They won't stop barking. And then the earth shrugs. 8.9 on the Richter scale. It's the world's biggest earthquake since Lisbon in 1755, and it doesn't hit California or Japan or Mexico, but New Madrid, Missouri, a sleepy town on the Mississippi River. For hundreds of miles around, dams burst, engulfing entire counties in tidal waves of mud and debris.
Cities collapse into piles of brick and shards of glass.
Bridges twist and snap, spilling rush-hour traffic into rivers already swollen with bodies. Within minutes, there is nothing but chaos and ruin from St. Louis to Vicksburg, from Kansas City to Louisville. America's heartland has fallen into the nightmare known as the Rift - a fault line in the earth that wrenchingly exposes the fractures in American society itself. The highly anticipated sequel to last year's Nebula nominee Metropolitan , from the author of Knight Moves , Hardwired , and the Drake Maijstral Series. Williams home page offers excerpts from many of his works.