Amber grinned and took a sip of soda. "Seriously? Dude, she's a registered guide. She goes off on hunting trips that last for weeks. In Alaska."
Cami laughed. "But I'm also always looking to learn. Mitchell, be my guest—make any notes you want. I'd love to see what you think."
A few minutes later, Cami stood on the front porch, the sounds of Amber and Mitch laughing in the kitchen muffled behind the front door. She looked up into the darkening, clear sky, and took a deep breath of warm summer air. The cicadas serenaded her from treetops all around her property, the crescendo of their desperate mating calls rising and falling in competition with each other. Crickets chirped from the aromatic flowerbeds around the front of the house, and in the distance, a lonely owl hooted.
Cami walked across the wide side yard and approached her neighbor’s house to the south. Like every other house in the neighborhood, Marty Price’s home was lit up with exterior floodlights. But that was where the similarities ended. As she approached the front door, she noticed on every exterior window hung heavy, metal hurricane shutters.
Most houses in the neighborhood—including Cami's—had a bay window in the front room facing the street. Not Marty Price. Rumor had it that when he’d purchased his house, he’d paid a contractor to rip out the bay and replace it with a large flat panoramic window. Above this he'd added an automatic hurricane shutter.
Cami saw them often enough at condos and hotels along the beach, but it still looked out of place in the neighborhood so far inland. The squat metal box ran the length of the window and on command would roll down a linked metal barricade not unlike armored Venetian blinds.
But Marty didn't stop with high wind protection for his windows. Beneath every window, all the way around the exterior of the house, he'd planted thorny bushes—mostly hollies and rosebushes. Anyone that wanted to break into his house would be in for a world of pain before they even got inside.
She knocked on the door. To her knowledge, no one she knew in the neighborhood had ever been inside Marty's house before.
Cami rang the doorbell, then waited another 10 seconds and was about to walk away when the door cracked open, stopped by a thick chain on the other side. A wisened, rheumy eye, part of a wrinkled, sallow-skinned face, appeared in the small opening. "What is it?"
“Hi, Marty," Cami said in a loud voice reserved for people hard of hearing. "It's Cami. From next-door? Cami Lavelle.”
“I know who you are. What do you want?”
Cami cleared her throat. “Uh, with all the stuff going on, I just wanted to say hi—hi,” she said, with a slight wave, “and…uh, see how you’re doing. Everything okay?"
"Fine. This is what we prep for, isn’t it?" The door shut with a solid thump.
"I guess it is…” Cami muttered. Shaking her head, she walked back out to the street and down to the next house. No one was home, so she continued her loop of the neighborhood, stopping at every house with lights on.
A few houses proved unoccupied, but there were a handful of people at home in the others. On the far side of the street, at the entrance to the neighborhood, she found the Curtis family. They had just sat down to dinner when she’d arrived. A power couple, both had high-paying jobs requiring frequent travel. They hadn't heard much about the tsunami and cared even less. Cami tried to fill them in, but they were more anxious to get to their custom dinner. It was their one night of the week, Susan explained, where they both forgot about work, and instead prepared dinner together—one of the boxed gourmet dinners that shows up at the door full of food ready to cook. It was a ritual, one they enjoyed, and they were not happy to be disturbed.
Cami took the hint and left. She only found four other houses with people at home, all of them nervous about the power fluctuations, but only one had a flashlight at hand. She heard a range of opinions, from it'll all blow over by tomorrow, to it’s the end of the world as they knew it, or at least they hoped it was the end of the banks—evidently one of her neighbors was in danger of falling behind on mortgage payments.
By the time Cami made her way through the largely empty neighborhood back to her own house, she had worked off what nervous energy remained in her body and was ready to take a shower and go to bed. As she walked up her own driveway, headlights illuminated her and swept across the front yard. She turned to see her neighbor across the street, Harriet Spalding, pull down her long, manicured driveway toward her house, set back an acre from the road in a copse of artfully maintained birches.
Cami sighed. The Spalding's were an odd couple. Henry was a senior banker in Charleston, and high enough up in the corporate food chain to worry more about social events than profit margins. His wife, Harriet, was the neighborhood busybody, and relished nothing so much as finding out everyone's secrets, except maybe gossiping about them to everyone else. Cami honestly didn't know what the woman did with all of her spare time other than sit on the couch and eat bonbons, but Harriet did not have the body of a layabout.
On the surface, Harriet Spalding was busy with philanthropic pursuits and volunteer societies. Reluctantly, Cami walked the long, winding driveway. She marveled at the perfectly manicured lawn, dotted with expertly trimmed hedges and shrubs. She doubted Henry or Harriet even knew how to use a trimmer, let alone had the inclination to get out and work in their yard. Harriet may spend most of her time at volunteer societies, but Cami was convinced the woman excelled more at volun-telling people what to do.
She went to knock on the door and hesitated, her fist already raised. Getting on Harriet's radar in a situation like this would probably cause more trouble than good, and despite Cami's inclination to seek out the best in people, she lowered her hand and turned, ready to head home.
The door opened before she could take two steps. "Camilla? Camilla Lavelle?"
Cami grimaced at her formal name, then plastered a smile on her face and turned around. "Hi, Harriet, how are you? I was just taking a walk around the neighborhood and decided I'd stop by and see how everyone was doing."
"Why, whatever would you want to do that for?" Harriet asked, genuinely befuddled. She fiddled with her hair a moment. “Everything's fine. Traffic was atrocious, of course, and unless Henry gets home in the next couple of minutes, I fear we’ll miss our dinner reservations!”
"Oh, that’s dreadful,“ Cami said, unable to think of a better reply in the face of such callous ignorance. "You haven't had any problems with the tsunami?"
"Good heavens, no," Harriet said, placing a hand on her chest. “That wave nonsense is only affecting the coast, anyway.” She flicked her wrist, making the pearl bracelet clink softly. “We’re perfectly safe here. Really, it’s no different than a hurricane, if you ask me. As usual, the media is blowing things totally out of proportion. It’s embarrassing, really.”
“Embarrassing?” stammered Cami, unable to put a coherent sentence together when everything Harriet had just said flew directly in the face of what she’d experienced only hours earlier.
“Yes! If you turn on the news or listen to the radio—really, Camilla, I thought you were smart enough to pay attention to things like that,” Harriet said, adjusting her hair again and looking over Cami’s shoulder. “It’s all the same: breathless reporting about the disaster, everyone competing with each other to see who can have the most dramatic byline music and most shocking infographics. It’s disgusting, really, to use the suffering of a few people so callously.”
“A few?” Cami blurted, feeling heat rise in her cheeks.
“Yes, a few!” snapped Harriet, finally looking Cami in the eyes. “Our country has hundreds of millions of people, and a few thousand of which live along the ocean—”
“We saw hundreds of people drown today, Harriet,” Cami said quietly. “I don’t think their families would agree with you,” Cami added, her voice wavering, powered by the anger she felt growing with every word that dribbled between Harriet’s perfect red lips. “And my husband was on a deep-sea fishing trip…I haven’t heard from him since the w
aves hit…”
Harriet shifted gears and placed a gentle hand on Cami’s arm. “I’m so sorry to hear that, dear.” Harriet glanced over her shoulder inside her house. She turned back and appeared flustered. “I really must go now, Cami—thank you so much for stopping by, but I expect Henry will be home any moment and I simply must be ready to leave, or we’ll never make our reservation. It’s probably too late anyway, but one must remain optimistic in trying times…don’t you agree?”
Cami blinked as the door closed in her face. She turned, took a step off the porch, then paused and turned back to look at the front door. “What just happened?”
A curtain swished by the narrow window set next to the door and the porch light went out, plunging Cami into darkness. She spun, expecting to see all the lights in the neighborhood out as well, but Marty Price’s house was still lit up like a Christmas tree.
Cami laughed as she headed back down the Spalding’s driveway. She mimicked Harriet’s snobbish accent and muttered, “one must remain optimistic in trying times…”
She shook her head and laughed. By the time she was at the street again, Cami focused on running through the list of chores for the next day. The lights on her own house flickered as she approached the front door. She decided to put reactivating the solar power system at the top of her list.
“If I have to wait for Reese to come home with lights flickering every twenty minutes, I’ll go crazy…” she muttered, stepping back inside her own house.
Chapter 11
Summit Station
Cadillac Mountain
Mount Desert Island, Maine
The little radio in the ranger station turned out to be a shortwave rig that picked up a decent amount of regional frequencies. After listening to his fair share of distress calls and warnings put out by the Coast Guard, Reese cycled through the available radio channels with growing frustration. He kept hearing the same thing: the waves hit with tremendous force and obliterated everything along the coast, then pushed inland and swept the debris ahead like a continuous, miles long wrecking ball.
Reese pushed away from the table and stood, exasperated. The little radio chirped with the incessant emergency alert system, as the original tsunami warning message repeated for the thousandth time. Resigned to the fact that he would not find much news on the radio, he went to check on Ben.
"Anything?" Ben asked, trying to sit up on his elbows in the cot.
Reese collapsed onto a stool next to the cot and leaned back against the cool cinderblock wall. "Nothing. Just the same messages about the Coast Guard telling people to stay away from the shoreline, and how the shoreline is getting ripped apart. There’s no details about anything further than ten or twenty miles out.”
Ben stared at the ceiling. “I’m sure they’re fine,” he muttered.
Reese closed his eyes and contemplated sleep when the front door crashed open. A gaggle of excited voices erupted in the lobby.
"Reese!” Jo bellowed. “Get that scrawny keister in here, we got us a live one!"
"What’s she yelling about?” Ben groused.
"Only one way to find out," Reese replied. He stood and walked into the lobby, promising Ben he'd come back with an update.
"There you are,” Jo said, doffing her hat and wiping sweat from her brow. “Thought you'd run off and got yourself drowned.”
Reese nodded in greeting at a family of four that walked in behind Aiden. “Not yet. What’s up?”
"That's Mr. Nakahishi—Nakayoshi…Naka—not-gonna-get-any-better-than-that.”
The man behind Aiden bowed formally. “Nikoyashi,” he corrected politely. Reese nodded again, and looked at the young woman next to him, who offered a slight smile and looked at the floor, shuffling closer to her husband. The two dark-haired children, miniature carbon copies of their parents, huddled close to her, eyes wide and staring at everything. Nikoyashi rattled off a string of words, gesturing at the radio. He pointed outside, said something else that Reese couldn't understand, then gestured at the device Jo held in her hand.
Reese shrugged as well. "I'm sorry, sir—I don't understand a word you're saying."
"Ain't nobody understands a word he’s saying," Jo muttered. "But we should understand this.” She plugged in a small device behind the radio. Examining the front of the little black box.
“What’s that?” asked Reese.
“One of them hand crank survival radios. But it’s got AM—something that shortwave jobbie over there doesn’t have.” She muttered to herself as she threw a switch, and a new voice filled the air.
“…for live coverage of the event. You're listening to AM 1270, the voice of Derry. We continue now with live coverage of the tsunami disaster, providing you the audio feed from our sister station, Channel 6 News."
“Derry?” asked Reese.
"New Hampshire," Jo muttered, waving him to be silent.
“What’s the situation, there, Carl?” asked the anchorman.
"Everything as far as I can see…I can't believe this—all the way up and down the coast in every direction, there's nothing but destruction! I see smoke rising up in the distance—I think that's Bar Harbor…“
“Hey!” Aiden blurted. “That’s us!”
"Sssh!” Jo hissed.
"To the south,” the traffic reporter continued, “everything is just…gone. Are you seeing this? The waves are still pounding the shore, and there's nothing but smoke and wreckage. I can’t even…words can't describe this, Alex?"
"Where is he?" Reese muttered.
“Helicopter," Jo said out of the side of her mouth as the anchorman continued to talk with his eye in the sky. Over the faint sound of helicopter rotors in the background, Carl continued his eyewitness report.
“I can see the waves retreating and advancing at different speeds further to the north. It looks like another one is about to come ashore, but south of us, you can see the waves pulling back. I think the coastline is really messing up the timing on these waves.“
“Do you see any survivors, Carl? We’re not seeing too well on the live feed…”
A long moment of silence followed. "No…no—there's nobody out there. The only thing I can see from this height are buildings—and pieces of buildings—and boats and debris. And trees. Lots and lots of trees. They're everywhere. It's like someone came to the coast and sprinkled matchsticks along the shoreline, then dumped a bunch of trash right there in the water. It just keeps flowing inland and then washing back out again. I've never seen anything like this before."
"I don't think any of us have, Carl,” Alex replied from the studio. “Can you see any other air traffic? We've had reports that the FAA is grounding all domestic air travel.”
"I've seen a few other news choppers, and a couple small, single engine planes like Cesnas, but we haven't seen any passenger jets."
"What about…what about emergency services? Have you seen any first responders?"
Reese looked at Jo. She shrugged.
“We passed over several barricades a few miles inland, as we got into position, but I have to believe with the size of these waves that those roadblocks must've already been swamped. We’ve seen a couple police cars floating in water with their dome lights swirling, but we haven't actually seen any people on the ground. Wait—wait, Chuck, take us down over there, yeah, 11 o'clock low," Carl said excitedly.
"What is it Carl? What are you seeing?" asked Alex.
"Right there, no there--to the left!” Carl barked into the microphone. "People! Alex, do you see this?”
“Yes! There’s people on that roof, we can see them!”
“There’s at least a dozen people stranded on top of the building—it looks like an apartment complex. We've moved back inland now, and we’re crossing over the outskirts of Rockland. "Yes, I can see people, now—lots of them there, sitting on rooftops. We can see them waving at us. I don't know how they're going to make…wait a minute…oh, my—”
“Oh no, no—look!” chimed Alex from the stu
dio.
“I’m sorry, Alex…I just…we just witnessed that building…” Carl’s voice, tight with emotion came over the speakers. “It just collapsed. The whole thing just went up in a cloud of smoke…it fell apart in slow motion. I saw the people, saw them fall into the water—this is just beyond anything…”
“Dadgum it,” Jo muttered, slapping her thigh with her campaign hat. She turned from the group and stared at the display of local plants and animals.
"Carl, can you see anyone in the water? We’ve lost the feed…” asked Alex in the studio.
As the others listened breathlessly to the descriptions of destruction and chaos along Maine's southern coast, Reese stepped away and moved closer to the map on the wall. Names called out over the radio were unfamiliar to him: Rockland, Rockport, and Thomaston, but he found them quickly enough on the map.
To the best of his knowledge, the news helicopter was situated some ten miles south of them. The problem was Maine had a huge coastline—all the little inlets and dips and twists and turns…it was no wonder the reporters focused on chaotic water movements. The tsunami had at least fifteen different directions to go.
He swallowed. Reese only had one direction to go: south. He stepped away from the map and walked back into Ben's room.
"Sure doesn't sound good out there," Ben muttered.
Reese sighed. His arms and legs moved stiffly, almost of their own accord. As he sat on the stool next to Ben, he rubbed his face. “I can't stay, Ben. I've got to go."
"Then I'm going with you," Ben said, trying to sit up.
Reese scoffed. “Relax, I’m not leaving right this second. You can't even walk yet." He leaned against the wall.
Ben collapsed back on the cot. "I appreciate that, man. But you have a family to get back to.” He stared at the ceiling and laced his fingers across his stomach. "Go on—get out of here. I'll figure something out."
Broken Tide | Book 1 | Overfall Page 12
