Skipping through all the missed calls and voicemails—none of them were from Cami and Amber, therefore they could all wait—he opened his phone's browser and tried to get online. An error message flashed across the screen that he could not connect to the server.
"You gotta be kidding me…" Ben complained. "You got Internet service? Mine’s down.“
"All the networks are down," one of the other prizewinners complained from the other side of the boat. The TechSafe employees had clustered together in little groups, while the crew gathered by the captain. Similar expressions of frustration and worry flashed across everyone's faces.
Reese shook his head again. He could almost hear Cami saying told ya so. "The cell networks are going to be down for a while. Everybody's trying to get information and talk and send messages all at the same time…" He frowned, trying to remember what Cami had told him about when the networks crash.
"Text messages!" he said, snapping his fingers. Not looking up from his screen. He opened the messaging app. "Text messages use a lot less bandwidth than calls," he explained to Ben as he tapped out a quick message to Cami and Amber, letting them know that he was alive and trying to make it ashore before the wave hit. "There's a chance they may still go through even with the networks bogged down. And when the networks come back, text messages will be the first thing to get automatically sent." He looked up at Ben, who was furiously tapping away on his own phone. "I hope."
Ben looked up at him. "You hope? You sound awful confident for somebody who hopes…" he said with a smirk, before looking back down at his phone.
"Cami's the one who's the expert on all this stuff… I should have paid more attention when she was telling me about these kinds of things.”
“Hey, don't beat yourself up over it," Ben consoled, "you know a lot more about it than I do."
Monty stopped by to check on them. "How you guys doing?" he asked, his sun-bleached hair hanging wet across his forehead. “Cap’n says we’re getting close to shore, but the water doesn't look right, so you’d better hold on."
“What do you mean, ‘the water doesn't look right?’” asked Ben, craning his neck to see around the bridge.
Reese leaned over the side. "Looks like an awful lot of beach to me," Reese said pointing at the shore ahead.
"Last time I was here," Monty said, scratching his head, "it sure didn’t look like that. It's like the tide went out, only way more than normal, man.”
That casual statement jarred Reese's memory—he remembered watching interviews with survivors of the Indonesian tsunami. They all reported seeing the waters recede way out into the distance, far more than a normal low tide. They recalled watching tourists walk far out onto the ocean floor, marveling at the sea life and rocks exposed to the air for the first time.
"It's the tsunami," Reese said, staring at the unnaturally shallow bay they approached at full speed. As the water seemed to grow shallower before their eyes, the cleft in the island formed by a prehistoric fjord grew deeper and deeper. Reese had no idea the seafloor could drop away from the shoreline so quickly. It was like watching somebody drain the water out of a pool in slow motion. The shoreline continued to expand out to meet the receding water which dropped as they watched.
The captain hollered something from the cockpit, and Reese saw everyone up front grab onto the side of the boat or anything that could support their weight. "Hold on!" Reese hollered, wrapping his arm around the side rail. Ben and Monty did likewise. Just before the boat took a hard turn to port.
Tackle boxes, coolers, and personal bags went sliding across the deck crashing into each other making more than one person yelp in sudden pain.
"What’s he doing?" called out Ben over the noise of the engines.
"There's not enough water in Seal Harbor!" Monty said, pointing at the chasm opening up before them at the end of the beach. The Charming Betty had turned due west and was making for the growing shoreline at the base of a wooded hill.
Monty stiffened. “He's going in at full speed! Brace for impact!" the veteran fishing guide yelled.
The impact, when it occurred, surprised Reese with its violence. They were still a good 20 yards from dry land—or at least what was now dry land—when the hull struck the soft muddy bottom that normally would have been a good five to ten feet below the surface. The Charming Betty came to a sudden halt and the motors coughed and died. There was no crash, no explosion—they were moving forward and then they weren't. Curses rang out and bodies flew toward the bow, despite the captain’s warning. Reese had a tight grip on the railing, but his momentum was too great and he was launched into Jimmy—who skidded across the deck and slammed into Ben.
Bags, beers, coolers, fishing gear—it all flew forward with a terrible racket. A few people cried out in pain from the impact of so many bodies and items crashing forward at once, but most managed at least to survive without much harm.
Reese picked himself up from the jumble of bodies and gear in the middle of the boat, then helped others to their feet. They’d all have cuts and bruises tomorrow, but there was no time to complain.
"We have to go--we gotta get to high ground!" Reese shouted, already moving to the side of the boat and throwing one leg over.
"Hold on a second," Eddie's voice rang out, silencing the nervous chatter. He stood on shaky legs as he held a hand to his bloodied head. "Nobody's leaving until we get a headcount—we have to make sure everyone is accounted for --
