"And Then They Came..." (Chapter LXXIII)
Chapter LXXIII The rain was falling so hard that as quickly as the wipers brushed it away, just as quickly the windshield became awash with water again. To make matters worse, night had fallen. Its soupy darkness, combined with the total absence of lights, the cloud-covered sky, and the torrential downpour made it nearly impossible to see much of what was happening outside. The deluge had transformed the street into a stream, the storm’s thick raindrops pelting the right side
"And Then They Came..." (Chapter LXXII)
Chapter LXXII Jeannie stepped out of the closet and raised her two hands, shaking so badly that she could not hold them still. Nour watched her with quiet fascination, while Da’ud stood by the kitchen’s door, taking periodic peeks at the backyard. Enrique smiled, and with one of his hands, beckoned her to approach him. Jeannie hesitated, standing by the closet’s door. “Mom!” Gabriel shouted, and both children ran to where she stood, embracing her by her legs. Jeannie continue
"And Then They Came..." (Chapter LXXI)
Chapter LXXI Lucas awoke with several of the storage boxes still piled on top of him. “…expected a lot more of a fight from you,” a man’s voice beyond the boxes was saying. Someone removed one of the cardboard containers from his stomach. He tried to raise his head to see the person helping him, but the whole world seemed to whirl around him, forcing him to desist from his effort Lucas’ view of the man addressing him was blocked by a large box, “The one thing I would like to
"And Then They Came..." (Chapter LXX)
Chapter LXX The wind had picked up considerably since Hassam and Rosario had left the others, nearly half an hour before. The sky was crammed with enormous, ominously heavy clouds that had erased most of the sunlight and transformed the late afternoon into an early twilight. In the back yard of the house invaded by Enrique’s group, two small palm trees were mercilessly being whipped and pounded by the storm’s unrelenting fury, its few remaining fronds flapping wildly as if ov
"And Then They Came..." (Chapter LXIX)
Chapter LXIX Jeannie had opened the kerosene can and was unscrewing the kerosene lamp’s fuel cap when the loud clatter of breaking glass startled her out of her labour. She was sitting on the kitchen’s floor, legs akimbo, a few feet away from where Ojeda waited for Lucas to emerge from the maid’s room. Her two small children, Sophia & Gabriel, were sitting by her side, watching her work. The shattering noise, coming from the house’s second floor, was followed by the sound of
"And Then They Came..." (Chapter LXVIII)
Chapter LXVIII The day deteriorated at breakneck speed. Twilight came suddenly and prematurely, long before the rest of the hurricane made itself felt. Heavy clouds dimmed the entire neighborhood, enveloping everything in a murky shadow. Lucas, Jeannie, and Ojeda stared with dread at the sharp contrast between the threatening landscape in the southeast, where Fay’s expanding presence was already manifesting itself, and the ever narrowing strip of blue sky to the north, where
"And Then They Came..." (Chapter LXVII)
Chapter LXVII Juan Romany padded on his slippers to his front entrance door, and looked through its peephole, wondering who would be calling at his house an hour before the hurricane was due to strike. He saw a man in his mid thirties waiting patiently on the other side. "Who is it, Juan?” his wife Mildred asked him as she approached her husband from the kitchen, wiping her wet hands on her apron. “It’s a young man,” the septuagenarian replied. “I don’t know him.” “Be careful
"And Then They Came..." (Chapter LXVI)
Chapter LXVI Lucas sat in his house’s porch, after watching the last weather bulletin in the Weather Channel. The satellite image of the hurricane shown on TV was probably three times, maybe four, the size of Puerto Rico. Like a giant buzz-saw, the mammoth weather phenomenon had whirled onto the outlying islands of Vieques and Culebras—two Puerto Rican municipalities—and its outermost rim was already starting to shred the southeastern corner of the main island. However, in Gu
"And Then They Came..." (CHAPTER LXV)
Chapter LXV “The police is here!” Rosario announced as he hurriedly walked into the room. “There must be at least twenty of them in the lobby, and I’m sure that they’ve surrounded the hotel. They should be here in a matter of minutes!” After going for some coffee downstairs, Rosario had been getting into the elevator to return to Enrique’s room when he had spotted dozens of heavily armed policemen, wearing helmets and body armor, stream into the hotel’s lobby. As the elevator
