"Dean Wesley Smith - VOR 03 - Island of Power" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Dean Wesley)

Stephanie only nodded as the deafening thunder filled the air around them.

Vast plumes of water shot into white light with each lightning strike on the ocean. And what had been
night had turned into the brightest day. The air itself seemed to glow.

“What’s happening?” Stephanieshouted, her voice barely audible between the intense claps of thunder.

He had no idea what was happening. Plenty of strange things had been occurring all over the planet since
that awful moment when the Earth was drawn into the Maelstrom, but Hank had never been this close to
any of them.Nothing like this.

“I don’t know!” he shouted. “It must be something from the Maelstrom.”

It was the only thing he could think of. Nothing like this ever happened naturally on Earth. What else
could it be but the Maelstrom?

During the first days of the Change, the Earth had suffered myriad storms, cataclysms, and general
disasters. A large chunk of United Africa had even vanished, but things had eventually settled into a kind
of normality. Of course, that didn’t mean nothing else was happening. It just meant it wasn’t getting
reported to the general populace. Even he and Stephanie, working at a top-secret Union research facility,
knew only what related to their own projects.

Lightning and thunder pounded the beach around them.

Another strike of lightning hit the hill above them, covering them with even more sand. He felt like they
were in the middle of a giant battle of the gods. Everything was shaking.

Sand rattled down the slope above them.

Ocean water sprayed them as the wind drove it inland.

Lightning continued to strike all around, and thunder rocked the ground.

They didn’t dare move.
Hank felt like he didn’t dare even breathe.

He held Stephanie, and she held him back as the world around them went totally and completely crazy.

Out on the horizon, through the bright flashes, Hank thought he could see a dark shape floating
downward in the bright light.

“Over the ocean!” he shouted into Stephanie’s ear. “Look.”

Stephanie nodded. She was watching it, too.

The black shape was like a hole in the white light.

Slowly, like it was drifting down on a slight breeze, the hole in the light settled into the ocean, just short
of the horizon.