"I need to go. Lani will be okay. I don't think there's any permanent damage. Tom's shoulder will need to be checked out by an orthopedist. And Mia needs an MRI, but that won't happen until we can get back to the mainland. The nurse said nobody has any spare clothes yet, so we'll just have to dry out until we can get some."
Tom massaged his shoulder, but he seemed more intent on looking around the hangar.
"When you find someone in authority," Kai said, "let them know that Tom is looking for his parents." Then he realized that even after all he had gone through with the boy, Kai still didn't know one important detail about him.
"Tom," Kai said. "What's your last name?"
"Medlock," Tom replied, understanding why he was being asked. "My parents are Joseph and Belinda Medlock."
"I've got it," Teresa said. "We'll find them, Tom." More quietly, she said to Kai, "Listen, I'm just…Oh God…I mean…" Before she could finish, she burst into tears and grasped Kai in a hug. After a moment, she pulled herself back and wiped her face. "I'll be back as soon as I can."
She walked toward the front of the hangar, and Kai turned his attention back to Lani and Mia.
Neither of them spoke. Mia stared off into the distance, and Lani slowly flipped through the photo album Kai had saved. It was hard to believe these were the same girls who were reprimanded this morning for being too chatty.
Kai knelt down and smiled at Lani.
"How are you feeling?" he said.
"I'm just coughing a little."
"You're going to be fine," Kai said. "You're going to be fine."
"Why, Daddy?" Lani cried. "I want Mommy! I want Uncle Brad!"
Lani put her face in her hands and bawled loudly. Kai comforted her the best that he could, taking his own comfort in her vitality.
"I know, sweetie," Kai said. "I want them, too."
Eventually, her sobs lessened until she just moaned into his shoulder.
A warm puff of air tickled Kai's ear. He turned just in time for Bilbo to lick his face energetically.
"Bilbo!" Lani said, and the dog sprang to her, where Lani lavished him with coos and pats.
Kai looked up to see a massive brown hand held out to him.
"Glad you made it, boss," Reggie Pona said, pulling Kai to his feet, then throwing his arms around him. "I thought we'd lost you a few times."
"If you hadn't sent help for us, you would have."
"I introduced myself to Teresa back there," Reggie said, pointing to the hangar entrance. "She seems okay. Are you girls all right?"
Lani and Mia nodded, focusing most of their interest on Bilbo. Kai knew Reggie wanted to hear about what happened, but he wanted to let the girls have a little time to calm down after the ordeal, and the dog was just what they needed.
"Let's take a walk, Reggie. Lani, take care of Bilbo. I'll be back in a little bit." Kai saw her start to protest, so he held up his hand to stop her. "I swear that I will not drive or fly anywhere without you. We'll just be outside."
As they stepped out of the hangar, two trucks screeched to a halt and began unloading passengers and supplies.
"Let's get some privacy," Reggie said, leading the way down the tarmac. "I saw a good place on my way here. You don't know how glad I was to hear you landed."
Kai didn't answer. After a few moments of silence, he said, "Is it over?"
"We're expecting a few more waves, but they're a lot smaller. That last monster was absolutely unbelievable. 300 feet! I mean, everything's gone for three miles inland in some places."
"I know. I saw it when we were in the air."
"Oh. Right."
Another silence.
"Teresa told me about Rachel and Brad," Reggie said. "I don't know what to say. I'm really sorry."
Reggie was tactfully leaving it open for him to say more, but Kai wasn't in the mood to discuss the details.
"Who's handling the warning duties now?" he said, knowing Reggie wouldn't have left his post without making sure it was covered.
"George and Mary finally showed up. They're on the phone with the WC/ATWC. I left them in charge so I could take a break and come find you. The first wave won't reach California for another two hours. The west coast should be pretty well-evacuated by then. Given the TV coverage, you'd have to be a grade-A moron to stay by the ocean today."
Reggie stopped at the base of what looked like a World War II era watchtower at least 70 feet in height. Although it obviously hadn't been used in years, it still looked sturdy enough.
"Should be a little quieter up there," he said.
Kai shrugged and followed him up the stairs. At the top, they were treated to an expansive view that stretched all the way to the shoreline five miles to the south. The fresh breeze felt good on Kai's face, carrying away the stink that still wafted from his sodden clothes.
"This is going to get worse before it gets better, you know," Kai said. "A lot worse."
"Tell me about it. All the power stations are knocked out. It could take a year to build new ones. They've already estimated at least 300,000 homeless on Oahu alone."
"We're two of them."
"Right," Reggie said. "I wonder where we're going to sleep tonight."
Kai wondered when he was going to be able to sleep again. All he could think of was Rachel, trying to fix her image in his mind before it faded. The twinkle in her eye when she knew Kai was going to unleash a dreadful pun. Her delightful bray of laughter at Lani's wrestling matches with the dog. The touch of her lips. The smell of her hair when she curled up with him just before they fell asleep. Without her, sleep would be a long time coming.
"Looks like we'll have to bed down in the airport hangars for now," Kai said. "With only one working runway in the entire island chain, any airlift is going to go slowly."
"Hell, I don't know how they're even going to get jet fuel up here to fill up all these planes," Reggie replied. "I heard someone from the government talk about resupplying Hawaii with the biggest ship convoy since World War II. Who knows how long that will take. At least two weeks before it gets here. I bet they move half the population to the mainland…"
"Reggie," Kai interrupted. "Do you mind if we just stand here for a few minutes and not talk?"
Reggie simply nodded and leaned against the railing, seeing that his boss needed some peace after the chaos of the morning. Kai just wanted to have a moment to himself before facing the reality of the hardships to come.
So they stood there silently, reflecting on their losses and contemplating the future, staring at the flat blue ocean serenely shimmering in the distance.
Epilogue
One Year Later
Kai Tanaka sat back from his laptop and stared out at the expansive view from his new house as he lost his concentration yet again. Even this late in the spring, the peaks looming above Seattle were still dusted with snow. The cold weather didn't bother him nearly as much as he remembered. He actually liked the crisp air now, but that wasn't why he had moved back to Washington.
And it wasn't the fact that Puget Sound was a hundred miles from the Pacific. Despite the move, the ocean was never far from his mind, as were the images of that terrible day in Honolulu.
It always struck him as odd that, with all the videography available from these kinds of time-stopping events, the most iconic images seemed to come from photos. But the same was true of the images from the Memorial Day Tsunami.
The sight of the USS Arizona, exposed to the air for the first time in over 60 years after it was sunk on the day that pulled America into World War II, washed inland and coming to rest alongside the USS Missouri, the ship where the Japanese surrender was signed, ending the war.
The photos of Honolulu taken from the lip of Diamond Head the day before and the day after the tsunami hit, one showing a bustling metropolis, the other a landscape laid bare up to three miles inland.
The aerial photo of Punchbowl National Cemetery, a memorial to those who have died in the service of their country, teeming with the li
fe of those who were protected and saved from the tsunami by its very location.
It was the Punchbowl image that Kai identified with most, and the one he had framed on his wall. It represented everything he did right on that day. He could honestly say that those people would not be alive if it weren't for him. It didn't let his conscience completely off the hook for all the thousands who died, but it was what let him sleep at night now.
He had come to terms with some of the decisions he made. Not all of them. But enough to let him not just mourn the dead, but to celebrate the survivors and remember the sacrifices some made so that others would live.
Survivors like Harold and Gina Franklin who, when seeing the utter destruction of Christmas Island, improbably sailed with the rest of the Seabiscuit passengers all the way to the Hawaiian Islands after they realized no one would be coming to rescue them. They and the nine people with them remained the sole known survivors of that island.
Paige Rogers and her children, who couldn't return to their home in Los Angeles until two weeks after the tsunami hit.
Max Walsh, the concierge responsible for saving the lives of 63 veterans and their wives, who couldn't have known that staying for just a few more minutes on the Grand Hawaiian rooftop might have made such a difference in Kai's life.
Sheila Wendel and her mother Doris, who touched down at Tripler Medical Center only a few minutes after leaving the Grand Hawaiian. Jerry Wendel-for whom Rachel made the ultimate sacrifice trying to save-survived surgery to repair a ruptured cerebral aneurysm.
Tom Medlock, who was reunited with his parents after three days of searching.
Others were not so fortunate.
Darryl and Eunice Gaithers, the elderly couple from Mississippi that Teresa had met on the beach probably returned to the doomed Hilton and stayed in their room until the hotel collapsed. They were never heard from again.
As Kai suspected, the two videographers who had filmed the collapse of the Seaside never got to sell their tape to the networks.
The body of Jake Ferguson washed up on the beach five days later. His family, who lived in Michigan and had sent Jake on vacation to visit his friend Tom, finally made it to Hawaii to claim his remains six weeks after the disaster, consoling themselves only with the details Kai could tell them about Jake's last day.
The extraordinary circumstances that these people endured were a testament to the spirit of humanity, a spirit he saw in his own family.
His wife, Rachel, and his brother, Brad, stood proudly in his memory as representatives of the best the human race can offer, as symbols of why people would want to go to such great lengths to protect civilization from harm. He wished he could have understood everything that went through their minds on that day, their last day. But he took pride in the actions they took, the same kind of selfless deeds so many others performed on that terrible morning.
Kai took the same pride in his team, that their warnings saved countless lives around the Pacific Rim. Even though the effects of the tsunami on the rest of the Pacific weren't as powerful as they were in Hawaii, many island nations were devastated and suffered horribly. Over 125,000 lives lost in total, 36,000 of them on the Hawaiian islands, but far fewer than had died in the Asia tsunami. And although the structural damage along the coasts of the mainland US, Australia, and Japan was catastrophic, only 57 people in those locations lost their lives.
The rebound of the Hawaiian economy had been stronger than expected, in part because of massive rebuilding efforts by the US government. Construction cranes from all over the world dominated the Honolulu skyline. Not surprisingly, people had short memories and were rebuilding huge new hotels and houses right along the reconfigured Hawaiian shoreline, certain that such a disaster would never again happen in their lifetimes. Kai hoped they were right. But he was hedging his bets, and he knew others were, too.
One of them was Reggie Pona. In his new post as assistant director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, Reggie gave Kai a tour of the facility where it was rebuilt inside Diamond Head crater right next to the Hawaii Civil Defense bunker. With more foresight, or more correctly, more money, that's where it should have been located all along. Now the money was plentiful, and when the next tsunami comes for Hawaii-and it will come-they will be supremely ready and able to handle it.
After the disaster, Kai felt the pull to return to teaching and research. There was nothing left for him in Hawaii, and he had missed working with students. He had asked for his old position in the University of Washington's geology department, and they gladly welcomed him back. The job didn't allow him to forget about the past, but it did let him focus on the future.
"Kai," he heard from the doorway, "we're going to be late for the movie. Shut that down and let's go."
"Yeah, come on, Dad."
He turned to see Teresa in the doorway, flanked by Lani and Mia. Teresa had finished her residency and continued on at UW as an attending physician. Kai wasn't dating Teresa. It was too soon. But they were good friends and saw each other often, especially because of the girls. Someday, maybe, when the time was right, when his grief for Rachel wasn't so sharp, he'd be able to love someone again.
He often had doubts about what was right, that what he was doing with his life was worthwhile. He struggled with it every day.
When Teresa became a doctor, Rachel and Kai listened to her stories about her experiences in the hospital with rapt attention. Teresa had to deal with death on a daily basis, and it had a profound effect on her. Kai would never forget one thing she said about it during those discussions, when she was telling them about a daughter who made it to her elderly mother's bedside in time to say her last goodbyes.
"She said she was happy that she was able to talk to her mother one last time," Teresa said. "She said she was happy to see her mother pass away like that."
"You sound like you don't believe her," Rachel said.
"Oh, she smiled, and she seemed glad and relieved to be there, but happy? No."
"Why not?"
"Life never has a happy ending," Teresa said. "It always ends in death. Death can be dignified or wretched, agonizing or painless, horrifying or serene, untimely or welcome. But it's always sad. Happiness comes from what you do with the time between the beginning and the end."
Now that Rachel was gone, Kai often wondered what she would want him to do with the rest of his life. As he closed his laptop, he looked at Teresa smiling at him, and he thought he knew.
Rachel would want him to be happy.
END
Afterword
Asteroids are a very real threat to our planet. The story told in The Palmyra Impact is a dramatization of what would happen if one of them struck Earth, but it is not science fiction. When I visited the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center for my research, I spent three hours with the director, Chip McCreery, who graciously gave me a tour of the facility. The tour took place more than eighteen months before the Asia tsunami devastated Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia in December 2004. When I told him the plot to my story, he agreed that the scenario was indeed plausible.
The reason is that asteroids are very difficult to detect. As I mentioned in the novel, asteroid 2002 MN wasn't discovered until it had already passed by Earth. If that asteroid had hit the middle of the ocean, we may not have known about it until the first waves hit populated shores.
In the future, one of those asteroids won't miss. It may not be in my lifetime, but someday it will happen unless we do something to deflect the asteroid.
Spaceguard is a real entity scanning the skies for dangerous near-earth objects. They've identified Apophis, a near-Earth asteroid almost identical in size to the one in The Palmyra Impact. There is a 1 in 45,000 chance that it will hit Earth in 2036.
The computer models that I referenced in the novel are very real and are an example of extensive research into tsunamis caused by asteroid impact. Those models may not match up exactly with the size and frequency of waves I sent towards Honolulu in my book, but I
will point out that until we actually experience an asteroid impact, we have no real data. The computer models may be wrong.
One thing is certain, though. I won't be in Hawaii the day Apophis makes its closest approach.
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