The Law of Averages

Book 2: Chapter 113: Unnatural Disaster

Dan forced both would-be thieves to pose for pictures, holding up both their company identification badges and driver's licenses. There was some grumbling and general unwillingness, but neither men were about to try and pick a fight. Thieves they might be, but they weren't violent ones. Dan also kept the laptop and hard drive in his hammer-space, if only to prevent another attempt at theft. He figured he could turn both in to the police once the current crisis had ended.

Hurricane Victor seemed little inclined to let up, and the conditions were only worsening. Dan had little worry for the building; it was a secondary shelter location, and thus incredibly fortified. Unfortunately, conditions outside had become too dangerous for travel in anything other than an emergency. The winds were a constant swirling maelstrom, and the rain was just short of blinding. When Dan found the stairs to the roof, he wasn't even able to open the door against the wind.

So, the criminals were stuck here. That was fine, they'd survive. Dan checked the emergency supplies of the building before he left, and was almost surprised to find them intact, if slightly diminished. It was still more than enough to sustain two men, so Dan herded them into an office space above ground, then returned to the stadium for his next assignment.

"SPEAR Teams have engaged with the enemy," he was told by a grim faced official.

'The enemy' being a vague, unhelpful term used as a substitute for real information. Who was attacking? The enemy! Who was at fault? The enemy! Why is there a hurricane parked over the city? The enemy!

"Unfortunately, we have been informed that the storm may not disperse upon their inevitable success," the official continued his briefing, his words bringing dismay to the attending volunteers. "Victor is officially classified as a Category Five hurricane, but wind speed is only increasing. Depending on how long it takes to neutralize the enemy, the hurricane's status may be upgraded." The man wrung his hands nervously, as the room broke out into angry mutters.

Unlike Dan's home dimension, Category Six hurricanes were very much a thing, even if they were few and far between. The designation was reserved for hurricanes that both reached a certain level of expected damage, and were generally regarded as man-made. It was a declarative statement by the government that a given storm could not be considered a natural disaster. Dan, who felt like he was growing more cynical by the day, now suspected it was a way to deflect blame when relief efforts were not up to the task.

Out of the seven Category Six hurricanes that had hit the east coast, only three had ever been proven to be influenced by a human. Hurricane Victor, however, was an almost textbook case of a power manifestation. Hurricanes of this strength didn't just spring into existence over the course of a few hours, and the fact that it was growing even larger and more violent after making landfall was almost certainly in direct defiance of physics.

None of these things made swallowing the news any easier.

"What that means for us," the official continued, raising his quaking voice above the restless crowd, "is that regardless of the outcome, we must contend with the hurricane until it burns itself out. Galveston's emergency shelters are rated for Category Six storms, and we are confident in our infrastructure. We must continue to direct survivors towards these shelters, despite worsening conditions outside. Be sure to study your maps, and secure your compasses. Expect little to no satellite coverage; navigation will be done purely through memory. Cell towers are still operational, and should withstand the worst of the wind and rain. Should you encounter trouble, call for help."

The man gestured towards the top of the stadium, in what Dan thought might be the announcer's box. He could see through the clear glass that it was occupied by dozens of men and women, all speaking on phones.

"Emergency lines are being flooded with calls. You will each be dispatched to deal with situations that suit your abilities. If you feel yourself incapable, speak up!" These last words were barked as a command, as the official's voice finally firmed up. "Do not go out into the storm unless you have confidence that you will return! There are lives depending on your actions, and incompetence will get yourself, and everyone else, killed! Lastly, be wary of debris. Current wind gusts within the city are in excess of one-hundred-fifty miles per hour. If you are struck by debris without some kind of defensive upgrade, you will almost certainly be killed. Likewise, anyone without some means to anchor themselves to the ground, or otherwise resist the wind, are encouraged to stay indoors and find some other method of offering assistance. Your individual assignments should be arriving shortly via text. Good luck."

Dan was forced to pick his arrival points much more carefully now that the hurricane had arrived in earnest. He could easily be thrown off his feet by the intense gusts of wind, and the streets were completely flooded. He trudged towards his objective from the relative safety of a building, jumping from one to the next as needed. This zig-zagging route was hardly efficient, but he hadn't been able to find a good picture of his destination and had been forced to improvise.

There was an apartment complex in the distance, one of those sturdy concrete constructions, reinforced to withstand anything nature could throw at it. It wasn't an official shelter, but about a dozen families had holed up inside. Evacuation of those numbers was all but impossible at this point, and they were in a relatively safe area besides. Most were residents, but they'd taken in several more refugees who had been unable to make it to a designated hurricane shelter in time. Unfortunately, many of these newcomers were walking wounded, either from flying debris, or wind-assisted falls. There was a doctor present, but his job was not simple. The apartment complex had immediately run out of the scant medical supplies that could be salvaged from first aid kits, and Dan's job was to resupply them.

He peered up at the apartment buildings through his binoculars, carefully scanning for an entry point. Most of the windows were covered by heavy hurricane shutters, but a few had failed to deploy. He chose one such room, and willed himself inside. He appeared on top of a couch, inside a room on the third floor. A quick glance around, and the lack of surprised screams, told him the room was empty. He quickly left the little studio apartment and stepped out into the hallway.

The refugees were occupying a series of four-person apartments on the fifth floor. The hallways were not fully enclosed, and the sound of the hurricane was almost deafening. Violent gusts of wind blasted through the corridor, accompanied by splashes of rain. Dan weathered the worst of it as he made his way towards a nearby staircase. The stairs were likewise not fully enclosed, wrapped in concrete barriers with about two feet of space between flights. It was more than enough to leave him drenched in mere moments.

Dan eschewed climbing, and willed himself up one flight at a time. The flat landings between floors were likewise drenched, and he had to carefully maintain his balance each time. It took four jumps before he could squeeze into the fifth-floor hallway, and he followed the room numbers around the complex until he located his target. Dan knocked on the door, hard, but immediately realized it was futile. The noise of the hurricane was overwhelming, but even with the storm raging in his ears, he could hear the small army of people moving inside the room.

He poked inside with his veil, automatically checking for traps and people with guns. He found neither, only a large number of people spread out across the living room floor, laying on crude stretchers and covered in blood-soaked rags. Dan had seen enough, and he returned to the stadium's supply room. He snagged a pile of basic medical supplies: surgical towels, gloves, cleaning supplies, antibiotics, bandages and Quikclot. He dumped the supplies into t-space, then took another armful. He appeared inside the apartment he'd scouted without waiting for permission.

Dan's sudden appearance drew shouts of alarm from those adults still capable of standing, but between his orange vest and obvious supplies, he was immediately welcomed inside. He handed out what he'd acquired, frowning at the sheer number of injured. There were stories from every survivor, each worse than the last. One family had attempted to drive to safety, only to catch an enormous tree branch to the front of their car. The father had barely managed to drag his family to the nearby apartment building. One man had bunkered down too close to a window, and had been sprayed with glass shards when it caught a stray projectile. A married couple had been taken off their feet by a sudden gust, and hurled down a street, desperately clinging to each other.

There was only one doctor, an old black man who was covered in blood up to his elbows. Dan put his first-aid training to good use as he followed the doctor's instructions. He returned to the stadium twice more for supplies, and drugs, as problems cropped up and were solved patient-by-patient. Dan brought food and water from the stadium's plentiful stores, and distributed them between the three apartments being used as impromptu shelters.

The other apartment residents were in much better shape. They'd placed all the wounded in a single room, so that the doctor could more easily attend them. Almost all of the injured were newcomers, who had braved the storm to their own peril. The actual residents were more or less unharmed. They'd simply drawn the hurricane shutters and sat tight. The apartment was new and sturdy, they reasoned, and not much different than a shelter. Why risk the hurricane, when they could just climb a few floors to stay above the flood zone?

Dan could admire the simple logic.

Treating the injured brought him a warm and fuzzy sense of accomplishment. He doubted any of them would have died without his intervention, but they certainly would have been in a great deal of pain. Infection was just as likely, and probably more of a threat than their wounds. Dan had spared them that. The thought put a cheerful spring in his step, and suddenly his damp clothes and chilled skin didn't seem so inconvenient.

He checked on each room before leaving, making sure they had what they needed. He stepped out of the last and into the turbulent hallway. The door shut behind him with a sort of finality. The job was done, time for the next. The storm rumbled in protest at his success. He felt the wind batter at his clothes, and the rain spray against his face. Dan felt something deeply primal in that moment, standing in the shadow of the hurricane. He listened to it rage and batter at the city, a massive, dark thing born from ancestral nightmares. What could mere men do against something so monstrously powerful?

He wanted to laugh at the errant thought. 'Mere men' had created the thing, had harnessed it and directed it. And 'mere men' were now fighting against it. Preparations had been made, contingencies had been enacted, and humanity was following through. Every single volunteer had come, knowing what they would face. They were battling the storm, and they weren't losing.

Dan was drawn to the edge of the hallway, to the staircase where he could view the sky. He looked up into the dark and stormy night, lit only by flashes of lightning and the refracted blur of endless rain. He grinned at the storm, promising himself that he would keep going, that he, too, wouldn't lose. He was about to turn away, to go to his next task, when he saw the flash.

Lightning crackled across the sky in a brilliant, blinding corona. Night turned to day in an instant, the color of the world going grayscale as Dan's eyes fought to keep up. And in the sky, in the midst of the enormous, branching bolts, tiny figures clashed. It was just a moment, almost a trick of the eyes, but Dan knew what he had seen. He blinked hard, trying to ignore the spots in his vision as he stared up. The thunder arrived, a crackling kaboom that sent his ears to ringing, but he kept looking, kept searching.

Lightning flashed again, and a dark shape was illuminated. It was distant, but too large to be a person. Crackling bolts flickered across it, before another earth-shattering boom shook the air, and the shape careened out of the sky, trailing smoke and fire. Dan watched with wide eyes as what must have been an aircraft plowed through a building, and cratered into the ground some distance away.

Then the lightning faded, and darkness enveloped the city once more.