Publisher's Synopsis
Years later, bizarre, terrifying events begin to occur. At a street intersection in Oakland, California, everything within a large circular area--streetcars, autos, people, pavement--suddenly vanishes without a sound, during a flash of bright, multi-colored light, leaving a vastly deep hole with perfectly smooth sides as though cut with a knife. A wave of something toxic spreads outward, causing people to die of dehydration in a matter of minutes. In a remote rangeland, an entire mountain and 2000 cattle similarly disappear. An enormous fireball cuts a large trench across the United States starting at the Pacific Coastal town of Santa Cruz, California, going all the way to the Atlantic coast and continuing to the "Sargasso Sea" in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, where it hovers and draws up water continuously.