Nancy Kress - After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall

“Not possible,” the volcanologist choked out again. “The model—”

The ground shook in Barcelona.

The wave train sped west out to sea.

It wasn’t dark, and it wasn’t light, until it was. Pete blinked. No Grab before had gone like this.

He stood in a vast store, bigger than any he’d ever seen. WELCOME TO COSTCO! said a huge red sign. The lights were full on. The big doors just behind him stood wide open. But there were no people in the store, and none of the Before cars in what he could see of the parking lot. Everything was completely silent. A few tables had been tipped over, and half-full shopping carts stood everywhere.

“Hello?” Pete said, but very softly. He held Ravi’s knife straight out in front of him. No one answered.

Cold slid down Pete, from his crooked shoulder on down his spine right to the tops of his legs. But he wasn’t here to give in to fear, or to start conversations with weirdly absent people. He was here to Grab. He took one of the half-filled shopping carts—part of his job already done!—and pushed it past a display of round black tires. Not useful. Behind it were tables and tables of clothes, and behind those he could see furniture and food. What would McAllister want most?

As he pushed a shopping cart forward, something miraculous came into view: an entire wall of DIGITAL FOTO FRAMES. But these were enormous, and the pictures on them moved. In each DIGITAL FOTO FRAME a beautiful girl, more beautiful even than Susie’s red-haired older sister, ran along a white beach and into blue sparkling water. The girl wore almost no clothes, just strips of bright cloth around her hips and breasts. The breasts bounced. Mouth open, Pete stared at the incredible sight. Could he maybe unfasten one from the wall and—

He heard a clatter behind him and he turned.

Something was wrong. Suddenly cars jammed the exits to Route 1, as if everyone was trying to leave the highway at once. Julie would have guessed a massive accident blocking traffic, except that the cars were leaving the freeway in both directions. Could a wreck ahead be sprawled across all six lanes? Or maybe a fire? She didn’t see smoke in the hot blue sky. She turned on the radio.

“—as high as 150 feet when it reaches the coast of the United States! Citizens are urged not to panic. Turn your radio to the National Emergency Alert System and follow orderly evacuation procedures. The tsunami will not hit for another four hours. Repeat, the Canary Islands tsunami will not hit the eastern seaboard of the United States for another four hours. Turn to the National Emergency Alert System—”

Tsunami. Waves 150 feet high hitting the coast of the United States.

For a moment Julie’s vision blurred. The car wavered slightly, but only slightly. She recovered herself—Alicia was with her. She had to save Alicia. Drive inland—

She couldn’t get off the highway. Traffic had slowed to a crawl, fighting for the exit ramps. An SUV left the highway and drove fast and hard into the fence separating the wide shoulder from a row of suburban houses. The fence broke. A blue Ford followed the SUV.

She knew about the “Canary Islands tsunami”—it had been the subject of a melodramatic TV show. Jake had discussed with her just why the program was wrong. “It couldn’t happen that way, Sis. The fault isn’t big enough, it was exaggerated for the computer model. And the model was based on algorithms—you’ll appreciate this—used for undersea linear quakes, not single-point events. It’s pure and inaccurate sensationalism. You would need a major seabed reconfiguration to get that megatsunami. Or an atomic bomb set off underwater.”

Hands shaking on the wheel, Julie pulled her car off the highway and followed the blue Ford toward the fence. She had to drive down a slight incline and through a watery ditch, but her wheels didn’t get stuck in the mud and the ground past the ditch was firm and hard, although covered with weeds. Her door handles and fenders tore off the tallest of these. Festooned with Queen Anne’s lace, the car drove through the fence hole and across somebody’s back yard. It was an old-fashioned 1950s house with a separate garage. Julie followed the two cars around the garage, down the driveway, and onto a road.

Everybody here was driving west, away from the ocean. But Julie had had time to think. Inland was not the answer. Not to the whole picture.

Her hands shook on the wheel as, guided by the compass on her dash display, she turned east. For several blocks she had to fight cars dashing out of driveways, the people glimpsed through windshields looking frantic and shocked. Cars jumped lanes, blocking her way. A woman stuck her head out of the window and screamed at Julie, “Hey! You’re going the wrong way!”

By the edge of town, however, she had the road nearly to herself. No one else was heading toward the sea.

How far inland would the evacuees have to go to escape the tsunami? Jake had once told her that 8,000 years ago in the Norwegian sea, an ancient rockslide had left sediment fifty miles into Scotland.

With one hand she fiddled with the radio, searching for more information. A Canadian station broke off its broadcast to say something about the Yellowstone Caldera, then abruptly went off the air.

In her car seat, Alicia slept fitfully.

In Washington, in Brasilia, in Delhi, in London, in Pyongyang, in Moscow, in Beijing, the Canary Islands earthslide was perceived as unnatural. Too large, too sudden, in the wrong place, not the result of natural plate tectonics. Every single country had received the data on the quake and resulting tsunami. Every single country had a classified file describing the feasibility and techniques for using nuclear blasts at Cumbre Vieja as a weapon. Every single country came to the same conclusion.

In Washington the president, his family, and senior staff were airlifted to an undisclosed location. From the chopper he could see the Beltway with its murderous fight to get out of D.C. Most would not make it. He could see the dome of Capitol Hill, the Washington Monument, the Smithsonian with its treasures, the gleaming terraces of the Kennedy Center and mellow rosy brick of Georgetown. All would be gone in a few more hours.

“I need more information,” he said to his chief of staff.

“Sir, retaliation scenarios are in place for—”

“I need more information.”

A woman stood in the doorway of the store, carrying a sort of padded bucket with a handle, curved to hold a baby. The baby was asleep. The woman and Pete stared at each other. She spoke first.

“You’re the one who has been stealing children, aren’t you?”

“Not stealing,” Pete said. “Rescuing.”

“From the tsunami.”

It was the second time Pete had heard that word today. He scowled to cover his confusion. “No. From the Tesslies.”

“What are Tesslies?” She moved closer, just one step. It was as if she were pulled closer, jerked on some string Pete couldn’t see, like the puppets Bridget had made for the Six when they were kids. The woman looked about McAllister’s age, although not so pretty. Her hair matted to her scalp and her clothing was wet over her breasts, which made Pete look away. He started throwing bundles of towels into a shopping cart.

“You’re taking things from this store, the way you did from the others. A sporting-goods store in Maine. A pet store in New Hampshire. A garden shop in Connecticut. A supermarket in Vermont. Ambler’s Family Department Store in Connecticut…”

She recited the whole list of store Grabs, his and Caity’s and Ravi’s and Terrell’s and Paolo’s and even way back to Jenna’s famous Wal-Mart Grab. Pete stopped hurling towels into the cart and stared at her, astonished. “How do you know all that? Who told you?”