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Stone Barrington woketo the loudest explosive noise he had ever heard, and there was more to come. Lightning flashed, illuminating his bedroom at his house in Dark Harbor, Maine, then a hammering on the roof began. He switched on a bedside light. It came on for a moment, then went off for a few seconds, then he heard the generator kick in, and the lamp came on again.
Holly Barker came running into the room; he had not even noticed her absence. She dived into bed and clung to him. “Please tell me this is a thunderstorm and not a nuclear attack,” she whimpered.
“It’s the mother of all thunderstorms,” Stone said, then switched on the TV to the Weather Channel. A man stoodbefore a weather chart, and there was a large red splotch on it where Maine should have been.
“It’s a nor’easter,” Stone said. “Last night they were saying this would come in the night, then pass offshore. I think it’s making itself at home.”
“I am not flying in that little jet of yours today,” Holly said.
“Nobody is. You can tell them at the office that you have a real good excuse for not showing up. You can refer them to the weather radar.”
“What’s that terrible noise on the roof?” Holly asked.
“That’s called rain.”
“That’s not like any rain I’ve ever heard on any roof,” she said.
“The Weather Channel guy was predicting eight to twelve inches of rain in our neighborhood.”
“Is your airplane going to be okay?”
“Fortunately, it’s waterproof. And yesterday, Seth drove stakes into the ground and tied it down, so it won’t blow away.”
“You were expecting this?”
“No, but Seth was. He’s a Mainer. He put extra lines and fenders on the boats, too.”
“Look out the window. It’s as though we are underwater.”
“We are, in a way.”
“Why haven’t we lost power?”
“We have, but our 25 kW generator kicked in, and that keeps the whole house running.”
“For how long?”
“Until that five-hundred-gallon tank of diesel runs out, and that will take a long time.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know.”
They put on robes and went down for breakfast. Seth’s wife, Mary, was putting food on the table as if nothing unusual had happened. “Morning,” she said cheerfully.
“Morning, Mary,” Stone replied. “How many days of provisions do we have stocked?”
“Oh, don’t you worry about that, Mr. Stone. We won’t starve. Good thing we have that twenty pounds of moose in the freezer that Mr. Rawls gave us last year.”
“Moose?” Holly said. “Last year?”
“Ed Rawls goes moose hunting every year,” Stone said. “He has a hard time getting rid of the meat.”
“What’s moose like?” Holly asked.
“I haven’t the slightest idea, and I thought I was never going to find out, but one never knows, do one? As Fats Waller used to say.”
