Foreshock, Southern California, 0917 hrs. Magnitude 3.6

It began at nearly six in the morning, as far as Evan could figure. Ralph, his 197-lb Mastiff shot up from his customary spot at the foot of the bed and howled. Keened was more like it, thought Evan. He had never heard the gentle brute make that sound and he'd owned - or been owned by - the gargantuan dog for the 12 years of his life. Something in the sound of Ralphie's howl struck a chord deep in Evan's spine. A primal place, a terror place, a place most people no longer remember their bodies even have.

Once he'd calmed Ralph down, Evan set about beginning his day. As he opened the back door to let the lumbering beast out for his morning constitutional, he felt there was something odd, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what. He shook his head as he admonished his brindle buddy not to dig in the yard and went into the kitchen to make his morning coffee. Not that I need it, he thought to himself, I'm as jittery as if I'd had a whole pot already. That chord was still jangling up and down his spine like the sound a high-tension wire makes when struck with something like the boom of a high-lift.

It wasn't until almost nine, as he parked his truck and set off across what seemed like fourteen acres of parking lots that he realized part of what had him so very edgy: there were no birds. No bird songs, not silhouettes of gulls criss-crossing the brilliant blue sky, shrieking their hunger across the landscape below, no sandpipers, no pelicans, nothing. Not a single humming bird, even, to be seen. Weird, he thought, then tried to focus on the mind-numbing boredom of the day ahead.

Evan Farms, a sturdy, 30-something outdoors-type with sandy hair and eyes almost habitually wrung up in a squint because he refused to wear a hat or sunglasses, was an accomplished bio-chemist and researcher. Although he lived an unassuming life, Doctor Farms was the group lead on reasearch into life-prolonging agents funded by the government. Although focused more on battlefield survivability, Evan had discovered some disturbing side-effects in some of his virus-based research - he'd been able to keep a lab rat, fatally injured in a bizarre fight in its communal cage, alive using one of his viral compunds - C-313e. The only problem was, he couldn't figure out why the rat was still animated and why, if it was able still to move, breath and eat, it hadn't yet begun to heal.

And what it ate ... well, Evan had an endless supply of insects to feed the creature, especially since it would not even go near the processed pellets normally fed the laboratorie's population.

Evan began his day, passing through layer upon layer of protective measures designed to keep the sub-microscopic critters he worked with inside, to the lab to begin observations of test subjects when the first actual temblor occurred, shaking dust from the vents overhead and rattling the huge triple-thick plate glass panes which separated different areas of the lab.

Great, Evan thought as he looked around to make sure his assistants were not harmed. An earthquake. What a way to start the morning.

The first foreshock was at 0917. A little less than two hours before armageddon, as far as Evan and his lab would be concerned ...