by Captain Sammitch, Danny, thedoctor and I'm Not Mister Mxypltk
The waves were definitely picking up now. Not exactly tsunami-strength, the ever-enlarging breakers were still capable of doing some serious damage.
"I'm not sure we should be so close to the water," Phil Smith said to nobody in particular. The building wasn't much more than a maintenance shed on the beach, and its foundation went down maybe six feet. He could already see water seeping in around the perimeter of the floor. "We gotta move."
Danny Hearn chuckled. "I doubt anywhere is safe right now."
"No, I mean we gotta move out of here."
As if to accentuate Phil's point, one of the I-beams behind them groaned loudly as the weight of the building shifted subtly.
"I see your point," Danny conceded. "So where do we go?"
"I was hoping you were gonna tell me."
Danny and Phil rushed out of their temporary shelter as the roof caved in behind them. While the walls still stood, the ceiling was laying in a pile of debris on the floor.
"PHIL! WE DO A LAST MINUTE SWEEP OF THE BEACH, THEN HEAD INLAND!" Danny yelled over the roaring wind.
Phil just nodded.
"AND SEE IF YOU CAN FIND THE OTHERS, WHILE YOU'RE AT IT!"
Phil shook his head and pointed at his ear.
"THE OTHERS!" Danny yelled, leaning in closer.
Phil nodded and gave the thumbs up. Danny pointed at himself and then pointed behind them, southward down the beach. He pointed at Phil and then in the opposite direction.
"MEET BACK HERE IN TEN!" Danny yelled. They then separated, sweeping the beach to see if anyone else needed a hand, and to hopefully reunite with their team. Grimm and Dirk Bell were still out on the beach somewhere.
A moment later, Danny was standing at the foot of a huge tree. The area around it looked clear, until a woman struggled through the wind to walk toward him.
"YOU SHOULDN'T BE HERE!" Danny yelled at her. She yelled something back, but Danny couldn't hear.
"WHAT?" he replied. She pointed upward into the three. Following her finger, Danny looked up, until he noticed the object of her concern: a cat in the tree about fifteen feet up, clinging to a branch amidst the roaring wind.
"You've got to be kidding me..." Danny said.
Further up the beach, Phil walked slowly and carefully through the wind. However, whereas other people could be thrown off-balance by the wind, and have to struggle to remain upright, Phil remained firmly rooted to the ground.
He came across a car and figured it had been abandoned there when the storm moved in. A slightly closer inspection, though, revealed the movement of a figure inside the car. He peered into the window and noticed a teenager huddled in the back seat looking scared. Phil tapped on the window. "You okay?" he mouthed.
The teenager cracked open the window slightly, and yelled out, "I CAN'T DRIVE THIS THING!"
"GET OUT! I'LL HELP YOU TO SAFETY!"
The guy, a little tentatively, climbed out of the car and held onto Phil. Phil tried to walk back toward the nearest buildings, where they could wait until Chance returned with the hovercraft.
The teenager, however, was panicking, and his grip on Phil threw them both to the ground. Phil had been concentrating too much on what to do to keep them firmly planted upright. He didn't have all that much control, after all.
Phil looked up as a log the size of a car hurtled toward them, broken off from one of the trees that lined the beach.
Meanwhile, Danny was climbing up a tree toward a kitten, using koala claws to keep a grip on the wood. He sat at the base of the branch that held the kitten, calling out to it. "Here, kitty-kitty-kitty..." It looked at him but didn't move.
"Damn it," Danny said under his breath.
"You know, this would be funny if it wasn't so life-threatening..." Hal said.
"Shut... up... Hal."
Danny slowly made his way across the branch, keeping his claws firmly stuck so the wind didn't throw him. He was gradually making his way closer to the cat, until he was close enough to reach out and grab it. He retracted the claws on his hands and did so. The cat purred softly against his chest. "Awww..."
The wind suddenly grabbed him and threw him out of the tree. Danny fell and landed hard on the sand beneath him. "Ow..."
"We'll be feeling that in the morning, if you're alive."
The woman rushed to Danny's side. "MISTER WHISKERS! WHERE IS MISTER WHISKERS?"
Danny opened his arms and revealed Mister Whiskers, perfectly safe.
"MISTER WHISKERS! YOU'RE OKAY!" she yelled.
"I'm fine, thanks. And you're welcome," Danny said, standing up.
"Pardon?" the woman said, turning to face him.
"COME WITH ME! I'LL GET YOU TO SAFETY!" Danny yelled. She nodded and followed him. Danny made his way back to the meeting point he'd specified with Phil, but found that none of his teammates had made it back there.
"Eagle eyes," Danny said, and looked farther up the beach. Off in the distance, he saw Phil pull a guy from a car, then fall to the ground. He then saw a tree branch being thrown to the ground toward them.
"PHIL!" Danny yelled.
Phil took one glance upward and was scared out of his wits. The log fell hard. It rocketed toward Phil, where it would no doubt crush him and his rescuee.
But then the log stopped in mid-fall, mere inches above Phil. And it stayed there, hovering.
Phil and his companion rolled out of its way, and then the log finally completed its fall, hitting the ground.
Danny let out a sigh of relief, watching from further up the beach.
"DANNY! THE BEACH IS CLEAR NOW! LET'S GET OUT OF HERE!" Danny heard a voice from behind him yell. He turned to find Grimm approaching him.
A tired Dirk Bell made a sweep across the beach, looking for morons who couldn't get to shelter. His body was exhausted. He was running on all cylinders to save the civilians of La Perdita. He spotted someone further down the shore.
As he got closer, the gunslinger noticed a man in his early twenties with long, unkempt and tangled hair and baggy pants. Dirk yelled for him to get to safety. The guy just stood there. Upon closer inspection, he could tell the man's eyes were glazed over.
"Man!" the guy finally cried out. "Did you see that cow? It was so trippy! It just swooshed around in the sky, man! It had a cape and everything! It was the baddest mother-fucking metahero ever, dude!" He would have continued, but the mushrooms growing out of his fingers distracted him.
"You know what?" Dirk responded. "I'm really going to enjoy this." And he did. The gunslinger's right fist impacted with the guy's face and cold-cocked him. As he shuffled across the beach with the unconscious hippie across his shoulders, a smile spread across his face.
Phil was not enjoying himself very much. After rescuing that kid from the trapped car, he had gotten separated from Danny and Grimm, and he was now standing on the beach, with the kid crouched on the ground a few yards behind him.
"Hey, mister!" the kid yelled. "What's going on?"
Phil ignored him. He was looking out to sea, and what he saw was not encouraging at all.
"What do we do?" the kid persisted.
Waves. Massive breakers were rolling in. Phil could see the water pulling back a bit, a sure sign that some monster surf was coming.
"You get off the beach, and quick," Phil replied at last.
He wrenched a life preserver and its rope off an abandoned lifeguard chair lying on the ground. Phil hurled the life ring, Frisbee-style, toward a concrete post in the parking lot nearby. Phil nudged the flying ring a bit with his mind and was rewarded with a distant thunk as it landed perfectly on the post, leaving a decent length of rope behind. Phil picked up the rope and handed one end to the kid. "Pull yourself along with this," he instructed him. "Get to the parking lot, then run to the hospital."
"But what about you?" the kid shouted over the storm.
"I'm all right," Phil reassured him. "Get going."
The kid scrambled off, holding the rope for support. Phil looked up and down the beach. Seeing no one, his attention returned to the incoming waves. Without question, these babies would be severe.
No telling what they might carry with them, he thought. Driftwood, burning oil, pieces of ships, anything. Well, anything except a date for tonight.
Phil realized there must be enough power in those waves to wipe out a decent-sized chunk of the island. A lot of folks could die from this. I guess somebody better try to do something about these waves. But if they did, there'd be almost no way to save themselves. It's friggin' Mission Impossible! Sounds like fun.
The basement of the MBL Consulting complex was beginning to get crowded. Several of the team members had brought in many of the locals who had no idea what to do in this situation. "You'd think people on a Caribbean island would have a little more experience with hurricanes," Dirk said as he dropped the hippie down on the floor.
Grimm had also brought in some people also, though Dirk doubted that he had to punch them in order to get unconscious. The beach hippie began to rouse from his fist induced slumber. One look at Grimm made him start screaming at the top of his lungs and clawing his way across the floor away from the skull-headed punker.
"Oh, my God! It's a demon! He's comin' for me! Man, this was some bad shit I got a hold of. It ain't supposed to be doin' this." He began to sob as a puddle formed on the floor.
"Sure as hell beats cable," Dirk said as he began to walk upstairs.
"Where are you going?" Dr. Henry Quantos asked.
"To my room. There's something that I've got to get."
"It's not safe up there."
"I'm a big boy. I can take care of myself. You worry about Trippy Longstockings, there." The gunslinger left the basement and climbed the stairs to his room.
"Man, those roots the natives sold me really fucked me up," the hippie lamented.