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The entire province in Indonesia had been almost wiped off the planet back in ’04. I’d been only a little kid at the time, but peoplestilltalked about that tsunami. It had killed over 160,000 people in Banda Aceh alone...
Jeremiah turned his chair around so he could stare at her, his mouth open.
Yeah, he knew of it too, which wasn’t at all surprising given it was one of the most violent weather events of our time.
She smiled when she saw the recognition on our faces. “I moved here after that.”
I couldn’t even imagine...
“Jesus. And now you’re facing another natural disaster.”
She nodded with a long sigh. “What else can we do, huh? We just have to do our best.”
“Have you been through a cyclone before?” I asked.
Suri nodded. “Yes, but smaller. Not as big as this one.”
That didn’t instil much confidence in me. But the truth was, not many Cat 5s had ever touched down in Australia, and until they’d changed the rating system, there had beennobigger cyclones than Hazer.
And Doreen had lived through Cyclone Tracey. Together they had some experience and neither one seemed the type to panic, so maybe Jeremiah and I were in great company.
The video feed looked ominous though.
“Okay, here it comes,” I said, turning my laptop around so they could see the screen. “Here’s the rain.”
And sure enough, like any beast of that size, dark clouds crept slowly toward my balcony. Wind and a wall of rain marched right at us. Widespread and low, the sheer size of the front of it...
Jeremiah’s eyes met mine, solemn and sorry. “Hazer’s here.”
I gave Suri’s arm a squeeze. “You okay?”
She gave me a grim nod. “It’s not so much the rain that falls that scares me,” she said. “But the water that rises.”
Christ.
I couldn’t even imagine.
“Let’s take one last look at daylight,” Suri said, getting to her feet and pulling Doreen to hers. “Come on, Dori. God knows when we’ll see blue sky again.”
I stood up and held my hand out to Jeremiah. “Come on. You too.” He winced at the dash panel, so I took his arm and pulled him up. “Ten seconds won’t hurt.”
I dragged him to the front porch where Doreen and Suri already stood. They were looking back out over the carport, to the north. The clouds were almost above us, encroaching on the blue sky like smoke.
We were only a few kilometres from my house, so it wouldn’t take long to reach us. But the winds came first. The trees in the street began to jostle, and the world was eerily quiet.
“Can you hear that?” I asked. “No birds. No noise at all, actually.”
It was eery and unnatural, and it felt like the whole world was holding its breath.
Doreen put her arm around Suri, as if the silence of the birds was something she’d lived through before, spoken about before.
Before the tsunami.
I put my arm around Jeremiah’s waist and rested my chin on his shoulder, and we watched as the first drops of rain began to spatter their way toward us.
Then it began to hammer down.
And the rain just didn’t stop.
