There is something invisible, she thought, looking at the distant black cloud, which she now realized wasn’t a storm at all, but a volcanic eruption originating in Iceland. But she’d only stopped reading the news for the past day, which meant the eruption had taken place in the past twenty-four hours. For the plume of smoke and ash to already be visible from SEAcroft, the eruption’s force must have been catastrophic. Her hand rose to her lips, as she remembered the loud boom that had interrupted her meal the previous evening. She’d assumed it was an errant thunderclap. But now she knew what it was, and understood what was happening to the birds.
It was gas.
Chlorine for sure, probably CO2, and God knew what else was being shoved ahead of the ash, propelled by the distant explosion.
And if there was enough of it to choke the birds in mid-air, there’s more than enough to do me in.
Kati wheeled around, facing the village, and sprinted.
Focusing on the path ahead, her legs became a blur. While she normally concentrated on endurance running, because it most resembled the slow, steady climb of the business world, she occasionally sprinted, reflecting times when legal battles were closer to wars. She was a fighter, not prone to giving up. Yet with every breath, the sting of chlorine seeped deeper into her lungs, where it was absorbed and sent coursing through her body.
Routine drew her eyes to her heart monitor. It was pegged at 100%, a fact she already knew because of the pounding in her chest, the ache of a strained heart as unfamiliar to her as breathing chlorine.
She covered the distance between the ocean and the single lane street in under two minutes, but her legs began to shake. She slowed as she approached the line of homes, now on her right. Her chest heaved with coughs, and then for air. Not air, she thought, oxygen.
Her eyes widened as the sheep on the left side of the road let out a pain-filled bleat. It kicked and thrashed against some unseen attacker, desperate and afraid. Its front legs folded beneath its body, and it ran like that, pushed along by its hind legs for a few more steps before collapsing. It then let out a long sigh and fell still.
The door to the house on her right opened and the familiar face of her old friend greeted her once more, this time with a look of abject horror. The woman tried to speak, but couldn’t past her swollen tongue. She fell to her knees, clutching her throat, and then laid as still as the sheep.
No, Kati thought. Move!
Her legs beat against the pavement, but became useless after just a few steps, her body and mind deprived of oxygen.
She stumbled off the road, reaching out for balance and grasping hold of the thin metal wire surrounding the wide-open sheep field. The pain in her mouth, throat and lungs was momentarily dwarfed by a jolt of electricity, coursing from the fence, up through her arms.
Her shout of pain lodged inside her swollen throat. If the air around her was still breathable, it would have done her no good.
She rolled onto her back, gulping.
Dying.
Regretting.
As her vision blurred, she let go of the world she had built. The business. The million pound flat. The expensive dinners. None of it mattered in the end. Her head lolled to the side, and for a moment, she saw the beach where her parents used to sit and read. I’m sorry, she thought, as she saw only darkness. I should have enjoyed it all more.
And then, Kati Takacs laid still, for the first time in her life, at peace.
The invisible cloud of chlorine and CO2, ignorant to her passing, continued on its journey inland, propelled by the staggering eruption’s influence on the region’s weather patterns. High winds swept the gases southeast over Lewis and Harris, the largest of the Western Isles, killing all 18,500 residents and 875 visitors, before descending on northern Scotland, where it thinned and eventually settled in the Highlands, but not before claiming another 235,000 lives.
7
Amos
“Tighter,” Amos Johansen told his son, his voice rumbling in his chest. The resonant volume of his words made him sound larger than life, but he knew the baritone had more to do with his smoking than his manly stature. As Nordic men went, he was small. He stood no taller than his wife, an average Nordic woman, and only a few inches taller than Ralf, his thirteen year old son. He hadn’t weighed himself in years, but he suspected both wife and son outweighed him.
Ralf rolled his eyes and undid the pile hitch knot, tying the small fishing vessel off once more. “I know how to do this. Better than you.”
When Ralf turned thirteen, seven months previously, he suddenly knew everything about everything, including fishing, knot-tying and cooking—tasks Amos had been working on all his life, under the tutelage of his own father, Hagnar. The family had owned and operated the Fjord Sjømat Restaurant for more than fifty years, and Ralf believed himself ready to take on the mantle of owner, operator and head chef all at once.
Amos didn’t judge the boy too harshly, though. He still remembered saying similar things to his father, though he wasn’t allowed to get away with it. Hagnar Johansen was a hard man, who had wielded a switch the way gladiators did swords, brought in record hauls of fish and fried most dishes. Fish were more scarce these days, so Amos cooked with finesse, using locally sourced organic foods that brought in wealthier patrons from the mainland. Beneath the Fjord’s sign, in smaller text, were the words, ‘Finest Tappas on Frøya,’ which locals got a chuckle from, because there were only two restaurants on the island of Frøya—both located in the small town of Kalvåg, and the other still fried everything.
“I’m sure you do,” Amos said, sarcasm bubbling to the surface.
If there was anything Ralf loathed more than being told what to do, it was not being taken seriously. The boy stood from his knot-tying duty and thrust an index finger at Amos. “First you make me stay out all night fishing, and for what?” He motioned to the cooler resting on the dock between them. “Five cod. Then you ride me about the knot. And now you mock me? You never take me seriously. You never listen. You don’t understand.”
If Amos had ever spoken to his father in this manner, he didn’t remember it. The memory would have been knocked out of him. And that part of him that was his father’s son wanted to find a length of wood and teach the boy a lesson. But it was far too late for such things. The confrontation would be less of a discipline between father and son and more of a fair fight. The part of him that loathed his father, revolted at the idea.
He decided to wield the only real power he held. “You will do as I say, when I say it, or you will spend your summer on Frøya, cleaning dishes.”
The boy’s mouth snapped closed, but his eyes filled with fire. Ralf’s girlfriend lived on the mainland, a traverse over several islands connected by a series of bridges, and then a long drive to Haugeelva.
“Your ancestors would have traveled much further on foot to find a good woman,” Amos joked, feeling pleased.
“Maybe I will,” Ralf said.
“If you get started now, you might be there in time for dinner.”
“It won’t take that long.” The boy crossed his arms.
Amos smiled at the boy’s growing absurdity. “You’ve walked the distance before?” He patted his own slender belly and looked at Ralf’s chubbier girth. “I think not.” It was a low blow. Ralf had grown up in a restaurant, eating rich foods at every meal. While Amos’s rapid metabolism had kept him slender with little effort, the plump boy had more of his mother’s genes.
The defiance melted from the boy’s face, replaced by a sudden wash of self-degradation. Tears filled his eyes.
I’ve gone too far, Amos realized. Again.
While Hagnar had been a violent father, Amos made his son cry nearly as often, stinging the boy with his words rather than with his hands.
Venting a sigh, Amos walked to his son, brushed away the boy’s protesting hands and wrapped him in a hug. Ralf resisted, but the effort was half-hearted. He was as affectionate as he was overweight.
“I’m
sorry,” Amos said, scolding himself, in part for speaking cruelly, but more so for losing this battle of wits with his son. Making the boy cry shifted the outcome of this argument in Ralf’s favor. Despite the boy’s rude and defiant behavior, Amos was the one apologizing. In fact, the sudden reversal got Amos thinking. With widening eyes, he leaned his face around, looking at the side of his son’s face, where phony tears framed a more honest grin.
He’s manipulating me!
Amos reconsidered the switch for a moment, but movement caught his attention. The pile hitch, tied too loose again, was coming undone.
Ralf stumbled away as Amos pushed him. “The knot, you deceptive buffoon!”
The boy looked ready to launch right back into a second round of verbal sparring, when he glanced back and saw the rope snaking free of the piling. “Shit!” He took hold of the rope, which was about to fall into the water and struggled to pull the small boat back to the pier. “Father, help!”
Amos crossed his arms. The advantage had shifted again. “You can do it without me, can’t you?”
“Help me, you asshole!”
Heat and pressure built inside Amos. He strode to his son, fully intending to shove the boy into the frigid Norwegian Sea. To teach him a lesson he wouldn’t forget. But when he saw the boy struggling to hold the boat, which was surging away as though under power, worry gripped him.
“Let go!” he shouted, rushing forward and wrapping his arms around the boy’s waist before he was pulled in the water. But it was a temporary measure. The taut rope would pull them both in. “Let go!”
“But the boat!” Ralf shouted.
“Let. It. Go.”
“It was grandfather’s.”
“He was an asshole, too,” Amos said. “It is not worth our lives!”
Ralf released the rope and both Johansen men spilled back onto the dock. Amos crashed into the cooler, knocking it off the far side of the dock. After colliding with the wood floor, he heard it land, but not with a splash. Instead, he heard a wet thud.
Confused by the sound, Amos rolled over and looked down. Where there had been water just moments ago, there was now only muddy, pungent-smelling seafloor. Exposed crabs scurried over the mud, looking for hiding places.
“Father,” Ralf said, sounding astonished. “Look.”
Amos pushed himself up and turned around, already expecting to see something strange, but nothing remotely close to what he found. The Frøysjøen strait, which was sixteen miles long and two and a half miles from Kalvåg to the far side, had come to life with a sudden, raging ferocity. The flow of water, which rose and fell with the tides, surged out to sea, fast enough to cover the small, unpopulated islands dotting the straight.
Their small fishing boat was pulled away by the retreating waters, joining a fleet of other boats, some empty, some holding crews of fishermen and lobstermen, shouting for help.
“What is this?” Amos said. His family had lived on the island for generations upon generations. He knew Frøya’s stories—the true and tragic along with the fictional and mythical. But not one of them told of waters rushing out of the strait with enough force to pull boats from piers and men out to sea.
Ralf had his own answer. “Tsunami.”
“A giant wave?” Amos asked. “That does not happen here.”
The boy dug into his pants pocket and pulled out a smartphone.
“I know the definition of a tsunami,” Amos complained, sure the boy was trying to educate him again.
Ralf held up the phone so Amos could see the screen, which was displaying a BBC news app. The first story listed under Top Stories had the headline: Iceland’s Bardarbunga Volcano Erupts. “Says it’s the largest eruption in modern history. That travel is going to be restricted across Europe for weeks. Maybe months.”
Amos held up his hands. He knew what Bardarbunga was and understood the ramifications. He’d vacationed on Iceland several times, and he remembered the fallout from Eyjafjallajökull in 2010. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Like you would have listened.”
Anger squeezed Amos’s heart, but he held it at bay. “Bardarbunga isn’t on the coast. Why would it cause a wave?”
“It released a gas cloud, too,” Ralf said. “Killed people in Scotland.”
Fear quickly overpowered Amos’s anger. “How many people?”
Ralf shrugs. “No one has been able to check. But a lot, I guess.”
Amos snatched the phone from his son’s hand and quickly read the article, which was scant on details and heavy on speculation. But the reality of the situation was impossible to ignore. While Bardarbunga was the first volcano to erupt, more than thirty had since the previous night. That boom, Amos thought, remembering the throaty reverberation that had rolled over the open ocean like a passing jet. We heard it. Prevailing winds and the eruption’s force had pushed volcanic ash and gas southeast toward the UK. He looked at a projection of how far the ash would travel. The trail skirted the southern regions of Norway and Sweden before heading into Europe, but a shift in the wind could bring it farther north.
Amos scrambled to his feet and dragged Ralf with him.
The boy pulled free of his father’s grasp. “Hey!” But Amos took hold of him again and shoved him toward the red building at the end of the pier. The first floor of the large seaside building was the Fjord restaurant. The second floor was home to Amos and his family.
“Get your mother!” Amos shouted, reaching into his pockets for the car keys.
“What? Why?” Ralf pointed to the tall hills rising up beyond the line of homes and businesses lining the road that wrapped around the island. “The open ocean is on the far side of the island. The wave won’t hit us here.”
Amos thrust his hand at the now empty strait. “Where the water flees, it will also return. You put too much faith in our seawall.” He moved his hand to the now revealed stone wall, covered in seaweed and barnacles. More than a few of the stones had slipped into the mud below. “And we’re not fleeing the water. We’re fleeing the ash. I do not wish to choke to death, do you?”
Ralf sobered, heading for the back door, while Amos unlocked the car. “Where will we go?”
“North.”
“Can we pick up Gayle on the—”
“Get your mother!” Amos shouted. “Your girlfriend has parents of her own. Go! Now!”
While Ralf disappeared into the house, Amos started the car and mentally mapped out their route, heading north to Heggelia, where his brother lived. But what if that is not far enough? Amos worried. He remembered an airport near his brother’s. Perhaps they could fly out if the skies were still clear?
Both passenger side doors opened. Ralf and his mother, Bitta, climbed into the car, tilting the small vehicle to the right. “What is all this about?” Bitta asked. Her hair was tied in a bun, but somehow still disheveled. She wore a flour-dusted apron and smelled of warm bread. “The loaves will be useless if the stove stays off.”
“Close the door,” Amos said and stepped on the gas.
Bitta yelped as the door closed on its own and the tires screeched over the pavement. As they tore down route 616, which took them along the coast of Frøya and across several bridges to the mainland, they saw long-time friends and neighbors cramming into their own cars, as well.
“Slow down!” Bitta shouted.
Amos glanced at the speedometer. He was going twice the speed limit. There was no one in front of him. He was leading the pack. Hoping those behind him would follow suit, Amos pushed the gas pedal harder.
The ground shook beneath them. Amos let up on the gas while he fought the wheel for control. Bitta screamed.
“Is the water returning?” Amos asked, eyeing the first bridge ahead of them.
“I cannot see it,” Ralf said from the back, looking out the passenger’s side window to an empty fjord.
Slowing to turn onto the bridge, Amos glanced left. Homes and farmland stretched out and ended at the base of a rocky hill ascending more than two
hundred feet at the island’s core. But where there should have been blue sky at the crest, there was, instead, a wave.
The ocean rose up, swallowing the island whole.
As warm piss coated the seat beneath him, Amos pushed the gas pedal to the floor and raced across the bridge.
“Oh, god,” Ralf said. “Oh, god!”
To their right, the ocean returned to the strait, hundreds of feet deeper, surging toward them and consuming everything in its path. Amos willed the car to move faster, but the vehicle’s 100 mph top speed was 400mph too slow to outrun the rushing waters. One instant the water was rising up behind them and beside them, and the next, it erased them.
The Johansens died instantly, their vehicle and bodies torn into unrecognizable bits strewn over Norway, 100 miles inland. The 500-foot-tall wall of water struck Norway moving at 600 mph. Minutes later, it struck Scotland, scouring hundreds of thousands of poisoned bodies from the landscape and increasing the death toll. Ireland followed with similar results. The island nations stole much of the wave’s energy, but a swath of Europe, from Norway to Spain was struck by the wave. Half a day later, the west coast of Africa was hit. And a full day later, South America was slapped, from Venezuela to the most eastern edge of Brazil. With some warning, South American nations were able to partly evacuate affected areas, but across the world, millions of lives were lost.
8
Abraham
Upon stepping into JFK International Airport, I’m greeted by a loud, “Daddy.” Then I’m tackled by two small bodies, squeezed and loved by sons who both somehow resemble me without looking at all alike. Mina and Bell follow, hugging more gently, shedding tears of relief that our strange family is whole once more. No one stares. No one judges. The world just lets us be.
Apocalypse Machine Page 5