Out in the toxic waters of the Gulf, a monster had honed in on American soil. Hurricane Amanda, as it might have been called if anyone had been left to name it, was bigger than anything on record and it surged due north, powered by a hot ocean current and violent winds full of radiation.

It had churned for weeks, drawing smaller storm systems in, and at its peak, the outlying winds were sustained at 300 mph, with gusts upwards of 375 mph. The storm surge was 25 feet high in places as it pushed into southern Georgia, and ten inches of rain fell from the angry sky in the first hour. If satellite pictures could have been accessed, they would have shown a storm that, at its height, covered over half the United States, with rainbands touching both Mexico and Canada.

Amanda moved northwest as she came ashore, submerging whole towns and leaving an immense path of destruction in her wake. The parts of the Bahamas, the Florida Keys, and Cuba that survived the War, were destroyed - flooded with high water that receded slowly, reluctantly giving back only half of what it had taken. The War had raised ocean levels as much as ten feet globally, and those lands already at or below sea level, were wiped off the map by Hurricane Amanda, becoming a part of the vast, angry ocean.

Nearly no one survived in these isolated havens of "fun in the sun", yet not all the victims came from the land. Boat after boat was flooded, rolled and sank, including battleships and Coast Guard vessels, which, having survived the War, could only drift on the tides without their engines and compasses. These people joined the millions of others already under the salty waves.

The eye of Hurricane Amanda hit Valdosta, GA head-on and moved inland like a wall of liquid destruction, leaving not a single structure or tree for ten miles inland. It was shocking to see a seven hundred foot long cargo ship sitting evenly atop a school building half its size. Upon closer inspection, it was not a container ship but a former battleship that had been turned into a floating hospital of aid; the boxes littering it not pods, but crushed cars and homes. The USNS Comfort had crossed the oceans on thousands of missions of mercy, but its days were over now; gone like the police, 911, lottery contests, and elections. Gone like Hollywood, American Idol, and the entire west coast. The Survivors, the War's desperate refugees, now have only the simplest of goals: they want to live, to continue, and if enough of the right people can find each other, they just might stand a chance.




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