The Tide

Chapter 2

"My name is Jack and-" 

"So, Jack. Have you seen the beast?" An unsettlingly energized news reporter shoves his mic in my face. 

"N-no, I only heard it, just like the rest of you." Sirens blared loudly around me and helicopters flying in to give people medical help were the only things I could hear, and I was having a hard time focusing on the man with the mic in front of me. Wyoming had just been hit by the monster from Seattle, and it's effects were already starting to get classified as unrepairable. 

"And what a horrifying thing to hear! Tell me, Jack, what did you feel when the monster cried out like that?" when he asked me this, I felt my stomach drop a bit. How was I supposed to explain this to him? He had heard it too, he must've known that the question he was asking me was almost impossible to answer. 

"Uh It was sort of like.. erm.. the way I felt was-" I felt myself starting to get fidgety, the lingering feeling of dread still there as I tried to remember the sound. It felt as if my mind was directly blocking out what it actually was, people had been calling it a cry but.. 

"McKinley, you're gonna wanna come look at this." a woman runs up to the reporter, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him away. 

"What is it?! I'm interviewing a witness here-" The reporter (apparently named "McKinley") nearly fell over as the woman dragged him along. 

"A-actually! Like I said I didn't see it, I only-" I do my best to try to correct him, but honestly? What was the point? To him I think he saw this whole thing as just another news story. The big smile on his face was actually kind of creepy. It felt like he didn't want to be on the same level as me, y'know? Like.. like he wanted to feel like he was just reporting on the situation, not actually being a part of it. To be honest, I would've felt a lot more comfortable if he had dropped the news reporter schtick and explained what he experienced. 

"Holy shit.." I heard some conversation behind me. 

"McKinley we're still rolling, you need to-" I heard a gasp and a loud cracking noise that sounded like a combination of glass and plastic shattering against the Earth "Oh dear lord.." 

I quickly turned around to see what was going on, and in an instant I felt my entire body go cold. The path of destruction the monster had left behind now had heavy rain clouds hanging above it. Big grimy yellow clouds which rained harder than any rain cloud I had seen before. The sound of the rain pattering against the ground drowned out any other sound... Wait- Wait no not rain.. 

Hail? 

Yeah, hail! It was hail.. each chunk of ice slammed it's body against the ground and I began to realize just how loud the clouds actually were. It was like there were tiny explosions hitting the Earth, as if the planet itself was trying to destroy where the monster had desecrated it with it's presence. I make a break for it, scrambling myself away from the oncoming destruction. I remember, in that moment, feeling like there was nothing stopping me. I could run freely without anything stopping me, I had no energy, I had no shortness of breath, nothing. 

"Where are my keys! God, fuck! Where are they?" as I keep running I hear a woman scream as she frantically tries to find the keys to her car. "Please! I'm begging you just let me get into my car!" the woman seemed to be in a frenzy, as I looked behind me I started to see why. People were actually being hailed to death behind me. The hail was  them hard enough to leave large gaping holes in their body, causing them to become riddled with holes and falling to the ground dead. I had no idea that ice could hit somebody hard enough to actually break through human tissue like that, bone even..? The clouds were getting closer now and I don't think that I could outrun it much longer. 

"Ma'am! I don't think your car is going to be that safe!" I ran to her and grabbed her by the wrist, hoping to get her somewhere safer. 

"Let go of my hand! I don't want to follow you, man! Let me go!" The woman yanked her hand away as the explosive sounds of the hail grew closer. I was starting to panic, unsure if I should leave the woman and run or hope that she'd let me in her car in order to have some sort of safety. I saw her grab the keys to her car and throw the door wide open. In a split moments decision I follow her into the car to hide inside. 

"I-I'm sorry ma'am! My house is too far away for me to make it and I-" the woman shuffles under the seats of her car with alarming speed, after I crawled my way into the back seat I followed suit. 

"If this were any other situation I'd throw you out of this car!" she screams.