People splashed by Cami, ignorant of the lumbering beast that bore down on them all. Cami tried to scream and couldn’t—her throat was closed tight with fear. She pushed off the lamppost and forced her way through the water, urged on by the fear in Amber’s eyes.
“Don’t wait for me!” Cami yelled in a ragged shout as she struggled through the swift water. “Go!”
Mitch made it to the church steps and helped the young mother and her children get into the safety of the stone building. He turned to urge Amber inside as the priest resumed his calls to everyone still in the street. Cami could barely hear him over the noise of all the debris propelled by the wave.
Screams erupted behind her, and she risked a glance over her shoulder. The wave had swept around the building behind her and flooded the street. A car coasted upside down into the lamp post she’d used to pull herself to her feet just moments earlier. The post wobbled, then bent over as if the base were made of butter on a hot day. Several people behind her were sucked under and swept away, arms still waving as they were carried off toward the river.
“Mom!” Amber screamed from the church, some ten yards away.
The water that swirled around her legs pulled her back as the wave approached from behind. Cami struggled forward but a sickening realization occurred to her: she wouldn’t make it. As her legs quaked and her exhausted body reached the point of collapse, Cami looked up from the futile fight against the raw power of the wave.
Mitch frowned and jumped back into the water with an immense splash and plowed through it like an icebreaker boat in the artic. He was much taller, younger, and stronger than Cami and reached her side in seconds. His strong hands gripped her arm. “Hang on, Cami-san, I got you!”
Mitch and Cami forced their way through the brown swirling swamp that encircled the church as the wave reared up behind them. The back of Cami’s neck suddenly felt cooler, as if she’d stepped into the deep shade of a tree on a hot day. The priest on the front steps yelled, then ran into the church with the last of the survivors.
Amber shouted something from the front steps of the church, then launched herself into the water. She latched onto Cami’s other arm and the three of them raced up the steps, trailing water as they pushed aside driftwood.
They reached the top step and without looking back, burst through the open door, passing from the world of blazing sunlight and danger to cool shadows and safety. The cold, hard stone floor of the church was the best thing Cami could recall feeling as she landed in a sopping wet pile of arms and legs with Amber and Mitch.
Cami blinked in the sudden darkness and hoped her eyes would adjust in time for her to see Amber before the wave hit the church. People rushed around them to reach the doors and shut them before the water arrived. The haste with which the refugees inside slammed their bodies against the doors to hold them shut told Cami how close they’d been to losing their fight against the tsunami. Mitch scrambled from the floor where he’d fallen through the door and added his mass to the group of desperate people who held the doors shut.
When the water hit the door it spurted around the cracks like a tiny hose. The entire door frame shuddered, and two people were knocked back from the heavy oak doors. They rushed back to their place as other people clambered through the crowd with heavy pews.
“Here! Prop them up here, put that end against the doors,” the priest instructed.
Cami wiped wet hair from her face. She grabbed Amber and pulled her to her feet. “Come on—Mitch! That door will never hold!” She looked around through the crowd of screaming, terrified survivors and saw a metal sign high up the wall that indicated a stairway to the belfry.
“Higher ground!” Cami said over the din. Mitch nodded and rushed for the stairs, while everyone else watched the drama unfold at the main door.
“We made it, why—” began Amber.
“That door will never hold! We only have a few seconds—” Cami replied, but her warning was cut off by the tremendous crash of the oak doors imploding. The sound reminded her of a rifle’s report as it echoed through the church. Dozens of people screamed in terror as the wave broke into the church
Cami ripped open the stairwell door and took the steps two at a time, Mitch and Amber hot on her heels. A few others followed their lead, but the water exploded into the stairwell by the time Cami reached the first landing.
“Don’t look down, keep going!” Cami said as she ran up the stairs.
“Still with you!” Mitch replied.
“Go faster, mom!” Amber yelled further down the stairwell. “The water’s coming up the stairs!”
The building shook with the pressure of the water as the wave tried to force its way into every nook and cranny of the church, but the solid stone construction held firm against the onslaught, just as Cami had hoped. She reached the top and threw herself against the metal door that opened onto the false belfry. Where bells would have hung in a traditional church, Cami found only speakers and a few false openings to suggest a hollow cavity large enough to support the massive instruments.
She turned and embraced Mitch and Amber as they plowed through the opening, both gasping for air and red faced. A few more people erupted from the stairwell, wild-eyed and panicked, including the mother they’d rescued with her two children.
The tower trembled and people screamed, but Cami rushed to the side and peered over. “Look!" Mitch said as he pointed down the street.
The same dark brown water that had chased them into the church poured out of alleys, now flooding the street next to the river. The overflow by the bridge snaked across and squirted out through the guardrail supports, creating a line of small waterfalls that grew in length as more and more seawater pushed inland.
“How is there this much water so far from the coast?” Amber demanded. “It’s not possible!”
Cami took a moment to watch the scene unfold and catch her breath. “It is possible,” she replied quietly. “Charleston is a peninsula—the wave surrounded it and buried it—what we’re seeing is the edges. The wave is flooding the Ashley,” she said and pointed at the fast flowing water below going in the wrong direction. “See how there’s so much more water in the river than on the streets? It’s like electricity, it’s seeking the easiest route. Rivers and creeks around here are going to be flooded for miles and miles.”
“And Charleston?” asked Mitch. “How far do we have to go to get out of this?”
Cami watched the raging water swallow people and drag them into the flotsam, arms and legs flailing. “I don’t know, but this might just be the first wave—”
“Wait, there’s more?” blurted Amber.
Cami shrugged. “No one’s ever seen a tsunami like this, guys, I don’t know…sometimes tsunamis come in groups, not just one big wave…” She looked down as the water below enveloped the stone church. Pieces of wood, paper, bits of trash, and bodies…so many bodies—Cami’s eyes watered at the staggering loss of human life right before her eyes but she forced herself to look as the deluge continued its relentless march inland.
Several cars, jammed up at the intersection with the bridge, had broken free in the deluge and formed a new barricade of jumbled metal, tires, and flotsam spanning the width of the bridge. Water continued to pile up behind the new barrier and foam exploded over the top like a wave hitting a seawall. Metal groaned and shrieked under the tremendous pressure, and cars turned into accordians. Cami hoped there weren’t any people in them, but feared the worst.
Jets of brown muddy water squirted between the cracks in the cars and shot like fire hoses out over the creek. One unlucky woman was hit by the spray and flew like a discarded toy over the side of the bridge, her high-pitched scream stabbing at Cami’s heart. A waterfall—a true waterfall—had emerged almost halfway out across the bridge as water poured under the railings and streamed down to the now raging waters below.
"So much water…," Cami muttered, moving from one corner of the tower to the other. The scene was much the same: pe
ople screaming and panicking, clinging to lampposts, and were swept away or pulled under, reaching and grasping in the air as they twirled in eddies spawned by the seawater. Bodies choked the rapids, some floating, some tumbling beneath the surface to emerge at the whim of the water, only to disappear once more like cast off rag dolls. Trash and debris, bits and pieces of buildings, signs, cars, and every imaginable remnant of human activity rushed past, around, and through the now gutted church.
Amber threw up at the sight and Mitch moved next to her but stared out at the apocalyptic scene with his mouth open.
From behind the church, Cami heard a grinding and snapping wholly different from the sound of metal cars being crunched. She rushed to the far side of the tower and squinted in the bright sunlight. The shattered hull of a boat with huge outboard motors, far too big for the Ashley River that raged at the bottom of the hill, scraped its fiberglass hull down the lengths of the brick buildings next to the church as the surge carried it forward. A man in an orange lifejacket and a baseball hat rode on the side of the boat, clinging to a rope for dear life. People leaned out windows and tried to reach him as he went by, but no one came close.
The man screamed as the boat smashed headlong into the church in an explosion of shattered fiberglass and steel. Cami gasped—it sounded like someone snapping celery. She leaned over the crenellation and looked down at what was left of the boat, smashed to pieces against the church's immovable granite foundation, shredded fiberglass jutting up from what was left of the side. She saw a red stain on the stone and the man was nowhere to be seen. A small wave slapped at the church and erased the blood, leaving no evidence the man had ever been there.
Cami put a hand to her mouth and turned away, unable to breathe. Seeing the man on the boat in the surging waters had made her think of Reese. She closed her burning eyes and swallowed as her chest tightened. As the tears leaked down her face, she told herself he was a thousand miles away, and hopefully safe. She had Amber—and she supposed Mitch, too—to worry about at the moment, and they had to get across the Ashley and make it home. Then she would grant herself time to worry about Reese. He was a sailor—if anyone could handle the tsunami on a boat, it would be Reese Lavelle.
When she turned to Amber, she knew by the look on her daughter's face that she was thinking of her father as well. "I'm sure he's fine, honey,” Cami said in a tight voice. “Your daddy's out on that big boat in the ocean—"
“Isn't that worse than being here?" Amber asked, her voice trembling.
“I don’t think so,” Mitch scoffed. “Out on the ocean, a tidal wave would only be like, what, a foot high?” He offered a smile for Amber. “It’s only when it comes in close to shore that...” His voice trailed off as he looked from Amber to Cami. “...but you already know that.”
Amber snorted, raising a mud-streaked hand to her mouth, making Mitch go red again.
"I'm not sure how…but I know your father’s okay, honey…" Cami said as she wiped at her face.
The continual roar of snapping wood, bricks breaking, cars crunching, blaring horns, and people screaming created a background noise that was sure to give Cami a headache if she was exposed to it much longer. She and Reese had watched all the news shows about the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, but the videos she'd seen came from towns and villages right along the coast. At most, that wave had carried trash and debris a mile or two inland. This far north of downtown Charleston, she was already more than ten miles from the ocean.
Ten miles.
Cami swallowed, her mouth parched. If North Charleston looks like this…what does the coast look like? Is there anything left at The Battery? Fort Sumter?
A new rumbling shook the church. A series of vibrations rattled the stone building--Cami felt them through the crenellations at the top of the tower. It was not a comforting feeling.
"Look!" Amber said, pointing east. A column of smoke erupted into the sky, and Cami watched a pair of chimneys disappear.
"Buildings are collapsing," Mitch observed quietly. He reached out and took Amber’s hand in his own. Neither blushed as they stared at the destruction.
"All those poor people," said the young mother softly. Her kids sobbed into her legs, clinging to their mother for dear life. The oldest--Cami guessed he was maybe seven or eight—held his mother's hand in a death grip and stared at the wall.
"What do we do now?" Amber asked.
"Look,” Mitch said as he pointed at the bridge and the struggling people still trying to cross it among the debris clogging the south end. “The water falling off the bridge—it never made it all the way across—that’s gotta mean something, right?“
"Yeah,” Amber agreed dubiously. “But look at the Ashley…” she said, pointing at the raging rapids flowing under the bridge, choked with lumber, trash and bodies.
“Should we try for the bridge?” asked Mitch.
Cami shook her head. "There's no way we can make it across that until the water comes down some. I mean, look at it," she said, peering over the side. "There could be anything in there…the current’s just too strong for us to wade across. This mess needs to recede at least a little.”
Cami checked her watch. She wasn't sure exactly when they’d made it to the church, but it felt like the waters had been building for the past ten minutes. She looked up again and stared out at the devastation.
Ten minutes was all it took to bring the entire city of Charleston to its knees, to wash away so many lives—she couldn't even begin to think about how many people had been caught in their cars. And the people in that building that collapsed!
Another sobering thought struck her as she looked out over the debris flowing in the waters all around the church. They were technically in North Charleston, just south of the airport. How many hundreds of thousands of people were trapped in the city closer to the shore? Was downtown Charleston even still there? Based on the destruction she’d witnessed so far inland, downtown might very well look like a war zone.
Her phone buzzed in the purse on her back, tickling her spine. That dreadful emergency tone sounded muffled under the gear in her bag.
Amber's phone chimed in, then so did the other woman’s. All three looked at each other. Shaking hands fumbled through purses for phones, and they all got them out at the same time.
"It is just the first wave," Cami breathed, reading aloud. "There's at least a dozen more waves to follow."
“How…I don’t…it’s not possible…” Amber said, shaking her head as she scrolled through the message.
“A dozen?” asked Mitch, incredulous. “Dude…we are so screwed.”
She looked up and stared out across the bridge to the far side of the creek. Hundreds of people had gathered on the far side, where the water hadn’t quite reached. They stood with their phones up, taking pictures and videos of the destruction as more debris and bodies poured across the retaining wall on the east side of the creek, flooding the tributary with seawater and debris. As Cami watched, a dozen limp, lifeless bodies sailed over the temporary waterfall and splashed into the frothy torrent below. She felt her gorge rise and turned away, closing her eyes again. Deep down, she knew that those corpses wouldn’t be the last that she'd see.
"This alert from NOAA says the next wave is even bigger than the first one,” Mitch warned, looking at his phone. “That’s gotta be a mistake…this one went almost ten miles inland!”
“It says survivors along the coast need to prepare to stay where they are…” Amber said, reading off her phone. “If they try to leave now, they’ll get caught in the bigger waves coming…” She looked up, her eyes wide. “If we stay, we’ll be trapped…if we leave, we could get caught in the next one…mom, what do we do?”
"The waters are receding!" somebody called from down below.
"Praise God!" cried the priest through the open roof access door. Cami heard the people inside the church clapping and cheering.
Cami looked at Amber. "We have to get out of here before the next wave hits—and before
everyone else realizes it’s coming.” She turned to the young mother with her kids. "You're welcome to come with us…"
The woman offered a sad smile and shook her head. "Thank you, but no. This church has saved us so far. I…I can’t…” She took a deep breath and smiled. “We’ll stay here. God will protect us."
Cami reached out and put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. She squeezed in reassurance. "I'll be praying for you."
"You too," the woman said with a nod, her eyes brimming with tears. "Thank you…thank you so much. You saved our lives…my children…" she said, looking down at her kids. She stifled a sob and pulled them into a close embrace.
“Try to stay as high up as you can," Cami said.
"Thanks again," the woman said as Cami, Amber and Mitch disappeared down the stairwell.
"I thought you said the water was too high," Amber observed as they pounded their way down the steps to the ground floor.
"I did—but that was before I realized there were more waves coming…and the next one’s even worse.” They burst through the bottom door into the flooded church. Refugees, most of them mud-splattered and dripping wet, had gathered near the altar, and still others limped up the steps and dragged floating belongings through the muddy water that sloshed around inside.
Cami and Amber made their way to the front door, bumping elbows and shoulders and apologizing the entire time. The priest met them and shook their hands. "Praise God, we have saved all these people. He works miracles!"
“Amen,” someone said behind them.
Cami pulled the priest to the side. "Father, a new alert just came through. This was just the first of many waves—the next waves will be even stronger…"
The priest smiled and nodded his head. "So I have heard. Fear not, sister, God will provide. He has protected us so far —"
Broken Tide | Book 1 | Overfall Page 8
