“No,” Sarah said. “I’m not ready for everyone to scatter. We need a plan first.”
“But I…”
Sarah’s comm buzzed. “Go ahead.”
“Staff Captain to the bridge immediately.”
Sarah and Rocco ran for the door.
A shrill klaxon wailed across the bridge and Sarah said, “What is that alarm, ensign?”
“Tsunami warning system, ma’am. Whatever happened in LA has sent a shock wave tsunami our way.”
“ETA?”
“One moment.” Ensign Gregor tapped his keyboard. “Estimates… and that’s all they are… say the wave will be approximately three hundred feet tall and traveling at five hundred miles per hour. Given the relative distance, we’ve got about two hours.”
“Two hours?”
“Due to weather patterns and seismic activity, scientists were worried about a tsunami moving west to east relative to the west coast of the United States. Ours is moving the opposite way, and the system just picked it up.”
“Two hours,” Sarah repeated. She fell into a chair, rubbed her forehead, and pulled her hair off her face. “There are seven hundred and six people aboard, and the Oceanic Eco is a mile offshore. We can’t move any closer due to the depth of the sea. There are only two functioning launches, plus lifeboats. Every second we delay evacuation means people will have less time to get to… where? The island?” Sarah went to the command console and lifted the communication receiver. “Ensign, put me on ship wide.”
“Aye.” A pause. “You are a go.”
“Attention all staff and passengers. There is a shock wave tsunami on its way toward us. We must evacuate the ship and head for high ground on the island. Staff, please help passengers into lifeboats and provide them with flotation devices before seeing to your own safety. Incidents of misconduct will be dealt with swiftly and harshly. God speed to everyone.”
Ensign Gregor closed the channel and Sarah put the mic back in its cradle. “Ensign, find my husband,” Sarah said. In all the chaos she’d forgotten about Gary.
“Aye.”
Sarah breathed deep and rolled her shoulders. She went to the map table, folded the paper sea charts and put them under her arm. She took another deep breath and set her stopwatch.
Sarah jumped from the launch and ran across the beach. An intense sucking sound rose above the wind and the yelling of panicked people. The massive pucker got deeper and louder as the water receded from the island as if the laws of physics had been reversed. The sea rose in a tumult as it was sucked around the island toward the tsunami.
A white line crossed the eastern horizon and grew like a nightmare.
The ocean surged higher as the sea flowed past the island as if it were a rock in a stream. “Run now. As hard as you can,” Sarah said. She and Gary ran up the mountainside, Sarah still carrying her pack and the Glock, and he hauling a container of food. She looked over her shoulder and saw that many lifeboats had been sucked out to sea as the ocean withdrew, but some had been pushed ashore as the sea coursed around the island.
The thick wall of white on the eastern horizon was coming on fast. They sprinted down the thin path and the ocean disappeared as they entered a forest of shrubs and tree ferns. She had to make it to the top. If she did that, there was a chance. They all followed one beaten trail and Sarah hoped whoever blazed it had chosen wisely.
She came around a bend and a child stood over a fallen woman, weeping. The kid’s hair was long and straggly, her eyes wild. “Help, please,” yelled the child.
Sarah stopped. “Come on, honey.”
“I’m Milly. I’m two years old.” The child held up her right hand displaying two fingers. “Help my mom? Please. She sick.”
The island trembled, and the sucking was replaced with a thunderous roar. A mighty wind tore through the forest, and Sarah pulled the girl away from her fallen mother. “Run, child. I’ll take care of her.” Sarah knelt and took the woman’s pulse. She was gone.
The child watched Sarah as people streamed by on the path, and the roaring of the sea rose above the cracking trees and smashing stone. Sarah wiped tears from her eyes and picked the child up. Gary yelled at her to run, but she’d tuned him out. She’d tuned everything out.
“I have no memory of that. I must have blocked it,” Milly said, the spell of the story broken by the realization that her mother wasn’t her mother.
Sarah put an arm around Milly. “You are my daughter. You were very young, and there is nothing for you to block.”
“Until now, The Day was more of a dream, something I’ve been building in my mind more from stories than actual events I lived through. I believed you to be my mother because you are my mother. You don’t have to give birth to someone to be their mother and giving birth doesn’t make you a mother.”
“Yes. Thank you, Milly. Thank you so much.” Sarah hugged her daughter and cried.
“Don’t stop there. What happened? How did it all end?” Milly laughed. “We’re here, so I know how it ends, but you know what I mean.”
“I thought we were being claimed by the sea. The wave broke over the island and the sea filled every empty space. The rumble of water, screams of pain, and the harsh whistling of the wind was like a cyclone. I clutched you to my breast. I needed to protect you. That’s all there was left to do. That and put one foot in front of the other.
“We ran past boulders, fallen trees and uprooted vegetation as the water crashed up the slope. People behind us were sucked under the rushing
