by John Shirley
Russ realizing that, somehow, fires had broken out, just above the waterline, in many places. Fire seemed a strange offspring of a tidal wave. The smell of smoke mingled with the reek of displaced sewage and decaying fish.
But finally, Pendra said, “My Gram . . . my Gram went to the store. She didn’t have any sodas for guests and she went to the store right before . . . ” She put a hand over her mouth and her eyes teared up again and Russ put his hand on her shoulder.
“We’ll check on her,” he said. “See if she came back before the wave . . . ”
“No, she—left right before the . . . ”
But they went and looked through the apartment, the three of them. Dad leading the way.
The apartment, in the same untouched building, in a downstairs corner, was empty but for two cats—a tabby and a fat, grumpy old Siamese. Pendra picked them both up, the cats mewing complaints, and hugged them to her, as Russ and his dad made a show of searching through the neat, cluttered old two-bedroom flat, with its 1960s artifacts. Framed posters of Summer of Love shows, their art as enigmatic as the stoniest tag graffiti.
Russ felt foolish; he knew the woman wasn’t there. Knew she was probably dead.
Russ and his dad returned to Gram’s living room just as the Siamese got disgusted with the enforced hugging and scratched Pendra. She dropped both cats and burst into tears, covering her eyes with her hands.
“We’ve got to see if we can help people out, down the hill,” Russ’s dad said. “Pendra—you should stay here, take it easy.” He flicked a light switch. “There’s no power here either, I see. No surprise. No gas in this building. Nothing to turn off. Wait here for your grandma and we’ll have a look down the, uh . . . ”
Pendra exhaled windily, shaking her head behind her splayed hands, then dropped them, wiping her eyes with the motion, and said, “Let’s look for her. See what we can do. We better bring Gram’s first aid stuff . . . ”
Pendra found the first aid kit and they went outside, struck instantly by a smell of exposed oceanic muck. Leaving the orderly little apartment and walking down the hill was like leaving the mortal world and descending into Hell.
The tsunami was visibly receding, slowly draining back into the Pacific. They saw a few intact roofs below, like wooden islands in the lapping water, with people clinging to them. It was impossible not to see the water as a person, somehow—it had seemed so self-directed, so malicious—and now, even as it slowly withdrew, the churning, nervous, silty waters seemed to Russ like a mass murderer after a rampage, still shaking as his fury subsided.
Many of the killer’s victims were floating around the rooftops, so discolored by mud and slime it was difficult to make them out from the flotsam and mucky water. There was a car, maybe a Corolla, jammed through the middle of a house, tail up, like a giant automotive tombstone leaning toward the sea. Fires licked just above the waterline; smoke gathered over the little town and the still-restless brown water.
A barefoot woman ran by, a block down, shouting a name, over and over again, and Russ knew, somehow, she was calling a lost child. The terror in her voice was deeply maternal.
Debris choked the street below as the waters drew back; high, ungainly lumps of wood and plaster humped up: the remains of houses. About a block down, the street below them was obstructed by a great unruly dam of timber and assorted objects, including one precariously tilted Volkswagen bug, and two twelve-foot boats, crammed into the giant deposit of rubble at odd angles. The accidental dam was at least thirty feet high, muddy water still streaming from its every crevice. Even from here, almost a block away, Russ could see a body, bent all wrong, worked into the splintery mass. Several men were dragging a limp woman, muddy from the water, from the barrier. One of the men was sobbing, his shoulders shaking.
Russ thought it was like pictures he’d seen of a war zone.
Birds wheeled frantically overhead; dogs barked. Cats screamed with agonized shrillness, trapped somewhere. A fierce-eyed, heavyset black man with salt-and-pepper hair, naked from the waist up, was stalking back and forth, shouting at people. “If your house ain’t been hit, get your water from the pipes, fast. Get it into buckets, whatever you got!”
Good advice, Russ reckoned, but most everyone remained standing about on the street, gawking. About ten yards down, a crying teenage girl was staggering up the street, yelling hoarsely, “Does anyone have a cell phone that works?” Her blond hair was matted, a broken left arm turned sickeningly sideways, one small breast exposed in her torn blouse, her eyes blacked by bruises, “Did anyone call for help? Hey! Does anyone have a . . . ”
Russ and Pendra waited while his dad went to talk to the girl, gently putting his coat over her shoulders, telling her to sit down and wait for help. Pendra shouted for her grandmother a few times, but the street echoed with shouts for other missing people, and she gave up, staring around, one hand over her mouth, now and then shaking her head.
Russ wanted to put his arm around Pendra, but thought better of it. “She drove, right?” he asked.
She nodded. Staring at the wrecked houses. At sodden furniture, flipped over in the street. At a middle-aged woman, her face twisted with emotion, dragging a man’s body out from under a soaked mattress. “She . . . the store is down the hill, past all . . . ” Pendra waved vaguely, as Russ’s dad came back. “Oh God,” Pendra said, her voice breaking. “Russ . . . I think she’s probably dead! She would have been in her car! She’s old! She . . . ” She wiped her nose on a sleeve. “I don’t have anybody else, just no fucking body at all . . . ”
Dad didn’t think twice, he put his arm around Pendra. “We don’t know what happened to her. What sort of car was it?”
“Um—a Honda Accord. Kind of like . . . metallic blue.”
“Let’s see what we can find a little farther down . . . ”
A naked boy, perhaps four, his face streaked with blood, was wandering wobblingly across the street, crying, waving his arms. Russ thought he ought to take the child in hand till they could find his parents. But a skinny Hispanic woman in a water-stained housekeeper’s dress scooped the boy up—the woman was clearly not the child’s mother, and he resisted with shrieking, white-faced hysteria. She clasped him even closer, hugging him as he thrashed, and said, over and over, “We find her, we find her, niño . . . ”
People were emerging from Dad’s apartment building, and from other houses above the waterline; some were openly weeping, most were gaping around in shock.
A lean, thin-bearded older man, an aging hippie, shuffled up to Russ’s dad. He had long gray hair worked into dreadlocks, leathery tanned skin, a marijuana leaf in gold outlined on his green T-shirt. He gestured vaguely at the panorama of wreckage and said, “This is like the shit that was supposed to happen in 2012. They only missed it by seven years. Probably this is, y’know, the beginning, and it’ll end with everything going all fucking sideways at once, man . . . ”
“Tsunamis have happened before, Lars,” Dad said. “That’s all it was.”
The phrase that’s all it was struck Russ as inadequate. But it was impossible to know how much “it” was. He had been wondering if the tidal wave had hit San Francisco. The scope of it even here in Freedom was difficult to grasp. The smell alone—of briny sea-bottoms and oil and smoke and sewage—was overpowering. And that would only get worse. When the bodies started to rot.
“Just an earthquake under water, Lars,” Dad went on, patting him on the arm before moving on. “They happen.”
They walked on down the hill—till Dad stopped, staring at a chunky, balding man, in a polo shirt and loafers and khakis, in the driveway of a two-story house built over the hillside. The man throwing Samsonite bags into the trunk of a gold BMW. Dad shook his head. “Dr. Spuris? What are you thinking?”
Spuris jumped at the sound of his name, his eyes wild, his mouth open. “I . . . oh . . . it’s you . . . ” he said vaguely. But his eyes stayed wild. “Drew, I’m just . . . ”
Dad walked calmly over to him, “Dr. Spuris
. . . ”
“For God’s sake,” Spuris said, holding up both hands in warning. “Keep your voice down! If people know that I’m . . . ”
“It’s noisy out here,” said Russ’s dad. “But there’s a noise missing. You notice? Sirens. You know why—Ferrara and his cronies ended that service. The Decentralizers got rid of it. We have no ambulance or EMTS, no firefighters; we have no cops in this town to speak of—the closest cop might well be dead, he went up and down the highway a lot. No hospital in the area, anymore. So that leaves . . . you. And the other doctor—only he lived across from the highway. Chances are he’s dead. You can’t go anywhere, Dr. Spuris . . . ”
But as Dad spoke, Spuris’s eyes got wider. He only seemed more panicky. “Oh my God. No sirens. I can’t stay! FEMA will send help. These people will keep me working till I have a heart attack! I’m not a well man! I can’t deal with all these people. I’m retired, for God’s sake!”
“You were a GP for years. You’re only semi-retired. You can help. Did you see that little boy down the street? He needs treatment, Spuris.”
“There’ll be hundreds, hundreds! All at once!”
“People will help you. We’ll find a way. You can do this. And anyway—we’re on a hilltop. The wave went up the hill, and around it. It had to have gone up Seaward Road a ways—the only eastward road out of here. It could be blocked with debris. The coast highway is totally unusable. Probably for miles. There are a lot of rocky hills—and no other roads. So where are you going to drive to?”
“Oh my God. Do you really think we’re stuck here?”
“Doctor!” The shirtless black man ran up, breathing hard. He was wearing jeans, and mud-caked sneakers. “You’re a doctor? We got a dozen people need you right down here—”
“No!” Spuris made a dart for the car door.
But Russ stepped in, his face grim, blocking his way, a hand raised. “Uh-uh.”
Dad reached behind him with his other hand—and Russ was amazed to see him open the car door, lock it, slam it shut.
“Oh Jesus, I think you just locked my keys in!” Spuris blurted.
“I’m telling you again, the only road out is almost certainly blocked, Spuris. You’re not going anywhere anyhow.”
“And I’m telling you I can’t deal with this!”
But four more men were striding up, and one of them was carrying a 12-gauge single-barrel shotgun: a man covered in mud and blood. So was the shotgun. Maybe it would fire, maybe it wouldn’t.
Hard to say what the man’s race was; but blue eyes looked out of the cracking mask of yellow mud. “You’re coming with me, Spuris. I’ve got a little girl down here. She’s hurt. You’re coming.”
Dr. Spuris gawped at them. They surrounded him. Four large men, including the shirtless black man.
He stared around at them, panting, and then turned slowly to his bags. His voice dull: “Let me get my . . . ” They parted for him, but watched him closely as he went to the open trunk of the car, unlatched the largest suitcase—and inside, crammed in with the wadded clothing, was a doctor’s bag.
Russ’s dad nodded, and he and Pendra and Russ went on down the street. Looking for Pendra’s Gram.
A strange feeling was growing in Russ. He was trying to hold the feeling down, push it away. But keeping it down meant he had to stop thinking about people who must be trapped, alive, in the fallen houses, around them; about the people who must be trapped in overturned cars, lying in there, broken and dying: Women, children, every sort of person, trapped and suffering and facing death. How many were there? Don’t think about it, he told himself. Get through this, one thing at a time.
But it wouldn’t keep back: his own inner tsunami, rising up and up, threatening to crest and crush him. Rising up, up.
And then there were two adolescents, a boy and girl, caked in mud, half naked, dragging a groaning man who was missing most of his lower half . . . leaving a wet red trail on the street as they dragged him up it, away from the debris.
Russ groaned, and turned aside from Pendra and his father, and vomited against the side of a slime-coated parked car.
Jill came to herself climbing up a hill.
She couldn’t remember, exactly, how she’d come here. She’d been clinging to the roof of the bar with Mario and Lon. People had died, nearby—they were almost within reach, but she could do nothing for them. The cold, hungry wave had washed over them and she’d clung stubbornly thinking No no no. Then it had receded somewhat, but its gray waves jumped around them like angry wolves. She had tried to shout something to Mario Ferrara—not sure what—then lost her hold and slipped into the water. No one had tried to pull her out. She’d swallowed water, flailed to the surface, spitting up burning salt water. She had dog-paddled—then clung to something slippery and wooden. A post? Her glasses were gone, but she’d seen bodies floating face down. Glad for once not to see clearly. She’d lost her grasp on the post and forced herself to keep paddling. She’d thought, I can swim, dammit, and made herself stretch out into the long strokes that she used at the Y to do laps. Eventually she’d found herself climbing up out of the water, onto a street . . .
Someone was screaming in a building nearby her, now. Water was pouring out its broken windows as if from a dam’s spillway. Jill just kept climbing . . .
She was barefoot, covered in slime, shaking with cold, her hair plastered to her head, as she struggled up the hill. She was not so far above the thrashing water that still sucked at the lower, beachside part of town. What had become of her shoes? She didn’t know. Her feet hurt but somehow it didn’t seem to matter.
She stepped delicately over debris. A twisted car fender; a bent mailbox; a broken window pane, the whole frame lying in the street; mounds of shattered glass; beach toys—something ironic in the beach toys, lying here, amongst the seaweed and trash in the street, and so close to that dead child. The child was just more debris. She knew the boy was dead because his head was turned around backwards on his neck and his eyes were staring into emptiness and a crab was walking across his forehead. She reached down and flicked the crab away, though it seemed pointless to bother.
A filthy, beach towel reading FREEDOM CALIFORNIA—FIND THE FREEDOM! had been plastered by the wave to the windshield of a small car. Water bubbled out the edges of the Honda’s partly closed windows—still filled with water, the little two-door sedan had become a dirty aquarium on wheels, with the pale dead driver inside it, brown hair floating like Sargasso weed over his head; the dead man staring through the water, out the windshield, as if amazed that the traffic light had never changed.
Find the Freedom! Irony—and it struck Jill that she had written an article warning about all this, several years earlier, when the clusterquakes started. She’d written an article—but she hadn’t moved away from the coast. Mocking irony . . .
“Around the end of the last Ice Age, there was a great increase in seismicity along the margins of the ice sheets,” Professor Garland said. “We’ve got a clear-cut geological record of that sudden rise in seismicity. That tectonic change in pressure, in turn, triggered these huge submarine landsides—which generated enormous tsunamis. So yes, global warming can lead to volcanoes, earthquakes, and massive tsunamis . . . ”
She’d blithely typed those words, published the article in the paper—that was before Ferrara had taken it over—and everyone had ignored it. She’d ignored it herself, her own warning—she’d stayed right here.
And here she was . . . stepping over a drowned dead woman as she climbed the hill in her bare feet . . .
Suddenly fatigue washed over Jill, and she was shaking too much to keep walking. She stumbled toward a small passage between two buildings on the left. She stepped over some driftwood and when her foot came down, her ankle seemed to give out, her leg wouldn’t hold her up, and she pitched forward onto the wet pavement . . .
FIVE
Nella found that some of the dead lady’s clothes fit her. Anyway, they fit her good enough.
The dead woman’s house was built on two levels, the foundations of the lower a little down the hill, and that lower section had collapsed, rammed by debris carried on the crest of the big wave. Some of the upper floor and the interior stairs were exposed, the stairs descending down to the lower level suddenly cut off, the last tread left hanging over a mound of steaming ruins. The outer walls of the lower section were gone; some of the woman’s family pictures were still hanging on an exposed inner wall. There was something naked about that. Especially when Nella looked down, through a shattered doorway, into the pit of the fallen section, to see the woman’s purpled arm sticking out, endlessly reaching upward, from under heaped furniture, pictures, appliances, and broken timbers—as if reaching toward the pictures.
But just now Nella was putting on the woman’s New Balance walking shoes. They were only a half-size too big. There’d been enough water left in the upstairs pipes to wash with, and Nella felt a little better, cleaner and wearing clothes. She’d scavenged a pair of designer jeans, a blue sweater, A little loose on her but close enough.
She stood up, wincing at the pain in her shoulder and right knee, looked around the upstairs living room. It was almost undisturbed, like a furnished dollhouse, except for some broken glass from a picture window resembling crusts of ice on the carpet. A driftwood sculpture was attached to the wall over the fireplace.
Nella felt the house creak in the wind and wondered if it would collapse. The other Sand Scouts had already looted the intact parts for anything that looked valuable. Jewelry, an iPod, a flatscreen TV. They’d gone to check next door. She could hear them over there—whooping and hollering as her mom would say. They’d found a lot of liquor in their house-to-house searches. So far all the houses had been occupied only by the dead. People had gone up the hills as far as possible, scared of a follow-up wave.
She saw the crucifix, then. A large one, made of brass, alone on the wall over the sofa, as if to guard a television viewer from evil. She crossed to it. Jesus seemed to writhe, for a moment, on his cross, looking down at her; brass eyes narrowing as he focused on Nella.