing at him the whole way like some sort of botanical gauntlet.
Crawling inside, he was out of the main blast of wind, but the rain continued to pelt him. It was a rough and rocky little hovel, but at least it was shelter. Now he could at least get his gear out of his pockets and lay them around him for easy access.
Let’s see, pressure was dropping, wind was up to 155, and the temperature was over ninety. He checked his watch, an hour into the storm.
Daniel began to do calculations in his head. Closing his eyes, he pictured a satellite view of the island, the storm, and its speed and course. Based on the current conditions, the storm was well and truly ashore. Now, it was sure to reduce speed slightly, so the eye wall should hit in about twenty minutes and then will come the calm of the eye. That meant it would be close to two hours before the storm moved beyond the island.
Daniel opened his eyes and smiled; this was going to be great!
As it turned out, his estimation was pretty darn accurate. The eye wall hit, with all its murderous fury, then came the calm of the eye—the sun even came out, briefly—and then the backside of the storm tore through the area.
Before the winds had truly dropped off, but the rain had let up, Daniel gathered his gear, crawled out of his little burrow, and headed back toward the hotel. That is, he headed for where the hotel used to be—it’d been flattened sometime during the course of the storm’s passing over the island.
Daniel smiled again. “Cool, what a sight!”
“Are you out of your mind?” A voice off to the side growled.
Daniel turned and saw Dave, Samantha, and Vernon—all the members of his team.
“Oh, there you guys are,” he said, his voice betraying his bright and chipper attitude. “How you doing? Ready to get going?”
The three of them looked very unkempt and ill-tempered. Their clothes were torn and drenched, and Samantha’s long red hair was dirty and matted against her white skin. Daniel wasn’t sure, but he had a sneaking suspicion she was mad. Sammy was a tough Irish gal who, as they said, wore her heart on her sleeve, and all her other emotions, for that matter.
“How are we?” she snapped. “How are we? You, you empty-headed, pea-brained geek! Take a look at us, you moron! How do you think we are?”
“Alive and well,” Daniel replied.
Sammy’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. Daniel wasn’t sure, but it actually looked like her red hair was leaking into her face. It went from its usually bleach white—touched with freckles—to pink, then red, and then deep crimson.
Dave tuned and comforted her. “It’s okay, Sam, try to let it go.”
“Daniel, do you have any concept of the danger we were in?” Vernon asked.
“Look at that hotel. It went from a six-story luxury adobe building to a pile of rubble in a few hours. We were under that! It’s only by the grace of God that we and the staff lived.”
“Wow, the storm really was something, wasn’t it?” Daniel replied.
Vernon nodded. “Yeah, it was, and so are you. And we’re through.”
“Well, of course we are. The storm’s over. So let’s get back to the lab, and we’ll—”
“No!” Vernon snapped. “When I say, ‘We’re through,’ I mean we, the three of us, we’re through with you. We quit. We’re out of here.”
Daniel was confused; what had happened to them. “Dave, what . . . what’s up?”
Dave, still obviously trying to calm Samantha, turned to Daniel. “What’s up is our patience with you, Daniel. We’ve followed you from one storm to another, all for the sake of the project.”
“And at every turn, you’ve ratcheted up the danger!” Samantha added.
Vernon nodded. “Yes, this makes the third time you nearly got us killed!”
“Whoa, wait a minute, guys,” Daniel replied. “I told Dave, you guys could leave any time and that only I had to stay.”
Dave sighed. “Yeah, you did, Daniel, but you didn’t tell us the details on the storm until it was too late for us to get out of here!”
Daniel rubbed his chin. “Oh yeah, I didn’t think of that.”
Samantha clamped her hands about her head as if it was about to explode.
“Daniel, for god’s sake, that’s your biggest problem—you do not think!”
“As far as we’re concerned, three strikes and you’re out,” Dave said. “We’re heading back to the center of town, and then we’re catching the first boat out of here. When we get back to Miami, we’re tending our resignation at the institute.”
“Good-bye!” Vernon snapped.
With that, the three of them started walking.
“Well but, guys, we have the presentation to the National Science Board next week!” Daniel called out to them. “Don’t you want to be there for that? It’s the great breakthrough in—”
Samantha looked over her shoulder at him. “Get lost, geek-oid!”
With that, the three of them made their way along the narrow gravel road that connected the hotel to the town. Daniel stood there, unsure what to do. Well, if they didn’t want to work with him any more, it was their loss, not his!
He looked around; devastation was everywhere: trees snapped like twigs, buildings crushed, cars and trucks reduced to twisted hunks of metal, and debris scattered across the countryside. His tent was long gone, although he did see a fragment of it up in the sole surviving tree. As for his table and other gear, they were long gone, and there was no point looking for them.