Live feeds everywhere. Sirens. Cars grid locked. Some people running. Some frozen. One beach reporter stood barefoot in wet sand.
“Look at this!” he laughed too loudly. “The ocean’s gone! I mean … I’ve never seen anything like this. Guess we should’ve brought surfboards.”
His cameraman didn’t laugh. The horizon swallowed the sky.Wind hit first. Then sound. A roar so deep it felt like pressure inside the skull. The reporter’s grin fell apart.
“That’s … closer than I thought.”
In his earpiece, a producer screamed for him to run. He didn’t.He stared at it.
“I love you, Mom,” he whispered.
The wave filled the frame. Cut to black.
Louisiana — Aaron
Aaron stood in front of the television, breathing hard.
“Seven hundred feet?” he said. “That’s not possible.”
Nita was holding their youngest tightly.
“They said five hundred miles per hour,” she whispered.
“That's an exaggeration. It has to be.”
The screen showed buildings on the California coast — tiny against the wall of water. The wave didn’t break. It consumed.Like gravity changed direction.
Aaron’s voice rose. “It can’t just wipe out a state!”
Nita started crying openly now. “People are still there…”
Aaron snapped. “They were told to leave!”
“Not everyone can just leave!” she shouted back.
The children were crying now too. The roar on television grew louder. Aaron grabbed the remote and hurled it across the room.It shattered against the wall.
“Turn it back on!” Nita screamed.
He froze. The silence in the house was worse than the noise. He walked slowly to the TV. Picked up the broken remote pieces.Turned the volume up manually.
Impact
The first camera onshore caught the moment. The wave didn’t crash like in the movies. It folded. Like a skyscraper collapsing forward. Glass towers vanished. Homes lifted. Cars spun like toys. And then there was no California coastline.
Just brown, churning, devouring force.
The anchor stopped narrating. They just stared.
One whispered, “Oh my God.”
The screen flickered as the power grids failed. Feeds dropped one by one. Until only aerial footage remained. And then that too cut.
John’s phone buzzed. Activation notice. He didn’t move. Jessica was crying quietly now. Her father had stopped pretending to eat.
On screen, the words scrolled: “Estimated casualties: unknown.”
John whispered, almost to himself, “That was deliberate.”
Jessica looked at him. He wasn’t watching the screen anymore.He was thinking ahead. Someone did this on purpose. Not to destroy a city. But to break a nation. Outside, birds were still chirping. The sun was fully up.
In kitchens across America, coffee machines finished brewing. And in one morning, millions of people had just watched thousands die live. No music. No heroic speeches. Just water.And silence.