The plate-glass windows of Store #04 bowed inward at eighteen hertz.
It was an infrasonic vibration, too low for human ears to register as a pitch, but violent enough to rattle the fillings in Julian Vance’s teeth. The glass panes rippled like stagnant pool water struck by a falling stone, reflecting the blurred, swimming red neon of the storefront sign.
Across the grocery aisles, rows of canned soup and glass jars of instant coffee vibrated against their metal shelves, buzzing with an eerie, collective hum. Inside the refrigerated drink cases, the liquid in hundreds of plastic soda bottles formed concentric standing waves that pulsed in time with the foundation.
On the rubber counter mat of Register 1, the red helium-neon barcode laser twitched and scattered into a trembling ruby fan.
BWWWWOOOOM.
The sound arrived through the floorboards, traveling through thirty feet of harbor bedrock and river silt.
BWWWWOOOOM.
Two distinct blasts. Heavy, mournful, and ancient.
