The Geostorm Series (Book 4): Geostorm [The Flood]
Page 21
Carly asked another question. “So are you saying the water is gonna keep on rising and not go down? Chapman, that’s impossible. This ain’t some Waterworld movie.”
Levi added somewhat sarcastically, “Maybe we should build an ark?”
Chapman sighed and mindlessly stared at his fingers as he touched the tips together and counted. Based upon the rising waters and the elevation of the house in comparison to where it was when the rain started, they’d be nearly flooded in ten days.
After several moments of awkward silence, Sarah spoke. “Noah followed God’s instructions and it was the right thing to do. I’m gonna pray on this; however, preparation for this possibility is necessary.”
“I agree, Mom,” said Kristi. “All we have to go on is what Isabella and Chapman have learned prior to the power outage and what all of us have seen in the last several days. It won’t hurt to get our ducks in a row.”
“Well, at least they can swim,” quipped Chapman under his breath.
*****
Kristi asked Chapman and Levi to join her in a ride up to the small ranch owned by Misty Garness and her husband. Misty had been Kristi’s roommate at Ohio State before the two veterinarians chose different career paths. It was Kristi who suggested they’d need to start with transportation. The Garness family had quite a few horses as well as several wagons they used to carry bales of hay around their ranch. Kristi hoped to make a deal with her old friend.
After an hour-long ride in which they had to traverse normally small creeks that were now flooded, they arrived at the Garness ranch. Misty readily provided the Boones two covered wagons that she rarely used except during the Heritage Weekend up at Lanesville.
She also gave up four of her oldest horses she considered reliable and strong enough to pull the loaded-down wagons. Coupled with the Boones’ existing stable of horses and one donkey, everyone would have a horse or a seat in the wagons if they decided to leave Riverfront Farms.
The two old friends said their goodbyes. They tried to warn Misty of the rising waters and the potential for longtime, more severe flooding, but she and her husband believed the rains would stop eventually and the waters would recede.
It was that way of thinking that contributed, in part, to her being so generous with her gifts. She was certain the Boones wouldn’t be leaving. Had Misty encountered the rising creek levels and the washed-out roads like the Boone siblings did, her opinion might’ve changed.
The difficult trip back to the farm with the wagons and horses certainly opened up Levi’s eyes considerably. His judgment had been clouded by the death of his father, the well-intentioned but strong opinions of Carly, and his own run-in with Billy Clark.
By the time they made it back to Riverfront Farms, he was fully on board with the prospect of evacuating. The only question was to where.
Chapter 49
Riverfront Farms
Southeast Indiana
It happened in the middle of the night without warning. These things always do. To be sure, the Boone family had been warned by Chapman and Isabella. For days they’d debated and commiserated, choosing between what the science and weather conditions dictated, and the emotions of losing Squire and the farm within a week of each other. A consensus couldn’t be reached, and disagreements threatened to tear the family apart. And then it began.
The shaking was barely discernible at first, except to Brooke. Animals have this innate ability to sense doom. She’d been sleeping between Kristi and Tommy when she felt it. At first, she stuck her head up to look around the dark room, using her superior eyesight to determine the cause.
When it happened again, slightly harder, she shrieked, immediately waking up both of her adoptive parents. A picture frame fell off the fireplace mantel, and a glass of water on the nightstand began to slide toward the edge toward the floor.
“Everybody downstairs!” shouted Chapman from the hallway. The sounds of footsteps rustling through the dark house indicated everyone had a sense of urgency following the tremor.
The children were crying from being uprooted from their sleep unexpectedly and the sudden sense of urgency to get to safety.
Then another hit, causing the house to shake on its foundation. The sounds of plates and glasses tinkling in the kitchen coupled with crashing picture frames, once full of smiling faces and momentous occasions, created a chaotic scene.
“Watch out for glass!” shouted Sarah.
“Where do we go?” asked Carly.
“Outside!” yelled Chapman. This was contrary to what kids were taught in school—duck, cover, hold on. However, those suggestions almost always applied to urban or commercial building settings. Without the threat of bricks from tall buildings or power lines to drop on them, being away from the house was best, especially because of the sinkhole threat.
The group, dressed lightly in pajamas or partially clothed, helped one another into the front yard and slightly up the hill toward Squire and Sarah’s apple tree. Soon, loud explosion-like sounds could be heard followed by more shaking of the ground. The rumbling noise had returned, muted only somewhat by the pouring rain.
“Let’s move higher up the hill!” shouted Chapman as he assisted his mother, who was shivering. He removed his sweatshirt and placed it over her head. “Wear this to stay warm.”
A creaking sound could be heard and then what might’ve been gunshots. It was actually the sound of the front porch roof and support beams being pulled away from the house. The ground suddenly washed away from the steps leading onto the porch, and a small hole opened up.
“The house!” shouted Jesse, who was the first to see the porch roof topple over and crash to the ground.
The hole grew larger and the roof was immediately consumed by a combination of mud and rushing rainwater from off the driveway. Next, the porch tore away from the foundation, causing some of the blocks to crack and open a hole into the basement.
“We need to get our things!” shouted Levi. He began to make a move toward the house, but Chapman wrapped his arms around his waist.
“It’s too dangerous, Levi. You can’t.”
“Chapman, we’ll lose everything if we don’t try,” said Levi.
Chapman hesitated, and then Tommy came to his side. “He’s right, Chapman. We have to go for it.”
Chapman let go of Levi and he pulled Tommy close to them both. “Go, but stick together. Use the back of the house to enter and exit. Don’t take any risks, got it?”
“Yeah!” shouted Levi as he slapped Tommy on the back and took off.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” Chapman shouted after them. He turned to Kristi. “Can you guys safely get the horses out of the barn?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, bring them uphill and tie them off to different trees. You know, spread them out.”
Kristi motioned for Carly to join her.
After they ran into the darkness, Chapman turned to Isabella. “Please take care of Mom and the kids.”
“I can help you,” Isabella protested.
“I know, but they need you more. Please?”
She nodded and touched his face. “Be careful, mon ami.”
Chapman smiled, glanced at his mother, and raced down the hill toward the back of the house.
Thirty minutes later, the foundation along the front of the house had collapsed, and the sinkhole began to swallow the bricks.
Chapman, Levi, and Tommy worked frantically to empty the home of anything of use. They piled things just outside the back of the house, and after the horses were removed from the barn, the rest of the family, including the kids, moved their belongings to higher ground.
As the daylight began to peer through the rain clouds, more of the house was falling forward into the seemingly bottomless pit that had opened up in their front yard. A steady stream of rainwater washed down the hill and poured into the sinkhole, taking mud from the sides with it.
The Boone family home, which had occupied this ground for more than a century,
was being buried in a cavern of its own, much like Squire Boone in the 1800s and Squire Boone of that day and time.
The family stood together in stunned disbelief until the collapse of their home ended. Suddenly, Chapman made one last precarious trip inside to make sure nothing of sentimental value had been left behind.
He bravely went upstairs to his room and retrieved his storm glass, the primitive teardrop-shaped sealed glass that contained chemicals capable of predicting upcoming weather events. Acting much like a barometer, it had begun to indicate the coming rains shortly after Chapman left for Fort Wayne to take his father to the hospital. Had he seen it cloud up, he probably would’ve disregarded it as inaccurate. Now it was a symbolic heirloom of his prior professional life as a meteorologist.
He also stopped by his parents’ room and took one final look. On the floor underneath a toppled dresser was a coonskin cap his father had made when he was a kid. The coonskin cap was often associated with the Boone family and its pioneering ways.
Chapman laughed as he forced the dresser out of the way to retrieve it. He placed the cap on his head and studied himself in a shattered mirror, which barely hung on the wall.
“I guess we’ve gone full circle, Dad. We’ll see if that Boone DNA pays off.”
The house began to shudder and felt like it was sliding deeper into the sinkhole. Chapman scurried outside and joined the rest of his family. He handed Isabella the storm glass and placed the coonskin cap on his nephew’s head.
Levi stepped forward and wrapped his arm around his brother’s shoulders. He reached into his pocket and showed Chapman the compass he’d been carrying since the plane crash. Levi didn’t have to look at the inscription on the back to recite the words he’d repeated to himself hundreds of times in the last several weeks.
Every adventure requires a first step.
THANK YOU FOR READING GEOSTORM: THE FLOOD!
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Since the beginning of time, four billion life forms have been created.
Ninety-nine percent are now extinct.
The human species is the youngest of them all.
A mere blink in the eye of time –
Time, which is running out.
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International bestselling author Bobby Akart delivers up-all-night survival thrillers in The Geostorm Series, the story of a planet-changing phenomenon, a natural disaster brought about by the Earth itself.
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Imagine a world where storms inundate coastal megacities. Entire species become extinct in an instant. And conflicts are fought over dwindling natural resources, food, and even shelter. The rapid pole shift resulting in the sudden reversal of the planet’s magnetic field changed the face of the planet, forever. Rain fell for months. Ice melted. Waters rose. Land masses disappeared.
Humanity had to go somewhere. Throughout the history of mankind, humans persevered because these cataclysmic events came about slowly allowing them time to analyze and adapt.
This time, it was different. The end of the world came and we no longer asked, who to die by fire and who to die by sword? We all died by water. As the dramatic changes in the Earth’s climate came about, superstorms, flooding, and weeks on end without sunlight became the norm. Until…
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Earth’s geologic revolution continued. Scientists had fought for centuries to study and explain the changes to our planet. Using advanced methodology, they routinely predicted our future. All of that research was for naught as the rapid pole shift generated The Tempest, a storm of biblical proportions.
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Copyright Information
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Table of Contents
Dedications
Acknowledgements
About the Author, Bobby Akart
Author’s Introduction to the Geostorm Series
Real-World News Excerpts
Epigraph
Prologue
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
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Copyright Information