The Tsunami Countdown

FORTY-SIX

12:04 p.m.

8 Minutes to Third Wave

Jerry had fallen unconscious, his head wound more severe than Rachel had first thought. After spending a few minutes trying to wake him, they decided to carry him up the stairs. Even though he was skinny, it took all three of them—Rachel, Paige, and Sheila—to pull him down the hall and up the stairs. At each landing, they stopped for thirty seconds to catch their breath. They had only made it up one flight to the twelfth floor. As they carried him, Doris kept the children occupied and told them about herself and her kids. Their last name was Wendel, and Doris had been widowed two years earlier when her husband, Herbert, had been stricken with cancer. Neither of her children, Sheila and Jerry, were married, so they had all come out to Hawaii for a family vacation. When the tsunami warning was issued, they had returned to their room as they were initially instructed. When the warning changed, Jerry had thought it was best to stay put.

After the first tsunami, they realized that staying was a bad idea, so they got in the elevator to get up to the roof. That’s when the power went out, and they’d been left stranded. As Rachel listened to the story, it dawned on her that she was risking her life for people who had blatantly disregarded her warnings to leave. She wanted to shake these people and say, Why didn’t you listen? But dwelling on their ignorance wasn’t going to help.

Their progress climbing the stairs was slow; at the rate they were going, they wouldn’t be on the roof until the next tsunami hit. They needed help carrying Jerry.

As they took another breather, Rachel heard voices coming from the stairway above them The voices were getting louder: people headed down toward them.

“Hello!” Rachel called out.

The movement above froze. She saw two faces peer over the railing about sixty feet above her at the twentieth floor. One of the strangers waved. Then they began coming down the steps even quicker than before.

In less than a minute they had covered the distance. A thirty-something couple, obviously happy at finding other survivors, smiled at Rachel, their bright red faces burned from exposure to sun they weren’t accustomed to.

“Are you coming from the roof?” Rachel said.

The couple looked at each other and shrugged. The man in the couple then started speaking rapid-fire in a language that sounded Slavic.

“Oh, no,” Rachel said. “Are you with the Russian group? Russki?”

The man repeated the word “Russki” and pointed at him and the woman. He then started speaking in Russian again.

“Do you speak English?”

“Nyet.” He shook his head. “No English.” Rachel guessed that it was the only English phrase he knew.

They were two more of the hotel guests who had failed to leave their rooms when the evacuation was taking place. Either that, or they had gotten separated from their group when they had been shuffled around the lobby. In any case, they were going the wrong way.

Rachel pointed down and said, “Nyet.”

At this, the smiles disappeared. The man’s voice became angry, even indignant. Perhaps he didn’t like being told what to do by a woman. Whatever the reason, he gesticulated and nodded vigorously as he pointed down.

Rachel motioned to her badge, which was still attached to her soggy suit. It said: Rachel Tanaka, Hotel Manager. Under those words was an image of the Grand Hawaiian logo. She hoped that would lend her an air of authority.

She pointed at Jerry’s inert form and tried to indicate that they needed help carrying him. The man, who was fairly burly, nodded and grabbed his arms.

“Good. He understands.” She turned to the Russian man. “Thank you. Spasibo.”

Rachel grabbed one leg, and Sheila got the other. But instead of continuing up, the man rotated Jerry around and made as if to carry him down the stairs. Rachel immediately put his leg down and grabbed the man’s arm. She shook her head.

“Nyet!”

The Russian became furious and practically dropped Jerry onto the cement. He made a rude gesture and took his girlfriend, who had been watching all of this silently, by the shoulder. They continued down the stairs, the man muttering to himself.

“Where are they going?” Sheila said.

“They’re going to die,” Rachel said, the weariness evident in her voice. She was too tired to sugarcoat anything. “They don’t know another tsunami is coming, and that it’s going to be bigger than the last one.”

“Shouldn’t we try to stop them?” Doris said.

“How? That guy is bigger than any of us. And you heard all the Russian I know. If you can make them understand, be my guest. Our bigger problem is that this is taking too long.” She waved her hand at Jerry. “It would go a lot faster if we got some help.”

“From that guy? You just said—”

“No. From Max.”

“Who’s Max?”

“He’s my assistant manager. He’s up on the roof with the other guests.”

“But if one of us goes,” Paige said, “there’s no way two of us can carry him.”

“No, but we can still make progress if Wyatt goes. He can run up those stairs in just a few minutes.”

“Sure I can!” Wyatt said.

“What if something happens to him?” Paige said. “What if he gets lost?”

“There aren’t many choices. They’re either still in the restaurant or they’re on the roof. He just needs to tell Max to come down and help us.”

Paige pulled Wyatt close to her, sheltering him from some unseen enemy. She buried her face in his hair and then faced Rachel, her eyebrows arched in despair.

“I’m sorry about what I said earlier. About you being responsible for Bill.”

“Don’t be.”

“When that building fell down, all I could think …” Paige broke down without finishing.

“It’s okay,” Rachel said, placing her hand gently on Paige’s shoulder.

“You saved our lives,” Paige said. Then she squared her shoulders in renewed determination and knelt beside Wyatt.

“This is very important, honey. Do you understand what we want you to do?”

“Go and get Max.”

“Or any other adult up there. But you come right back down as soon as you find him, you understand?”

He nodded.

She hugged him. “I’m so proud of you. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

Wyatt padded up the stairs. The rest of the group picked up Jerry again and renewed the slog upward.

“How are you doing?” Kai asked Lani. Her breathing was a ragged rasp.

“Hurts a little.”

“I’ll give you a lift in a minute.” Even though they were jogging, Kai needed at least a little bit of a break. He ached all over from being twisted and turned by the water. He had strained his shoulder when he was holding on to the doorway, trying to keep from going out to sea. Not to mention cuts and bruises too numerous to count. Still, it could have been much worse.

Teresa put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Kai winced but didn’t pull away.

“Thanks, Kai. For Mia. If you hadn’t gotten her free …” Her voice trailed off, the implications too much for her to bear.

Kai put his arm around her and returned the hug. “I know. Same for Lani.”

“Where are we going?” Brad said. “Isn’t that building closer?” He pointed at the building directly in front of them, about three hundred yards away.

“It’s closer, but it’s only twenty stories tall. I’m not sure that’s high enough. Besides, it’s going to get the brunt force of the next wave. I’d rather be in one that has a little protection and doesn’t get a direct blast. Remember, the next wave is going to be the biggest yet.”

“I wish you’d stop saying that,” Brad said. “So which one are we going to?”

“To that one,” Kai said, nodding.

“Which one?”

“The one with the boat sticking out of it.”

On the ocean side of a thirty-story apartment building, the aft end of a sixty-foot charter fishing boat was suspended ten stories above the street. Its twin propellers were easily visible from their current position about a quarter mile away.

“Man!” Tom said.

“If that doesn’t show the power of a tsunami,” Kai said, “I don’t know what does.”

“Yeah,” said Brad, “we sure haven’t seen enough examples of that yet.” He jumped in front of Kai and led the way, Mia still clinging to his back.

Lani began coughing again from the exertion.

“That’s enough jogging for you,” Kai said. “Hop on.” She jumped on his back, and he continued to trot, albeit a bit more slowly. The debris was getting treacherous. The terrain was literally postapocalyptic. They continually detoured around large heaps of splintered wood, twisted metal, and dislodged concrete that impeded their progress.

They were still two blocks from their designated refuge when they found an intersection piled three deep with cars, buses, and trucks that had gotten wedged against the bottom of a cement foundation. Brad skirted it and stopped when he rounded the corner of the pile.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Brad said.

“What?” Kai said, coming to a stop beside him.

“There’s a couple of people up ahead. They’re heading this way.”

Sure enough, two young men were making their way through the debris toward them. Kai couldn’t tell if they were high school or college students, but they couldn’t have been older than twenty. They looked like they were in good shape, and both had their shirts off and sticking out of the back of their shorts, as if they were on an afternoon stroll. One of them held a video camera.

“Hey!” Brad yelled. “You’re going the wrong way.”

The men looked in their direction, appraising the motley crew. “No we’re not, man,” the one with the camera said. “You are if you don’t want to die.” “Look, we’re not stupid, you know. We’re heading to that building on the beach.”

“You are stupid,” Kai said. “There’s another tsunami coming.” He kept going, and the others followed. He wasn’t stopping to chat with these bozos.

“Why do you think we’re taking this with us?” the one without the camera said. “We’re gonna sell the video. We’ve already got some good stuff of that building coming down over there.” He pointed at the remains of The Seaside.

“You idiots,” Brad said. “We were in that building.”

“Cool,” the cameraman said, and turned his camera on them.

Their comment got Kai to stop. He turned and stared at them, unable to comprehend how crass and greedy some people were.

“You two little shits look at all this destruction and death,” Kai said, “and all you can see is some money for yourselves?”

“Hey, the TV networks are making money off this. Why shouldn’t we?”

“You’re not going to make any money because you are going to die. That building is not going to stand against a wave two hundred feet in height.”

The two men laughed at that.

“You think this is funny?”

“Man, this is going to be great footage.”

“Turn that camera off, you asshole!” Brad yelled. He moved as if he were going to try to take it away from them, but Kai stopped him.

“Forget it, Brad. No one’s ever going to see that footage anyway. If they’re too dumb to take good advice, they’re on their own. We don’t have time for it. Let’s go.”

The two men stumbled off in the direction of the beach, talking in low voices and laughing.

Kai was angry at them, not just because they were cold opportunists, but because they made him see how futile his job could be in some cases. Kai’s job was to warn people of danger. The people could do with that warning what they wished. He couldn’t force them to get to safety. He couldn’t save them if they didn’t want to be saved. Now he was seeing that reality up close. And what made Kai feel even worse was that he didn’t want to save them. They deserved whatever happened to them.

As Kai’s group got close to the “boat building,” as he had come to think of it, Lani tapped him on the back.

“Daddy, I hear something.”

“What?”

“A voice, I think. It’s coming from your bag.”

My bag? Then Kai realized how stupid he had been. In all the rush, he hadn’t remembered to check the phone or the walkie-talkie. Someone was trying to reach them.