Escaping the Giant Wave

by Peg Kehret

  I looked. Yellow flames shot out of every window on the third floor. As we looked up at our room, the roof collapsed with a loud rumble like a dozen dump trucks all unloading at the same time. For a second I thought it was another earthquake; then I saw that the Totem Pole Inn was caving in on itself. The fire roared skyward as the flames consumed the roof beams.

  I shuddered, thinking what would have happened if we had stayed in our room or on the second floor.

  “Bill is burning up,” BeeBee said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it. BeeBee had carried Bill Bear around with her for so long that he really seemed like one of the family. I let her cry for a few seconds. Then I said, “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “We’ll walk around to the back of the hotel,” I said, “to the road. Then we’re going to go up the hill.”

  BeeBee didn’t argue. She slipped her hand in mine and together we skirted the remains of the burning Totem Pole Inn.

  The odd smell I’d noticed inside was stronger now, making my head ache.

  “I smell gas,” BeeBee said.

  When we reached the road behind the hotel, the voices were louder. We saw more flames across the street.

  “Look!” I said. “The new hotel’s on fire too.”

  “There are the fire engines,” BeeBee said. “That’s why the sirens stopped; the firefighters came to the Frontier Lodge.”

  From where we stood, the road ran downhill to the Frontier Lodge. The dark smoke from the two fires blew inland, giving us a good view of the burning lodge.

  “I hope the owners had insurance,” BeeBee said.

  Although the sun hadn’t set yet, the sky had an orange glow. I peered nervously at the waves washing onto the beach below us. They were the same size as always.

  I looked toward the horizon, trying to see the yacht that Mom and Dad were on, but it was no longer visible. Either it had gone beyond my view, or it had already come home.

  I hoped the Elegant Empress had returned early, and that Mom and Dad were on their way back to the Totem Pole Inn. I liked baby-sitting when nothing went wrong. Ordering pizza and tipping the delivery man had been fun—but being in charge during an earthquake and a fire wasn’t fun at all. It was terrifying.

  “There you are!” Daren came up behind us. His clothes looked singed, and he was missing one shoe.

  I never thought I’d be glad to see Daren Hazelton, but it was a relief to know he had made it out of the hotel. Even so, I tensed, expecting him to slug me.

  For once he kept his hands to himself.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked. “Did you get burned?”

  “One sneaker caught fire, and I had to kick it off, and after I got outside I coughed up a lot of black gook, but I’m okay. What about you?”

  “I burned my hand on the door handle when we left the lobby.”

  “I stepped out through the broken window.” He said it as if he had been far more clever than I had been. “What are you standing here for?”

  “We’re watching the fire,” BeeBee said.

  “We aren’t staying here,” I said. “We’re going up the road, to the top of the hill.”

  “Are you crazy?” Daren said. “Look at all the trees on that hill. I hiked up there this morning and it’s nothing but woods. With both hotels on fire, those woods will probably catch fire too. There’ll be a huge forest fire, and if you go that way, you’ll be trapped in it.”

  “Where are you going to go?” BeeBee asked.

  “After I watch the fire, I’ll go down to the ocean. Water won’t burn, so the beach is the safest place to be.”

  “What if there’s a tsunami?” I said.

  “A what?”

  “A tidal wave. Sometimes earthquakes trigger tsunamis, and a sign on the beach said it could happen here. When there’s an earthquake, everyone is supposed to go uphill as soon as the earthquake ends. Get as far away from the water as possible.”

  “I don’t plan to be burned alive in a forest fire and I’m not scared of getting washed away by a wave,” Daren said.

  “Suit yourself,” I said. “BeeBee and I are climbing the hill.”

  We left Daren and followed the road up the hill.

  Daren called after us. “If you have a brain in that thick skull of yours, Davidson, you’ll go down to the water with me instead of running away from nothing like a scared rabbit.”

  If no tsunami comes, I thought, I’ll never hear the end of this. Daren will tell every kid at Edison School that I ran away while he was brave.

  7

  “What if he’s right?” BeeBee asked. “What if we go in the woods and then they catch fire?”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Daren still stood in the road near the Frontier Lodge watching the fire.

  “The firefighters are already battling the blaze,” I said. “I don’t think it will get out of control.”

  “They’re only fighting one fire,” BeeBee said. “What about the Totem Pole Inn?”

  “Maybe they’ll let it burn,” I said, “since it was going to get torn down soon, anyway. Officially, the inn is closed. The firefighters may not know anyone was staying there. They won’t let the fire spread to the trees, though.”

  We continued up the road. I wasn’t sure that this was the right choice. The sign had said a tsunami could follow an earthquake within a few minutes. It had been at least fifteen or twenty minutes since the earthquake. Did that mean there was no danger of a tsunami? If so, we might be safer at the beach or near the hotel, where other people were.

  Daren’s theory about the fire spreading made sense, and as far as I knew no tsunami warning had been issued. Of course, if there was a warning in effect, I wouldn’t know it.

  My mind went in circles like Alexander the Greatest when he chases his tail. One second I thought we should hurry up the hill; the next second I wondered if we should return to the hotel area.

  The thing that kept me going uphill was my memory of Dad’s voice saying, “You got that?” after he had read the sign to us. Mom and Dad trusted me to take care of BeeBee and myself. By doing what the sign said to do, I hoped I was keeping us safe.

  BeeBee trudged at my heels. “I’m tired,” she said, “and hungry. I want my pizza and my milkshake.”

  “I don’t think room service delivers out here,” I said.

  BeeBee didn’t laugh. “I want Bill.” Her voice quavered as if she were going to start crying again.

  I felt like crying myself. Besides losing Bill, we had lost all of our clothes and our luggage and our plane tickets home. BeeBee hadn’t thought of any of those things yet, and I didn’t intend to tell her. I could imagine the moaning I’d hear once she realized her new sun hat was gone and the bucket of shells and her favorite pajamas that had dollar signs all over them.

  Now that we were away from the burning Totem Pole Inn, the road was more narrow. Ruts and potholes made it hard to walk without looking down all the time. The farther we got from the ocean, the more the smoke hung in the air. My eyes smarted. I kept blinking, but it didn’t help much.

  “Why isn’t anyone else going this way?” BeeBee asked.

  I had wondered that myself and didn’t know the answer.

  “Maybe there are wild animals around here,” BeeBee said.

  “Wild animals fear fire,” I said. “They’d run away even faster than we can.”

  That seemed to satisfy her.

  We had walked another five minutes, when a concrete barrier blocked our way. A small sign beside it said: “No vehicles beyond this point.”

  We walked around the barrier and found that the pavement had ended. We were now on a dirt path that headed up at a much steeper incline than before.

  My hand throbbed where I had burned it on the door handle, and my throat hurt from all the smoke.

  I stopped walking long enough to wipe my face on the bottom of my shirt.

  “Do you hear that?” BeeBee said.

  I listened. Somewhe
re in the distance I heard, “Moo. Moo. Moo.”

  “It’s cows!” BeeBee said.

  “Is that the kind of wild animal you were worried about?”

  “I meant cougars or grizzly bears. I hear a whole herd of cows.”

  I knew that animals sometimes sense a natural disaster ahead of time. I’d read about dogs and cats back home in Kansas who pace nervously around before a tornado strikes. One woman in our town had a parrot who, she claimed, knew a tornado was headed in its direction long before the weather service issued any warning. Were the cows aware that another earthquake was coming? Or a tidal wave?

  We stood still for a moment, straining to hear better. The mooing repeated, over and over and over, sounding exactly the same each time.

  “I don’t think those are live cows,” I said.

  BeeBee giggled. “Dead cows don’t moo.”

  “I think it’s a recording.”

  She listened again. “You’re right. Why would anyone play a tape of cows mooing?”

  We walked on.

  “The farmers make a tape of their cows mooing,” I said, “and then if one of the cows doesn’t come home at night with the others, the farmer plays the tape over a loudspeaker, and the stray cow hears it and knows where to go.”

  “Is that true,” BeeBee asked, “or are you making it up?”

  “Making it up,” I admitted, “but it’s logical. I can’t think of any other reason why someone would broadcast a bunch of cows.”

  “That mooing noise is coming from the direction of town,” BeeBee said. “There weren’t any cows in town.”

  While we pondered the puzzle, we heard voices on the road behind us. Looking back, we saw a man and a woman go around the concrete barrier and hurry toward us. The woman had a small tan terrier on a leash.

  “Hello!” the man called when they were a bit closer. The little dog wagged her tail and tugged toward us.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Keep going up the hill,” the woman said. “There’s been a tsunami warning! It’s supposed to hit Fisher Beach at five-thirty.”

  “We aren’t supposed to go anywhere with strangers,” BeeBee whispered to me.

  “This is an emergency,” I whispered back, “and we aren’t going with them; we were climbing the hill anyway.”

  “Hurry!” the man said as they caught up to us.

  “They look like Grandma and Grandpa,” BeeBee whispered.

  I nodded, and we fell into step behind the gray-haired couple and their little dog. I felt less anxious now that we were near adults, strangers or not.

  The dog kept turning around, wanting to sniff us. “Come along, Pansy,” the woman said. “You can make friends after we’re out of danger.”

  “How did you know about the tsunami?” I asked. “Was there a warning on the radio?”

  “We heard the cows mooing,” the man said.

  “We heard them too,” I said. “It sounded like a tape recording.”

  “That’s the tsunami warning,” the man said. “The town council decided cows wouldn’t be as frightening as a siren, so when there’s a tsunami warning in this area, they broadcast the sound of cows mooing.”

  “In Kansas we have tornado warnings,” BeeBee said, “but the warnings don’t sound like cows; they’re sirens. We didn’t know what the mooing meant.”

  “That’s a problem,” the man said. “We knew because we live here, but visitors don’t have any idea what it means when those cows start in. Of course, they might not know what any other warning signal means either.”

  “We thought a farmer had lost one of his cows and was calling it home,” BeeBee said.

  “Oh, lawsy, that’s a good one,” the woman said.

  “If there’s been an official warning, why aren’t more people coming up the hill?” I asked.

  “Usually guests from the Totem Pole Inn come up the hill with us, but the inn isn’t open any more,” she said. “I heard two or three rooms were used last night because of a convention, but officially it’s closed. The new lodge isn’t renting rooms yet, so only a small staff is on duty. With the fires and all, they may have left before the tsunami warning.”

  “We stayed at the Totem Pole Inn last night,” I said.

  “I’m glad you got out safely,” the man said. “We’re the ones who called the fire department. We live in a beach cabin just down the road.”

  “Do you have neighbors?” BeeBee asked. I knew she was still wondering why other people weren’t coming up the hill with us.

  “None close by,” the man said. “There are always a few people having beach picnics this time of night, but many of the locals ignore the warnings because there have been so many false alarms. The cows moo, the radio and TV announcers get all excited and create a panic, and when the wave finally comes, it’s only two feet high. It’s happened half a dozen times.”

  “The problem,” the woman said, “is that the scientific weather instruments can predict the time of a tsunami, but not the size of the waves.”

  “Warning signals only work if people trust them,” the man said. “I’m afraid the folks who live around here have lost their trust.”

  “We told those people watching the hotel fire to get to high ground,” the woman said, “but most of them went down to the beach instead. One girl said if there was a tidal wave, she wanted to see it. I told her, ‘Honey, the only way you’ll see a tidal wave is when it washes you away,’ but she laughed and went down to the water anyway.”

  “Has a tsunami ever hit this area?” I asked.

  “Not in the fifteen years we’ve lived here, but the experts keep saying it’s going to happen, so every time there’s a warning we take Pansy for a walk up the hill. Better safe than sorry, that’s my motto. By the way, I’m Josie and this is Norm.”

  “I’m Kyle,” I said, “and this is my sister, BeeBee.” It would have seemed like an ordinary conversation, except that all of us kept walking as fast as we could, as if we were hurrying to catch a bus.

  “Kyle’s a hero,” BeeBee said. “He got us out of the hotel when it was on fire, and he rescued a boy who had passed out from the smoke, only that boy wouldn’t come up here with us. He said it was safer at the ocean because water doesn’t burn.”

  “Maybe he’ll hear about the tsunami warning,” Norm said. “Sometimes officials go around and broadcast the news. They tell people to evacuate, to go to higher ground.”

  “Where are your parents?” Josie asked.

  “They went on a cruise,” BeeBee said. “They’re having dinner on a big yacht.”

  I added, “It’s a business event for the company they work for. They had to go because our dad was the salesman of the year, but the dinner was only for adults.” I didn’t want this couple to think Mom and Dad were a couple of deadbeats, off at a party while their kids were left alone in the hotel. “We ordered pizza from room service, and then we were supposed to watch a movie until they got home.”

  “The pizza fell on the floor and the milkshakes spilled,” BeeBee said.

  My throat felt tight. Talking about Mom and Dad made me wonder again where they were. If they were still out on the ocean, what would happen if a tsunami hit? Would the ship be able to ride the huge wave, or would it capsize?

  If the ship had headed back early because of the earthquake and the fires, the captain would know about the tsunami warning and would tell the passengers where to go to stay safe. But would Mom and Dad do it, or would they rush to the Totem Pole Inn looking for us?

  Now that I knew there was an official tsunami warning, I was certain I’d done the right thing by coming up the hill, but I also realized how much danger my whole family was in.

  BeeBee apparently had the same thought, for she said softly, “What if Mom and Dad get washed away by the giant wave? What if we never see them again?”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t reassure my sister when I was every bit as worried as she was.

  8

  The celebration on board
the Elegant Empress was in full swing. Cotton ball clouds drifted across the sky, and the hum of the ship’s engine accompanied a string quartet that played soft music in the background.

  The Davidsons filled their plates at the buffet table.

  “You can win salesman of the year anytime,” Mrs. Davidson told her husband, “if it means an evening like this.”

  “It is special,” he agreed, “but don’t expect me to win every year. Enjoy it while you can.”

  “I feel guilty being on a yacht eating grilled vegetables and salmon and chocolate mousse while the kids have pizza in that dumpy hotel room.”

  “Now don’t start worrying about the kids,” Mr. Davidson said. “BeeBee seems to like having Kyle be the sitter, and I don’t think he minds too much. Besides, they’d rather eat pizza than grilled veggies any day.” He helped himself to some garlic bread.

  Just then Mr. Wray, the president of the real estate company, signaled to the quartet to stop playing. He went to the microphone and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to interrupt your dinner, but the captain has received a radio message that the town of Fisher and Fisher Beach were hit by an earthquake a short time ago.”

  Mrs. Davidson gasped and reached for her husband’s hand.

  “There wasn’t any major damage, and as far as we know there were no injuries, but the power is out in the entire area and we have reports of a few fires that started when the earthquake broke a natural gas line.”

  Mrs. Davidson opened her purse and removed the cell phone. Mr. Davidson took a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to her. On it was the phone number of the Totem Pole Inn.

  She punched in the number and waited. “Nothing happens,” she said. “It doesn’t ring.”

  “If the power is out, the hotel’s telephone line is probably out too.”

  “I’ll keep you posted on any further developments,” Mr. Wray said. “Now please enjoy the rest of your dinner. We’ll be presenting the awards soon.”

  Instead of returning to their table, the Davidsons approached Mr. Wray.

  “Shouldn’t the Elegant Empress head back to shore?” Mr. Davidson asked.