It played so fast they had to slow it down so you could see what was going on.
From the street, a shot of the Empire State Building and a tall cloud drawing closer and closer, frame by frame, but it wasn’t a cloud—it was a wall of water—and then the image went blank.
A beach and you’re looking out at the water, only there is no water, just a boat stranded about a mile out into the ocean bed and you hear a voice praying to Jesus and then the image is shaking, shaking, and a wave so high the minitab can’t see the top thunders up. Then darkness.
Chloe said she wanted to watch kid TV. We ignored her.
Bad Makeup said the National Connectivity was down because three of the five satellite centers had been located on the East Coast.
Blue Suit said the president had declared a state of emergency and was safe at an undisclosed location.
We watched, mostly in silence.
“Turn it to Tabi-Teens,” Chloe whined. “This is bo-ring!”
I looked at her. She was totally clueless. She was listlessly picking at a label stuck on the minitab counter.
None of the little kids seemed to understand what we were learning. They were just kind of slowpoking around, hanging out.
I had to keep watching the TV. Couldn’t think about the kids.
I felt gray. Washed out. Like a stone.
Bad Makeup said the megatsunami had triggered severe weather conditions across the rest of the country. Her voice caught on “rest of the country.” She mentioned storms called supercells, sweeping across the Rockies (that was us).
I looked over at Josie. She was watching the screen. Caroline had crawled onto Josie’s lap, and Josie was stroking Caroline’s hair absentmindedly.
CNN showed more footage from the East Coast.
They showed a house carried up the side of a mountain. They showed a lake full of cars. They showed people wandering around half naked on streets in places that should have looked familiar, but now looked like locations from war movies.
People in boats, people crying, people washed down rivers like logs on a log float, people washed up along with their cars and garages and trees and trash cans and bicycles and god-knows-what else. People as debris.
I closed my eyes.
Near me, someone started to cry.
“Put it to Tabi-Teens!” Chloe demanded. “Or Traindawgs or something!”
I took my brother’s hand. It was ice cold.
* * *
We watched for hours.
At some point, somebody turned off the television.
At some point, somebody got out sleeping bags for everyone.
There was a lot of whining from the little kids and not a lot of comforting coming from us.
They were really bothering us. Especially Chloe and Batiste.
Batiste kept talking about the “end of days.”
He said it was just like Reverend Grand said would happen. The judgment day was upon us. I wanted to punch him in his little greasy face.
I just wanted to think. I couldn’t think and they all kept crying and asking for stupid things and clinging to us and I just wanted them to shut up.
Finally Astrid bent over and grabbed Batiste by the shoulders.
She said, real clear and kind of mean, “You kids go and get candy. As much as you want. Go do that.”
And they did.
They came back with bags from the candy aisle.
That was the best we could do for them that night: candy. We took the bags and ripped them open and made a big pile in the middle of the floor, and everyone gorged on fun sizes of all brands and types.
We ate it like it was medicine. Like it was magic candy that could somehow restore us to a normal life again. We ate ourselves numb and got in our bags and went to sleep.
There was a lot of crying from the little kids and occasionally one of us would yell, “Shut up!”
That’s how we got by, that first night.
DAY 2
CHAPTER FOUR
EIGHT POINT TWO
We were shaken awake around eight.
It wasn’t that thing that happens where you’re dreaming that you’re running through a forest chasing a fox or something and suddenly a tree grabs you and starts shaking you and you begin to wake up and realize it’s actually your mom shaking you and your alarm is going off and you’re late for school.
Not at all.
This was: You’re in a sleeping bag on the floor of a giant superstore and suddenly the floor starts pitching and heaving and you’re getting bounced around like a piece of popcorn in a hot pan and things start falling off the shelves and everyone is screaming and scared out of their minds and you’re one of everyone.
It was more like that.
* * *
And here’s the hilarious part—it was a FORESHOCK. Apparently, that’s what happens when you’re about to experience an 8.2. It’s an earthquake so big it sends messengers ahead.
“Get to the Pizza Shack!” Niko shouted. “Under the tables!”
I grabbed Alex with one hand and picked up Ulysses the first grader with the other and ran for it. Stuff was falling off the shelves or had fallen. From the Food section and elsewhere you could hear glass bottles crashing off the shelves and onto the floor.
The rest of the kids were right behind me. I saw that all the big kids had grabbed one or two little ones. Astrid was escorting Josie. Tripping and falling and hurrying as best we could, we made it to the Pizza Shack and got under the tables. They were bolted down, which was why Niko wanted us there.
“We’ll be safer here,” I told Alex and Ulysses, whose nose was streaming wet snot.
“Hold tight to the table legs,” Niko shouted.
“This is dumb,” Brayden growled. “The earthquake is over. Why are we hiding here—”
And his voice began to shake.
Because the ground had begun to shake.
And he sure did grab himself a table leg.
The quake was less scary than the foreshock, in my opinion. We were ready for the quake. We were awake already.
We started shaking and shaking and you could hear things falling and crashing all around us.
* * *
It’s a miracle the store didn’t cave in, but, as we would discover, the store was built like a safe. It held. Rock solid. Pretty much everything was tossed to the floor and lots of the shelves toppled over, but the damage to the store was not as bad as it could have been.
“Is everyone okay?” Jake asked.
“Um, I would say, no,” Astrid answered. “The world as we know it is gone. We’re locked in a Greenway and an EARTHQUAKE just smashed the store to pieces!”
She was furious and she looked gorgeous.
“I know that, Astrid!” Jake snapped. “Obviously everything has gone to hell but I am supposed to be in charge so I just thought I’d ask!”
The kindergarten twins burst into new sobs. I saw that they, like Ulysses, had lots of grime and mucus on their weary little faces. All the little kids looked pretty bad off.
“Jake is doing the best he can so why don’t you back off, Astrid?” Brayden said.
“Screw you, Brayden! You’re the last person I want to be stuck here with!” she answered.
Josie had her hands over her ears. The little kids were crying and Chloe was starting to scream.
“All right, everyone just settle down,” Jake said. “Astrid, you’re out of control. Pull yourself together!”
“Excuse me,” Henry said to Jake. “Me and Caroline have decided. We want to go home.”
Henry and Caroline wanted to go home. Like it was some sleepover that had gone wrong and now he’d like Jake to call their parents so they could get picked up.
“Yeah! I want my nana!” Chloe yelled.
“Guys, we gotta wait for Mrs. Wooly,” Jake said calmly.
But the little kids were in a full-blown meltdown now. Crying, noses running, snorting with sobs, the works.
Ulysses was near me and
he nodded his head, agreeing with the shouts and demands and wails of the other kids. These tears, fat like jelly beans, plopping out of his eyes and running down his face, were so profuse they were actually washing his face because he kept wiping at them with the sleeve of his sweatshirt.
“It’s going to be okay,” I told him.
He just shook his head and cried all the harder.
I got up. Determined to go find a godforsaken Spanish-English dictionary.
“Don’t go yet,” Niko told me. “More aftershocks.”
He was right. The floor started to pitch and I dropped down and ducked under the nearest table. It just so happened to be the table Astrid had ducked under, too.
This was certainly the closest I’d ever been to her. I held the center pole under the table. Her hands were just below mine.
Her head was bowed and it was all a blur of blond hair and purple sweater until the tremors stopped.
She looked up at me and there was this moment of plainness between us. Like she saw me and I saw her. She looked scared and young, like a little girl, and there were tears in her eyes.
I don’t know what she read on my face. Probably that I was totally hers. That I loved her with everything worthy inside me.
I guess she didn’t like what she saw, because she brushed away tears with the back of her hand and turned away from me. Her jaw was clenched and she looked like she wanted to punch me in the throat. That’s the truth.
I got out from under her table.
* * *
“Screw this,” Sahalia said. “I’m going home.”
“No, you’re not, Sahalia,” Jake said. “Mrs. Wooly told us all to stay here and stay together and we’re gonna do exactly that.”
“Are you kidding?” Sahalia said. “Mrs. Wooly’s not coming back. We’re on our own. And frankly I’d rather take my chances out there than stay here with you losers.”
Alex spoke up. “How are you going to get out? The gate is down.”
Sahalia pointed to the wall, past the Pizza Shack, near the Grocery section.
Duh.
There was a door with a red, illuminated Exit sign above it.
How had we missed it until now?
“They have to have emergency exits,” she said.
Then she walked over and pushed it.
“Let me,” Brayden said.
“Bray!” Jake yelled, but Brayden had already sprinted over.
He bashed his weight against it.
“No good,” he said. “It’s locked.”
“Like I said,” Jake repeated, eyeing his friend. “We’re staying here until Mrs. Wooly comes back.”
“I’ll find a way out,” Sahalia said. She stomped off.
“Excuse me, but Sahalia is my neighbor,” said Chloe. “If she’s going home, I’m going with her.”
“Me, too,” said Max. “I can hitch a ride.”
Jake was losing patience.
“You heard what Mrs. Wooly said! We stay here until she comes for us. It’s simple.”
“But why does Sahalia get to go?” whined Chloe.
“Sahalia’s not going anywhere,” Jake answered. “The doors are locked!”
“But I want my nana!”
Jake bent down and got up in her grill.
“Stop talking about going home. There is no going home until Mrs. Wooly gets back.”
“But I want—”
He poked Chloe in the chest.
“Stop it.”
“My nana—”
He poked her again. “Stop.”
She stopped. Then she rubbed the spot on her chest where he’d poked her and glared at him.
So we were lucky that the Greenway was solidly built, but, man, the mess was incredible. Almost everything had been tossed from the shelves. The shelving units themselves hadn’t fallen over, since they were bolted down. That was nice. But everything was a mess and most things made of glass were history.
We all picked our way through the merchandise, headed back to our sleeping-bag “home” in the Media Department.
“Gonna be a big cleanup,” Alex said to me.
“It’ll be good,” I said. “Something to keep us busy until they come for us.”
Alex shrugged.
* * *
The bigtabs that had been on the walls of the Media Department were now on the floor of the Media Department.
Pretty much everything in the Media Department was now on the floor of the Media Department.
The display wall itself was hanging partially off the concrete wall behind it.
The bigtabs were lying facedown on the floor, overlapping like roof shingles. Bits of black glass and plastic framing were scattered all over the place.
Everyone was standing around, forlorn and crestfallen, looking at the debris as Alex and I walked up.
“We just had the one crappy television,” Brayden complained. “And now it’s toast. We have no way of knowing what’s going on outside!”
“I think we need to start thinking about an exit strategy,” Astrid said.
“Shhh!” Alex interrupted her.
“No, I really do,” she continued, surprised that Alex would cut her off.
“I hear the TV,” Alex said.
We all shut up. If you listened very closely, there was a buzz, a hum. A tiny, tiny hum.
Brayden and Jake stepped forward and began digging through the bigtabs.
“Careful,” Alex said. “You could get a shock!”
Jake found the TV.
He stepped back over the mound of dead bigtabs, holding the TV carefully at its sides.
The screen was smashed. Strange, glowing inkblots of color surged over the monitor helter-skelter.
Alex took the set and placed it on the floor.
He pushed along the lower edge of the frame. That was how you changed the channel—something I didn’t remember since we’d switched out our TV for a bigtab when I was, like, seven.
Alex made some adjustments and the static got louder and louder.
Then a voice came on.
“Yes!” Jake said.
The little kids cheered.
“Quiet,” Niko said.
“Shhh, you guys!” Astrid added.
It was a man’s voice. Sounded like an interview.
“Entirely unexpected as this area is not on a fault line. It’s unthinkable, really. And a quake of this magnitude is unprecedented. There is no doubt in my mind that it was triggered by yesterday’s megatsunami.”
Alex sat down in front of the TV. We all just took random places nearby, except for Chloe, who said she was going to get some food.
The voice on the TV changed.
“Excuse me, Professor. We have breaking news. There are reports coming in of a leak. A chemical leak. Chemical warfare compounds.
“There are reports that several chemical warfare agents may be leaking from NORAD’s storage facilities.”
“Quiet! Quiet everyone”—the voice was yelling to people in the studio, it seemed—“This is from NORAD: Attention, residents of Colorado and neighboring states. At 8:36 a.m. today, Wednesday, September 18, 2024, chemical weapon storage facilities at the North American Aerospace Defense Command Department have been breeched. Residents in a five-hundred-mile radius of NORAD are urged to get indoors and seal all windows immediately.”
Niko stood up. He looked wired, flushed. Panicked almost.
“Guys, we have to cover the front gates.” Niko said. “Right now.”
* * *
We zigged and zagged through the store, cutting our way through the fallen boxes and crashed-up merchandise. Niko started giving orders left and right.
“Jake, get plastic sheeting. Brayden and Dean, get duct tape.”
“Plastic sheeting, like what?” Jake asked, panic in his voice.
“Shower curtains could work,” Alex suggested. “Or plastic drop cloths, like painters use.”
“Alex, help Jake. Figure it out. Astrid, keep the little kids out of
the way.”
“Don’t stick me with the kids,” she protested. “I’m just as strong as you guys are!”
“Just do what I say!” Niko hollered.
She did.
* * *
Brayden and I found the duct tape and cursed that we didn’t have anything to carry it in, like a cart or a basket. The most either of us could carry in our hands was, like, ten rolls.
“I have an idea,” I said. I stripped off my rugby shirt.
“What are you doing, Geraldine?” Brayden asked. His voice was flustered. “Screw you, I’m going.”
He took off with his ten rolls.
I made knots in the sleeves and started loading the tape into it. Maybe it would have taken as long to find a bucket or a bag or something but I got at least thirty rolls in my shirt.
* * *
When I made it to the gate, Niko and Jake were trying to push the bus back from the gate, to make more space to work in. It didn’t budge.
“Forget it,” Niko said. “We’ll work around it.”
Brayden was ripping open the packets of plastic sheeting.
“I’ll do that,” Niko said. “Go back for more tape. We’re going to need lots more—”
I arrived and dumped out the rolls of tape.
“Excellent,” Niko said. “Open ’em up.”
I started to tear the plastic wrappers off the rolls when Brayden elbowed me in the ribs.
“Nice abs, man,” Brayden said. “You work out?”
He started to laugh. Jake stopped unfolding the sheeting and was on Brayden in about two strides. He shook him. Hard.
“We’re gonna die from friggin’ NORAD and you’re busting on the booker about his friggin’ physique? What’s wrong with you? Come on, man!” Jake let go and Brayden stumbled backward.
I struggled to untie the stupid knots from my shirt.
Now I knew what Jake thought of me. The booker. Okay. Whatever that meant.
Meanwhile, we had sheeting to put up.
“This is going to be much faster,” came my brother’s voice. He came sliding over to us on the linoleum, holding two staple guns and a box of industrial-size staples.
Jake and Niko manned the staple guns. Me, Brayden, and Alex held the sheeting taut.
Two layers of shower curtains. One layer of wool blankets (Alex’s idea). Then three layers of plastic drop cloths. The whole thing sealed along the edge with multiple layers of duct tape.
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