“Einstein, go east ASAP. Geosat Seven detected a four meter tsunami. You’ve got—” The urgent voice faded in a static-screaming storm.
Sarah clawed the pilot’s chair and stood up, bracing herself tightly against the fading temblor. “Four meters,” she said hopefully. “That’s not very high.”
John sat up, his face ashen. “That’s a four meter deep sea wave. When that tsunami reaches the shallow continental slope, it’ll be forced much higher. Multiply the four meters by thirty-five for a rough estimate of the tsunami’s peak height.”
Sarah’s jaw dropped.
“And it’s probably an underestimate.”
John glanced at the crushed passenger scats, collapsed ceiling and folded walls. He walked into the aisle, avoiding the low ceiling by crouching. Bright light continued to shine from the fireball, lancing through the remaining windows like broad lasers. He pointed at a section of missing wall. “Think you can squeeze through, Amberle?”
She nodded.
Guiding her across the contorted floor by the hand, he led her to the hole. “Watch those sides. They’re sharp.”
Amberle nodded and climbed down on her sore knees.
“Get everyone uphill.”
Worried for John and Sarah’s lives, she hesitated. “But what about—”
“I’ll get us out. We’ve maybe forty minutes.”
Sarah asked in a frightened tone, “Can we even make it in…”
Amberle didn’t want to hear any more. Being careful not to touch the jagged hole’s edge, she squeezed through and crawled over a scattering of loose boulders. As she stood, lightning flashed from the eerie blue-gray sky, making her jump. A loud crash of thunder followed, echoing between the hills. Several fireballs brilliantly whisked overhead. Feeling vulnerable standing in the open valley, she crouched.
John stuck his head out of the opening. “Go!”
Motivated by his raised voice, she stumbled away from the DFC.
She encountered Elizabeth and her friends. “You’ve got to… to climb that hill!” Panting hard, Amberle pointed to the one that she had tried climbing earlier.
“What’s happening?” replied Elizabeth, nervously glancing up at the brilliant, phosphorescent sky.
“A flood’s coming!”
Staring blankly at the fading fireball, Elizabeth didn’t pay attention.
Amberle looked at Elizabeth’s companion, Mara. “Help her up the hill.”
Mara nodded. She grabbed Elizabeth’s hand and led her toward the ridge. Rosalee, another friend, held Elizabeth’s opposite arm.
Amberle ran into the large dinner group. Frightened kids stared at the blazing sky. Many were just standing up after having been knocked down by the earthquake.
“Tsunami!”
Several students dashed toward the hill. Their actions had a cascade affect, motivating the entire group to run away.
Amberle followed her fleeing classmates, banking toward the DFC and seeing that John and Sarah had managed to widen the hole in the craft’s side and squeeze through. Having returned from their climb, Dave and the rest of the boys walked around the half buried vehicle, watching the other kids run past. Wes wasn’t with Dave.
Echoing from the hills with the sound of tumbling mountains, crashing avalanches, and cascading water, a body-pulsing noise reverberated for several long, torturous moments. Amberle covered her ears and shivered.
“Fireball concussion!” said John.
Dave turned around and ran.
“Where’s Wes?” she yelled.
Dave stopped, turned, and said, “Before the strike, he hiked into that valley.” He pointed toward the deep incision in the coastal mountains.
He could have been injured by falling rocks! Amberle turned and ran. “Wes!” she called, moving rapidly along the base of the ridge trying to find her friend.
“Wait, Amberle!” yelled Sarah. “We’ll find him!”
She ran harder.
Turning into the V-shaped cut through the coastal ridge, she encountered a steep, barren creek bed. Carefully choosing rocks as steps, she climbed down. Despite the slowly fading fireball, the air had grown sharply cold, and her fingers hurt as she grabbed cooling stone for support.
She slid down a short cliff of hard dirt and gravel. Clawing the soil to her side, her hand punched through the ground and encountered a number of smooth rocklike objects in a small cavity. She heard several small pops as her hand crushed the stones inside. Warm liquid oozed around her digits. “Ick!”
Immediately releasing her grip, she dropped to the bottom. Her hand pulled some of the round objects out, and they wetly shattered on the gravel at her feet.
Curious about the broken spheres, she crouched and studied embryonic things resting in a dense fluid, their tiny hearts exposed and silently beating. Feeling guilty for killing the unknown creatures, she looked away. She wondered how much life the desert actually contained. All dormant, she thought. Why?
“Amberle!”
Barely visible on the edge of the high ridgeline, she saw Wes waving at her.
“The tsunami’s nearing!”
From her vantage, she could just glimpse a sliver of beach through the steep walled valley, a stretch of sand much broader than she remembered. Beyond, a great, dark wall loomed. Her heart jumped as she realized just how close the gargantuan wave was, and how far down she had run.
Bloodying her fingers by jabbing them in sharp cracks, and scraping her elbows and knees, she rapidly gained altitude, surprised by her heretofore untested ability to climb. A steady rumbling increased from the west, and the ground shook. Small stones dropped onto her head. Encountering smooth rock, her ascent slowed as she desperately sought out tiny, flaking ledges and thin cracks for grip.
She glanced up, squinting her eyes against falling pebbles and dust. Wes had descended part of the ridge. He reached down. “Climb!” he yelled in a voice barely audible over the noise of crashing water. “Just a little higher, and I can help you up.”
Lightning, streaming from a distant line of turbulent cloud to the west, brilliantly pulsed in a huge arc toward the eastern hills.
She saw what looked like a ledge under the intense illumination, and leaped. With three fingers, she grabbed the lip. Her fingertips began slipping. She clawed the smooth rock with her feet, giving her arm the aid it needed in lifting her body. She reached up and grabbed Wes’s hand. Helped by his firm pull, she shoved her way onto the top of the ledge.
Wes dashed up the steep slope. To her right, she saw John climbing. He must have followed her. She glanced to her left, and saw the beach fading under the foot of a wave that appeared more a mountain than a thing of water. Feet slipping in the loose gravel, she desperately ran up the steep slope, seeking large rock exposures which afforded better traction.
A cold wind grabbed her, whipping her hair violently. The ground shook strongly as the beach disappeared under a turgid mass of ocean. With an ear-piercing crack, the wave slapped into the hillside, the pulse knocking her down. Surging up the narrow valley like a water cannon, the foamy white wave exploded high into the air behind her. Frigid, biting liquid engulfed her legs. Seething past her torso, the flood shoved her up the hillside, dragging her through sharp, suspended stones, lifting her high, and dunking her head into a noise of lapping water and popping bubbles. Unsure of her orientation, she blindly reached around. Am I going to drown?
Her hand scraped across the rough surface of stone. She wrapped her arms around the exposure and held on in the strong current. As quickly as the water had grabbed her, the wave let go. Slurping hungrily, pulling a clawing wash of numbing air over her soaked body and dragging a vast cascade of stones below her embedded feet, the powerful liquid hand dropped swiftly away.