Crawford Kilian: Tsunami: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller

Don shook his head, but said nothing. Mercer opened a brown paper bag and produced supper: cans of pork and beans, and metallic-tasting beer. Mercer rattled away while they ate, apologizing for the food, complaining about the shortages and morale problems he contended with.

“Old Allison, he was supposed to be the big leader, you know, the problem-solver. But he kind of turned into the problem, I guess. Just got pushed a little too hard.”

“So you’re in charge now?”

“Kind of looks that way. Allison’s got a friend named D’Annunzio, who’s mostly good for shooting people who can’t shoot back. But he’s off chasing around after Allison’s kid, somewhere south of here. Any luck at all, he won’t make it back. If he does, we’ll put him in a cage. Uh, could we maybe talk about that deal?”

“For the gas and oil?” Don smiled. “Sure. What’s your no-bullshit bottom line?”

“Fifteen per cent, if you give us early delivery on some of that methane you guys are cooking up.”

“Sounds good.”

“Listen, I need something else.”

“What?”

“I need a white dude to run things here. I try to do it myself, somebody’s gonna shoot me in the back.”

“Is that how you and Allison did it?” Don finished his beer and started another. “Why bother? Just elect a local council and let ‘em take over.”

“Urn… well, trouble is, people got used to the army running everything, and then us.”

“You’re saying you guys aren’t ready for democracy yet?”

Mercer laughed. “Let me tell you about the black man’s burden. All these natives here, all they want to do is sing and dance and fool around and maybe settle a couple of old scores with Ole Massa here.”

“We’ll work something out. Maybe get you a transfer to the Bay Area.”

“I’ll pack my bag.”

A couple of hours later, Don rode back out into the bay in the Zodiac. The western sky was a mass of rising storm clouds, black and orange and red. The Zodiac bounced over a light chop, through stray shafts of golden light from the setting sun. Off to the east, the tawny hills gleamed below the darkening sky. He was upwind of the slick, and the air was fresh and cold.

Fifty thousand years, Einar Bjarnason had predicted, until the sun’s heat rose again to normal. Fimbulwinter was on its way: in the Antarctic night, the ice was reaching far to the north. Perhaps it had already killed his brother, as it had killed so many others. Soon, perhaps in months, snow would lie deep and bright across Canada and the mountains of America; it would not melt in next year’s summer, or the summer after. And each winter would add to it, pack it down into glacial ice whose weight would draw it down from the north, from the mountains, spreading, thickening, feeding on itself —

The Zodiac seemed to dip and accelerate. Rachel and the barges, less than a kilometre to the north, tilted towards the east.

To the west, the sea was bunching up, rising steeply and swiftly until the horizon disappeared. Flecks of white glinted near the crest of the wave. In seconds he was looking up at it; then the Zodiac tilted up and rose with terrible speed and silence.

— He was at its crest, and then dropping again. Rachel and the barges had ridden it out as well. To the east, the wave now blotted out the coast in a long line of spray that caught the sun and gleamed with rainbows. A boom rose from the wave, echoed from the shore, and went on for a long time.

Rachel loomed up before him, and he saw Kirstie standing by the rail, casting a line to him. He caught it and made the Zodiac fast. Her hair in the sunset was like fire. Then he was on deck, holding her, rejoicing in her closeness. Rachel came around and headed out to sea, looking for deeper water to ride out the rest of the tsunamis in.

“I thought for sure you were dead,” Kirstie said with her arms around him.

“Not yet,” Don said. “Not for a good long while. Let’s go find Morrie. We’re going to have a hell of a time tomorrow, getting everything operating again.”

Crawford Kilianwas born in New York in 1941. Raised in Los Angeles and Mexico City, he is a naturalized Canadian citizen living in Vancouver, British Columbia, with his wife, Alice, and daughters, Anna and Margaret. Formerly a technical writer-editor at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, he has taught English at Capilano College in North Vancouver since 1968. His writing background includes two children’s books ( Wonders Inc. and The Last Vikings ); critical articles on Charles Dickens and the Canadian writer James De Mille; several radio plays broadcast by the CBC; and Go Do Some Great Thing: The Black Pioneers of British Columbia .

© Crawford Killian 1998

Crawford Killian has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

First Published in 1998 by toExcel*

This edition published in 2017 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.

* Published in 1984 by Bantam Books