Sunfall

by Jim Al-Khalili

  He settled on a modest Malbec and, wrapping it in the bottom of his T-shirt, he twisted it round to wipe it clean, transferring its filthy film of dust to his clothes. He then wandered back to the deeper end of the cellar, where the lighting was better and the noise from outside fainter.

  The dogs, sitting side by side a few feet away, were watching him intensely. ‘You two girls OK? Come on, this is fun.’

  They both jumped up eagerly and trotted over to him to be made a fuss of, reassured that, despite his earlier tension, their master now appeared more relaxed and calm. Frank knew they would hate not being able to go outside to do their business. Come to think of it, he wasn’t particularly delighted by the prospect of shitting in a bucket either. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Fuck. Toilet paper! Oh, well, too late now.

  The storm raged outside. The noise was now deafening. Suddenly, without any warning flicker, the lights went out. The solar-powered generator must have been knocked out. He reached down in the pitch black to the floor by his feet where he remembered he’d left the LED lamps and felt around for the nearest one. He picked it up and switched it on. He left the others off but still within reach – no need to use up their charge unnecessarily.

  Beth and Sheba settled down again, now that they knew Frank wasn’t abandoning them, and both curled up on the filthy floor under the old wooden bench. He opened the bottle of red, feeling pleased with himself for remembering to bring down a wine glass. Making himself as comfortable as possible on the bench, he tried to distract himself with a book. For the first time that day he started to feel less tense. Let the storm do its worst. Frank Pedersen was going nowhere.

  After several hours during which the storm raged with increasing ferocity, he must have fallen asleep, because he was slowly dragged back to wakefulness by the sound of Beth whining by the cellar door at the far end, scratching it to go out. It took several seconds of disorientation before it struck him what had changed. He could only hear the dog whining because there was no competing noise from the other side of the oak door. After the deafening racket of the storm outside, the contrast was eerie. He checked his watch. It was late afternoon, and his first thought was that the hurricane had passed, allowing himself a moment of self-congratulatory triumph. But his relief was short-lived; a quick mental calculation told him this was impossible. When he’d last checked, just before coming down to the cellar, the storm had been over a thousand kilometres across. At the speed the forecasters had said it was moving, it could not have covered a distance equal to its entire diameter in the time that had elapsed. In fact, by his reckoning, it should only be halfway across. The silence must mean that the eye of the hurricane was now directly overhead.

  He went over to the door and released the catch. Something outside was stopping it from swinging open, but with a firmer push he managed to dislodge the tree branch that had been blown across it. Before he could stop them, the dogs scampered out from behind him. Sheba came to a halt just outside the door and sniffed the air, while Beth trotted down the steps and disappeared into a bush. Frank stood and stared. ‘Jesus Christ!’

  The scene that greeted him was astonishing. The villa above him was blocked from view at this angle, but he could see out right across the island. There was a very light breeze and the sky overhead was clear, but a few kilometres out to sea was a sight he knew he would never forget: a wall of dark churning clouds that extended all the way around him, stretching up into the sky. That the sun was peeking through the hole in the roof of the hurricane only added to the dreamlike scenario. He looked down towards the coast – or rather, where he expected the coast to be. The sea now extended almost a kilometre further inland than it had done yesterday, only stopping where the land began to rise. New Bight had disappeared. All that remained of the town above water was the church steeple.

  Venturing further out, Frank walked down a few steps to get a better view of his home behind him. The first thing that struck him was the missing Hermitage tower. The thirty-foot bell tower had been the only part of the old building not reinforced along with the rest of the property. The storm had brought it down, reducing it to a mound of rubble – large chunks of brickwork and stone were now strewn across the courtyard. He needed to have a quick scout around to assess any further damage.

  He walked briskly up the path that led round to the top of the hill. A wave of relief washed over him as he saw that, apart from the bell tower, the rest of the Hermitage was relatively undamaged. Luckily, it appeared that the back of the building had taken the brunt of, and survived, the full force of the winds. He scrambled over the scattered bricks knowing he didn’t have long before he had to get back to the cellar. Looking back the way he’d come he caught a glimpse of both dogs trotting back inside.

  Relieved at his animals’ good sense, he started back across the courtyard himself. It occurred to him that if the first half of the hurricane had battered the back of his home then it would now be the turn of the front to bear the brunt. Oh well, if he had to rebuild the place, then so be it.

  Zigzagging his way across the courtyard around the ruins of the collapsed tower, he was about ten metres from the steps when he felt the winds suddenly pick up. Puzzled, he turned round. The approaching wall of the storm had been over to his right and so he hadn’t seen how close it was. Now, it was patently obvious that he had utterly misjudged how fast it was moving towards him. With a renewed sense of urgency, he hurried on, his progress slowed by the large chunks of masonry.

  In the space of those few seconds it took him to cover the short distance to safety, the winds sweeping across Como Hill picked up from a gentle breeze to the full force of Hurricane Jerome: over three hundred and eighty kilometres an hour. Frank Pedersen was running now.

  Or at least he went through the motions of running, for he was suddenly plucked up off the ground, as though he were no more than a dry leaf caught in an autumn breeze, along with pieces of the Hermitage roof and an assortment of tree branches and bushes. Tumbling through the air like a rag-doll, Frank didn’t have time to feel afraid or to make sense of what was happening to him, because the logic circuits in his brain that had served him so well all his life now simply ceased to function. Instead of terror, he felt a strange sense of exhilaration, as a child might when tossed into the air by a parent. But unlike the child’s relief as it fell back down to the safety of strong adult arms, Frank had no such reprieve. Hurricane Jerome was no respecter of Newtonian gravity.

  Any feelings of anxiety or exhilaration he might have had ended the moment a passing oak tree slammed into him, snapping his neck instantly.

  9

  Thursday, 7 February – off Grand Turk Island, northern West Indies

  Six hundred kilometres south-east of Cat Island, and while a still alive but edgy Frank Pedersen was about to open a bottle of beer, the rain had been steadily falling all morning and was getting heavier. The sea was becoming choppier too – more irritable than tempestuous, but it was clear to anyone who knew the sea that nothing but raw rage lay ahead. Joseph Smith knew the sea. He’d been a fisherman all his life and had a pretty good idea what was coming, but for the time being his small fishing trawler trudged along happily enough. Given the recent meagre hauls, Joseph knew that he couldn’t afford not to go out these days, whatever the weather. So, against the wishes of his wife, he had left the village with his son Zain before dawn to ensure a good few hours for a semi-decent catch before they had to turn back. Joseph figured that if there was a sudden change, then they’d need fifteen minutes to reel in the nets, then another hour to get back to shore, if he opened the engine all the way up.

  On the other hand, why take any unnecessary risks? Maybe it had been foolish to come out at all. Joseph had always trusted his instincts, and his instincts were now telling him to call it a day, albeit a very short one, and head back. It was still only ten-thirty in the morning and they had been out for just over three hours. But then no other fool was even out on the water today.

  ‘Sta
rt the winches, boy, I’m calling it,’ he shouted across the deck to his son.

  ‘Why, Pa? It don’t look too bad to me yet,’ laughed Zain with the bravado of youth.

  ‘Just do it. I’m not in your mother’s good books as it is, so it’s best we get back before things get too interesting out here.’

  Joseph ducked inside the wheelhouse to work out the most efficient bearing to take if the wind suddenly started picking up in the next hour or so.

  Zain was sixteen and, Joseph was sure, would be happy enough to get back home as soon as possible too. The boy had recently developed a serious crush on their neighbour’s daughter, Aliya. A year younger than him, he’d known her all his life, but this past year she had blossomed into a beautiful young woman. The two had been spending a lot of time together.

  Joseph stared at the screen in front of him and tried to make sense of the live weather map it was showing, when it struck him why it had looked so odd. A sudden chill ran through him. When he’d last checked the satellite data, just under half an hour ago, the centre of Hurricane Jerome had been seven hundred and twenty kilometres to the east and heading towards them at about twenty knots. Given its size, this meant that the outer edges, where the wind and rain really picked up and the sea turned brutal, would not reach them for another couple of hours – plenty of time to get back to shore. But that had changed. His mouth suddenly felt dry. He licked his lips. The storm had just doubled in size in the space of thirty minutes. It was such a ridiculous notion that Joseph assumed it had to be a mistake in the readings. But if the current data were correct then the outer wall of the hurricane was far closer than he’d thought.

  He rushed back out on deck. It seemed to him that even in these few minutes conditions had worsened, and the rain was now pouring down. His son was standing at the stern, his legs braced against the roll of the boat, next to the boom holding the power block that fed the nets out behind. Joseph shouted out to Zain, but the boy couldn’t hear him. Holding on to the rail, he made his way to the stern and grabbed his son by the shoulders. ‘Zain,’ he yelled into the storm, ‘we’re going to have to cut the nets free and get the hell out of here.’

  Joseph tried his best to appear calm and relaxed, but Zain read the nervousness in his eyes. ‘Cut the nets? Why don’t we reel them in?’ his son shouted.

  Joseph didn’t want to lose his nets, but he knew it would take at least twenty minutes for the hydraulic pump to winch them in – time he now calculated he didn’t have. In any case the pump ran off the main engines and he needed all the power he could get if he was going to outrun the approaching hurricane.

  ‘The storm’s a lot closer than I thought. We really don’t have a choice,’ he shouted above the increasing roar of the rain and wind.

  Zain didn’t question him any further and instead hurried back to the wheelhouse where they kept the tools. Joseph tried to rationalize that this wasn’t a decision he was taking lightly. They would struggle to afford new nets to replace these ones. He watched as his son came back with the large cable cutters and Joseph left him to it, struggling against the driving rain back to the wheelhouse. They were twenty-two kilometres away from the coast. At full throttle, in this weather, they would get back to port in about forty minutes. Although the hurricane to their east was moving in the same direction, the circling winds at its outer edges, if it caught up with them, would be slamming into the port side of the boat.

  Joseph wrestled the boat around against the angry sea and began the race for home. A few minutes later, the door slammed open as Zain stumbled in accompanied by an angry gust of salty spray. He leaned his weight against the door and forced it shut. ‘The nets are gone,’ he said breathlessly and reached for an old towel to dry his face. Joseph cursed himself for thinking that coming out this morning was ever a good idea. There would most definitely be all hell to pay when he got back home and had to admit his folly. Still, he would worry about that later.

  Joseph Smith knew the sea and still felt confident. With the nets cut and the boat heading home, he had done all he could. It was now a straight race between him and the storm.

  The wipers skidded ineffectively back and forth across the windshield as the rain lashed down. Joseph couldn’t see much beyond the bow of the boat through the curtain of rain, just the deep charcoal-grey hue of the stormy sky. It seemed to him as though the thunder clouds extended all the way down to the sea.

  Then a sudden flash of lightning briefly lit up the world outside, and Joseph froze.

  ‘Oh, dear God, no.’

  The dark sky he’d been staring at wasn’t sky at all, but a giant wall of water bearing down on his small boat.

  His knuckles whitened as he gripped the wheel with a futile intensity. Had he been able to articulate any semblance of rational thought at that moment he might have admitted that this was no longer a fair struggle between man and nature – that his puny little fishing boat was but an insignificant toy at the mercy of the rolling mountainous waves.

  ‘Forgive me, Elsa,’ he sobbed, thinking of his wife back home. He could hear his son screaming somewhere behind him.

  For a second or two, the world outside went quiet as the wind dropped, as though in respectful anticipation, and the boat began to tilt up.

  10

  Thursday, 7 February – San Juan, Puerto Rico

  Camila had lived through her fair share of hurricanes during her eighty-five years in San Juan and knew the drill. She’d spent the morning calling family and friends, making them promise that they would stay safely indoors with sufficient supplies to keep them going for a few days until the storm had passed. She’d been busy baking and cooking since hearing the weather forecasts two days ago. Wiping her hands on her apron she took out several Tupperware boxes from the cupboard. The rich aroma of chorizo and shellfish in her large pot of asopao permeated the whole of her ground-floor apartment. She’d now cooked enough food to feed a platoon for a week and began portioning up the thick soup. She’d keep most of it in her fridge but decided to take a couple of portions up to Grace Morales on the fifth floor.

  Camila was feeling rejuvenated after the recent stem-cell injections had cleared up the arthritis in her knees, and was keen to impress her friend with her newfound vigour. Besides, she wanted to have a better view out to sea than she had from her own flat on the ground floor.

  It had been an exceptionally warm and sticky week, and now the rain had started. The wind had been building all morning and was currently strong enough to blow the lids off garbage bins, sending them rolling down the street with an assortment of autumn leaves, paper, plastic and anything else not firmly secured. Counting the cost of the damage wrought by storms was a fact of life for Camila, and she was sure it would be much worse than just a bin lid that needed replacing. Last year her two sons had clubbed together to replace her old windows with graphene-toughened glass that could withstand the brute force of the far stronger winds – something she was even more grateful for today.

  Picking up the soup, she left her apartment. She thought about getting in the lift, but then decided she’d like to see the look on Grace’s face after telling her she’d climbed five flights of stairs.

  Grace was indeed impressed by her old friend’s regained mobility, though at first she’d been startled by Camila’s breathlessness.

  ‘Well, there’s no need to show off on my account, my dear,’ she scolded. ‘What’s the use of healthy knees if your heart gives out?’

  Camila still managed to chuckle as she caught her breath. ‘I can see how jealous you are, Grace. No point trying to hide it. Now put the kettle on.’ She barged past her friend into the apartment.

  To Camila’s relief, Grace seemed just as unconcerned as she was by the approaching storm. They would keep each other calm.

  After catching up on family gossip the two women settled down by the front window with a coffee and a piece of cake. It was a beautiful view to the north, overlooking the Laguna to the picturesque district of Condado, an aff
luent tree-lined neighbourhood with hotels and apartment blocks that, in turn, overlooked the Atlantic. To the west was the hundred-and-thirty-year-old Dos Hermanos bridge that linked Condado with the entrance to old San Juan.

  That is, it would have been a beautiful view. But not today.

  Over the next hour, they watched as the storm continued to build outside. From their vantage point they could see the palm trees below them swaying ever more dramatically in the strengthening winds. And as the hurricane approached, their unease began to build. Camila had lived through hundreds of storms in her life, but there was something different about this one that she didn’t like. And yet she couldn’t quite put her finger on why she felt a growing sense of foreboding.

  Had visibility been better they would have seen the first of the storm surges approaching from out at sea. As it was, Camila could just make out the other side of the lagoon. Through the driving rain she saw a few foolish motorists still out on the roads, despite the tsunami warnings that had been broadcast all morning, including several cars crossing the Dos Hermanos bridge spanning the lagoon, trying to reach safety as quickly as they could.

  Arriving about a minute apart, it seemed that each tidal surge was bigger than the previous one.

  Then, as though tiring of playing games, Hurricane Jerome decided to show Camila what it was truly capable of. She sat transfixed, her coffee cup slipping, unnoticed, from her fingers onto the floor. She watched as first the roads and then the bridge itself disappeared underneath the giant wave. Her heart began pounding in her chest, this time with terror rather than physical exertion. She could just about make out a few cars being carried along by the water as it advanced across the lagoon towards them. The scene looked like something from one of those badly made disaster movies she remembered watching as a young girl.