The Tsunami Countdown

THREE

8:56 a.m.

The rain had been falling constantly for two hours now, but that didn’t keep Yvonne Dunlap from her duties. In her three weeks on the Palmyra Atoll, she had come to appreciate the damp weather, which gave the island a serene quality. Even with 175 inches of rain per year watering the lush vegetation, she could think of worse places to do scientific research. She picked her way across the beach looking for her quarry, avoiding the plastic garbage that marred the otherwise pristine habitat. Dark clouds stretched to the horizon, broken only by an occasional flash of lightning in the distance. The breaking surf and soothing patter of rain were her only companions.

None of Yvonne’s three colleagues on the island had joined her on this excursion. They were back at base camp, working on their computers out of the rain, compiling figures about the nesting habits of sooty terns or analyzing data about the impact of non-native species on the island’s flora.

Yvonne had come hunting much more interesting prey than birds and shrubbery. Her graduate studies in invertebrate biology had brought her to this isolated outpost for one reason. And it didn’t take long for her to spot what she was looking for. She took out her digital camera and approached slowly to add more photos to her collection.

An enormous blue coconut crab scurried up a thick palm tree looking for its favorite food. This rare example looked like it measured three feet across and weighed close to ten pounds, a size that would put most Maine lobsters to shame.

The Nature Conservancy had purchased the Palmyra Atoll as a wildlife preserve. To minimize the impact of humans on the ecosystem, they granted only a limited number of permits to researchers. Yvonne was one of the lucky few, and she reveled in exploring the island’s natural wonders. Rainy mornings like this were especially good for her outings, giving her time to enjoy nature as it was meant to be, alone and in silence. To her, the experience was spiritual.

Yvonne interrupted her photography to jot some notes in her journal. The crab in front of her was one of the finest specimens she’d ever seen, and she wanted a full record of it. At the top of the tree, the crab grasped a coconut in its claws and ripped it open like a ripe melon, tearing at the meat inside. Yvonne was setting her camera to video mode to capture its eating ritual when a great boom echoed across the island. The sound was so loud that she dropped the camera.

The crab, also startled by the noise, dropped from the tree and scuttled back to the safety of its burrow. Yvonne stooped to pick up the camera, waiting for the thunder to abate. She searched for the source of the noise, but the clouds looked uniformly gray in all directions. Nothing suggested a major storm headed their way.

In a minute the sound dissipated, and Yvonne strode over to the hole the crab had disappeared into. She plopped herself on a fallen log not far from it and waited for the crab to reemerge, aiming her camera in hopes of a close-up.

She continued staring at the burrow until a new noise intruded on the soft drizzle. A rumble from the island’s interior. At its widest, the Palmyra Atoll was only a half mile across. For some reason, Yvonne thought the sound was reaching her from the opposite side of the island.

She stood and peered into the thick foliage. The noise grew quickly, coming toward her. It sounded like a thousand elephants stampeding, knocking down every tree as they charged. Yvonne stepped back involuntarily, stopping only when her boots were splashed by the surf.

She spotted movement in the forest. It was indistinct at first, but within seconds it resolved into an image that took Yvonne a moment to comprehend. A churning mass of water raged toward her, uprooting and splintering every tree in its path. She couldn’t have been more shocked than if it had actually been elephants.

She froze, paralyzed, her voice choked by fear. The roar was so loud that it seemed to go through her, and the wind pushed before the wall of water blew the hood of her windbreaker backward. Yvonne’s eyes locked in terror on the rushing mountain of debris, and she hopelessly wished that she could find some kind of burrow to plunge into as the crab had done.

As the water reached the beach, the closest palm tree—the same one that had seemed so solid when the crab had climbed it—was yanked out of the ground. Just before it crushed Yvonne, she finally screamed.