Amber tucked a lock of hair over one ear and leaned against the counter. “So, Mitch...where are you going after you close up? You wanna...I mean, we’re going to try and get some lunch on the way out of town—”
“Uh, change of plan,” Cami said with an apologetic look at Amber. She inclined her head toward the people in the street. “We need to get out of here.”
Mitch cleared his throat and focused on scanning the items in Cami’s first basket. “I, uh...yeah, I was just going to head west and get out of here. Pops doesn’t want me in town,” he said, as he emptied her basket. “He says he’s going to lock down the marina soon and head home, anyway. Now that they’ve called for the evacuation, I should just head out to Givhans Ferry, probably camp out till this all blows over.”
Cami nodded as she handed over her credit card. She didn’t even look at the price. “Sounds like a good choice,” her eyes on the crowds of people on the sidewalk outside. “You’d be plenty far inland.”
Mitch grabbed the bags and walked them to the front door. He unlocked it and opened the door with a grimace as the noise hit them. People hurried by in the dense crowd, all talking to each other or on cell phones.
“This is intense,” Amber observed.
“Uh, maybe I’ll just grab my stuff now…” Mitch said. “Be right back.”
“Mom,” is this for real?” asked Amber.
“I think it is, sweetheart,” Cami said as she scanned the crowd. She peered east toward the coast but couldn’t see anything except a sea of worried faces.
Mitch returned a moment later with a large backpack and and the rest of Cami’s purchases. “I’ll lock up and we can get out of here.”
Cami turned and joined the flow of pedestrian traffic heading west. “Well, that settles it. Let’s go. Mitch, why don’t you come with us, we’ll get lunch west of town—but right now, we need to get gone.”
“Good enough for me, y’all,” said Mitch with a glance at his phone. “I don’t like the way everyone is so spooked,” he added. “Lemme let dad know.”
“Yup,” Amber said quickly. “Yup—let’s go.”
“So how much time, exactly, would it take for this thing to reach us?” Mitch asked over the honking horns, eyeing the crowd as they walked.
“If it started when I think it did,” Cami replied over her shoulder, “maybe six or seven hours.”
“I heard it was moving faster than they expected,” Mitch offered. “On the news,” he said to Amber, his ears going pink again. “They said it hit up north, like Nova Scotia and it’s curling around the shoreline as it goes…”
“If it takes six or seven hours to get here,” Amber said, then glanced at Mitch, “and it’s moving faster than they thought…” Amber looked at Cami. “Shouldn’t it be here…like, now?”
Cami cursed herself for not paying closer attention. She’d been so wrapped up in trying to keep Amber calm, she’d missed vital information. She vowed that was not going to happen again. Amber was an adult for all intents and purposes. She was an equal member of the team and should be treated as such. Cami decided right there on the sidewalk in Charleston that she wasn’t going to waste energy and time trying to protect Amber from the truth, no matter what. Since she’d gotten up, Cami could see now she’d made mistake after mistake, all in the name of normalcy bias.
Instead of wasting time shopping for school supplies, she should have spent the entire time at Walmart loading up on long term food. It wasn’t a totally wasted trip, but there was so much more she could’ve picked up…
“Come on,” Cami snapped, “we need to move faster.”
“There’s too many people and cars,” Amber complained. “Sorry,” she called after bumping into a young woman dragging a pair a kids behind her, loaded down with beach gear and a cooler.
“It’s fine,” the young mother said, red-faced and sweating. The two kids cried and struggled, tripping and pulling her arms.
They found themselves walking side by side for a moment. “Did you walk all the way from the beach?” asked Amber.
She nodded, sweat dripping from her nose. “Have to...the roads are packed, and we’d still be stuck way back there if we hadn’t started walking when we did.” She looked up, seeing nothing but a sea of heads. “Do you know how far it is to the marina?”
“Just another block or two,” Mitch offered. “Ma’am, you want me to take that cooler for you? Looks like you got your hands full. We’re headed that way, too.”
“Oh, thank you,” the woman said, gladly handing over the bulky beach gear. She shifted the diaper bag on her shoulder and got better grips on the kids. “When we left the beach, people were screaming that the tidal wave already hit up north somewhere. If that’s true—”
“Where up north?” demanded Cami. Fresh sweat broke out on her chest.
“New England or something, I think,” the woman said apologetically, “Sorry, I wasn’t paying much attention.”
“Mom, I’m sure he’s fine,” Amber said quietly, putting a hand on Cami’s arm.
“Yes…y-yes, of course,” Cami said, her voice tight. Suddenly it felt hard to breathe. Whatever had happened, Reese was living it right at that moment—or already had suffered through the impact. She closed her eyes and said a little prayer as they waited at the corner for the light to change. He had to be alive, he had to.
Several knots of people clustered at the corner around them, all looking at phones. Others strolled down the street seemingly without a care in the world. Tourists walked by with bags of souvenirs, locals strolled by carrying backpacks and briefcases. Like any other late summer day, most people walked to their destinations with heads down, staring at phones.
Cami immediately recognized the people who paid close attention to the evolving situation as the ones who’d stopped in their tracks and stared in disbelief at the alerts on their devices. She could hear buzzers and ringtones chiming all around them as the EAS messages went out.
She looked back over her shoulder at all the people behind them. The people further back looked panicked. She did not want to be trapped in a stampede if people lost their minds. Somewhere back there, the wave had to be about ready to slam into the shore.
A news chopper roared overhead, low and fast as it skimmed the skyline and raced toward the beach. The pilot slowed the aircraft’s forward momentum, and the helicopter rose straight up.
“What’s up with that?” asked Mitch as he watched the helicopter.
“I think they saw the wave. Look, I bet they’re getting higher to get a better view as…
“As it hits?” Amber asked, her face pale.
When the first person jaywalked, Cami jumped right behind them and dragged Amber and Mitch with her, setting off a cascade of people rushing across the street. Cars honked in vain, and Cami hurried across the street. The bridge was just up ahead, only a block away.
Living so far inland, Cami had never in her wildest dreams considered preparing for a tsunami. Butterflies tickled the inside of her stomach. All the preps, plans, and supplies that she'd so painstakingly collected over the last decade, all the work and foundations she’d laid to make sure her family survived whatever disaster might befall them—it was all in danger of being washed away like driftwood at the beach. None of it would be worth anything if they didn’t make it home.
She mentally kicked herself for pushing her luck and being greedy. She didn’t need any of the supplies she’d picked up at Mitch’s store. It was all nice to have…but as she glanced over her shoulder at Amber and Mitch, struggling to keep up with her frenetic pace, Cami realized she’d jeopardized more than her supplies by coming to town.
Stupid.
As they worked their way down the street, it became more and more congested toward the bridge, and their car, hopefully still safe in the Walmart parking lot. As they walked, her mood darkened.
Doggedly, Cami, Amber and Mitch worked their way, inch by inch, through the jostling crowd toward the bridge. Several people had ab
andoned their cars and fled on foot, carrying whatever they could, which only exacerbated the congestion and horn honking. Somewhere in the sweaty, cursing mess, the young mother and her two kids fell behind and were lost in the crowd.
Cami, Amber, and Mitch had almost reached the bridge when suddenly everyone fell quiet. Just like the others in the crowd, Cami came up short and turned to make sure she could see Amber. Her daughter looked at her with the same confused expression that almost everyone else had on their faces. Why had everyone stopped? And why had everyone gone quiet all at the same time? Mitch heard it first. His face slackened, and he turned away to look southeast toward The Battery.
Then Cami heard it, too.
A low rumble in the distance, it sounded like the noise coming from a sports stadium or a major social event. An indistinguishable, muted roar, the mixing of thousands of voices. Cami swallowed, her mouth dry as her face dripped with sweat.
Her heart quickened its pace and a wash of fresh heat spread over her body. The first screams erupted out of sight at the back of the crowd, around the curve of the street. The sounds of voices raised in panic echoed on the wind and drifted closer. Rippling closer, the screams and cries of alarm stretched along the side streets, alleys, and avenues as far she could see to the east.
Toward the ocean.
“Cami-san…” Mitch murmured, stepping closer but still looking back the way they’d come.
"Mom?" Amber whispered in the ghostly silence around them. "Mama? What do we do?"
Smoke, a misty haze in the distance, rose up down the street and rolled forward like a fog. Cami couldn’t see anything at first, other than people who turned and ran from what chased them.
Then the crowd parted and a car came into view, spun sideways and carried along by the angry brown water. It bowled over several people who vanished in a horrific spray of seafoam as the tsunami gained speed. Cami saw the driver moving behind the wheel a split second before the car turned on the whim of the wave and vanished.
More cars, abandoned in the road, joined the rolling, tumbling nightmare at the leading edge of the relentless, unstoppable wall of water that continued forward. Lamp posts swayed and toppled, adding to the impressive amount of debris that churned down the street. People scrambled and climbed over each other to flee, which caused even more people to fall prey to the wall of water as it destroyed everything in its path.
Behind the front of the wave, the water built up and reached the second floors of most buildings that lined the street. A few shuddered and shook. The wall of a bank at the corner rippled and collapsed under the pressure of millions of gallons of water. The nightmarish sound of glass breaking and metal groaning—over the screams of thousands of voices—jarred Cami back to herself.
“Mom!” Amber screamed, her hand like a vice on Cami’s arm.
Cami’s mouth was so dry she was worried she wouldn’t be able to speak what at that moment felt like the most important thing she’d ever said to her daughter: “Run!”
Chapter 5
Mount Desert Island, Maine
As the minutes ticked by and the Charming Betty grew closer to shore, Reese noticed the waves smoothed considerably. The choppiness of the open water gave way to an almost glassy smoothness that allowed the boat to pick up considerable speed. They practically flew across the glassy smooth surface of the water, roaring toward shore with a rooster tail of spray behind them. Mount Desert Island loomed ahead of them. A green and brown mass containing the pointed peaks of Acadia National Park.
Reese's eyes were drawn to Cadillac Mountain—he'd been there as a child with his family, and they’d gotten a sticker to slap on the back of the car to prove it. Never in his wildest dreams did Reese imagine himself racing there on a boat with the intent of climbing as high as he could to save his life.
The question was how high did they have to climb? How high would the wave rise?
He clenched his jaw in frustration. They were still outside cell service, so no one had any answers. Other than the panicked squawking coming from the radio as other ship captains encountered the waves out on the open water, the sideband channels were filled with chatter back and forth between people requesting assistance and the Coasties trying to coordinate rescue efforts.
Behind them, Reese saw an odd lump on the horizon growing. At first it looked like a slight distortion caused by moisture in the air. Then as they grew closer to land, he realized that it was actually the water itself, swelling in the distance, creating a mirage-like shape that shimmered with movement. The tsunami was coming—and it grew larger by the minute. Visions of Hollywood special effects flashed through his mind, and he could almost see towering waves thousands of feet tall, roaring in to smash everything in their path.
He closed his eyes and gripped the side rail tight. That wouldn't happen. He and Cami had long discussions about the tsunami that hit Indonesia in 2004. As much damage as that one had caused, it'd only been 90 feet high at the highest point.
"I got cell service!" Ben yelled as he skidded across the deck and stopped next to Reese. "Holy crap, my phone’s blowing up with alerts. Look at all this!" he said, showing Reese the screen, covered in emergency alerts and text messages from friends, family, and co-workers.
Before Reese could open his mouth to reply, his own phone chirped and let loose with that irritating/scary wail caused by official emergency alert messages. He dug it out of his pocket and thumbed through the screens, like everyone else on board the boat.
NOAA and the National Tsunami Warning Center had changed their alert status from coastal advisories to a full-on tsunami warning. It looked like everything was centered around New England, but he couldn't tell how far south the warnings stretched. The damage was expected to spread, and for a moment, he was grateful that Cami and Amber were out of immediate harm’s way.
That would let him concentrate on saving his own hide.
Skipping through all the missed calls and voicemails—none of them were from Cami and Amber, therefore they could all wait—he opened his phone's browser and tried to get online. An error message flashed across the screen that he could not connect to the server.
"You gotta be kidding me…" Ben complained. "You got Internet service? Mine’s down.“
"All the networks are down," one of the other prizewinners complained from the other side of the boat. The TechSafe employees had clustered together in little groups, while the crew gathered by the captain. Similar expressions of frustration and worry flashed across everyone's faces.
Reese shook his head again. He could almost hear Cami saying told ya so. "The cell networks are going to be down for a while. Everybody's trying to get information and talk and send messages all at the same time…" He frowned, trying to remember what Cami had told him about when the networks crash.
"Text messages!" he said, snapping his fingers. Not looking up from his screen. He opened the messaging app. "Text messages use a lot less bandwidth than calls," he explained to Ben as he tapped out a quick message to Cami and Amber, letting them know that he was alive and trying to make it ashore before the wave hit. "There's a chance they may still go through even with the networks bogged down. And when the networks come back, text messages will be the first thing to get automatically sent." He looked up at Ben, who was furiously tapping away on his own phone. "I hope."
Ben looked up at him. "You hope? You sound awful confident for somebody who hopes…" he said with a smirk, before looking back down at his phone.
"Cami's the one who's the expert on all this stuff… I should have paid more attention when she was telling me about these kinds of things.”
“Hey, don't beat yourself up over it," Ben consoled, "you know a lot more about it than I do."
Monty stopped by to check on them. "How you guys doing?" he asked, his sun-bleached hair hanging wet across his forehead. “Cap’n says we’re getting close to shore, but the water doesn't look right, so you’d better hold on."
“What do you mean, ‘the water do
esn't look right?’” asked Ben, craning his neck to see around the bridge.
Reese leaned over the side. "Looks like an awful lot of beach to me," Reese said pointing at the shore ahead.
"Last time I was here," Monty said, scratching his head, "it sure didn’t look like that. It's like the tide went out, only way more than normal, man.”
That casual statement jarred Reese's memory—he remembered watching interviews with survivors of the Indonesian tsunami. They all reported seeing the waters recede way out into the distance, far more than a normal low tide. They recalled watching tourists walk far out onto the ocean floor, marveling at the sea life and rocks exposed to the air for the first time.
"It's the tsunami," Reese said, staring at the unnaturally shallow bay they approached at full speed. As the water seemed to grow shallower before their eyes, the cleft in the island formed by a prehistoric fjord grew deeper and deeper. Reese had no idea the seafloor could drop away from the shoreline so quickly. It was like watching somebody drain the water out of a pool in slow motion. The shoreline continued to expand out to meet the receding water which dropped as they watched.
The captain hollered something from the cockpit, and Reese saw everyone up front grab onto the side of the boat or anything that could support their weight. "Hold on!" Reese hollered, wrapping his arm around the side rail. Ben and Monty did likewise. Just before the boat took a hard turn to port.
Tackle boxes, coolers, and personal bags went sliding across the deck crashing into each other making more than one person yelp in sudden pain.
"What’s he doing?" called out Ben over the noise of the engines.
"There's not enough water in Seal Harbor!" Monty said, pointing at the chasm opening up before them at the end of the beach. The Charming Betty had turned due west and was making for the growing shoreline at the base of a wooded hill.
Monty stiffened. “He's going in at full speed! Brace for impact!" the veteran fishing guide yelled.
The impact, when it occurred, surprised Reese with its violence. They were still a good 20 yards from dry land—or at least what was now dry land—when the hull struck the soft muddy bottom that normally would have been a good five to ten feet below the surface. The Charming Betty came to a sudden halt and the motors coughed and died. There was no crash, no explosion—they were moving forward and then they weren't. Curses rang out and bodies flew toward the bow, despite the captain’s warning. Reese had a tight grip on the railing, but his momentum was too great and he was launched into Jimmy—who skidded across the deck and slammed into Ben.
Broken Tide | Book 1 | Overfall Page 6
