Boyd Morrison - The Tsunami Countdown

“Lani, can you carry that too?”

“I think so,” she said. She hoisted the raft into her arms, and they scrambled out of the store.

Teresa tried for a car jack in the first car she saw. The door was smashed in, so she reached into the open window and pulled on the trunk release.

Nothing happened. She tried again, with the same result. She ran around to the back and kicked at the trunk a couple of times, but it wouldn’t budge.

She didn’t have time to keep trying on one car, so she ran to the next one, an overturned Chevy with a crushed roof. This one looked even less encouraging. She skipped it.

Finally, she found a car that seemed promising. A minivan lay on its side, the rear window gone. She wriggled through it and examined the floor that was now on its side. The third row of seating was still in place, so she had to get that out of the way. She found the release handle, and the bench seat dropped away, almost falling on her. She pushed it against the second row of seats, leaving enough room to get at the floor covering.

Teresa pried the soaked covering off and saw what she was looking for. A gleaming copper-colored car jack was screwed into the floor pan next to the skinny spare tire.

The jack was held in place by a wing nut that was normally easy to twist off. But while it was being tossed around, the minivan’s frame had bent, tightening the nut. Teresa tried with all her strength to turn it, but it wouldn’t move. She needed some leverage.

She snaked back out of the van and looked around for anything that could be used as a lever. Ideally she would miraculously find a pair of pliers on the ground, but that was wishful thinking. Instead, she would have to make do with what she could scrounge from the area immediately around her. That happened to be a metal chair leg. The smooth round caster still dangled from one end of it. She twisted the caster until it popped out of the leg. She also picked up a heavy piece of broken concrete to hammer the chair leg with.

When Teresa got back in the minivan, she carefully placed the chair leg on one side of the wing nut and braced herself against the vehicle. She made sure it was not on the bolt itself. One wrong hit, and it would bend hopelessly askew.

Teresa reared back with the concrete block and whacked it against the end of the chair leg. She felt the nut give way. In two more taps, the nut was loose enough to unscrew by hand. When it finally came off, she fumbled the jack, and it fell to the ground.

As she bent to pick it up, she heard movement outside the car. She assumed Kai had returned from the scuba shop.

Teresa emerged from the minivan triumphantly holding the jack and jack handle above her head.

“I got one!”

But instead of Kai, she found a scruffy man with a patchy beard. The smell of alcohol wafted through teeth yellowed from years of smoking. His soiled T-shirt couldn’t hide the enormous gut protruding over his low-hanging shorts.

“Damn looter!” he said, slurring his words. “I knew I’d find some out here.”

Teresa lowered her hands to show she wasn’t dangerous. She had dealt with patients like him many times at the hospital.

“I’m not a looter.”

“You look like a looter to me. Tearing through someone’s car. Stealing their stuff.”

“I need a car jack to help—”

“Don’t give me that crap! I seen it on TV. I know what to do with people like you.”

She hadn’t noticed what he was carrying in his right hand. He raised an automatic pistol and pointed it at her.

“Sir,” she said, “listen to me—”

“You come with me and we’ll find the police. They’ll sort you out.”

“A tsunami is coming!”

“Yeah, I bet you’re glad it came. That way, you can take whatever you want.”

“Sir—”

“Police!” the man began to yell. “Police! Looter! Police!”

“Do you see any police around? There is another tsunami coming.”

“Do you think I’m stupid? Police!”

As he continued to yell for the police, Teresa saw Kai, Tom, and Lani coming toward her from the scuba shop.

“Kai! Get back!”

The man spun around to see who she was yelling at. He raised the gun even higher as if to threaten this new group with it. Kai and the others were nonplussed at what was going on. All they saw was a grubby-looking man holding a gun in his hand. They stopped abruptly.

The man, possibly unbalanced by his quick movement, possibly on purpose, pulled the trigger. A crack ripped the air, and the bullet whizzed by Kai’s head, pinging off a piece of metal behind him. The three of them hit the ground.

This man was obviously unhinged. Trying to reason with him would just make things worse, and any further discussion would eat into the precious time Teresa had to somehow pry Mia free. The man was a danger not just to her but to her daughter. She didn’t hesitate; with the man facing away from her, Teresa swung the heavy metal car jack with both hands and bashed him in the back of the head.

The effect was instant. The man dropped the gun and fell to his knees, where he swayed groggily. Teresa picked up the pistol, ejected the magazine onto the pavement, and threw the gun into a pile of debris. The man pitched forward and lay on the ground, still conscious but moaning.

“Bitch,” he slurred in a low rumble. “You hit me.”

Teresa waved to Kai.

“Come on! I got a jack. Let’s go.”

“What happened?” Kai said, rushing up to her. “What the hell is going on? Who is that guy?”

Teresa, shaking from the rush of adrenaline, stared at the prone man.

“I’ll tell you later,” she said. “Let’s go get Mia and Brad.”

11:45 a.m .

2 Minutes to Second Wave

On the skybridge between the Grand Hawaiian buildings, Ashley clung to Bill’s shoulders as they crossed from the Akamai tower to the Moana tower. They had been making good progress, suffering only one or two minor slips. However, the creaking of the walkway became more frequent, in part due to Bill’s two-hundred-fifty-pound frame. “You’re doing great, Ashley,” Paige said, trying to keep her daughter’s spirits up. She had to dig her fingernails into her palms to keep herself together. She could do nothing to help them other than provide encouragement. “Just keep holding tight.”

The decision to send her two children off with a stranger had been agonizing for her, but she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Ashley and her husband behind. The image of Wyatt nearly falling off the skybridge was burned into her memory. If anything like that happened to Ashley, she’d rather depend on herself to save her child.

As Bill was ready to take his final steps toward the safety of the building, Paige heard a commotion on the other side of the bridge.

Five college-aged men stumbled to a stop at the end of the bridge. Each of them talked in a sloppy midwestern twang fueled by at least a twelve-pack of beer apiece.

“Hey, look,” one of the guys said. “See, I told you I could see people crossing from our room.”

“Come on,” said another one. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Before Paige and Bill could shout more than “No!” all five of the drunken frat boys stepped onto the bridge. They hadn’t gotten more than a few feet before one fell, dragging two of the others down with him. The impact resonated on the already fragile skybridge. It started to bounce, snapping cables, swaying sickeningly over the courtyard below, now drained of water.

“Bill!” Paige shouted. “Jump!”

But Bill wasn’t going to be able to get to the Moana tower without falling, possibly losing Ashley, so he grabbed the child’s arm and pulled her off his back. He swung her around and hurled the small girl toward the waiting arms of Paige six feet away.