Sedulity 2: Aftershock (Sedulity Saga)

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Sedulity 2: Aftershock (Sedulity Saga) Page 3

by David Forsyth


  Two professors leading the tour assured the students that earthquakes were quite common in this part of Central America and nothing to worry about. Nevertheless, their confidence began to waver when they spotted steam rising above the trees from the top of the volcano above them. Approaching the rim they were told to expect a beautiful little lake filling the bottom of the crater. What they did not expect was to see it boiling and spitting clouds of steam.

  The teachers tried to calm their students, though couldn’t help exchanging worried glances. The volcano of Cosiguina was not extinct, but had been dormant for more than a century. In 1835 it had erupted violently, transforming the top of the volcano into a 500 meter deep crater. Giant pieces of rock had been hurled into the Gulf of Fonseca where they formed new islands in the shallow sea. Volcanic clouds from that eruption had covered Central America, raining ash as far as Mexico City a thousand miles away. Those eruptions were violent, but relatively short lived, with the volcano returning to a dormant state in 1859. By 1938 the bottom of the crater had filled with a picturesque lake and eventually became an ecotourism destination. Nevertheless, the group that stood at the rim of the crater on this fateful day was soon worried that they might have chosen the wrong time to visit this slumbering giant.

  The professors instructed the geology students to take photographs of the steaming lake and surrounding area before organizing their descent. There was no other indication of an imminent eruption, so the crater might simply be venting thermal steam or releasing a minor lava flow underwater. It was certainly an unusual and unexpected sight, but those were often the most interesting events to study and record. The group spread out around the rim of the crater, many using smartphones and digital cameras to snap pictures of the boiling lake 500 meters below, others turning to grab scenic views of the surrounding area.

  The rim of the Cosiguina Volcano crater stood 2,800 feet above sea level, offering a commanding view of the whole Gulf of Fonseca. The visitors could look down towards the base of the mountain they had climbed and see the Nicaraguan fishing village and marina where they had spent the previous night. Those looking east across the shallow gulf saw the hills and river valleys of Honduras, with the big island of Tigre and several smaller volcanoes in the foreground. El Salvador was also visible to the north. However, those who glanced west, out over the Pacific Ocean, were the first to sound a true alarm.

  Shocked exclamations and pointed fingers drew everyone’s attention out to sea where something strange and sinister formed on the horizon. From atop the volcano the students and professors could see for many miles on that clear afternoon and what they saw sparked fear and confusion. The ocean was rising up into a moving mountain range that rapidly approached the shore. One of the professors blurted, “Tsunami!” Then he paused, speechless, to shake his head in disbelief that any wave could possibly be that enormous. It stretched the whole length of the horizon and grew taller as it approached land, casting a shadow across the flat sea before sucking the water up into the face of the wave. Far to the south, the eastern end of the massive wave was already hitting the coast of Nicaragua, sweeping inland as a moving mountain of whitewater, while the rest of the wave continued to build and roll northeast on a collision course with the Gulf of Fonseca.

  The stunned observers atop the volcano soon realized that although the wave grew to incredible height, it was not as tall as the volcano. They could actually see over the first wave and discern several slightly smaller walls of water following it. The smaller waves caught up to the big one when it slowed and piled up higher on the continental shelf. The combined height of the waves topped two thousand feet when it smashed into Cape Cosiguina. Many of the students used their smartphones to record videos of the monster wave sweeping over the coast, crossing miles of jungle, and climbing towards them up the face of the volcano. They held their breath as they waited to see if it would reach them at the summit. It would be close.

  One of the professors focused instead on the portion of the wave that swept past the cape and into the shallow Gulf of Fonseca, where it grew even larger. It crashed into the southwestern tip of El Salvador and the mouth of the gulf focused the wave, magnifying its destructive force. A moving mountain of water swept over the scattered islands without pause, enveloping the whole west coast of Honduras. A portion of the focused wave slammed into Zacate Grande, a slightly smaller sister volcano of Cosiguina, with a splash that rose thousands of feet into the air while the rest of the wave surged past it in a deluge that swept dozens of miles up the Rio Negro Valley. A smaller wave surge, only a thousand feet tall, swept around the Cosiguina Peninsula to wipe away the Nicaraguan town of Potosi and dozens of little fishing villages before meeting more water pouring across the peninsula and obliterating the shrimp and lobster aqua-farms lining the southern half of the gulf.

  Only a few of those on the peak of Cosiguina paid any attention to the destruction of everything else in the gulf. Most focused instead on the wall of whitewater threatening their own lives. The wave swept past either side of the volcano at more than half its height, but where it hit the mountain the water exploded uphill with the power of half an ocean behind it. Some of the students screamed in terror, yet many of them kept taking pictures with their phones and cameras. It defied logic to see a wall of churning water rushing up the side of a mountain. Yet up it came, accompanied by a cacophony of destruction in the rainforest it overran. Howler monkeys howled before being engulfed, flocks of birds shrieked as they took flight, towering trees fell into the flood, and all of it was drowned out by the roaring water rushing up the side of the volcano.

  Most of the students were spread out along the southern rim of the crater, facing the wave. Some of them were frozen in fear. The rest turned and ran around the crater towards the eastern side of the volcano. The rising water slowed its ascent at around the 2,500 foot level. By the time it passed 2,600 feet the majority of the raging torrent began parting to flow around the mountain. Nevertheless, a churning wall of whitewater, though diminished, continued to climb towards the summit of the volcano.

  The wave was still several meters high when it crested the summit and swept a dozen terrified students off their feet. They screamed and flailed when the water carried them over the rim of the crater to plummet more than 1,500 feet to their deaths. Some of them bounced off the crater walls on the way down, mercifully losing consciousness. Others were launched into a freefall towards the boiling lake far below.

  The professors and surviving students stood transfixed by the sight of the ocean sweeping over the top of the volcano and pouring into the crater in front of them. It only lasted for a few seconds before the rest of the wave receded down the mountainside, but everyone who witnessed it was certain the vision would stay with them for the rest of their lives. They had no idea how right they were.

  Deep below the crater a plug of hardened lava that had held the volcano in check for more than 150 years was destabilized when the Pacific Plate moved and pressed up against the much smaller Cocos Plate. The earthquake earlier in the day and the boiling lake had indeed been indications of more to come. Timing of the arrival of the monster tsunami was coincidental to the looming volcanic eruption, although both were caused by the asteroid impact. The people clustered atop the Cosiguina Volcano knew none of this. At that moment they were the only survivors within miles of the Gulf of Fonseca, feeling grateful and relieved to have escaped the water, but that would not last long.

  Less than a minute after the wave hit the volcano, while those who survived were gazing out over the devastated Gulf of Fonseca, watching the flood waters continue to advance deep into the Rio Negro Valley, the ground began to rumble and shake. Another earthquake seemed almost tame compared to what they had just endured, but this one was different. The shaking increased. The lake below, swollen and cooled by the wave only moments before, began to bubble and steam more violently than ever. Chunks of rock broke away from the crater walls. The survivors’ relief quickly returned to terror and
they turned to flee the rim of the volcano. It was far too late for that.

  The eruption of the Cosiguina Volcano was enormous. In a repeat of the 1835 event the giant plug below the crater was forced up from beneath the lake. It was easily blown out of the 500 meter deep crater on a high pressure pillar of lava, ash, and superheated gases. The students and professors on the rim of the crater were vaporized within a second of the detonation that launched the plug out into the gulf. Anyone within a dozen or more miles of the volcano would have been killed by the blast wave and pyroclastic flows, if they hadn’t already been wiped out by the tsunami. A giant cloud of dust and ash rose into the stratosphere, darkening the sky across most of Central America. The dust would eventually combine with massive storm clouds generated by cubic miles of evaporated sea water from the asteroid impact to accelerate climate change in ways nobody could predict.

  *****

  Captain Mikal Krystos used a pair of Leupold low-light binoculars to gaze out the bridge window towards the impact site, in the direction he expected to see the sunrise. The Sedulity was still traveling east at a slow speed of five knots. Rain continued to fall hard and steady from a totally overcast sky filled with clouds that streamed westward faster than Captain Krystos could ever recall seeing clouds move. Paradoxically, a strong wind had developed over the past few hours at sea-level blowing in the opposite direction, towards the asteroid impact site. Mr. Summers, the meteorologist, had explained that the billowing column of steam from the asteroid strike was sucking air in from every direction at sea-level and spewing storm clouds out in every direction at high altitude. The theory made sense, but this was an event unlike any witnessed throughout recorded history. These forces of nature seemed unnatural, even to experienced seamen.

  The captain was becoming concerned that it was still so dark. He should be seeing signs of dawn. Sunrise should only be moments away, but the eastern horizon remained pitch black. The low light binoculars allowed him to discern the shapes and movement of waves and clouds, but revealed little detail of what they were sailing into.

  “Are the FLIR pods operational?” he asked.

  “Imaging is working, Sir,” Mr. Crawford replied, looking up at a couple of LCD monitors mounted above the helm. “But the directional controls aren’t responding. The cameras are both pointed back along the ship in ‘man overboard’ mode. We might be able to point them forward manually.”

  He was referring to the infrared cameras mounted on the underside of each bridge wing. They were normally pointed towards the stern, down the length of the ship, since the primary purpose of their 640 x 480 resolution thermal imaging cameras was to watch for anyone falling, or jumping, overboard. Being in that configuration had shielded the lenses from the blast wave and tsunami that hit the bow of the ship, but the FLIRs were also designed to be directed forward to assist in navigating the ship when necessary. The aiming system had been damaged by the impacts, and pointing them forward manually would now require one of the crew to hang outside the ship on a tether.

  “How hot is the rain now?” inquired Captain Krystos.

  “Rain temperature has fallen below 50 degrees Celsius, about the same as a very hot shower, Sir,” said First Officer Crawford. “I think one of the crew would be willing to give it a try.” The captain raised an eyebrow, noticing that Crawford hadn’t volunteered to do it himself.

  “I’ll do it, Sir,” said Petty Officer Perkins. Being the radar operator on a ship with a broken radar was motivation enough to find other ways to make himself useful during the crisis. Perkins was also a technician, so he was a logical choice for the job. The captain nodded agreement and instructed Perkins to put on foul weather gear and a safety harness.

  Within a few minutes the young technician was dangling outside the bridge wing on a tether, fighting the wind and unnaturally hot rain to redirect the starboard FLIR camera. The dome shaped housing for the camera was dented and partially melted, making it difficult to swivel on the mount, but Perkins used a screwdriver as a lever to get it moving enough to turn by hand. A minute later he had it pointed forward over the bow and clambered back inside the ship.

  “Well done, Mr. Perkins,” Captain Krystos acknowledged while looking at the LCD display above the helm. It showed things that were invisible to the naked eye, or even those using low light marine binoculars. The FLIR was a thermal imaging system that measured and visualized heat signatures. The greyscale display showed hotter objects in lighter shades, while cooler objects were darker. What it showed now was somewhat confusing to the casual observer. It looked as if the Sedulity were sailing straight towards a brilliant white oak tree that was so far in the distance that its trunk must be many miles wide and several miles high, up to the point where it branched out across the whole sky. The thermal image of that sky was brightly lit with billowing and rapidly moving clouds, highlighted by lightning and twinkling streaks of hot rain, while the ocean was nearly black in contrast. This was unusual at night in the tropics, where the water was often as warm as the air and retained its heat at night. The FLIR proved that the clouds streaming over the ship were closer in nature to steam than normal condensation, but it was the white hot column in the center of the screen that drew everyone’s attention.

  “What is that thing?” Mr. Crawford asked uncertainly.

  “A column of superheated steam rising from the impact crater,” replied the aged voice of Professor Farnsworth from behind the gathering of ship’s officers. He and Kevin had come out of the dayroom in hopes of watching the sunrise in front of the ship and were concerned that the horizon remained so dark. “These clouds are so thick that they’re blocking the light of dawn and reflecting it away from the Earth’s surface.”

  “Are you saying it will be dark all day?” Mr. Crawford asked incredulously.

  “No, we’ll get some light eventually,” the professor explained. “But not much more than twilight this close to the impact zone. These steam generated clouds are thicker than normal cloud cover and stretch far beyond the horizon by now. I’m afraid it will stay quite dark until the sun rises high enough to send light straight down, as opposed to across the sky.”

  “That makes sense,” Captain Krystos said. “I’ve seen more than a few storms that came close to turning day into night, but nothing quite like this.”

  “Nobody has seen anything like this,” Kevin Summers interjected. “The cloud cover must be twenty or thirty thousand feet thick. I think the professor is right; we’ll be lucky if it gets any brighter than twilight by noon. It’s fortunate that your FLIR is working, Captain. With the weather radar knocked out, those thermal images will probably offer the best picture of what’s happening outside today.”

  Everyone on the bridge stared at the LCD display and tried to comprehend the scale of the event they were witnessing. The brilliant white column of steam filling the center of the screen represented millions of gallons of evaporated water being spewed into the atmosphere to form solid cloud cover spreading out at gale force speed in every direction. It was a scene that would have frightened anyone. For the few aboard Sedulity who understood the full implications of this event it was truly terrifying.

  *****

  Rachel Brewer was coming to the horrifying realization that she was a widow, only two weeks after marrying the man of her dreams. Brad Brewer had been everything she could hope for. Smart, fun, adventurous, a successful video game designer, Brad was a self-made-millionaire at the age of twenty-six. He and Rachel had dated for more than a year before his video game, Undying Hunger, became a hit. She always thought it was a silly game. In it the player was a zombie who had to keep finding people to bite without being shot in the head in order to advance to the next level. Apparently a lot of gamers loved it, enough so that Brad bought a house and asked Rachel to marry him. After a fairytale wedding on the beach in Malibu they had boarded the Sedulity for their honeymoon cruise to Australia. All of her dreams had come true, right up until they turned into a nightmare.

  Brad
and Rachel had been on the balcony of their honeymoon suite at the time of impact. They had no interest in the Line Crossing Ceremony on deck, preferring to mark the moment alone. They had seen the asteroid appear high in the western sky, growing into a fiery streak of blinding light as it passed over the ship. A second or two later night turned to day at the moment of impact somewhere far beyond the other side of the ship. They clung to each other in a shocked embrace until the alarm was sounded, then they followed the captain’s instructions to go to their lifeboat muster station, which happened to be in the Martini Bar on the Promenade Deck.

  Rachel remembered their journey down the stairs, surrounded by dozens of confused and panicked passengers. Terrifying as that memory was, she would relive it again and again just to feel Brad’s firm grip on her hand, exuding reassurance and guidance in the midst of chaos. Brad had carried their lifejackets in his free hand, using them to open a pathway through the crowd at the landing on Deck 5, until one panicked passenger tore one the lifejackets out of his grasp and ran away with it. “Hey! Stop him!” Brad had yelled, but it hadn’t made any difference. Her husband probably would have chased the thief, if Rachel hadn’t been clinging to him in fear. Instead he pressed the remaining lifejacket into her arms, cradling it between them, and pressed on to the lifeboat station.

  She was so proud of him. Even in those final, flustered, fearful moments Brad had stood as her champion and knight in shining armor. He insisted that she put on the remaining lifejacket. She could still see Brad standing there in the Martini Bar, smiling at her while he slipped it over her head and saying he would be fine without one. Then the window behind him exploded inwards and an unimaginable force threw both of them across the room to sprawl on the deck. Rachel’s memory faded at that point, skipping instantly from love and tenderness to despair, highlighted by pain and hellfire. Deep searing pain, bright burning flames, hopeless despair, were all overshadowed by her beloved Brad. He covered her, sheltered her, and saved her from the worst of the inferno that consumed most of those gathered at the muster station.

 

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