As We Know It

by Carrie Butler

  “Blue sign!” I call out suddenly, eager to contribute. “No, wait, it’s for parking.”

  Fail.

  I can almost hear Brent, my dear ex-fiancé, laughing at me. It wouldn’t be the first time he found pleasure in my embarrassment. But what if he knew I was down here in the worst of it? Would he be worried about me? Would it give him some kind of movie-esque realization that I was everything to him and he can’t lose me? He’d travel to Oregon, desperately searching every evacuation center, showing people a tattered picture of me. Then, just as he was about to give up hope, he’d spot me huddled under a blanket, overlooking the torrid sea, my hair blowing in the…

  Oh, who am I kidding? If I die here, he’ll post a pity-bait Facebook status, and that’ll be the last he thinks of me—assuming he lives.

  The bridge comes into bobbing view ahead of us. People are siphoning in from other streets to cross here. Someone is blowing a whistle.

  “I was right,” Vincent informs us, jerking his chin to the right. “Broadway’s out.”

  I follow his line of indication, and, sure enough, there’s a collapsed bridge down the river. I stare at it for a few seconds, but it doesn’t sink in. Even with cars bobbing in the water. My brain has stopped processing traumatizing images.

  Huh.

  We slow down as a bottlenecked crowd forms on the First Avenue bridge, which doesn’t look too great in my opinion. Cracks and crumbles aren’t exactly comforting, but whatever. It’s still standing.

  “Don’t fall in with the herd,” Vincent warns me. “Keep running.”

  The herd, he says, as if we’re not trying to out maneuver other human beings. Pangs of guilt clench my heart and linger as we pass families with bloodied kids and a man carrying an elderly woman piggyback style. Will they make it? Is there anything we can do to help them pick up the pace?

  I shake my head to rid myself of the thoughts. Vincent’s right. A savior complex is what gets people killed.

  We pass buildings in shambles I would’ve liked to have seen on my trip. In all honest selfishness, I would’ve liked to have had at least a day or two to enjoy the whole beach town vibe before my life was threatened. Then again, if we’re making wishes, I would’ve also liked to have avoided bruised lungs. I’m wheezing, and the inside of my chest feels like it’s lined with sandpaper. The ever-present clouds of dust aren’t helping, either.

  “Turning,” Vincent announces ahead of me, as he swings a right.

  I see the sign this time. I also see the flames of hell lapping up every shop on the corner. This is not somewhere we should be for any length of time. I try to catch up with Vincent and Naveen, but my prophetic shoe finally finds its stumbling block. Literally.

  My hands shoot out to brace my fall, but it’s too late. Broken pavement scrapes skin from my knees and elbows in burning streaks. I look up with tears stinging my eyes and humiliation ringing in my ears, only to see their retreating form disappearing down the street. They haven’t even realized I’m down.

  People push and edge around me, as if I’m just another obstacle in the fading sunlight. A stroller wheel—gah! Make that, two stroller wheels roll over my fingers without apology. What the hell, people? A string of curses wells up inside me, ready to spew.

  No, wait.

  That’s the rum.

  I wretch and empty the contents of my stomach in the street, earning myself a wider berth. The tears finally spill down my cheeks, and now they won’t stop coming. I heave and heave until I can’t breathe anymore.

  This is real, isn’t it?

  I’m going to die here.

  CHAPTER 4

  A mangled shadow falls over me, but I don’t have the strength to move.

  I cover my mouth and make jerky, flailing gestures down the street. Go around me, asshole. Can’t you see I’m bleeding and sick here?

  “You okay?” Vincent’s voice startles me, and I snap my chin up.

  Too soon. I moved too soon.

  Naveen gives a little wave, still nestled in his friend’s arms like a child. Given the size difference, it almost appears that way. He stiffens as Vincent carefully adjusts him to slide his arm further beneath his knees.

  “Come on,” Vincent tells me, offering his hand.

  These guys I haven’t yet known an hour risked their lives to come back for me, and I can’t wrap my head around it. They just lost minutes precious to their escape… for me. “I’m gross,” is all I can say.

  He rolls his eyes. “I’d rather have a gross friend than a dead one. Get up.”

  I wipe my hand on my shirt anyway, and only take his long enough to right myself. He’s trying to balance enough as it is. “Thanks…”

  “Can you run?” he asks, sidestepping my mess.

  “I don’t think I have a choice.”

  The corner of his mouth twitches. “Then let’s do this.”

  We rush down the street and hang a left onto the other end of Broadway. Abandoned cars are even more abundant here. Some have tires and bumpers wedged into the pavement, as if they were dropped in wet cement. More liquefaction, I guess. One second the ground is a solid, and the next it’s liquid—then whoops! Back to a solid.

  Science is so effed up.

  People are crawling through broken windows into a hardware store, as if stealing is somehow acceptable during a disaster. “I hope that hammer’s worth it, you saqueador cabrón!”

  My throat burns with acid from the effort, but I had to. Not only is the act of looting morally sick, it’s stupid to waste time when there’s a freakin’ tsunami coming! Other people will see that and think they have to get in on the action. Next thing you know, dozens will have been led astray. Then we’ll have—

  “So, the Spanish…” Naveen trails off, diffusing my anger with small talk.

  “I’m second-generation Spanish American. My family’s from Asturias.”

  “I meant, what does it mean?”

  “Oh.” I’m so used to people asking where I’m from originally (Elkhart, Indiana!) that it’s an automatic explanation. “Something like… you bastard looter! Or more literally, you male goat looter!”

  I shake my fist for emphasis, and he laughs.

  “I hate to kill the pleasantries,” Vincent cuts in, glancing at his watch under Naveen’s neck, “but we’re out of time. Earliest wave could be at the beach by now.”

  “How fast does the water move?”

  “If I recall correctly, you’d have to run a five or six-minute mile to outrun one.”

  Shit. Suddenly, my battered skin, damaged lungs, and stinging heels don’t bother me. I’m sprinting like a champ.

  Vincent is hot on my heels, and then right beside me.

  I’m hyperaware of everything as we barrel up Broadway—the bitter taste in my mouth, the screams and shouts around us, the smell of destruction in the air. Why is this street so damn flat? Shouldn’t we be reaching a hill sometime soon? I know I drove through hills coming down here.

  Another intersection, another sign. On the ground. The evacuation route sign is on the ground! Where do we go?

  “S-Straight,” Vincent huffs. “Another bridge.”

  “I-I thought you said we could stop running after the last one!”

  “Motivation!” he shoots back.

  A heinous, rushing roar starts building behind us, and I do a stupid thing. I look.

  Clouds of dust and smoke are bursting everywhere, as taller buildings start disappearing on the horizon. The few remaining poles and trees are being swallowed up, and I can’t even see the water yet.

  Vincent bumps me with his shoulder. “Eyes ahead, Alana!”

  “Elena.”

  “Shit, I knew I heard that wrong.”

  I would laugh; I would so laugh if my lungs could afford the expense. “It’s… okay…”

  The bridge is small, just spanning a creek, but it’s a welcome sight. We join a crowd of people pouring in from either side, and I can’t help but wonder if they’re lost. Coming from those
angles, they must be running inland wherever possible. There aren’t any other bridges I can see from here, even toppled ones.

  Just ahead, there’s a road sign for a hospital and a gradual incline in the road. Finally! Once we’re atop that hill, I’m going to collapse. Seriously. People are going to have to walk over my body, because that’s all of the energy and pain resistance I have left.

  Someone’s dog starts howling in their arms, and I get the eeriest sensation of déjà vu—a second before the ground starts quivering.

  “It’s happening again!” a little boy wails, clutching onto his mama.

  You have got to be kidding me. I shoot Vincent a look, but his gaze is focused on the bridge under our feet. “We need to move… now!”

  It’s too late. The aftershock tears a rip in his path, and he trips mid-stride, sliding with Naveen still in his arms. I try to help them, but no one can stand upright—the shaking is too intense—so I crawl.

  My elbows and knees curse me in both languages, still bleeding from my mishap in the street, as I pull myself over the rough patches. I know nothing is on top of me this time, but the weight is crushing me again. Vincent’s. The building’s. It’s hard to breathe. “Are… are you guys okay?”

  The bridge dances to the earth’s forced rhythm, swaying back and forth and twisting side to side. I’m practically a rodeo champion by this point, but all I can focus on are the openings in the side barrier.

  They’re cutouts shaped like cathedral windows, straight across the bottom and bowed to a point on top. If my mother were here, she’d have her rosary beads out.

  I wanted to play dress up with those things so badly when I was little, but she never let me—not that she really knew what to do with them herself. She was only Catholic by way of in-law-induced guilt. Once my abuela passed away, we stopped attending mass altogether. Now here are the windows, come back to haunt me in my final hours…

  “No!” someone shouts behind me, desperation maddening her voice. “I’ve got to call Steve!”

  I glance over my shoulder to see a girl in her late teens, struggling over a cell phone with an older man, presumably her father. “After it passes,” he insists.

  “I have to tell him I love him now!” Her smooth dark hair is somehow still perfectly coiffed, despite the circumstances. “We never said it. Please, Daddy…”

  “Damn it, Caitlin!” He snatches the phone from her grasp and pitches it past me, where it skids across the broken pavement and teeters at the edge. “I need you to hold on and pay attention to what’s happening around you. We’re almost there. Then you can try to—”

  “I’m not some kid you can boss around anymore,” she cries, scampering for the device. “Don’t you get it?”

  Before he can reply, another crack races up the bridge, and my eyes nearly bulge out. I thought this was supposed to be the safe one? This time, I’m the one calling out the girl’s name in warning—half a second before the ground falls out from under us.

  CHAPTER 5

  One moment I’m yelling, and the next I’m flat on my back.

  My head bounces off the ground. Creek water surges into my gasping mouth, and I accidently gulp it, triggering a gag from deep within. I grasp around and lean onto my arm, turning just enough to get my head above the shuddering water.

  I spew and sputter, blinking to try and clear my vision. Muffled by my ringing ears, people are screaming. I push my wet mess of frizzy curls back, off my face, and pinch at my nose. “V-Vincent?”

  Everything is a blur of shapes and movement. I try to stand, but the strap has broken on my wedge heel, and I’m like a foal on untested legs. In the briefest of fits, I chuck the damn things down creek and find my footing au naturale.

  The ground settles.

  “Naveen?” My calves are weak, my knees nearly spent, but I manage to get up and survey the damage. The only parts left of the bridge are clinging to the banks. People are running round them, trudging through the creek, and bypassing the collapse victims.

  “H-Here,” a weak voice responds at my back. He’s sitting in the water with a dazed expression on his face, trying to pat his cling wrap back down. Him surviving the fall relatively unscathed is a small miracle in and of itself.

  “Where’s your friend?” I ask, eyeing a window-shaped barrier piece as it bobs by, one edge skirting the bedrock.

  Naveen nods toward where a few people are hovering over a heap of jagged concrete, so I wade over.

  Vincent’s crouched down, his t-shirt plastered to his tense shoulders. I put a hand on his back. “Are you okay?”

  He latches onto my arm like a cobra strike, turning with a raised fist and murder in his eyes. Seconds tick by before recognition softens his features and he lets go. “Sorry.”

  What the hell?

  The man from before is sobbing, shouting pleas at the top of his lungs. I follow his gaze, and my heart stills.

  Caitlin is sprawled out on one of the massive slabs, half-submerged in water. Her eyes are wide, staring unseeingly at the dusky sky, with her hair fanned out across a growing pool of blood.

  I forget how to breathe.

  Shouldn’t we… ? We should… I reach out to check her pulse, but Vincent grasps my wrist and pulls it down. With nothing more than a shake of his head, he stands and turns away.

  BOOM.

  It’s the kind of sound you hear in a movie theater, the immersive bass that resonates in your chest. I jerk my head toward the horizon and see buildings sinking to their metaphorical knees, dropping one after the other. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!

  Not now!

  Vincent nearly jerks my arm out of its socket, making for the other bank. He breaks into a full-out run, and I spend my last burst of energy struggling to keep up. Out of the corner of my eye, Naveen is up and darting toward us.

  My senses sharpen, slowing everything else down. The others who were with us on the bridge are scrambling for higher ground, all except Caitlin’s father. He’s thrown himself over her unmoving form in hysterics. “Sir!”

  I want to yell louder, to reach out and pull him along, but he’s too far gone in every aspect of the phrase. I can’t believe I just watched someone die, especially someone that young. In the blink of an eye, her life was snuffed out like it was nothing. How are we supposed to keep moving after that?

  The rushing sound gets impossibly loud, like a train barreling toward us, and I make the mistake of looking again. It’s here. The tsunami has caught us. We’re not getting out of this alive, either. I see it…

  I see it.

  I see it! Madre de Dios, it’s right there. An inky wall of water, toting debris like sociopathic trophies. Boats, houses, cars—are those bodies? It’s immense, higher than any building I’ve seen so far in Seaside.

  “Hold on.” Vincent spins me around and grasps either side of my face with both hands. “You hear me? Hold on!”

  I’m not ready.

  I’m not—

  I’m struck by something so hard it knocks me off my feet, leaving me suspended for the slightest second in water. Then it fills the creek bed, the road. No! We were so close!

  A garbled version of my name snags my attention, but only long enough for me to duck the beam of a boat carried on its side by the ocean’s angry swell. My heart nearly explodes, surging adrenaline-laced blood in every direction. I have no choice. I hold my breath and go under.

  Disorientation spins and tugs me in a thousand different directions. It’s so dark, I can’t remember which way is up. Things are slamming into me from every angle, some rough, some slimy. I struggle to keep swimming, stiff and braced for the final blow.

  There’s no romanticizing this feeling, drifting toward the bottom like some lifeless doll. I jerk around and sputter and my chest is on fire. It’s a last-ditch attempt that feels futile. Weighted.

  Did we come this far to die?

  Something sharp jars my knee from below, and I reach down to catch its upward spiral. It’s huge, whatever it is. A r
oof? My fingers barely grasp the rough metal edge before it breaks the surface.

  I cough so hard I see colors and half-expect my lungs to spew out across the shingles. It smells so bad up here, but I’m clinging with every last shred of strength I have. This roof is my saving grace, for the moment. I blink a watery film from my lashes and look around, my chest heaving.

  This is surreal. It’s as if the entire city of Seaside is caught up in the murky water, and it’s being relocated. Fires dot the surface, sending up smoke signals to no one. The weird thing is, I can’t stop thinking about how the tsunami itself rolled in. It wasn’t a massive, theatrical wave like I always imagined. It was sheer power, charging in to reclaim territory.

  “Vincent?” I finally shout, finding my voice. “Naveen? Anybody?”

  It’s hard to see around all of these ships and buildings, especially with evening settling in. Once night falls, I can’t even imagine the nightmare that will unfold. I could be swept out to the ocean and never know it. A cold chill shoots down my spine at the thought, and I hunker down.

  If I can just stay upright, ride this pulse, maybe I can latch onto something else. Maybe…

  I keep trying their names, calling out until my throat is numb, to no avail. Maybe they got out, or found debris to float on, or—

  A Buick spirals past and clips my roof, spinning me around. I issue a nasty curse before I realize someone’s trapped inside the vehicle. Their terrified eyes meet mine for a moment, before the water deigns our parting. The SUV bobs and moves on to crash into a gnarled tree.

  Honestly, I don’t know who has it worse—the folks who died instantly, or those of us who are floating around, awaiting our turn.

  The thick, gritty deluge carries everything and everyone past the intersection and around the corner, as if it’s mocking the route we would have taken. Maybe safety was unattainable all along. Who knows. All I can say for sure is I’m on borrowed time.