Bill solved Jonathan’s dilemma for him. He dropped to his knees, tugged the bags together, unfastened their necks, and tied them together in a professional-looking secure knot. His hands flew at a speed belying his advanced years. “I used to be merchant marine,” he explained. He stripped off his outer shirt and wrapped it around the knot, fashioning a soft, smooth strap. “There.” He struggled to his feet and stepped back from his work. “If Zurry can’t handle the load, we’ll cut it loose.” He called the dog. Zurry hesitated.
“It’s okay, boy,” Jonathan said.
Zurry trotted to Bill who ruffled the fur on the animal’s head. “You can do this, Zurry,” he said softly, his mouth close to the dog’s ear. He motioned for Jonathan. “We’ll lift the bags together and drape the strap across Zurry’s back. Can you manage with one hand?”
Jonathan’s left hand, the one he’d extended between Olive’s legs, grasped her left hand, keeping the woman firmly in place across his shoulders. “You bet.” For a million bucks I can.
They hoisted the bags together, the old man wrestling his sack up with both arms. Zurry’s back sagged under the load, but his muscular legs held ramrod straight. The odd quartet set off once again, Jonathan with Olive, Bill limping beside Zurry who plodded determinedly in Jonathan’s wake.
Jonathan picked his way through the wrecked landscape as quickly and as carefully as he could. Across mudflows and rock slides, around fallen power poles and broken pavement. The main exodus of residents seemed to have reached safety already with only one or two laggards remaining visible. Jonathan knew he had only a matter of two or three minutes to find refuge.
The tsunami swept up the beach, logs and even small boats erupting out of the top of the surge like volcanic effluent. The mountainous swell charged toward the upper reaches of the sand, preparing to breech the final berm that fronted the beachside homes. Jonathan chanced a glance at Haystack Rock. Over two hundred and thirty feet tall, black-green water had already submerged the lower third of the towering sea stack.
They needed to find elevation in the next sixty seconds or they would die. The roar of the tsunami filled his ears. His focus narrowed to the singular task of survival: finding a way up Haystack Hill. A road, a trail, a footpath. Anything.
Chapter Eighteen
Tsunami
Manzanita
Sunday, July 5
SHACK SPRINTED toward the rear of Alex’s destroyed house, but broke off his dash when he heard voices from in front of the home. He pivoted and ran back to the street. Two people appeared, a young woman carrying a microphone, and a somewhat older man toting a television camera.
“I need help,” Shack yelled.
The couple, hurrying in the direction of the beach, halted.
“There’s a lady trapped in the house.” Shack pointed. “I can’t get her out alone.” His voice, constricted by anguish and fear, must have sounded anything but commanding and heroic.
“The tsunami’s coming,” the young woman said. Her gaze flicked from Shack to the cameraman to the ocean and back again.
No shit. “I know, I know. If I could just borrow your camera guy for a minute, I think we could free the lady. Okay?”
“One minute,” the reporter said. “Daws, go help him. Shoot some video, too. But sixty seconds and you’re outta there.” She glanced again at the ocean. Her eyes widened.
Shack saw what she did, a big roller several miles out, slowing but growing; a great black swell churning across the naked littoral. The realization that the life expectancy of everyone near the beach could be measured in mere minutes slammed into him like a heavyweight’s haymaker.
“This way,” Shack yelled, and once more darted toward the back of the house, this time with help in trail. They reached the mangled, shattered window frame.
“No way I can get through that with my camera,” the man named Daws muttered. He stripped off the camera and set it on the ground.
“What the hell are you doing?” snapped the reporter, who had followed them. “We need that video. Great stuff.”
“Amanda, damn it, this isn’t a story. It’s real life.” Daws didn’t wait for a response, he wriggled into the wreckage, following Shack.
“Dawson, take your fucking camera!” Amanda screamed.
He didn’t. Ignoring Amanda, he scrabbled through the ruined house behind Shack. “Hey, man, I smell gas.”
“That’s probably the least of our worries,” Shack said, continuing to squirm through the debris.
They reached Alex who lay still, her unblinking gaze locked on Shack. “You shouldn’t have come back,” she said, her words soft, barely audible.
“There’re a lot of things I shouldn’t have done in my life,” Shack said. He patted her hand. “I brought help.”
“No,” she whispered, “it’s too late. Too heavy.”
Shack assumed she meant the debris that imprisoned her.
Daws slithered up beside Shack. “That’s a support beam on top of her. There’s no way we can move that.” He kept his voice low, likely meaning his words for just Shack, not Alex.
A wave of nausea surged through Shack. He knew Daws was right. He’d been fantasizing, thinking they could rescue Alex. Even two men, given the confined space in the collapsed house, had no chance of shifting the beam, let alone lifting it.
“I know, I know,” Shack said, his voice tight with emotion, with defeat. “Get out of here. And thanks for trying.” The two men, on their stomachs and resting on their elbows, shook hands.
“Aren’t you coming?” Daws asked as he began to back out.
Shack shook his head. No.
“She’s your wife?”
Shack hesitated, then answered, “Yes.” She should have been.
“What are your names?” Daws continued to worm his way toward the exit.
“I’m Shack, Shawn. McCready. She’s Alexis . . . Williamson.”
Daws disappeared from view. “God be with you,” he said.
Probably too late for that. Shack grasped Alex’s hand and wiggled closer to her. Their faces remained inches apart.
“You need to go,” she murmured. She seemed beyond pain now, perhaps in a state of psychic Valhalla, or on a stairway to the stars, halfway to heaven.
“No, I need to be here.” He squeezed Alex’s hand tighter.
A faint smile, like a thin ripple on a still pond, spread over her lips. A gossamer ray of sunlight sliced through the wreckage and illuminated Alex’s face with a trace of gold.
“My dark-haired, golden girl,” he whispered, and kissed her on the lips.
With his free hand, he slipped off his belt. He released Alex’s hand so he could work with both of his. He cinched one end of the belt around his left wrist, then coiled the loose end around a shattered wall stud and tied it off.
Alex watched with a questioning gaze.
“Just to make sure I stay with you,” he said, “so I don’t get washed away.” A half-truth. The real reason for the tether he didn’t wish to explain to her. Drowning, he knew, is excruciating. A human being, no matter how noble or heroic his intentions might be, will instinctively fight or flee to remain alive, will struggle reflexively for that last, life-sustaining sip of air, and damn the cost.
Shack wouldn’t allow his body to betray him. He would remain with Alex until the ocean claimed them. He supposed an outsider might judge it as his cross to bear, a way to whitewash his sins, to atone for his failures. But it was more than that. It was what he wanted.
He nestled next to her, once again gripping her hand, knowing it would be the last human touch either of them would feel.
The thunder of the tsunami had become faintly audible now, the wave flooding the beach, storming toward the protective berms and seawalls and all that lay behind them. Relentless in its assault.
A remnant of a smile clung to Alex’s lips. “You should have left.”
“I’ve done enough of that.” He squeezed her hand ever more tightly.
Her mouth moved but no sound came. Shack thought he read her lips, a silent Thank you.
“Tell me about our daughter,” he said, his voice pinched with emotion. His eyes misted over, but not because of fear.
Cannon Beach
THE TSUNAMI surged over the last of the dunes separating the beach from the higher ground beyond. It boiled into the streets and the weathered gray and brown shake-sided homes that sat above the sand. It seemed to Jonathan less like a wall of water and more like a rogue wave from a violent winter storm. Except this wave didn’t just burst over the protective berms and then slide back into a churning sea. No, this swell didn’t retreat. It kept coming, pushed by a massive dome of water behind it, flattening, drowning, and engulfing everything in its path. A flash flood from the ocean.
The surge charged toward Jonathan, Zurry, and the elderly couple. Ahead of them, Jonathan spotted a road running partway up Haystack Hill. “There,” he shouted, and, still lugging Olive on his shoulders, turned into the street as the initial rush of water swirled around his ankles.
Bill and Zurry lagged behind. Zurry’s back, burdened by the hundreds of pounds it had been tasked to bear, slumped into a concave curve. The dog’s gait became unsteady, wobbly.
“Come on, Zurry,” Jonathan yelled, “we’re almost there.” He broke into a trot, gaining elevation as the leading edge of the tsunami swept uphill to his rear in unceasing pursuit.
The sea, where it never should have been, had morphed into a seething, black witch’s brew of trees, mud, utility poles, and outbuildings. Massive chunks of driftwood and even a couple of automobiles danced and spun on top of the torrent.
Bill, up to his waist in water, struggled toward Jonathan. Zurry’s body disappeared beneath the churning floodwaters leaving only his head visible.
As the road steepened, Jonathan’s breath came in great, gasping gulps. He had no idea how much elevation he had to gain to find safety from the tsunami, but knew he had a decision to make, and had to make it now. He’d distanced himself from the frontal assault of the flood, so had gained an advantage, but still the water came. Despite that, he calculated he had a smidgen of time. He placed Olive on the ground, her back propped against a mailbox post.
“Hang on, Olive,” he said, “I’m going after Bill.”
He darted back down the hill into the seething water and grasped Bill’s hand, yanking him none too gently toward Olive.
He dragged him to Olive’s side. “Take care of her, I’ll be right back.”
Once more he waded into the flood, this time searching for Zurry. But it seemed too late. His best friend had disappeared. The realization hit Jonathan in the chest like a vicious knife wound. He doubled over and howled in anguish—plaintive, atavistic.
Manzanita
THE SKYLANE’S acceleration felt almost leisurely, too slow. Rob glanced at the airspeed indicator. The Cessna needed eighty miles per hour to get airborne. The needle passed sixty. The leading edge of the tsunami washed over the tidal flats beyond the end of the runway.
Seventy.
Timothy lifted his head and opened his eyes. He stared through the windscreen. “Dad!” Terror threaded his voice.
The seawater surge swirled over the terminus of the runway, rolling over the big, white-painted number “33” that indicated the runway’s heading.
“Damn it all, damn it,” Rob yelled. The plane and tsunami were seconds apart. They weren’t going to make it. He glanced at Tim. Their gazes locked. Father and son.
“Sorry,” Rob said. “I love you, Tim.”
The plane lifted, wobbled, slowed a bit as the fixed landing gear knifed through the surface of the rising mountain of water.
“Oh, Jesus, thank you!” Rob shouted. Somehow they’d made it. Just enough airspeed to stagger aloft as the enormous surge beneath them grabbed at the tires of the Cessna. Now they skimmed over the surface of the rising ocean, the climb rate of the aircraft keeping them barely out of harm’s way.
“Wow, Dad. There’s something to tell my kids about.”
Rob stared at his son. “What kids?”
Tim turned beet red. “I mean when I have some.”
“Don’t rush it.”
Rob dialed in the radio frequency of the Seattle Air Route Traffic Control Center. Contacting the center was not required for VFR flights, but he hoped the center might have some intelligence regarding the extent of the earthquake damage, at least around Puget Sound.
“Seattle Center, Seattle Center, this is Skylane seven-three Delta Echo departing Nehalem Bay State Airport. Over.” He waited for a response. None came. He tried again. Still dead air.
“Not good,” he said to Tim.
“The tsunami?”
“No. The tsunami will be confined to the coast. More likely the earthquake knocked out power, but air traffic comms will have backups. I’ll try again in a few minutes.”
Rob kept the Skylane headed south, flying over the little beach towns that dotted Highway 101. Except . . . there were no little beach towns, and no Highway 101. In spots, the ocean had thundered as far as a mile inland. The villages had been leveled, the highway, washed out or submerged.
The funky little communities of Nedonna Beach, Manhattan Beach, and Rockaway Beach had ceased to exist. That had become ocean bottom, swept bare by the force of the tsunami.
The water, black and swirling, churned with the dreck of what minutes prior had been people’s homes, businesses, vehicles. In an instant they’d become part of a tragic amalgam of floating roofs, store shelving, SUVs, beach umbrellas, dog houses, propane tanks, and on and on.
Rob’s chest tightened as he spotted his first body—a figure, face down in the water, spinning in place like a four-armed starfish. He continued to scan the surface, only then realizing there were many more bodies. Many more. Some appeared, at first glance, to be just driftwood or large fish. The dark ocean, filled with tons of debris, made it difficult to discriminate. But if he watched long enough, he found he could identify features that made the flotsam human: arms, legs, torsos.
“Dad,” Tim said over the intercom, alarm ringing in his voice, “there are dead people down there.”
“I know. There’ll be a lot more. I’m sorry, son.”
Out the left side of the aircraft, Rob caught glimpses of large clusters of people who had made it to higher ground ahead of the tsunami. They waved frantically at the Cessna. Rob waggled the plane’s wings, not that he could do anything for them. Whatever had happened here had happened in scores of other locations up and down the coast for hundreds of miles. Help would come. But it might take days, not hours.
“I don’t get it, Dad, why didn’t more people run? Didn’t they know the tsunami was coming?”
Rob banked the Cessna slightly and set a course for Tillamook Bay.
“They knew, they just didn’t believe.”
“How come?”
Rob pondered the query before answering. “Well, my theory is that as humansevolved, they learned to be afraid of imminent, tangible threats. You know, things like lions and tigers and bears . Start talking megaquakes and tsunamis, events that come along only every few centuries, and it’s hard to get people’s attention. The risks, however real they might be, seem hypothetical, academic, distant.”
“Pie-in-the-sky stuff, right?”
“Right. They’re not exactly threats that ignite a flight-or-fight response. Give me a good ole woolly mammoth attack any day.”
Tim leaned his head against the window and stared at the devastation below. “I think you got one, Dad,” he said, his voice monotone. “I think you got one.”
Chapter Nineteen
> Destruction
Airborne Over the Oregon Coast
Sunday, July 5
ROB GUIDED THE Skylane over the northern end of Tillamook Bay and the tiny town of Garibaldi. The town’s dock and marina, including the Coast Guard’s facilities, sat submerged beneath the Pacific. Much of the residential area of the community, situated on a hillside, had escaped the tsunami, but not the earthquake. Landslides, fires, and toppled power poles defined the town’s fate.
Highway 101, which runs through Garibaldi and hugs the bay’s shoreline, had largely ceased to exist. Either the tsunami’s surge or quake-induced landslides, sometimes both, had rendered the road useless.
Rob held the plane at five hundred feet as he flew down the bay, or at least what used to be the bay. Only the uprooted and severed remains of evergreens, trees that until moments ago had populated a sandy spit separating the bay from the ocean, now suggested where the western boundary of the sprawling estuary had been. The spit had been washed away. For all practical purposes, the Pacific Ocean, at least until its water receded, had expanded its domain into the foothills of the coastal mountains. The water beneath Rob, not unlike the flooded areas he’d already seen, had become foul, churning with the tragic manifestations of disaster: houses, boats, vehicles.
A few survivors clung to wreckage in the bay-cum-ocean and gestured frantically at the Skylane. Rob knew there was nothing he could do for them, but again he waggled the aircraft’s wings in acknowledgement, letting the victims below know they’d been spotted.
“Dad, look.” Tim spoke through the interphone and pointed out to the left and ahead of the Cessna.
“Our favorite spot,” Rob acknowledged, dismayed, his voice flat.
The Tillamook Cheese Factory, famous not only for its cheese, but for its ice cream, fudge, and gift shops, stood in shallow ocean water in a meadow near the Wilson River. The surge had not reached much beyond the buildings comprising the plant. Cracks and fractures scarred the exteriors of the structures, but the facility appeared largely intact. Hundreds of cars and SUVs jammed the surrounding parking lots, not unusual for a holiday weekend, but most of the vehicles, fender deep in water, had become metallic islands for groups of refugees who sat on their roofs and waved as Rob flew over.
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