Surfing USA (prologue)

[Dimocritus]

 There was a palpable sensation in the air that day. Sort of what you would expect on a very hot very humid afternoon. Except it was neither hot, nor humid. It was this weird "bearing down" sensation, unlike anything anyone had felt before. Kind of like gravity itself had somehow gotten a little stronger. There was weight in the air.

Most people chose to spend the day outside, luckily. They conveined on porches and stoops across the country. A lot of places had been shut down because the machines and gadgets weren't working properly, and the water tables were all fucked up, on top of that. Every one of them was aware of what was going on, they had seen the ever-so-slight bend in the beams and trusses, but no one spoke a word about it. They chose to not see it coming.  

Then it happened, and when it did, it happened in waves.

The first house dropped at 5:23 Eastern time. Flattened in less than a second, compacted into it's own foundation, the shockwave erupting debris. This started a chain reaction, clear across the neighborhood. House by house, flattened within moments. A hungry ripple of old junk, plywood, glass and cheap vinyl siding. This same scene played out in almost the exact same fashion in small cities and towns clear across the country.

Some people panicked. Others ignored it, it was only low and lower-middle class properties that imploded, after all. The media was having a Field day, along with religious leaders all over the world. The scientific community collectively scratched their heads.

Numbers began coming in a few days later. The death toll of the incident was mounting, and there were hundreds yet to be accounted for. The damage was more than significant, even if isolated. Cities built near fault lines, or otherwise coded for natural disasters, took the least amount of damage, and refugees began pouring in. No one got a chance to hear the final death toll. Because it wasn't over.

It seemed to have happened in slow motion, yet instantly and out of nowhere. Churches with steeples and buildings with similar structures collapsed in on their supports, spearing themselves into oblivion, in sepukku style suicides. Old factory buildings, brick and iron monoliths from the industrial age, spiderwebbed with cracks suddenly, then shattered into flying fragments and tangles of concrete and re-bar. Skyscrapers, en masse, fell into themselves and onto each other, hurling I-beams like javelins. Bridges. Schools. Hospitals. Simultaneous collapse.

Under the extreme gravity, the debris churned and folded in on itself, expelling cars and wire fence and then re-consuming them. The outward force of the shockwave propelled it all. As the waves proceeded, the sea of destruction swelled into a massive tidal wave as high as a skyscraper. There was only one thing anyone could do at this point:

Ride or Die.

[Phox]

 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

NIIIICE!

[Dimocritus]

Thanks, dudes.


If anyone is unaware, this is the prologue for this piece.