The Swarm

by Frank Schätzing

  Slowly she looked up and saw the wave.

  The hurry was over. She knew it was too late. She'd lived fast, and she'd die fast too. At least, she hoped it would be fast. At times she'd asked herself what it would be like to die, what went through a person's mind when their fate had been sealed and they knew it was time. I've come for you, Death would say. You've got five more seconds, so have a last think, whatever von like. Look back on your life, if you wish.

  Didn't they say that as your car flipped over, or you fell from great height, that somehow, your life flashed before you, images from your childhood, your first love, like a 'best-of compilation?

  But the only thing Lund felt was fear that death would hurt her, and she'd suffer. She felt almost ashamed that it had had to end so pitifully. That she'd messed up.

  She watched as the tsunami crashed into Kare Sverdrup's restaurant, smashing it to pieces and surging onwards.

  The wall of water reached the car park.

  A few seconds later it was rushing up the hill.

  The shelf

  By the time the wave had reached the surrounding coastline, it had wrought untold damage on the shelf.

  The oil-rigs and platforms built near the break had disappeared along with the slope. That alone had cost the lives of thousands but it was merely a foretaste of what was to come. As the water surged forward, it formed a towering vertical front that grew taller as the water depth decreased. Under the force of the impact the struts of the platforms snapped like matchsticks. In less than fifteen minutes more than eighty had toppled into the sea. The problem wasn't so much the height of the wave – North Sea oil platforms were built to contend with forty-metre waves, which, statistically speaking, occurred once in a hundred years – but the combination of other factors.

  Even ordinary waves had been known to exert pressure of up to twelve tonnes per square metre – enough to rip out sections of harbour wall and deposit them in the centre of town, to throw sailing-boats into the air, and break a freighter in two. That was the impact of a wind-generated wave. The force of a tsunami was a different matter. Next to a tsunami of similar amplitude, even the most ferocious surface wave seemed gentle as a lamb.

  The tsunami triggered by the landslide reached the middle of the shelf at a height of twenty metres, low enough to pass beneath the platforms' decks.

  The force with which it hit the pilings was all the more lethal.

  Oil-platforms, like ships and any other construction destined for long-term exposure to the sea, were expected to withstand certain stresses, which were measured in years. If the defining criterion was the forty-metre wave, then engineers designed the platform to survive the impact of the swell. Since the wave was expected only once a century, the platform – according to the workings of a none-too-confidence-inspiring logic – was deemed to have satisfied the hundred-year standard. That meant, statistically, that it was fit to weather a century of waves. Of course, no one expected it to last a hundred years being battered by forty-metre waves. In fact, it might not even survive one major surge. Monster waves weren't really the problem: the damage was done by everyday wear and tear caused by ordinary waves and currents. Platforms and other technical structures soon developed an Achilles' heel, although its location was anyone's guess. If a weak spot on a platform suffered the equivalent of fifty years' stress within the first decade, an ordinary wave might suddenly pose a risk.

  Figures couldn't solve the dilemma. The statistics and mean values used in marine engineering described ideal scenarios, not what really happened. Averages might mean something to bureaucrats and engineers, but the sea had no truck with statistics: it was a succession of unpredictable circumstances and extremes. A particular stretch of water might have an average wave height often metres, but if you were hit by a one-off thirty-metre monster that statistically didn't exist, the average would be of precious little comfort: you would die.

  When the tsunami swept across the landscape of steel towers, it exceeded their maximum strain. Struts snapped, welded joints burst open and decks sagged. On the British side, where steel structures were the norm, practically every platform was smashed to pieces or fatally damaged by the impact.

  Years earlier Norway had switched to reinforced concrete pilings, which provided less of a target for the tsunami, but the outcome was no less calamitous: the wave bombarded the derricks with ships.

  Theoretically, most ships weren't equipped to deal with surface waves of more than twenty metres. The hull-girder stress was designed to cope with a maximum nominal wave height of sixteen and a half metres. In practice, things worked differently. In the mid-nineties rogue waves north of Scotland tore a hole the size of a house in the 300,000 tonne tanker Mimosa, but the ship got away. In 2001 a thirty-five-metre breaker nearly sank the cruise ship MS Bremen off the coast of South Africa – nearly. That same year, close to the Falklands, the Endeavour, ninety metres in length, fell victim to a phenomenon known to oceanographers as the 'Three Sisters' – three freak waves, each thirty metres high, in quick succession. 'The Endeavour was severely damaged, but she made it back to port.

  In most cases, though, the ships that met with freak waves were never seen again. Each monster wave would push a deep trough in front of it, a chasm that the vessel would sink into, bow or stern first. If the waves were far enough apart, there'd be time for it to rise up and scale the crest. When the wavelength was shorter, events took a different turn. 'The ship would pitch forwards into the trough, only to be met head-on by the vertical front of the following wave. The vessel would be swallowed and buried under water. Even if it managed to rise up from the trough and start to ascend the crest, there was still a danger that the wave would be too high or too steep. Most of the time it was both. Extremely high and extremely steep. 'That meant attempting the impossible – scaling a vertical wall. Smaller vessels in particular would fall victim to waves whose height exceeded their length, but even ocean-going giants didn't always make it out of the trough and over the crest. 'The wave would flip them over and they would hit the water upside-down.

  Freak waves, generated by the interplay of currents and wind, could reach speeds of fifty kilometres an hour, but seldom more. That was enough to wreak havoc, but compared to the twenty-metre-high tsunami that was sweeping the shelf, a freak wave was a lame duck.

  Most of the tugs, tankers and ferries that had the misfortune to find themselves in the North Sea at that moment were thrown around like toys. Some collided, others were hurled against the concrete pillars of the platforms, or smashed against the loading buoys to which they'd been moored. Even reinforced concrete couldn't withstand the force of the impact. The giant structures began to collapse. The few left standing soon followed suit. Tankers, some fully laden with oil, collided and exploded, smothering the platforms with clouds of fire. Derricks were blown to pieces in a series of chain reactions. Burning debris was scattered over hundreds of metres. The tsunami tore the platforms from their foundations on the seabed and toppled them into the water. The devastation of the shelf took place just minutes after the wave had surged outwards from the site of the submarine slide on its way to the coastline around it.

  Each incident alone was a nightmare come true for the offshore and shipping industries. But what happened that afternoon in the North Sea was more than just a living nightmare.

  It was the apocalypse.

  The coast

  Eight minutes after the outer shelf collapsed, the tsunami hit the steep cliffs of the Faroes. Four minutes later it reached the Shetlands, and two minutes after that it slammed into the Scottish mainland and the southwest stretch of the Norwegian coast.

  Nothing could flood Norway entirely – except perhaps the comet that scientists believed would wipe out all humanity if ever it were to crash into the sea. The Norwegian landscape was made up of mountain upon mountain, protected by sheer cliffs that even the biggest wave would find difficult to surmount.

  But Norway lived on and from the water, and most of its major
cities were at sea level, in the foothills of the towering mountains. All that separated them from the open water were small, flat archipelagos, some of which were home to cities themselves. Ports like Egersund, Hauge-sund and Sandnes in the south were at the mercy of the wave, just like Alesund and Kristiansund further north, and hundreds of smaller towns along the coast.

  The worst hit was Stavanger.

  All kinds of factors influenced what happened to a tsunami when it reached the coast – reefs, estuaries, underwater mountain ranges, sandbanks, offshore islands or even just the angle of a beach. As a result, the impact of the tsunami would either lessen or increase. Stavanger, the heart of the Norwegian oil industry, a key commercial and shipping centre, one of the oldest, prettiest and richest cities in Norway lay all but defenceless on the coast. Only a string of flat islands stretched north of the port, linked to the mainland by bridges. Minutes before the wave hit the city, the Norwegian government had alerted the Stavanger authorities, who had immediately broadcast a warning on radio, television and the web. But there was hopelessly little time to react. Evacuating the city was out of the question.

  Unlike the Pacific states, where people had lived with tsunamis since time immemorial, Europe, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic didn't have a warning system. While in Hawaii, the PTWS, the Pacific Tsunami Warning System represented over twenty Pacific states, including almost every coastal country from Alaska to Japan, Australia, Chile and Peru, people in countries like Norway knew nothing about tsunamis. That was one reason why Stavanger's final minutes were filled with confusion and dismay.

  The wave closed in on the city before anyone had time to flee. It was still growing when the pillars of the inter-island bridges collapsed. Just before it reached the city, it towered to its full thirty metres. It didn't break immediately, because it was so long, but crashed vertically into the harbour defences, shattering the quays and warehouses, then racing inland. The old town, with its historic timber houses from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, was razed to the ground. From Vagen, the city's historic dock, the water burst into the city centre. When the tide hit Stavanger's oldest building, the Anglo-Norman cathedral, the windows exploded outwards before the walls collapsed and the debris was swept away. Anything in the path of the water was blasted aside with the force of a missile. But it wasn't just water that destroyed the city. Mud, twenty-tonne boulders, ships and cars battered the buildings like outsize projectiles.

  By now the sheer wall of water had turned into raging foam. The tsunami no longer surged through the streets at such speed, but it was turbulent and destructive. The foam trapped pockets of air, which compressed on impact, generating fifteen bars of pressure, enough to dent a tank. The water snapped trees like twigs, and their trunks became part of its weaponry. Less than a minute after the wave had hit the sea defences, the entire harbour was in ruins, along with the adjoining district. As the water surged along the streets, the first explosions could be heard.

  The people of Stavanger had no hope of survival. Anyone who attempted to outrun the towering wall of water ran in vain. Most of the tsunami's victims were struck dead by the force of the wave. The water was like concrete. They didn't feel a thing. Those who survived the impact soon suffered a similar fate as the water flung them into buildings or ground them against debris. Almost no one drowned, apart from those trapped in flooded cellars, but even then most people were killed by the force of the surging mass of water or smothered in mud. Those who drowned died a terrible death, but at least it was quick. Few had time to realise what was happening. Starved of oxygen, their trapped bodies floated in dark, chilly water, heartbeat faltering, then finally stopping as their metabolism ground to a halt. The brain lived for a little longer. After ten to twenty minutes the last flicker of electrical activity faded.

  It took just two minutes more for the wave to reach the suburbs. The greater the expanse of land it covered, the shallower the seething water became. Its speed continued to diminish. The wave raged and surged through the streets, killing anyone it encountered, but at least the houses stayed standing. It was too soon, though, for the survivors to celebrate. The coming of the tsunami was the beginning of the devastation.

  Its retreat was almost worse.

  KNUT OLSEN AND HIS FAMILY experienced the retreating wave in Trondheim, where the tsunami had arrived a few minutes earlier. Unlike Stavanger, Trondheim had the fjord to protect it. Flanked by several larger islands and shielded by a headland, it extended almost forty kilometres inland, then widened into a basin on whose eastern shore the city had been built. Many of Norway's towns and villages were situated at sea-level along the shores of the fjords. Anyone looking at the map would assume that even the destructive power of a thirty-metre wave wouldn't threaten Trondheim.

  The fjords turned out to be death traps.

  When a tsunami entered a channel or an inlet, the water that was already being compressed from the bottom was suddenly restricted on both sides as well. Tens of thousands of tonnes of water squeezed into the strait. In Soigné Fjord, long but narrow in the mountains north of Bergen, the wave rose dramatically. Most of the villages alongside it were situated on high plateaus at the top of its banks. Jets of water sprayed towards them, but no serious damage was caused. Things were different at the end of the hundred-kilometre-long fjord, though, where several towns and villages were clustered on a flat spit of land jutting into the water. The wave obliterated them, then slammed into the mountain range beyond. The water shot up to 200 metres, scouring the slope of vegetation, then collapsing down. It continued its path along the fjord's tributaries.

  Trondheim Fjord wasn't as narrow as Soigné Fjord and its banks weren't as high. That, and the fact that it widened as it went on, meant the water wasn't so constricted. All the same, the mound of water that hit Trondheim was big enough to sweep across the harbour and flatten part of the old town. The Nid broke its banks and spilled over into the districts of Bakklandet and Møllenberg. Avalanches of foam mowed down timber houses. In Kirkegata Street almost every house fell victim to the flood of water, including Sigur Johanson's. Its pretty facade gave way and the timberwork splintered, while the roof caved in on the wreckage of the walls. The debris was washed away, swept along by the raging torrent whose power and energy only let up when it reached the walls of the NTNU, where it swirled furiously, then began to flow back.

  The Olsens lived one road up from Kirkegata Street. Their house, wooden like Johanson's, withstood the tsunami's assault. It trembled and shook. Furniture toppled, crockery smashed, and the floor of the front room sagged. The children were panicking and Olsen shouted to his wife to take them to the back. In truth he didn't know what to do, but since the wave had hit the front of the house he thought the back rooms might be safer. While his family took refuge, he made his way breathlessly to the front windows to see what had happened. As he crossed the floor, it sagged further, but held. Olsen clutched the window-frame, ready to rush back should another wave roll in. He looked out in stunned horror at the ruins of the city, the trees, cars and people bobbing in the water. There were screams and bangs as walls collapsed. Then explosions rang out, and red-black clouds rose above the harbour.

  It was the most harrowing sight he'd ever seen, but he fought back the shock and focused on a single thought: saving his family. All that mattered was that his wife and children survived.

  It looked as though the wave had stopped.

  Olsen watched for a while then picked his way carefully to the back of the house. The barrage of questions started right away. He looked into his children's wide, fearful eyes, and raised a hand to calm them, telling them it was over and they needn't be afraid. Of course it wasn't over – how could it be? But somehow they had to leave the house. He had the idea of escaping over the rooftops to dry land, but his wife said he'd been watching too much Hitchcock. How did he propose to do that with four kids? Olsen didn't know, so that settled it. He returned to his post by the window.

  This time
when he looked out he saw that the water was flowing back, racing towards the fjord and picking up speed.

  We're going to make it, he thought.

  He leaned out for a better view. At that moment the house shook violently. Olsen clung to the window. The floor was splintering. He wanted to leap back, but there was nothing beneath him. The living-room floor was a huge gaping hole. Water poured in and Olsen pitched forward. At first he thought he'd been jerked through the window, then he realised that the front of the house was hanging off the walls. It was tipping him into the water.

  He screamed.

  The people of Hawaii had lived with the monster for generations, and knew what would happen when it beat its retreat. The receding water created a violent pull that swept everything into the sea, washing over anything left standing. Those who had survived the first act of the catastrophe died in the second, but their death was filled with agony. Their end began with the futile fight for survival against the raging water, the struggle to swim against the tide. Their strength would give out and their muscles would weaken. They'd be struck by debris and their bones broken. They'd cling to anything they could find, only to be torn away again, swept onwards with the rubble and the mud.

  The monster of the deep came on land to feed, and when it returned to the ocean it dragged its prey with it.

  The first Olsen knew of that was when the front of the house tipped towards the maelstrom. Then he knew he was going to die. As the wall tilted further, more explosions rang out across the harbour as the remains of ships and oil plants burst into flames. Almost every electrical system in the city had failed as one short-circuit triggered the next. Maybe that was how he would be killed – by the high-voltage current in the water.

  He thought of his family. For a split second he thought of Sigur Johanson, and was seized with impotent rage. Johanson was to blame. He'd kept something back – something that might have saved them, the son-of-a-bitch.