Everyone knew it was coming but no one was sure just when it would happen. It had been over a hundred years since the last big earthquake had decimated the San Francisco Bay Area and another massive tremor was long overdue. The slumbering beast that is the Hayward Fault finally awoke on an ordinary October morning, catching the 7 million people of Bay Area by surprise as they tended to their routine affairs. Will seventeen-year-old Kayla Hendley, airline pilot Burt Weaver, precocious second grader Gwen Mills and many others live through the convolutions of the angry earth? Surviving the savage pummeling will have more to do with blind luck than any careful preparations. The lives of ordinary people will be forever changed by the colossal natural disaster that is The Beast.