by Ginger Zee
Helicity slit her eyes open and was met with utter blackness. She opened them wider, trying to make sense of the impenetrable dark. Then out of the ink, or maybe it was from the darkness of her mind, came a whispered voice.
“Don’t give up. Don’t give up. Don’t give up.”
Lana’s voice. An image exploded in her mind of Lana mouthing the words as they struggled against the pull of the flood. It was so real, Helicity swore she could feel that water lapping at her limbs, dragging at her clothes, its saltiness seeping into her bones.
No, her fogged brain resisted. That’s not possible. The flood was before. That water was fresh. This water is from something else.
Somewhere beyond, a low moan rose into a shriek, growing louder and sharper with every pulse of her throbbing head. Fear impaled her innards and suddenly, her mouth filled with saliva. She rocked sideways, felt the sharp stab of pain in her shoulder, then heaved and vomited up her stomach’s sour contents. The taste of bile brought with it a moment of clarity.
Andy. I was looking for Andy.
Clutching her aching arm at the elbow, she struggled to sit up. Her fingers brushed the rough floor, and like a bolt of lightning, she remembered.
The hurricane. The railing. The pain.
She lifted her hand and gingerly touched her head. There was a lump—a goose egg, her mother would have called it—and her fingers came away sticky. She swallowed hard. Blood.
The memories were coming in clearer pictures now. She was inside the lighthouse. She’d fallen down the stairs, all the way to the floor from what she could tell. She touched her shoulder and winced. She feared she’d dislocated it, but after a few tentative rolls, she decided that while painful, it was intact.
But how long had she been out? Why hadn’t Sam and Andy come to find her? And where had all this water come from?
She fumbled for Andy’s phone. Soaked in seawater, it was dead. She rolled to her knees and crawled forward through the sloshing wet to where she thought the lighthouse door ought to be. The howling and shrieking grew louder the closer she got, the sound knifing into her skull. She felt the wind as it whistled through holes in the door.
Something outside rapped against the metal. She recoiled, startled, then licked her lips and tried her voice. “Hello?” she called hoarsely. “Is someone out there?”
There was no answer.
She shifted her position and pressed her eye to a hole.
Outside the door was a world locked in the throes of raging chaos. Surging seawater and torrential rain drowned the land in all directions. Wind and waves pounded the toppled houses into kindling. Winds so strong they bent palm trees as easily as licorice sticks ripped the road gate from the ground, and snapped at least one electric pole in half. She stared at the dangling wires in horror before realizing they must be dead.
She squeezed her eyes shut and felt for her necklace. Miraculously, it had survived the fall. As she clutched it, she thought about flinging open the door and fleeing her prison. But she resisted the urge. As horrifying as it was to be trapped alone inside the lighthouse, it was infinitely safer here than out there.
Hours of hungrily researching weather had taught her that the power of water was like nothing else. Storm surge could move entire buildings and homes from their foundations. Debris hidden within the rushing water could mow down people like a runaway locomotive. One wrong step, and you could be swept away. She didn’t need a book to know that. Her own experience had taught her as much.
Bam!
The sudden sound of a large object ricocheting off the door broke her out of her reverie. She realized with a start that the rising water had swallowed her thighs and was creeping steadily up to her waist.
I have to get to higher ground.
Another crash rocked the tower as she slogged over to the spiral staircase. Her shoulder and her head screaming with pain, she began to climb. Or rather, to crawl, dragging herself up one tread to the next on her hands and knees.
To stop her mind from spinning out of control, she thought about the story Mia had told her, about the 120 people who had sheltered in this same lighthouse during the 1900 hurricane. It staggered her to imagine the terrified men, women, and children crushed together on these steps. Had they screamed in terror? Clung to one another for strength—or channeled their fear by lashing out? Suddenly, she was glad to be trapped here alone. She pushed away the images and focused on the positive: they’d all survived.
Halfway up, she paused, straining her ears for any sign of the owl. But it must have flown off, for there was no warning screech, no attack. She considered stopping for good then. There was no reason to continue, after all. She was safe there on the stairs.
Or so she thought until more debris blasted the lighthouse. The hit shook loose several bricks high above her. They rained down around her, narrowly missing her head as she cowered against the wall. As painful as it was to keep going, staying put no longer seemed like the best option.
After endless, torturous minutes of climbing, she reached the ladder. Exhausted, she wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep. But the cramped area offered no place to sit, let alone stretch out. The platform beyond the trapdoor, though, promised both.
Up close, that small door reminded her of one from her favorite book, Alice in Wonderland. Alice was much too big to fit through her door until she drank a magic potion that shrank her down to the right size. Helicity had no magic potion. She prayed she’d fit through her door without it.
It took every ounce of energy left in her body to begin that final climb. Toes marching in the air and her good arm screaming with effort, she boosted herself up rung after rung. She wrapped her bad arm around the top and pushed on the door with the other.
It didn’t budge. She choked back a sob. That the trap might be too heavy for her to move had never occurred to her.
No. I will open it.
She took a deep breath and tried again. With a groan, it lifted an inch. She gave a mighty shove, and the door flew open and landed on the platform with a bang. The roar of the wind and the thud of rain had been loud before, but now, with the door open, it was deafening. She climbed two more rungs and stuck her head through the opening.
The tower continued up to meet a newer wooden platform with another hatch accessed by another ladder. The two landings with the protected space between reminded Helicity of a sandwich cookie.
At the thought of cookies, Helicity’s stomach suddenly contracted. Water dripping through cracks in the wooden platform and running in rivulets down the brick walls made her throat ache with thirst. She berated herself for not bringing her supply-stuffed backpack with her to the lighthouse. Both it and the bicycle had undoubtedly been swept away hours ago.
“I can’t do anything about food,” she muttered. “But I can drink rainwater.”
With that goal in mind, she heaved herself up onto the platform, lay on her back, and opened her mouth to capture drops from the steadiest drip. The water tasted funny, but it soothed her thirst, so she didn’t care. She caught some in her hands and rubbed it on her face to fight off the wave of exhaustion urging her to sleep. But sleep and concussions don’t mix. So instead, she stared up at the wooden platform and listened to the storm raging around her.
After a few minutes, she sat up, cocked her head to the side, and listened more closely. Maybe it was just her imagination or wishful thinking, but—
The rain. The wind. They’re not as strong as before.
Her drowsiness vanished. Minutes ticked by. The rain lightened from a thrumming drumbeat to a gentle tapping, then ceased altogether. The howl of the wind was replaced by a distant and constant whoosh-thump that Helicity recognized as the crash and roll of waves.
The eye. I’m in the eye of the hurricane, she thought wonderingly.
The hatch in the wooden platform proved easier to open. Above, she was greeted by a clear night sky studded with stars and a sliver of a moon. Warm fresh air kissed by rain and the scent of t
he sea filled her nostrils. It was so beautiful, so eerily peaceful, she could almost believe she’d dreamed the hurricane.
Then she looked down, and reality punched her in the face.
Where land and life had been just hours before, now there was nothing but filthy water clogged with debris for as far as her eye could see. Even from this height she could pick out a half-submerged car with a shattered windshield. An overturned boat, its keel rocking in the waves. A waterlogged easy chair slowly rotating in an unseen current. The roofs and walls, studs and stilts of ruined houses drifting together in clumps like jumbled toy kits waiting to be pieced together. And trash. Thick blankets of the stuff floated everywhere.
Staring at the horror below, she realized how incredibly lucky she was. If she’d been caught outside in the hurricane…
She sucked in her breath. Andy. Sam.
They’d been together before the storm hit. But where were they now? Safe on the mainland? Or somewhere in the horrifying debris-filled soup below?
And what did they think had happened to her?
Her heart cried out in anguish then. She fell to her knees, racked with sobs for several long minutes. Then a puff of wind made her look up.
The eye of the hurricane was passing. And in its wake would follow the other side of the hurricane, part of the eye wall, and with it, more deadly winds, torrential rain, and storm surge. Until it passed, she was trapped in her black tower.
That knowledge should have filled her with desperation. But it was as if her tears had washed away her fears, for as she gazed out toward the horizon where the next onslaught would appear, she felt a calm determination settle over her.
This lighthouse has survived worse, she thought. And so have I. So, go ahead and come at me, hurricane.
She captured her necklace in her hand. I’m ready.
Ginger Zee is the chief meteorologist for ABC News, forecasting for and reporting on the nation’s weather from Good Morning America to World News Tonight. Zee has been on the ground before, during, and after almost every major weather event and dozens of historic storms, including Hurricane Katrina. She watched as the eye of Superstorm Sandy passed over Atlantic City and then covered the devastated Jersey Shore; she was there for the Colorado floods and wildfires, and the destructive tornadoes in Moore and El Reno, Oklahoma.
Zee’s dedication to science began at an early age, watching powerful thunderstorms rush across Lake Michigan. Her passion for meteorology brought her to storm chase in college at Valparaiso University, where she earned her bachelor of science in meteorology. Throughout her career and especially in this book, Zee is dedicated to getting young people interested in science, respecting the environment and atmosphere around them.
