“We're leaving," Cami said, stepping around him. She wasn't willing to spend any more time trying to convince someone to leave who didn't want to. She had to get her daughter home. They had to be ready if—when—Reese came back. She was sure that being out on the water, he would've received an alert from the Coast Guard faster than people on shore had been notified. By now, Reese was probably already in his car heading inland to find an airport.
Massachusetts was a long way from South Carolina…maybe the tsunami didn't hit that far north at all? She didn't have time to look up the answer on her phone—it was time to get home.
As they stood in the foyer, preparing to step out into the sunlight, the lights in the church flickered a few times and then winked out. Cami took a deep breath. She hadn't even considered the possibility that the flood water might be electrified. She closed her eyes and took Amber's hand in hers.
"We gotta stay strong, sweetie. We have to move fast and not stop for anything. Anything. You understand?”
“Momma…” Amber whimpered.
“Whatever you do, don't let go of my hand, okay?" Cami asked, turning to look at her daughter.
Amber’s eyes glistened, but she nodded, her mouth set in a grim line. With her free hand, she adjusted the straps in her backpack. She took a deep, shuddering breath, then squared her shoulders the same way Reese did when he was expecting trouble. “What's the plan?"
Cami smiled. Her husband would be so proud. “We’re going to make our way to the bridge, and see if we can’t get across.”
“The water looks like it's already receding up the street—look, at least it’s not getting any deeper,” Mitch observed.
“And once we get across the bridge?" asked Amber.
Cami smiled grimly at her daughter. Amber didn’t know the meaning of ‘quit.’ Her smile turned to a wince as she stepped into the jarringly cold water and felt something bump against her leg, hidden in the brown murky depths. "We'll figure that out once we get across."
Chapter 7
Mount Desert Island, Maine
Over the tremendous roar of the water crashing into the mountain below, Reese heard the sound of an engine working hard just above them. "Come on! There’s a road up here, we can get help!"
Just below him, Ben cursed, scrambling over some rocks to grab onto a pine tree. "Great," he panted, "I could use all the help I can get right about now…”
Reese pulled himself up over the edge of the roadway, using the guardrail like a ladder. Finally standing on somewhat level ground again, he leaned over, his hands resting on the sun-warmed metal rail as he watched steam and haze swirling through the trees just below them. He had no way of knowing how high they were, only that the water hadn’t reached them yet.
He looked back and saw the whitewater raging up the hill, snapping trees and flinging boulders aside like toys. The water roiled with debris. One of the TechSafe winners, further down the hill turned and threw up his arms, only to disappear in a silent explosion of sea spray.
Reese’s heart skipped a beat. The tsunami wasn’t slowing down at all, but continued right up the hill after them, destroying everything in its path. “Keep moving, Ben!”
"Thank’s coach, great pep talk,” Ben said, hauling his slightly overweight frame to the roadway. "Civilization at last,” he panted, laying on the pavement.
Tree trunks snapped, cracking like cannon fire. Leaves and smoke and dust choked the air as the wave rolled up the hill. The ground began to tremble.
“Are we high enough?” asked Ben.
Reese helped Ben stand on shaky legs. "I don't like the way those trees are moving, man. I think we need to keep going.”
Squealing tires behind them proceeded a meaty thwack, and Reese jumped to the side, slamming into the guardrail. The next thing he knew, Ben crashed into him like an NFL linebacker and the two of them tumbled back over the rail. There was a long, heart-stopping moment where the sky switched places with rocks and trees before he and Ben came to a bone-jarring stop against an unyielding pine.
The air had been knocked out of Reese’s lungs sometime during the fall and he opened his mouth in a silent gasp of pain. Next to him Ben groaned, his face contorted, and one hand slapped at the ground. Reese scrabbled up from his position on the rocks against the tree, and shoved Ben away.
"Owwww!” Reese groaned as his tortured lungs sucked in life-giving air at last. "What was that for?” he demanded.
"My leg," Ben cried out through clenched teeth over the noise of the wave. "My leg!"
"Hey! You okay down there?" a new voice called out. Reese looked up from his position by the tree and squinted in the sunlight through the dust and pine needles in the air. Someone leaned over the guard rail up the embankment he’d just climbed. It looked like a kid.
"What happened?" Reese called.
“Dude—I think I hit you with my car! Are you okay?"
"Are you freaking kidding me?" Reese snarled.
"Worry about it later! Leg!” Ben said, grabbing at the rocks around him in an attempt to sit up. “Wave!” he yelled and pointed downhill.
"Oh, crap," Reese said as he looked down at Ben's right leg. The knee had already swollen double in size.
"Hey, stay right there,” the kid called out. “I’ll come down and help you!"
“No! You stay up there!” Reese countermanded, throwing up a hand. “We have to get higher!”
The kid was already halfway down the embankment. "Whoa! Dude, you need a doctor—”
“We need a helicopter,” Ben retorted.
“I don't know where a doctor’s office is,” the kid continued, “but there's a ranger station at the top of the mountain—I saw a sign back around the curve before I…”
“Before you hit me with your car?" Ben demanded, his voice rising through the pain.
"I'm so sorry, man—I’ve never hit anybody before.”
“First time for everything, I guess,” Reese replied under his breath. “Let’s get back up to the road, I can’t tell if the wave is cresting or not…”
“We weren't even on the road!" Ben complained, ignoring the wave. “I was on the shoulder! Who taught you how to drive?”
“My mom!” The kid snapped. “I—I didn't even see—I was just trying to get away from the waves!"
Tires squealed and horns honked, as several more cars raced by their position, heading up the mountain. Bits of gravel tumbled down the embankment, kicked up by the passing vehicles.
"Whatever—we’ll sort this out later,” Reese said. “We gotta get you to that ranger station. Hopefully it’s higher up the hill.“
"I am so sorry," the kid said, putting his hands out, showing his palms. "I'll help you—whatever I can do—oh man, look at your knee!"
"I don’t like the way you're turning green, kid," Ben snarled. "I'm the one that got hit!"
The sound of tree trunks snapping downhill was sharp as gunfire over the dull roar of the waves. Reese's mind came to a sharp focus. "Save it. There’ll be time for that later, we have to get away from the flood zone."
It took even longer to climb the embankment the second time, but eventually all three managed to make it over the guard rail, sweating and exhausted. Reese took the fact that they hadn’t been swept away by the raging torrent just a few dozen yards below them as a good sign.
“I think the water’s cresting…look, it’s not coming up the hill any higher,” he observed.
Ben looked up from the road, as he leaned against the guard rail on his good leg. “Thank God…” he muttered. When he turned away from the tsunami that clawed at the hill, his eyes opened wide in shock. "A Prius? You hit me with a Prius?”
Reese, knowing Ben's penchant for big, diesel-powered Ford trucks, laughed as he helped him hobble toward the mint green hybrid. “It has wheels and a motor…sort of…it’ll do.”
"It—it’s my dad's," the kid replied, blushing. “It gets great gas mileage.”
Another car roared by, going well over the speed lim
it, and bumped the driver’s side. The side mirror shattered, and plastic flew in the air, but the other driver didn't so much as stop after regaining control. The black sedan raced around the curve in the road and disappeared uphill to the sound of squealing tires and a racing engine.
"Hey!" the teenager yelled as he stepped out into the middle of the road with a raised fist.
"Forget about it, kid!” Reese called.
"I'd say that makes us even,” Ben laughed.
"He's right,” Reese said, getting the young man’s attention. “We’ll have a lot more things to worry about than dents on your car if we don't get uphill, real quick."
“I’m Aiden, by the way," the freckle faced kid said, extending a shaking hand to Ben.
Ben stared at the outstretched hand for a moment, his eyes narrowed and his jaw working. "Ben," he said, grasping the kid’s hand.
"And I'm Reese. There, we’re all introduced—now can we get going, please?"
"I don't even know what's going on!" Aiden cried, running both hands through his curly brown hair, his eyes wide, face covered in a sheen of sweat.
"Just settle down and take a deep breath, Aiden," Reese said, helping Ben into the back seat. "Let's focus on one thing at a time okay? Get in the car and get us to the top of this mountain. My friend is hurt and he needs medical attention."
Aiden looked over the side of the road, downhill through the trees at the tsunami. “But the tidal wave…”
"Hey, over here," Reese said, snapping his fingers to get the kid’s attention. "Eyes on me, Aiden. Look, something really, really bad is happening on the other side of those trees, and I don't know if we’re out of the danger zone yet. We need to keep moving to higher ground. Okay? You've got to help us, because my friend can’t walk.”
At last Aiden nodded. “O-okay. Okay, man."
He jumped in the driver’s seat, slammed the squeaking door, and shifted the car into drive. The Prius whined on the incline, its hybrid electric motor struggling to gain momentum up the steep road. The going was slow at first, but after the first three turns, Reese's fears began to recede.
The haze and smoke in the air that filtered through the trees just below the embankment seemed to dissipate as they climbed. At the fourth bend in the road, they found a slight scenic overlook. Reese couldn't help himself. "Hey, pull over here for a second."
Aiden let his foot off the gas and pulled over onto the gravel shoulder. Reese opened his door and stepped out, ignoring Ben's complaints. He stood speechless by the side of the road, staring down the side of Cadillac Mountain.
Two hundred feet below them, the Atlantic Ocean flowed past like a swift river, carrying broken trees, bits of buildings, and more boats than he could quickly count.
Reese estimated the water only moved about 20 to 30 miles an hour, but seeing the sheer volume of it, all moving inland at the same steady speed was simply staggering. As the water wrapped around the southern end of the island, debris, trees, and flotsam mixed and rumbled together, spinning and churning on the surface as it all pushed inland. Shockingly, Reese could almost see the water level rise as he watched, as the land forced water higher and higher up the banks. Lost out of sight to his left, around the east end of the island and up Seal Bay, was a small town nestled at the end of the bay. A lone tornado siren wailed in the distance, fighting to be heard over the constant roar of the water surging past.
Aiden honked the horn behind him, forcing Reese back to his senses. If it was this bad this far north, then Cami was right. This tsunami was a monster, and it was probably hitting the entire country at once. He couldn't fathom the sheer size of the wave—the eastern coastline was more than two thousand miles long! It couldn't be possible, and yet as he stood there next to Aiden’s dented, mint green Prius, there was no doubt the tsunami was real.
Cami had been right. After all the false alarms and breathless warnings that came to nothing…this time she’d nailed it. And it was bad.
Fear gripped his heart and sent a cold wave through his veins. Cami and Amber were down there near Charleston. How far inland would the wave go? He glanced out the window, ignoring Ben's question about damage as he shut the door. How could anything survive the onslaught that he’d just witnessed? As Aiden pulled the Prius back onto the road, he glanced out and saw another white line not quite at the horizon.
"There's another wave out there…”
"What?" Aiden blurted, momentarily losing his grip on the steering wheel. The car jerked as he brought it back under control, pulling around yet another turn as they made their way up the side of Cadillac Mountain.
“This trip sucks,” Ben moaned from the back seat.
Chapter 8
North Charleston, South Carolina
Cami emerged onto the western end of the bridge, legs caked with mud and dripping wet from the waist down. The crowds had thinned considerably as the water receded back across the bridge, but there were still hundreds of people struggling toward dry land.
Amber and Mitch appeared, both red-faced from exertion, helping each other on slippery footing. Amber offered a weak smile for Cami and paused to rearrange her ponytail, which had done its best to break free. They’d lost all the precious gear she’d risked their lives to get, but Cami counted that a bargain. And a lesson—one she wouldn’t soon forget.
“Sorry about the stuff, mom…” Amber said, dejected.
“Forget about it—the important thing is we’re all alive and safe,” Cami replied immediately. She brought Amber into a bear hug and buried her face in her daughter’s hair.
“Well, that was…something…” Mitch said with a huff. Sweat or seawater dripped from the tip of his nose and flecked his beard. Somewhere along the mad dash to escape the dying city he’d lost not only the bags he carried from the store, but his backpack as well.
Cami nodded, trying to catch her breath. Now that they’d made it to dry land west of the Charleston peninsula, the weight on her shoulders had slackened appreciably. People continued to stream past, but most stepped aside and pulled out phones to take pictures of the other side.
Cami couldn’t blame them—Charleston was a mess. Smoke hung in the air from several fires in the distance, and an ever-present haze obscured downtown, except for the tallest buildings that poked up through the brown-gray fog. The far shore of the river was covered in broken wood and trees, sides of buildings, whole roofs ripped from houses, cars, boats—the great undulating pile was too much to take in. It reminded Cami of the debris left on a beach after a hurricane’s storm surge—multiplied by about a thousand—and shouldn’t be anywhere near the northwest side of Charleston.
“Come on,” Cami said, feeling the grip of fear tightening her chest again. She ignored the people around them, complaining about not being able to make phone calls, and pushed forward. “We’ve got to keep moving.”
“What’s the rush? We made it,” Mitch countered.
“This is just the first wave, remember?” Cami asked, sweeping her arm to encompass the destruction on the far bank of the Ashley River. On cue, tornado sirens started up again. The people on the bridge froze as one, turned to look back into Charleston, then broke into a run, heading away from the city, a fresh round of screams escaping their throats.
“The second wave is coming! Move!” Cami said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“You don’t think the wave can reach us over here, do you?” asked Amber, struggling to keep up through the resurgent press of people.
Cami signaled with her arm to head left, and cut through the crowd, stepping out on a little turn off. “I don’t know if it can reach us or not, but our top priority is to get home.“
As Cami herded Amber and Mitch up the landscaped embankment to the Walmart parking lot above, she watched the crowds disperse once they made it across the bridge.
More evacuees spread out and milled around the river’s west bank, watching those still on the eastern side struggle to make it to the bridge in the sludge and debris. A fai
r-sized cluster of people streamed down the road, heading for parking lots and businesses as yet unaffected by the tsunami. As she’d expected, the traffic they’d encountered a few hours earlier was still present, made worse by the sudden influx of pedestrians from Charleston.
Cami scrambled up the embankment, helped the last few feet by Amber and Mitch, who’d knelt to lend her a hand. “Thanks,” Cami gasped as she crested the embankment. “Wasn’t planning on getting a workout in today, but I guess you’ll have that.”
Mitch laughed. “This is nothin’, Cami-san. You should come with me when I hit the Trail.”
“What trail?” asked Amber, hands on her knees as she regained her breath.
“The Trail. Appalachian, man. You get to carry your gear up mountains, it’s great.”
“Wait…what part of that is great, exactly?” asked Amber, peering up through strands of sweat-slick hair. She stood and rubbed her lower back. “Oof. I’m ready to be home, now.”
“Let’s just get in the car. Mitchell, is there some place we can drop you?”
He got a faraway look on his face. “Dad was at the marina today.” He pulled his phone from his pocket. “Lemme try calling him.” He waited for a long moment, then looked at the phone. “All circuits busy.”
Cami looked over the bridge at the marina nestled on the far side of the river. Or what was left of the marina. Most of the boats had been crumpled against each other, pushed by the unforgiving ocean tide and turned into matchsticks against the bridge’s piers. The river was totally impassable. A few people were already climbing out on the knotted wreckage, calling out to each other, but she was too far away to hear what they said. Smoke drifted in the air from a handful of fires that had sprung up around the marina and on several boats. With cell service down, people would—
“Oh!” she said, surprising herself. “Try a text message, Mitchell—sometimes when the cell networks are overloaded, text messages still get through.”
“Really?” asked Amber.
“Yeah, I think I remember reading something about that,” Mitch muttered, tapping out a message. “Well, here goes nothing.” He looked up from his phone. “Hey! It says it went through!”
Broken Tide | Book 1 | Overfall Page 9