The little girl’s fingers intertwined with Whitney’s, and the girl was pulled steadily up. A bearded man next to the girl saw that she’d clear the gate first and took hold of Whitney’s arm to hoist himself.
“Let go!” Whitney shouted as the gate dug into her arm.
“Amber!” another man shouted with shock in his eyes. He lunged at the bearded man pushing the girl back down, and Whitney knew the girl’s rescuer was her father. Amber’s father wrapped one arm around the aggressor’s neck and pushed off the gate with his feet. The action added an unbearable amount of weight to Whitney’s arm, but both men fell to the ground. The father seemed willing to die for his child, and as the two men rolled away from the gate pummeling each other, she realized he would.
The water was upon them.
Whitney pulled with all her might, but her muscles had little strength left. The water hit her like an explosion. Whitney was flung back ten feet, her grip on Amber’s arm lost. She sat up quickly and looked to the gate. The people were gone, replaced by a churning wall of water that roared like a wounded Kodiak bear.
Whitney shouted as she pushed herself up and ran back to the house. Ten feet from the front stairs, her feet began splashing through ocean water. A surge of water hit her knees and threatened to knock her down, but she lunged up the stairs, freeing herself from the water’s grasp.
She entered the house, closed the door, slammed the deadbolt home, and careened for the stairs, hoping another ten feet would be enough to save her life. She reached the top stair in four leaps. As she stepped into the hallway, a force struck the house so hard that she was shaken from her feet. She fell forward and heard a loud crack, but it wasn’t the house; it was her head. A stab of pain shot through her skull. As she fell, she saw the wooden chest she’d struck as she’d fallen.
It was the last thing she saw. Her vision blurred and turned black.
As her consciousness faded, the sound of rushing water and groaning wood surrounded the house.
Whitney awoke with a start and clasped a hand to her throbbing head. She struggled past the pain, attempting to gather her thoughts. As the pulsing headache in her left temple eased in intensity, she remembered: the wave. The people. The death. Despair, rage, and confusion attacked her all at once, an emotional lion pride, circling with hackles raised and talons extended. They wanted to devour her alive. But they were old enemies she’d faced before. Using willpower built over the past year’s suffering, she pushed the emotions away and faced her grim new reality.
She forced herself to calm and became more aware of her surroundings. She was still on the hallway floor of her house, but she was freezing. Wondering if she was wet, she checked herself and found her clothing to be dry. She looked down the stairs. Even the downstairs floor was dry.
From her position on the floor, she could see her alarm clock, but the power was out. She had no way of knowing how long she’d been unconscious, but it couldn’t have been long. It was still daylight, though the previously blue sky was now thick with ashen clouds . . . and something else.
Standing came only after a concerted effort. Her head pounded with every step, and she found herself walking through the bedroom and toward the deck door with her eyes closed. Hands outstretched, she stopped when she reached the wall. She slid her fingers from the wall to the glass of the sliding door.
When the flesh of her finger made contact with the glass, Whitney yelped and pulled her hand away. The pain was like searing heat, but she knew from experience that it was cold. Freezing cold. Whitney’s eyes flew open and blinked at the brightness. Despite the overcast sky, something outside was abnormally bright.
Through squinted eyes, Whitney took in her new view.
Extending out from ten feet below her home’s foundation all the way to the horizon was a sheet of ice. Thick flakes of snow fell from the sky. She seemed to have been transported to the North Pole. She didn’t dare go outside dressed for summer as she was, but from her view behind the glass she could see that everything, from Maine to Massachusetts, was buried under hundreds of feet of snow and ice.
And now she was alone, completely, and she feared that the most. More than the wave. More than the cold. Being alone with her thoughts, with her demons, was just about the worst way she could imagine to die.
###
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
The Fate of Thomas
Unnamed
Unnamed
Sample of ANTARKTOS RISING
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The Didymus Contingency Page 31
