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“Radio tower’s down,” Jeremiah said.
Christ.
Time slowed down to a crawl.
Every minute felt hellishly long.
The tail end of the cyclone was so much worse. Jeremiah had said it would be, and he wasn’t wrong.
The noise. The roar. The sound of hell unleashed.
For as long as I lived—if I lived through this day—I would never forget how loud it was.
It started to mess with my head. Like I couldn’t hear anything else but the deafening roar, and then like I couldn’t hear it at all.
Like I’d gotten used to it. Complacent. Like the utter horror outside wasn’t happening at all.
Even the girls had stopped crying some time ago and now just stared blankly into the room. I think I preferred them crying.
Suri was sitting up now, still tucked into Doreen’s side, still clutching Bruce. With just a hollow look of defeat.
It felt surreal.
Like the worst possible thing to happen wasn’t happening at all.
I wondered how my family was.
If they were okay.
Did the cyclone-proof cellar hold?
Were they hurt?
My heart was thumping so hard it was painful.
“You okay?” Jeremiah asked.
I nodded, making myself let go of his shirt. I hadn’t realised I was even holding it, but my hands hurt from clenching them. My whole body ached from being so tense.
He took my hands in his and rubbed where my fingernails had bitten into my palm. “They’ll be okay,” he said, somehow knowing where my mind had gone.
Maybe he was thinking about his dad back in Melbourne.
I nodded again. “I wish I knew for sure.”
Then something occurred to me...
I looked over at Shane and Lindsey. “You drove here from the newsroom?”
Lindsey still had her hands over her ears, but Shane nodded.
“What was the damage like?”
Shane gave a small shake of his head, as if tellin’ me not to ask.
“What was the damage?” I asked again, yelling this time. “The foreshore? The city centre?”
Shane glanced at Doreen and Suri, then at Jeff and his girls, and finally back to me. “Trees down, roofs gone. Flooding. Smashed windows. Some houses were ripped open. Some houses were flattened.”
