Wave

  Where the answer came from, she did not know. At that moment she attributed it to a kind and merciful God, because she was sure it hadn’t come from inside her—

  The Ericksons’ neighbor has a boat, too.

  She went through the yard, out the other gate, and across the front lawn. The temptation to check her watch again itched like a rash, but she fought it. What was the difference? The M.O. here was “move as quickly as you can, period.” The hour of day was irrelevant.

  The neighbor’s house was built from the same plan as the Ericksons’. Karen had met him once, last summer. His name was Ralph Bokowitz, a retired dentist from Passaic, widower, and father of two. Nice enough guy, the Ericksons had said, but not terribly social. Karen reached the garage door and tried to pull it up. It didn’t budge, so she cursed at it.

  Then she realized the handle simply needed to be turned. When she did this, she heard the rods slide back neatly. The door, on well-oiled runners, slid up without further effort.

  And there it was.

  Bokowitz’s little aluminum boat was, like everything else in his garage, in immaculate condition. It sat on a shiny new trailer, ready for action. The engine in the back had been pulled up and was tilted forward.

  Now for the hard part.

  The trailer was kept upright by a single cinder block, which had been positioned vertically under the hitch. With a mighty effort, Karen lifted the hitch and nudged the block away with her foot. Then she set the nose of the trailer down and moved the block aside to clear the path. These few simple actions left her winded.

  Mustering all the strength she had, she lifted the hitch again and started pulling. It was a struggle just to gain the first few inches until momentum kicked in. Halfway down the driveway she drew the trailer to the left, dragging the reluctant rubber tires across a lawn that would be submerged very shortly. Her arms burned with pain, turning first to wood and then to stone. Each time she felt like she couldn’t go any further she thought about her family. She knew dropping the trailer here would be the fatal, final error. There was no way she had the strength to get it up to speed again; not on the soft grass. It was already moving and she had to keep it moving.

  She glanced briefly up the street, half-expecting to see huge gushes of water crashing around the barrier of houses on Long Beach Boulevard. If that happened, she decided then and there, she’d drop the trailer and run for it. She had to pull left again to get the trailer through the front gate. In a moment of pure good fortune, it fit through the opening with maybe an inch to spare on either side.

  The pain in her arms had reached such a point that she could barely feel them anymore; they were so numb it was as if they weren’t even there. She propped the trailer’s forward beam over her shoulder and turned, pulling it Viking-style so her legs would bear the brunt of the load for awhile. Once she hit the downhill part of the yard her problem was to keep from being run over by the trailer. As she slowly inched it down the steep slope, she was becoming exhausted.

  By the time she passed through the gate and reached the shoreline, the weight of the boat and trailer had become too much for her. Every muscle had frozen as if she’d been hit with a stun gun. She didn’t even have the strength to lower the trailer’s nose onto the ground. Instead, she simply stepped to one side and let it fall from her shoulder.

  Unfortunately, the rest of her body did not move as swiftly as it needed to and the galvanized steel tubing landed on her right foot like a sledgehammer.

  The scream that emanated from Karen’s slender body echoed first through Little Egg Harbor Bay, then around the rest of the country, then the planet, and finally throughout the deepest reaches of outer space. In her shock she tried to yank the foot free, which only served to tear the gash even further. She dropped to the ground, squeezing her ankle in an attempt to dampen the zillion-watt bolts of agony that were shooting into her brain.

  When she finally mustered the courage to look squarely at the wound, she saw more blood than she’d ever seen in her life—and that included the birth of her two boys. The moment became surreal, dreamlike; she felt detached from it. She was looking at someone else’s foot, not hers. She was aware of the pain, but it was somehow muted and distant.

  Then she tried to wiggle her toes, just to make sure the foot wasn’t broken. Although she felt like she was wiggling them, they barely moved. Something else did, however—something bloody and shiny. It was visible through the opening in her shoe. She wasn’t a medical expert, but she was pretty certain it was either a ligament or a tendon.

  And it was moving.

  She vomited so fast and so hard that her throat seemed to catch fire. She turned her head just far enough to puke on the ground and not her foot.

  Then the adrenaline hit her. Suddenly, alongside terror and extreme anxiety came wild rage unlike anything she’d ever experienced. She’d lost her cool a few times in the past—felt the sting of anger and the rumble of hatred—but those instances were always understandable: the shooting death of a close friend, a news story about a child being raped and murdered, the 9/11 attacks. But now, for the first time in her life, she felt like there was some unseen force working against her, some being other than God—perhaps Satan himself—trying to throw up barrier after barrier in order to seal her fate. To make sure she perished on this island with the other unlucky ones.

  To keep her from her children, and they from her.

  This was at the core, the very heart of her fury. Something was out there trying to keep her from her kids. Some Thing wanted them to be motherless, wanted them to suffer the anguish of losing a parent, bear the scars of that loss for the rest of their lives.

  She had no intention of letting that happen.

  She wiped her chin with her sleeve and got back up. The pain in her foot was intense, but she ignored it. She lifted the nose of the trailer again and dragged it to the water’s edge. She detached the boat and went around to the back. Pushing it off, she figured, would require another herculean effort, but the little craft rattled along the tiny black wheels almost on its own, sliding quietly into the bay.

  As she stepped into the salty water pain shot through her foot again. She dropped to her knees, grabbing the side of the boat as dizziness threatened to deliver the knockout punch.

  “No,” she said, out of breath and staring at her reflection on the rippling surface. “This isn’t where it ends for me. Not a chance.”

  She hauled herself into the boat, landing on her back and remaining motionless for a long moment. She was so weary now that she felt thoroughly drunk. Everything was moving, swirling. Somehow she remembered that the engine needed to be lowered in. She got to her knees and crawled aft. She could feel her hands moving over the intimidating solidness of the machine, heard it splash when the prop hit the water. But she was barely aware that she was doing all this. She set her head onto the top of it; actually her head put itself on top of it. All she wanted was to sleep.

  She had to get the engine going.

  Her fingers felt around for the starter. First one side, then the other. Where was it?

  And what was that noise in the distance?

  It was coming from the direction of the beach. Louder than anything she’d ever heard before.

  Hope became sorrow.

  Day became night.

  Darkness closed in.

  Mark heard the helicopter in the distance, had a feeling it might be for him. By the time he actually saw it, it was heading the other way. It grew smaller and smaller, and with it went his last hope of survival. He watched it numbly, thinking about what his life might have been. About his life with Jen.

  This is how it was meant to be, a voice told him. It wasn’t his normal mind-voice, but just as clear. People like you never really get to be with people like her. It’s not in the cards.

  He ran—not just in the direction of the chopper, but away from that voice. He waved his hands and screamed. He deduced that the aircraft was heading off the island and toward a
safe area, which meant it was traveling northwest. If he headed in that general direction he should run into the parking lot.

  Then what? Get in the car, head for the bridge, and get off the island—all in the next five minutes?

  He checked his watch. Not even five. Less than that. Maybe two. Maybe none. Even if the wave-strike estimates weren’t dead-on accurate, how much time could there be? Ten minutes? Fifteen at the most? It still wasn’t enough. Not even close.

  Time has run out for you, Mark White, the voice observed. Life never really worked for you in the first place. Maybe this is for the best.

  “Fuck you,” he said, still running.

  He and Donald Harper never came within hearing distance of each other, but Mark did find the parking lot. He managed to get his car keys out of his pocket just before he heard something. A loud roar, coming from the east.

  He turned to see what it was.

  The voice said, Are you really that surprised?

  { FIFTEEN }

  The beaches of LBI were deserted—no sunbathers, no swimmers, no surfers; not even a lone ship drifting drowsily along the horizon. Lifeguard stands lay on their backs, exposed to the brilliant morning sun, and plastic garbage bags billowed up over the rims of rusted steel trashcans. Sandpipers scurried along the edge of the surf in search of food, squawking angrily at one other.

  At precisely 11:33, the tide began falling. A normal tide cycle takes roughly six hours, but this one was complete in less than eight minutes. The sea withdrew as if someone had yanked out its rubber plug, then began to reverse course, swelling violently as it sucked the remaining water from the surf to empower itself. Crabs that had been comfortably concealed only seconds before now found themselves scurrying for cover. Millions of tiny stones and shell fragments rolled downward in a tinkling, rattling cacophony.

  Then the wave surged forward. It was not a “surfer’s curl” with a little crest at the top. It was as ugly as the destruction it promised—a hurried, disorganized rise, as if the Atlantic Ocean were being pushed forward by the hand of God. The deafening roar that accompanied it was like something from another universe. The wave climbed the slant of the beach with no effort, enveloping and moving swiftly over the dunes.

  The first line of resistance came in the form of an eighteen-mile row of homes. Many were large and majestic, and far too old to put up any kind of a fight. The wave slammed into them with an intensity their designers had never anticipated. A beautiful Victorian in Loveladies, built in 1911 and lovingly maintained by all three of its owners, folded as if it had been gut punched. In Beach Haven Terrace, a modest Cape Cod that had been purchased a few months earlier by a 62-year-old widower rose off its foundation and cruised into the home next to it, immediately reducing them both to a chaos of shattered boards. In Holgate, a spidery construct of studs and windowless frames that would have been a three-story home in a few more months bent forward in a respectful bow, creaking and groaning before it disintegrated.

  Water gushed down access paths and alleyways. It poured onto Atlantic Avenue and Ocean Boulevard, wiping out thousands of Japanese black pines that had been planted soon after the storm of ’62 in the hope that their fast-spreading roots would hold the ground firm in the event of some future catastrophe. Telephone poles snapped like twigs, leaving behind jagged stumps. A rusted pickup truck on Passaic Avenue in Harvey Cedars was scooped up and carried some seventy feet before first striking a flagpole then rolling side-over-side until it landed on someone’s front porch. In Brant Beach, the observation deck behind the Mancini Municipal Building exploded in a shower of timber, with one lengthy, creosoted four-by-four effortlessly impaling the windshield of an unmarked police car.

  In Ship Bottom and Surf City, hundreds of residents watched in terror from their vehicles as the Atlantic Ocean rose up and over homes, businesses, and roadways. Suddenly it was no longer theoretical, no longer merely a news report—it was here, and it was real. No cameras, no reporters, no fifteen minutes of fame. Just tons of water rushing at breakneck speed and filling every available opening.

  The first wave would not reach these unfortunates, but that didn’t stop the fear from escalating out of control. Cars at the back of the line swerved to the shoulder and accelerated, colliding with others who had the same idea. Tempers flared and obscenities were screamed, but there was no time for confrontation. Some drove onto the sidewalks as the scene degraded into a bumper-car mentality, property damage no longer a concern. A man in a silver Volkswagen Jetta who had deviated from Long Beach Boulevard to take Central Avenue cut a path across nearly a dozen lawns before finally colliding with a mailbox at the intersection of Central and 2nd. It was a federal crime, but he couldn’t have cared less. In spite of the damage to his crumpled front end, he kept going.

  Inevitably, through a combination of horror, adrenaline, and paralysis, the already sluggish traffic came to a near halt in the confusing layout where Long Beach Boulevard met Route 72 and headed west. As the bone-chilling sight of homes and businesses being consumed by the sea unfolded behind them, many people abandoned their useless vehicles and began running. Those who still maintained an ounce of consideration pulled over first, some into the Mobil Station or the Ron Jon, others into the Eckerd or the B & B. One woman, small and mousy-looking with pulled-back hair, got out of her car and stood crying in the road. The man stuck behind her, with his very pregnant wife in the passenger seat, opened his window and hollered at her to get back in and keep going. When it became clear she wasn’t listening, he got out, ran over, and slapped her across the face. Rather than snapping her back to reality, this caused her to crumple to the pavement as if she’d been shot. She curled up in the fetal position, crying even harder. The enraged man shook her violently. When she didn’t react he dragged her to the grassy margin on the shoulder, then returned to her car and, depressing the gas pedal, sent it into the parking lot of the Quarterdeck Inn.

  As the first wave receded, it brought miles of debris with it. Couches and tables floated alongside books and toys, mattresses and boxes. Strips of aluminum siding and sheets of paneling drifted like tea leaves, intermingling with nondescript chunks of sheetrock and splintered pine studs. Priceless personal items, on their way to being lost forever, bobbed on the surface—photographs, greeting cards, letters. A silver cigarette case made in 1827, passed down in one family through six generations, would tread water throughout the day until finally, shortly before five o’clock and almost ten miles out, it dipped under the surface and see-sawed lazily through green-tinted space, past the reach of the stippling sunlight and downward into eternity.

  As the second wave arrived, it brought the debris back with it. The shattered glass and broken timber became weapons—projectiles as deadly as anything the world’s armies had in their storehouses.

  This wave was considerably larger than the first, and it rolled over the beaches with even greater ease. It smeared all remaining structures from the first line, then went to work on the next. The old Coast Guard Station at Barnegat Light trembled violently, as if it were a living thing wracked with fear, before breaking apart in hulking sections. In North Beach, a recently built, multimillion-dollar home with dozens of skylights held out with considerable valor, flooding all the way to the second floor before imploding from the sheer weight of the acquired water.

  Businesses along the main strip were not spared. The concrete building that housed Murphy’s Market in Beach Haven managed to remain standing, but the monstrous gush that blew through the back forced the store’s contents out the front, pouring them into the street. A few doors down, Kapler’s Pharmacy spewed its contents in similar fashion, decorating the intersection with vaporizers, toothbrushes, and plastic peroxide bottles.

  The water-wall slid across Long Beach Boulevard and into the parking lot of the Acme where BethAnn Mosley and Jennifer King worked. It toppled light poles and flipped dumpsters, driving one of the latter into the glass front of the Beach Theater next door. A lone trailer that had bee
n parked alongside the supermarket tipped over slowly, crashing through the cinder-block wall. In Ship Bottom, Pinky Shrimp’s Seafood Company, not much larger than a two-car garage, folded like a figure in a child’s pop-up book. Its chimney, with the word “seafood” printed in bold white letters down one side, collapsed almost gracefully into the raging current.

  The second wave claimed the first human casualties. An elderly couple who had heard about the oncoming disaster only fifteen minutes earlier gripped each other in wordless terror as their Impala was plucked from the road and driven sideways into a rocky outcrop featured in a miniature golf course. The car crumpled like a beer can, squashing the occupants and, mercifully, killing them instantly.

  Closer to the Route 72 intersection, an unemployed man in his early thirties who had been a thorn in the side of local police for years and, on this day, had tried to clean out as many cash registers as possible was running for his life, his pockets dribbling loose change and bills of various denominations, when he was swept off his feet. He was a strong swimmer and tried desperately to follow the movement of the current, but he went under after becoming entangled in a stray fishing net. As he tried to free himself he was struck by a wooden pallet that moved through the water like a torpedo. It removed his head in a messy, bloody explosion; his decapitated body would never be found.

  At precisely the same moment, a woman who had taken a motorcycle from a neighbor’s garage found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time as the Ship Bottom water tower buckled and fell onto the gas station through which she was taking a shortcut. One resident who would ultimately escape to safety and had witnessed her gory end would spend almost a full year in therapy in an attempt to purge the ghastly image of her body being flattened, then cremated when the station’s pumps exploded in flames.