Speed Reading Made Easy: With Exclusive Phrase-Formatted Practice Exercises by David Butler

Author:David Butler [Butler, David]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: David Butler
Published: 2016-06-23T16:00:00+00:00

Excerpted from

THE FLOOD

by David Sachs

Copyright © March 5, 2015 by David Sachs

Reprinted by permission of David Sachs

A man leaned over a power auger, listening to the motor echo over the snow. Behind him, a fragile tent stood out on the wide white landscape. Inside the shelter, the two scientists examined ice samples. They searched for clues in a 65-million-year-old puzzle, the great die-off of dinosaurs and half the species on earth.

One day, the ground shook.

The table in the scientists’ shelter vibrated and slid towards the wall. The lamps swung from the roof. There was a booming noise from outside.

The world began to lean, until the table danced across to the opposite wall. Then the world flipped, the lights went out, and the sound of tearing filled the tumbling shelter.

They were the first to die.

It was a different world to wake to.

Travis Cooke was a paramedic and when he slept, coming off a long night shift, he still heard the ambulance siren in dreams. It confused him to be awakened by the noise. Sirens of all types, coming from all sides. His blurry eyes set on the bottle of sleeping pills and found their focus.

The clock on the nightstand said 7:15 a.m. He looked out the window and thought of zero hour. The streets of Brooklyn were filled with men, women and children running and cars almost at a standstill, horns honking in desperation. The end of the world. Terror. Terrorists, he thought.

Stressful and high-intensity events were his work. The reaction from his body should have been immediate. Instead, he was sluggish from the pills, uncoordinated. He fell from the bed. He thought of his son and ex-wife as he came to his feet. He turned on the TV as he began to dress. Before he could change the channel to the news station, he heard the president’s voice.

“… urge you to move inland…”

The picture came a moment after the sound. President Crawford was in an unfamiliar room. His seal was on the floor, and a flag stood next to the desk, but it was not the Oval Office.

“… as far as possible. This is a national emergency, an international emergency. The tsunami will be reaching Florida in under four hours, and will reach New York City by late this afternoon, before five o’clock, according to the best estimates we have right now. This will not be a survivable event. The National Guard will be directing transport airships to major hospitals. We ask all of those with cars to leave the coast immediately. We have asked that all transit companies, buses, trains, and airlines cancel all scheduled routes to assist in the evacuation process. We face a dark period in the next twenty-four hours.”

The pause seemed to last for hours. The president was saying something he knew would cause panic, possibly worldwide. That was the first thought that came to Travis.

“In other countries, tens of thousands may already have been killed. Only by acting quickly can we avoid losing hundreds of thousands.

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