by Ellis, Tara
“Eric, I just got—”
“Jess!” her dad shouted, brushing past Kofi and ignoring his friend. “Now isn’t the time to be pushing your boundaries. I need to know I can count on you to do as I say.”
Jess berated herself for tearing up as he leaned back against his desk and glared down his nose at her in a way he used to do when she was little. He knew that showing disappointment in her behavior had a much greater affect than anger, but she refused to fall for it. “You’re treating me like a five-year-old!” she retorted, the pent-up fear from the last hour bubbling to the surface. “I want to know why so many people are dying, dad. Or I’ll just get the laptop and find out for myself.” She stubbornly crossed her arms and pulled away.
A series of emotions played across his face as her father was clearly torn between being angry or remorseful. After a moment he pushed away from the desk and placed his hands on his hips, squinting thoughtfully at her. “Perhaps you’re right and I’ve overreacted in my attempt to protect you. I prefer to understand a situation before trying to explain it to someone else, and I have to admit I’m still grossly uninformed at the moment.”
Jess relaxed slightly, surprised by her dad’s admission. Yet another adult behaving strangely. Though relieved he was letting her stay, she almost wished he’d done the more typical Dr. Davies rebuttal, instead. It would have made her feel more normal.
“Akuba, was your mother one of the people injured?” he asked, his tone shifting noticeably to one of concern. “Is she okay?”
“She was burned,” Akuba replied. “Though not as badly as some of the others. I do need to get home and tend to her, but I wanted to check in and see what you’ve heard. Talk at the clinic was largely rumor, I suspect.”
Jess’s dad shook his head in response as he walked back to his desk. He turned the open laptop around, and the screen displayed a confusing image. Jess moved closer to try and decipher what it was.
“They’re saying the MOHO eruption is going to end up being the largest in recorded history,” he explained. “This satellite image shows an unfathomable flow of gas and debris spreading out across the Indian ocean.”
“That’s going to kill everyone?” Jess blurted.
When her father looked at her with obvious pain in his eyes, Jess understood then why he’d been trying to protect her. “No, hon. There are some islands near Africa that will be destroyed, including Madagascar, but we don’t have anything to worry about this far away. The greater concern now is what they’re calling a pocket of methane that could threaten the continent of Africa, if the winds carry it in that direction.”
“Did it cause the geyser?” Jess had absolutely no idea if it were possible, but it was the first thing that came to mind. Especially since it was two mysterious things happening at the same time.
Her dad started to shake his head, but Kofi put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. “My earthquake app went off on my way here, Eric. And it wasn’t one of the dozens around the MOHO island.”
“Where?”
Kofi stared at her dad for so long, Jess thought he wasn’t going to answer. She didn’t understand the men’s reactions. They were scared, and she’d never seen her dad scared before.
“The west coast of the states,” Kofi finally said, his voice thick.
“How big?”
Kofi turned his phone around so Jess’s dad could see the screen. She had read in several books where a character was described as ‘paling’ in reaction to something traumatic. That was what Jess thought of when she saw the color drain from her father’s face. He paled in reaction, and she had a feeling seeing it caused a similar response in herself because she suddenly felt light-headed.
“Nine-point four?” Eric rushed to one of his bookcases and took down a world globe. Setting it on the desk next to the laptop, he spun it around, tracing a finger near the coast of Africa, and then the west coast of America. They were almost perfectly opposite of each other.
“The whole freaking Cascadia subduction zone must have unzipped,” Kofi continued. “That’s the only thing there capable of a quake that big. The MOHO, our geyser, The Big One. They can’t really be connected, can they?”
Jess’s father removed his finger from Washington State and then set the globe spinning with the one resting where MOHO island used to be. “Every seismologist and geologist with any accreditation would tell you it’s not possible.”
“Disi kai ala psa bifo.”
“What?” Jess’s father scrutinized Akuba. Though he was certainly familiar with the Sranan Tongo language spoken by the indigenous people, Dutch was the official local language, so Akuba rarely used it around them.
Akuba backed toward the office door but repeated the words before leaving, staring mournfully at Jess as she spoke. “Disi kai ala psa bifo.”
Jess felt a sudden chill, though it had to be pushing eighty degrees inside. She was fluent in the language of her nanny and friends, and had understood her the first time.
This has all happened before.
Chapter 9
DEREK
Mauritius island
Indian ocean, 1,200 miles off the southeast coast of the African continent
The water was definitely getting sucked out, exposing coral and other sea life to the warm tropical air.
Derek knew what that meant.
“This shouldn’t be happening.” The brutish, bare-chested man standing on the other side of his mom was pulling at his sun-bleached hair with both hands while staring out at the receding water. “That MOHO island is hundreds of miles away; it should take several hours for a tsunami to hit us.” He looked fleetingly at Derek’s mom and then at the destruction scattered behind them on the hillside. “We need more time.”
A sickening rumbling sound began to build as the sand under their feet shifted. Derek was the first to drop to his knees. In the past hour he’d learned a lot about earthquakes, and rule number one was to get close to the ground. Nearby buildings groaned and people screamed, an orchestra that was playing over and over again.
He noticed Player didn’t even bother to try and help his mom. The guy had been flirting with her for the two days they’d had neighboring tiki huts on the Mauritius beach. Derek learned his name was Brent late the first day, but Derek preferred his own made-up nickname.
The palm trees dotting the beach swayed hard enough to dislodge one of the few remaining coconuts, causing a woman near them to dodge to safety. Derek had seen some people with serious injuries from the falling fruit, so it was no laughing matter. He glanced up to make sure they were far enough away and then back at the roads winding up the hill behind their resort. They were pretty much destroyed. The concrete was cracked and thrust out in different directions, and countless trees and power poles were down across them. While the locals had fled immediately following the loud boom, before the quakes even started, the rest of them had sheltered in place. By the time they knew what was happening, their only route to the nearest airport was blocked. Forced onto the beach to avoid the crumbling buildings and roads, Derek had no idea what was next.
He had a sudden longing to be back home, sweating with the rest of his friends at football camp. Skipping out on the training leading into his junior year at high school might get him booted from the varsity team, but a month on the beach was too tempting. Derek was known for making brash decisions, and as the end of the school year had approached, he simply didn’t care about football anymore.
The ground lurched again, snapping Derek out of his thoughts and he blinked slowly, feeling dazed. The sun was hot on his face, reminding him of where he was. Except, he didn’t want to remember. He wanted to go back inside his own head where he was safe.
“They can go as fast as five-hundred miles an hour,” his mom was saying to Player with very little emotion. Derek recognized it as her courtroom voice. “The brochures said the island was seven hundred miles away, so it could potentially be here in less than another hour. Our more immediate concern ar
e the quakes originating closer than the MOHO island. I’ve been in some strong quakes, and they were nothing like this. There has to be something happening on the seafloor near us, which means they’re also generating tsunamis which will be here sooner.”
Derek watched his mother as they cautiously stood when it seemed the worst of the shaking was over. Her mind was like a steel trap, and if she said they needed to get to higher ground, that was what they should do. The question was how.
“Derek, we need to get our tennis shoes, and stuff some water bottles in your backpack. Quickly.”
He ran after his mom, who was already headed back to their hut, situated close to the beach. So, they would walk. Was there enough time? The wind shifted, carrying with it a new smell mixed in with the salt and brine. It reminded Derek of hot pavement right after a summer rain started, or when a fire had a bunch of water dumped on it.
Pausing at the threshold between the white sand and smoother paths leading to the huts, Derek closed his eyes and took a shaky breath. “Get a grip, Deckster,” he whispered, using his game name for encouragement. “Pull it together.” Opening his eyes again, he forced himself to look to the south, toward the looming black clouds that no one was saying much about. His mom guessed it was what she called an ash plume from the erupting volcano and that they were too far away for it to be nothing more than a once-in-a-lifetime show he’d be able to tell his grandkids about one day. Except it was getting closer. Much closer, and now he was pretty damn sure he could smell it.
The sun was getting lower in the western sky and a noticeable haze was beginning to develop over it, giving a false impression of an early sunset. Was it getting warmer?
“Derek!”
He spun back around to face his mom, and saw she was already standing impatiently in the doorway of their hut. Player was nowhere to be seen, and Derek figured he was getting stuff from his own place.
“Mom!” he shouted, while jogging the rest of the way. “I think the ash is here. I thought you said it wouldn’t go this far. Will our plane be able to take off?” He was assuming that was the plan: get to the small airport five miles away and get on whatever plane was headed outta there.
Her long black hair had come loose of its messy bun and was whipping around her face, caught in a hot wind abruptly shifting in from the south. Derek knew people often described his mom as cold and hard. Her reputation as a top corporate lawyer was well known in their community back in Boston. In that moment, she looked vulnerable and Derek had an unexpected, fierce sense to protect her. He had to help get them out of there.
“I still don’t have a signal,” she told him as he brushed past her and grabbed at his backpack on the only couch.
Derek saw that his mom was holding her phone and already had her tennis shoes on. She’d managed to get through to his grandpa fifteen minutes after the boom and he’d been the one to tell them about the eruption, but the towers must have gone down with the first big earthquake, because they hadn’t been able to get any coverage since then. He slipped his shoes on and snagged a t-shirt.
Through the open door, a more intense glow backlit his mom. Derek noticed the air was becoming thick, and it took more effort to breathe. Sweat was rolling off his forehead and the hut felt more like a sauna.
His mom turned to stare at the deepening, red display of the sun and Derek joined her, taking her hand. The roiling clouds were descending on the island, and just visible to the south, there was another dark object rising up from the water to meet it. It spanned the visible horizon and it took Derek a moment to grasp what it was.
“No,” his mom whispered.
She looked over at him then and Derek’s blood ran cold. Until that moment, he still thought they were going to get off the island. People were right; his mom was tough, but he’d seen fear in her eyes before. It had been two years ago, when he’d broken his leg in a game and was going in for surgery. He wasn’t worried until he saw her and then his last thought before going under was that he was going to die. He didn’t die, of course. He had fully recovered, but he never forgot his mother’s expression. It was something he clung to when she put in eighty-hour work weeks and he began to question whether she really loved him.
Player ran into view then, a bag in one hand and sunglasses in the other. “Someone said that’s a pyroclastic flow!” he gasped, his voice cracking. “We have to run, Cindy.”
Derek didn’t wait to be told twice, and he tugged at his mom’s hand and ran after Player, not caring how much he’d hated the guys guts only a few hours before. If the man could help clear a path, he’d be his new best friend.
The resort boasted its remote location and, aside from a small collection of businesses rising up behind the private tikis, the steep landscape was covered in dense jungle.
“That way,” his mom directed, pointing at a dirt road that appeared to parallel the main street. Though it was littered with debris from fallen trees and some freshly formed cracks up to a foot wide, it was a passable route.
As Player helped his mom over a palm trunk, Derek dared a look behind them, and immediately wished he hadn’t. Dozens of other tourists were also attempting to scramble away from the beach any way possible, while several others remained standing out on the sand. They were simply waiting to be devoured by either the darkness or the water.
Derek shook his head as if it were covered in water, unable to understand. How could they just give up?
“We have to get as high as possible,” Player was saying, and Derek nodded in agreement as he leapt over the log.
“Do you know if there are any caves up there?” his mom asked. She coughed then, and Derek realized his eyes felt gritty. It was getting darker as the sun was blotted out by the black clouds and all that remained was a rapidly shrinking spot of red.
The jungle was silent, in spite of all that had happened, and Derek wondered where the animals had gone. Maybe they were the smart ones.
“A cave?” Player huffed as he ran. “Why would we want to find a cave? We have to get to the airport.”
Derek’s eyes were watering and his lungs burned. He tied his shirt around his face as he jogged after his mom, ignoring the burning sensation of his skin. It was getting unbearably hot.
“We aren’t going to make it to the airport,” she answered, coughing harder. “That’s a cloud of hot gas. We have to get underground.”
The wind shifted again. With it came a blast of what felt like boiling sand pelting their skin. People began to scream in the distance, their cries of fear turning to agony, and Derek realized from a detached perspective that he was one of them.
Arms encased him and he was thrown to the ground, most of his bare skin shielded by his mother’s body. The brief lull from intense agony gave him a chance to reflect on what he was going to miss.
Derek regretted bailing on football camp. It wasn’t because he didn’t care. It was because his dad, whom he’d seen only on holidays and at football games for the last five years of his life, had announced he was getting married and moving to Australia. Walking away from the only real tie to his dad had been his way of coping. Now, he’d never get a chance to explain to his friends, to tell them he was sorry. To show his dad what he was giving up.
His mom shrieked in pain and Derek buried his face into her chest as the furnace raged over them, allowing her the sacrifice as the final act of a mother’s love.
Chapter 10
PETA
Mauritius island
Indian ocean, 1,200 miles off the southeast coast of the African continent
“These aren’t going to be good enough once the methane gets here.” Peta ripped her fogged mask off and shone her flashlight around frantically at the remaining tubs stacked against the walls. The temperature had definitely been rising over the past half-hour since locking themselves in the basement, but the air was still breathable. Peta desperately needed a break from the confining mask and while she was becoming more optimistic about their chances against the pyroc
lastic surge, she needed to see so she could locate their only chance of surviving the methane.
“What are you looking for?” Lieutenant Rogers asked, adding his light to hers.
Devon grabbed at a container closest to him and motioned for Hernandez to help him, clearly understanding what she was doing. “Fire suits. They’re for when volcanologists get in nice and close to a crater. They come with a type of SCBA.”
“Self-contained breathing apparatus?” Hernandez guessed, his voice muffled and raspy through the gasmask.
Peta nodded, not caring if the guy saw her gesture or not. “These respirators will work for any ash or other toxic gases in the surge, but not methane. It’s heavier than oxygen and displaces it, so we’ll suffocate whether we’re wearing these or not.”
“Lovely,” Rogers muttered. “So, if we don’t get incinerated, we get to look forward to either being smothered or drowned.”
The hillside the building was dug into trembled around them with yet another earthquake, and it was impossible to tell if the eerie groaning was caused by the shifting structure or the Earth itself. Peta froze and waited for it to pass. No matter how many times it happened, it caused a surge of paralyzing fear. Once able to breathe again, she shone her light on the Lieutenant. “Only if we’re not buried alive.”
It wasn’t funny, and wasn’t meant as a joke, yet Rogers chuckled in response and soon they were all laughing rather hysterically. Peta wiped a tear from her eye and honestly thought she might be going insane. It was then that she noticed how hot it really was, and the back of her throat was beginning to tingle and burn. She quickly put the mask back on.
The lab was located on the Northern end of the forty-mile long island, and was perched on one of the highest points of the mountainous region. Though the scope of an explosion that would create a pyroclastic surge large enough to span roughly seven-hundred miles of ocean was inconceivable, Peta knew the gas itself still had to obey the laws of physics. “When the surge hit land, it should have slowed down considerably,” she explained, though no one had asked the question. She was once again falling back on science to calm her mind and get her focused. She began opening more containers while she spoke. “It should have already weakened considerably before then, no matter how much energy was released. That’s a long way to travel and it’ll be heavy, and flowing uphill will slow it even more. I can’t imagine it was hotter than two or three-hundred degrees by the time it reached us.”
