by Noah Mann
“Tsunami!”
One of our neighbors shouted the warning, loud enough that everyone within ten houses could hear. Dave Arndt, after pausing at the sound, sprinted now toward our elderly neighbor’s house.
“It’s a contingency,” I said, looking to Elaine.
She knew this as well as I did. The Defense Council had discussed reactivating the tsunami warning system in light of the continuing seismic activity, though any sensors out at sea which could confirm the approach of a devastating wave were no longer monitored, if they were still working at all.
“Let’s get moving,” she said.
* * *
Residents streamed along roads which had been marked as Tsunami evacuation routes long before the blight was even a glint in some laboratory madman’s eye. Those who were not as mobile, or mobile at all, were assisted by neighbors who’d agreed, as part of the town’s emergency plan, to accompany those in need. A half an hour before dawn broke, with the ocean a black expanse to the west, the exodus to safety had been completed.
“No one is missing?” Lorenzen asked.
“So far, it looks like everyone is accounted for,” Enderson reported, checking a thick clipboard he carried. “We just have two dozen to the north moving livestock, but they’re in communication with Westin by radio.”
“If the wave shows, you see that he tells them to haul their butts to high ground,” the sergeant told him. “People before animals.”
“Already told him just that.”
Lorenzen nodded, then shook his head.
“I hope they’re all right,” he said.
There was no need to specify who he was referring to. Nearly forty eight hours ago the expedition to Portland had left. Under old world conditions they would have arrived by now. But this wasn’t that world. They could be fifty miles from Bandon, or a hundred and fifty. There was no way to know. The last radio contact with them had been almost thirty six hours earlier, when they were just entering Reedsport, a bit over thirty miles distant. After that, simple line of sight had prevented any reliable radio signal to be received, even using the Camas Valley repeater.
“They’d be inland by now,” I said. “Any tsunami won’t affect them.”
“Yeah,” Lorenzen said, half confident in his agreement at best. “As long as they weren’t on a bridge when it hit.”
“They were probably sacked out,” Elaine reassured him, our daughter deep asleep in her arms. “Like the rest of us.”
Grace waded through a knot of residents who had gathered at our vantage point, which held a clear view of the Pacific. Brandon’s drowsy head lay on her shoulder, pouting at the commotion all around.
“Where’s Krista?” Elaine asked her.
“She’s back there with Private Westin setting up the portable radio,” Grace answered.
The radio blackout that the Rushmore had signaled about could not be absolute. We’d needed to communicate with the expedition heading north, and hopefully would again. This, though, required that any restrictions be lifted. Being able to communicate via radio was vital after a disaster such as what we’d just been through. And what might be yet to come.
“The hospital was cleared out,” Grace shared. “Clay is with Mr. Porter in the ambulance.”
Ted Porter, the unfortunate recipient of a broken leg during a game of touch football, was the only admitted patient to be removed. Beyond that bit of information that Grace shared, though, was something else she said. How she referred to Commander Genesee. As Clay.
“Good,” Sgt. Lorenzen commented, waving Hart over when the medic was within sight.
“Yes, Sergeant?”
“Has Westin been able to reach Remote?”
“No,” Hart answered. “He said he can’t even reach the repeater.”
The repeater in Camas Valley, which took advantage of their transmission tower, could very well have been knocked out by the quake. Or lost power. In either event, without that electronic relay, no signal could get in or out of the settlement.
“When this passes, I want you to take a volunteer with you out to Remote to check on any casualties and damage. If you can, do the same in Camas Valley.”
“Got it, Sarge. And two trucks of supplies are in the safe zone.”
Lorenzen nodded, but wasn’t satisfied.
“This is a wakeup call,” he said.
“We need a cache of supplies already in the safe zone,” I said, agreeing.
“Let’s make that agenda item number one,” Lorenzen said, scanning the crowd. “Is the mayor anywhere close?”
“I’ll find him,” Enderson said, setting off in search of the town’s leader.
Satisfied that all Bandon’s residents were accounted for, Lorenzen shifted his attention west. Next to him, Hart brought a pair of binoculars to his eyes and scanned the choppy waters stretching to the horizon and beyond.
“That was at least a seven,” Elaine said, giving the earthquake we’d all just experienced a guestimate on the Richter scale. “I’ve been through fives, and they were nothing compared to this one.”
There was no United States Geological Survey to determine and broadcast the actual magnitude of the quake, nor its epicenter. If it was as large as Elaine was suggesting, and located on the seabed in the distance, a catastrophic tsunami was a very real possibility.
But none came. We watched the Pacific for almost an hour, waiting for a rising wall of water to inundate the lowest areas of the town. The ocean was as it always was, churning and lovely. No outflow of tides to feed any coming tsunami materialized. We’d all been spared.
Then, someone looked to the northeast.
“My God...”
It was Dave Arndt, my neighbor, whose almost quiet exclamation turned our heads. In ones and twos at first. Then by the dozens we looked until every soul in Bandon was staring at the column of smoke rising into the dawn sky, dark and grey, unlike the product of any fire I’d ever seen. Because it was not that at all.
“That’s an ash cloud,” I said.
As a boy in Montana I’d listened as my father told tales of the rain of gritty pumice ejected by Mount St. Helens, hundreds of miles from my childhood home. I was just a baby then, but he’d saved articles and pictures of the event, and my mother kept a small jar of the ash that had coated the city, inches deep in places. What we were witnessing, I knew, was a volcanic eruption.
“By direction that has to be Mt. Hood,” Elaine said.
“Isn’t that dormant?” Hart asked.
“Dormant doesn’t mean dead,” Lorenzen reminded his medic.
“That’s what all the earthquakes were,” Elaine said. “It was rumbling back to life.”
I turned to Lorenzen as worried chatter spread through the gathered residents.
“You can see Mt. Hood from Portland,” I told the sergeant.
The implication of what I was saying was plain to both of us. Three of our people were heading right into what might well be termed hell on earth.
“They can’t be there by now,” he said. “But they’re a lot closer to the eruption than we are.”
“So is Air Force One,” Elaine said.
And, we had to assume, so was the President.
“Get Westin up here,” Lorenzen told Hart.
The medic dashed away through the crowd in search of the unit’s communications specialist.
“If we get a wind from the north,” Dave Arndt said.
That very weather condition had brought the freak blizzard to Bandon just weeks ago. The breeze now was from the west. The northwest. If that shifted to what my neighbor was speaking of, ash could fall upon our town, piling on roofs to the point of structural collapse. Crops could be devastated. Livestock would choke on the fine material being spewed two hundred miles distant.
“That ash column has to be fifty thousand feet tall,” I said.
“Sixty,” Grace corrected me, explaining when she noticed me looking. “College geography. We’re not even seeing the bottom thirty t
housand feet of the column.”
I understood what she was saying. Just like with our radios, the curvature of the earth limited line of sight. For something as distant as Mount Hood, we would only be seeing the highest part of the rising tower of smoke and ash.
“Sarge...”
Lorenzen turned to Westin as he joined us.
“Try to contact the captain.”
“Already am,” Westin told the sergeant, then shook his head. “If we couldn’t hear them last night, hearing us today probably isn’t going to happen.”
“Keep trying,” Lorenzen said, and Westin hurried back to the portable radio he’d set up.
Elaine put a hand on my arm and I looked to her.
“Eric, what will they do?”
I wanted to say that Angela, Martin, and Carter would turn back. That would be the logical course of action to preserve themselves. As every life in this world was precious beyond mere numbers, prudence would dictate that.
But Schiavo was also a soldier. An officer. And she would be thinking much the same things that we had, including considering the fact that the plane presumably carrying the President of the United States almost certainly was within the danger zone of the eruption. A quake feeling like a seven as far away as we were must have been simply devastating to Portland and areas surrounding it.
“They’ll keep going,” I told Elaine.
“That could be suicide,” Grace said.
I nodded. It could be just that. But her mission had been to get to Portland to meet Air Force One. Now, in her mind, it very well could be that she believed their trek had turned into a rescue mission of incalculable importance.
“We should get people back to their houses,” Mayor Allen said as he arrived with Corporal Enderson. “It’s cold and, well, preparations are going to need to be made.”
“Agreed,” Sgt. Lorenzen said.
“Damage is going to need to be repaired,” Mayor Allen said. “And buildings are going to need to be readied for any ash cloud.”
I listened to the discussion between the senior military leader in Bandon and the political leader. Others around them chimed in as they talked about necessities and plans and critical steps to take, Elaine and Grace prominent among those contributing.
I said nothing. My time on the Defense Council was almost up. Those who’d been used to my participation at times such as these had weaned themselves from the expectation that I would be front and center, leading the charge to deal with the devastation.
And with our missing friends.
They were out there, in danger. Maybe in more distress than we could imagine. And I was here, where I’d wanted to be. Relatively safe.
“We’ve got to get them,” I said, blurting out the forceful directive, then correcting it somewhat. “Someone has to.”
Those who’d been talking looked to me. As did Elaine. She was worried, sensing that the part of my character which had existed before the blight, and developed further during the ravages of its worst times, was rising once more, despite my promise and efforts to step back from the leadership position that had come naturally to me.
“Someone,” I repeated.
But she didn’t look away from me, her expression going slack with fear, and with realization. She knew, and I knew, that the only someone I was truly speaking of was me.
“We’ll wait,” Enderson said. “To see if any communication works.”
“It won’t,” I told him.
“No,” Elaine said. “It won’t.”
My wife reached with her free hand and put her palm to my cheek. In that touch I felt all that I needed to from her—love, tenderness, support.
And agreement.
“You have to go,” she said to me.
I nodded against her touch and turned, looking to the monstrous cloud now spreading across the sky. I’d promised to never leave my wife and daughter again. Now, I was backing away from that, and I would be heading into the maelstrom which had spawned the tower of burning ash that filled the northern sky.
“Are you sure, Fletch?” Enderson asked me.
I looked to him and shook my head, not certain about anything. Especially the outcome of any attempt to reach our expedition.
“But we have to try,” I said.
Elaine stepped close. I wrapped my arms around her and our daughter and held them, just held them, wanting to remember the realness of the feeling. In case it was the last time.
Thank You
I hope you enjoyed Avenger.
You can learn about my books, release dates, and my occasional newsletter by visiting my website:
www.noahmann.com
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Book 1: Bugging Out
Book 2: Eagle One
Book 3: Wasteland
Book 4: The Pit
Book 5: Ranger
Book 6: Avenger
About The Author
Noah Mann lives in the West and has been involved in personal survival and disaster preparedness for more than two decades. He has extensive training in firearms, as well as urban and wilderness Search & Rescue operations, including tracking and the application of technology in victim searches.
