It had come in the night. No one had left town yet—no one was prepared for the sheer _might_ of the storm's wrath. Houses torn from their foundations, entire neighborhoods leveled, the earth littered with the debris of a super nature storm. Mass destruction had gone from an impossibility to an eventuality. Victoria and her husband had been asleep when the worst of it stormed down from the sky. Torrents of hail and rain poured down in merciless sheets, rattling the windows and doors like restless spirits, but they'd slept on, too tired from the baby's near constant crying to do much else than eat and sleep. They, like the others in town, hadn't given much thought to the upcoming forecast. The weatherman's warnings of a storm rivaling that of what they'd seen in a decade's time falling on deaf ears. _After all_, they'd shrugged, _why worry? _The forecast had a habit of exaggerating and the alarms would sound if it was a serious warning. Their mistake. It had come in the night. Victoria had just gotten the baby to sleep when she'd heard the distant rumblings of a thunderstorm brewing in the distance. She thought mildly of the weatherman's warning before disregarding it entirely, chalking the fear she felt up to a new mother's protective instinct. Oh, how she wished it was only her anxiety. Shattered windows and torn blinds, walls groaning dangerously under the weight of fallen trees. Distant shrieks and sirens echoed faintly, the worst of it swallowed by the storm itself. A baby's cry, a home demolished by Mother Nature's hand. Then silence. A long, terrible silence. It had come in the night. And no one was prepared.