Tsunami: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller

by Crawford Kilian

  “Should I even be hearing this?”

  “It’s common knowledge, Bob. These damn flares have the upper atmosphere all churned up. Launch a missile, you can’t tell if it’ll come close enough to its target to take it out.

  “Are you telling me World War Three’s been postponed because of the weather?”

  Both men laughed and turned their attention to lunch. But within a minute or two Miles was brooding again about his troubles.

  “The kids in basic training are taking it hard. At least the whites and Chicanos. They’re mostly farm boys, small town boys, they worry when they see what the UV is doing to the land. Then Mama writes a letter about how all the horses went blind and had to be shot — boy, you got a kid with a problem.

  “What about the blacks?”

  “Thank the good lord for those boys. They can take a dose of UV that would fry an egg, and they’re city kids — they don’t know what colour grass is supposed to be. Except maybe the kind they smoke. We’d be out of business without ‘em. You know, they’re actually getting a kick out of all this.”

  “A kick?”

  “Sure. The rest of us can’t go outside without gloves and all that crud on our faces, except at night. The black boys think it’s funnier’n hell. Well, I guess it is. We got the world’s first indoor army.”

  Allison saw the chance to make his move. He raised his glass of Perrier: “Here’s hoping the ozone will be back by June, or I’ll have to shoot The Longrangers in a studio.”

  “Ah! Tell me about it.”

  Allison launched into his spiel, knowing Miles would be interested and sympathetic; the general had commanded long-range reconnaissance and patrol outfits in Vietnam. The pitch was going well, and Miles was nodding enthusiastically, when a stocky, red-faced captain burst in.

  “Sir — sorry to disturb you, but we’ve got an urgent message from the Presidio in San Francisco. Uh, some kind of tidal waves are coming up the coast. They say San Diego and L.A. got clobbered, and Vandenberg — ” He stopped himself, looking suspiciously at Allison.

  “Spit it out, Captain.”

  “Vandenberg Air Force Base reports heavy casualties and extensive damage. They expect the waves to reach the Monterey area about twelve-twenty. That’s ah, twelve minutes from now. sir.”

  The general looked more annoyed than alarmed. “Okay. I don’t think this will amount to much, but evacuate the firing ranges at once, and the dependents’ quarters within half a mile of Highway One. Get everyone moved east of North-South Road. Notify the hospital, fire services and MPs. And get me a chopper out in front of this place by twelve-fifteen.”

  “Yes, sir!” The captain vanished, leaving the door ajar; the hum from the main dining room, downstairs, seemed to change pitch.

  Miles rose from the table. “Well, Bob, looks like we’ll have to get together another time real soon. Sorry about this. I don’t think we’ll have any real trouble, but no sense taking chances. Boy — if Vandenberg got flooded, they must be some big waves.”

  The general was already halfway to the door. “Remember me to that lovely wife of yours.”

  — Oh Christ, thought Allison, she’s in Carmel.

  Allison followed Miles out and raced to his car. Just as he was unlocking it, the fort’s PA system thundered into life: loud-speakers bawled unintelligibly, the noise blurring into echoes. Sirens moaned. Allison backed out of the parking slot and roared onto the street.

  The main exits would be jammed with trainees from the rifle ranges pouring across Highway 1. He’d do better taking North-South Road and coming out at the southwest corner of the fort.

  Once past the dependents’ housing, Allison met little traffic, and soon reached Highway 218. He used a roundabout route to get back onto Highway 1 on the south side of Monterey; Carmel was only four or five miles farther on. He drove fast, splashing through flooded stretches of the road.

  Belatedly, Allison turned on the car radio and tried to get KMPX, but it was off the air. He tried 640, the emergency frequency, but heard only a high-pitched whine. He switched off, swearing.

  Sirens were screaming as he neared the junction with Highway 1: ambulances and police cars blocked off the streets leading down to the water. Even without radio, word had travelled fast in Monterey. Cars were almost bumper-to-bumper, heading for the high ground on the road to Carmel.

  — Why was the engine running so loudly? He downshifted into second; the noise was louder. It wasn’t the car. The whirring, rasping roar was coming from the north, from the waterfront.

  The roar ended suddenly with a single sharp boom; the Mercedes shuddered as the pavement thumped beneath it. What sounded like machine-gun fire followed almost at once. Crossing Pacific, Allison got a clear look down to the waterfront.

  It was gone. A black-and-white wall of water stood where the beach and wharves had been. The crest of the wave was level with the roof of a four-story building, which exploded when the water struck it.

  A long tentacle from the wave shot up Pacific, a white mass twenty feet high and moving fast. It overtook a yellow Datsun station wagon, flipped it over, and engulfed it. The front of the tentacle was armoured in debris — boats, trees, fragmented walls, chunks of concrete, a long black shaft that must have been a piling from one of the piers.

  The wave slowed long before it could reach the intersection, but Allison didn’t pause. He spun the Mercedes around a stalled Volkswagen and accelerated. Others had the same idea and blocked him, until he turned on his headlights and leaned on the horn. Like sheep before a barking dog, the other cars drew aside and let him by.

  Away from town, the broad highway to Carmel was crowded with cars moving slowly and steadily in both directions. Allison wondered whether Carmel had somehow escaped, until he glimpsed a sobbing woman sitting in the back of a northbound pickup truck. They’d got it, all right. He watched the oncoming cars, looking for Shauna’s Jaguar.

  He came over the ridge and looked south. West of the highway, almost nothing was left of Carmel. Trees, houses, the tea shops and boutiques on Ocean Avenue — they were all just wreckage now. Men and women ran or walked up the road, many without protection against the driving rain; many didn’t even have sunglasses, and their eyes were vague and unfocussed with shock. One bearded man, barefoot and wearing only a T-shirt and jeans, slapped the hood of the Mercedes as he shambled past.

  “Hey man, too bad, show’s over. You missed all the fun. Missed all the goddamn fun!” The man went on up the line of cars, shouting and laughing.

  The wave had almost reached the highway before receding. No one was trying to keep traffic out of the ruined village; most of the drivers pulled off the road and abandoned their cars, running downhill through the wreckage to look for family or friends. Allison shook his head and muttered, “Morons.” It was obvious that anyone caught in the western, downhill part of Carmel was dead. All the little doll-house cottages, the stores and restaurants, were smashed flat and scattered up the hillside like driftwood. Muddy water ran in streams through the debris. Carmel Bay was a mass of heaving water that looked like boiling milk.

  Uphill from the highway, the high school and the houses around it looked almost obscenely normal. Kids and teachers were crowded against the chain-link fence on the edge of a playing field, gaping down the hill. One of them had vaulted the fence and was standing on the hillside above the road, a portable videotape camera held to his face. Allison admired the kid’s presence of mind.

  He was still about a mile from the Carmel Valley turnoff when the second wave came in. Allison saw it first as a geyser erupting around the rocks of Carmel Point — a geyser that rose higher and higher, then vanished as the crest of the wave rolled over the point and onto the wreckage-strewn beach.

  Hidden behind its own spray, the wave rolled over the ruins like a fog bank. When it struck the wall of debris left by the first wave, it shot straight up, higher than the few trees still left standing; then it curved and fell roaring onto the steep slope below the
road.

  Allison turned into the empty northbound lanes and jammed the accelerator to the floor. Rain and spray mixed in a dense grey cloud too thick for the windshield wipers; he guided himself by the line of red taillights to his right. Just a few hundred yards now, and he’d be on the road up the valley.

  The taillights, glowing blurrily, suddenly drifted closer. A little orange car materialized in front of the Mercedes, skidding slowly sideways —

  He felt the wave hit: a foot deep, still powerful, thick with debris. It swept across his side of the highway with a grinding noise. Cars were all over the road now, crunching together and spinning apart. The Mercedes drifted left, almost to the concrete barrier at the side of the road, before its tires came back into solid contact with the pavement. Allison had automatically put the car in neutral; now he gently tested the brakes. They felt mushy, but they worked. The car stopped. He pressed a button to retract the top, another to lower the windows. Rain drenched the leather seats. He put his hat on and looked around.

  The wave was retreating from the highway in a sheet of chocolate-brown water, leaving an uneven layer of branches, lumber, rocks and mud on the asphalt. Wedged against the right front wheel of his car was the body of a German shepherd, its teeth bared and its fur caked with mud.

  A young woman in jeans got out of a stalled Audi nearby and ran screaming across the road towards the hillside below the school. She stepped on the corpse of a small child and ran on without stopping.

  Allison stood up on his seat. A few cars were turning around, skidding in the mud, and heading back north. To the south, a van lay on its side. Water sounds assaulted him: the hiss of rain, the roar of the ebbing wave as it ran in torrents back through the smashed village. Not far from the road, someone was screaming for help.

  He slid down behind the wheel and put the car in first. The tires spun, flinging mud and pebbles against the underside, and then found traction. Slowly, slipping through mud and bumping over rocks and shattered lumber, Allison drove south to the turnoff. — Don’t let me hit any nails, he prayed. God, please, no nails, no glass.

  Other cars followed him, weaving around those deserted by their drivers. In his rear view mirror, Allison saw three or four men leave their cars and stumble downhill into the ruins.

  They wouldn’t get far; neither would he, if he were fool enough to follow them. Better to get home, change, and come back with Hipolito. If Shauna was in Carmel she was almost certainly dead anyway. Tears stung his eyes.

  Rain soaked into his Stetson, and the brim began to sag. The sheepskin collar of his jacket smelled of wet wool. He drove slowly, avoiding the bodies scattered among the wreckage; weeping, he turned onto Carmel Valley Road, into country that had seemed forlorn this morning but now looked like an untouched paradise.

  A silver Jaguar came around a corner, headed west. Allison saw it from half a mile away, braked, and pulled off the road. He flashed his headlights, then leaned on the horn. Shauna cut smoothly across the road and halted just in front of the Mercedes. He saw her face in the spattered semicircle of clear windshield and giggled at her surprised expression. The giggles took a long time to stop.

  Deliberately, savouring the moment, he got out and splashed over to her. She rolled her window down.

  “What in God’s name are you doing, Bob? And what have you done to the car?”

  Allison glanced back and noticed absently that the sides and front of the Mercedes were scratched and gouged. He turned to her, reaching out to touch her cheek, her perfect dark hair.

  “Kid, y’know — you’re cute enough to be in the movies. Anybody ever tell you that?”

  “Are you ripped? Driving the Mercedes with the goddamn top down, and it looks like you were in an accident, and all you — “

  “Turn around. We’ve got to get home.”

  “Hey, I’m getting all wet. — Oh shit, was there an accident? Are you okay?”

  “Turn around, kid. I’ll follow you home. Tell you about it there.”

  She nodded slowly, looking scared, and rolled her window up. The Jaguar boomed in reverse, off the shoulder and onto the rainswept pavement.

  Allison followed close behind her, without bothering to put the top back up. His sodden clothes made him shiver. But he felt very clear-headed. Just an hour or two ago he’d been dithering, planning a movie one moment and worrying about social collapse the next. The time for doublethink was past; middle-class paranoia was a futile self-indulgence now.

  He made his plans swiftly and easily. Every step fell into place, like the preproduction phase of making a film. By the time the two cars turned up into Escondido Canyon, most of the details of the plan were set, most of the contingencies were allowed for. One question remained, and it hung in his mind all the way back to the ranch: How do I get Sarah up here?

  Chapter 4

  Plummet pitched and swung wildly as it was hoisted up and onto Ultramarine’s deck. They were hove-to in the lee of the Farallon Islands, thirty kilometres west of San Francisco, but the sea here was calm only in comparison to the storm-driven waves nearby.

  Don crawled to the rear of Plummet’s cabin. Grunting, he straightened up and opened the hatch. Rain sluiced down on him as he climbed out.

  A couple of crewmen helped him down from the superstructure; he was stiff and clumsy, and a little dizzy.

  “How do you feel?” one of the crewmen asked.

  “Okay.” He turned to look at the sub. “Poor Plummet.”

  Ignoring the rain, Don walked around the submersible. He had seen at once, when the hatch opened, that the sail — a metal skirt around the hatch — had been torn away. Plummet’s bright yellow paint was pitted and chipped, in many places right down to the steel. Rocks had gouged and dented the hull; the protective screens around the propellers were clogged with gravel. The manipulator arm was mangled.

  “I hope Owen won’t be too sore when he sees this.”

  “He already has.” The crewman pointed to the bridge, where two pale faces showed through rain-blurred windows. Don waved; the men waved back.

  He left the deck and went down a corridor to his tiny cabin; on the way he met Shirley Yamamura, the ship’s doctor. She cleaned the gash on his scalp and put a bandage over it.

  “A real turbidity current, huh? You’re lucky,” she remarked.

  “Pretty sloppy kind of luck. Ow.”

  “Poor baby. No, really — too bad it didn’t happen when the networks were still operating. You’d’ve been the biggest thing since Cousteau.”

  “Maybe I’m lucky at that: What’s happened to San Francisco?”

  “They’ve had at least three big tsunamis, maybe four or five. I’m afraid I’m going to be awfully busy when we get back.” Her lined face was set. “See you later.”

  Don got out of his wet, bloodstained clothes and pulled on dry jeans and a red flannel shirt. Then he went up to the bridge.

  Except for the rattle of rain on the windows, the bridge was quiet and dim. Bill Murphy, the skipper, stood beside Owen Ussery, the ship’s chief scientist. Bill was a short, compact man with a soupstrainer moustache and curly black hair that stuck out around a Giants baseball cap. The cap, together with his wrinkled plaid shirt and brown corduroys, made him look more like a suburban father than a master mariner. Owen was tall and thin, with a long sallow face and short white hair. He wore a baggy grey cardigan and shapeless blue slacks tucked into gumboots.

  “Glad to see ya,” Bill said, punching Don’s arm. “How’s your head feel?”

  “Like a hangover. Good to see you guys. Uh — sorry about the sub, Owen.”

  “That’s the least of our problems. We’ll just take it out of your pay.” Owen nodded towards the window. “Look.” Just above the wave-chopped eastern horizon, a dark cloud merged into the overcast.

  “Is that the city?”

  Owen blew his nose. “Yes, that’s the city. We’ve been trying to raise the Institute, but there’s no reply.”

  “What we’re picking up fr
om CBers and hams is really bad,” said Bill. “So I’m staying put until the waves are all finished.”

  Owen pursed his lips. “We’ve been discussing our options,” he said dryly. “I feel we should get home as soon as possible. Sitting out here is not doing anyone any good.”

  “Sorry, Owen.” Bill Murphy’s dark eyes met the chief scientist’s. “We stay put until the waves stop.”

  Don eased himself into a chair. He ached, and felt a little seasick. “That could be a long wait, Bill.”

  “How come?”

  Don seemed to ignore the question. “Owen — was this really from a quake in the Antarctic? Any details?”

  “Not much. There was a quake, eight or a little better on the Richter scale, somewhere in West Antarctica. Mount Erebus is erupting too, but that’s all we heard.”

  “Look, I don’t know enough to be sure, but these waves could go on for days or weeks.”

  “How so?” Owen walked with practised ease across the swaying Moor and took the chair next to Don’s. Bill glanced at his steersman and then joined them.

  “I told you my brother’s in the Antarctic. He’s got a theory that a quake down there could start a surge of the ice sheet. That would dump a lot of ice into the ocean, all at once. And if the surge is periodic, we’ll get more tsunamis.”

  “We can stay out for two weeks more if we have to,” said Bill.

  “Not much point,” said Don. “If the waves are caused by an ice surge, and the surge is periodic, the next series of waves could come at any time. We might as well go in now.”

  “Not in this storm,” Bill said. “Wait until morning. It’ll blow itself out by then. And if it hasn’t, at least we’ll be able to see where we’re going.”

  “Fair enough,” said Owen. “Don, let’s get you down to the wardroom and feed you something. You must be starving.”

  The thought of food made Don feel queasy, but he got to his feet and went out with Owen. He listened only absently to Owen’s talk about the tsunamis and the turbidity current and the need for more biological samples.