Gunter stared at the weathered boards of the observation deck while they bent and twisted as the ground under them shifted violently. First one, then a dozen planks sprung from their mounts, which unleashed a hail of splinters.
The roaring intensified to a rib-shaking thunder. Gunter looked over his shoulder and watched the last few planks of the observation deck disappear into the open maw of the caldera. Wisps of steam rose up in front of them from deep in the sleeping volcano.
Pine needles and twigs rained down on them as the trees shook. Gunter managed to get to his knees and shepherded his family toward the trail. He had to keep them moving. They had to get off the volcano before the eruption spread up the slope to Taburiente. It might already be too late, but he had to try.
“Is Taburiente exploding, too?” Heidi asked in a wavering voice. “I thought it was dormant?”
“I don’t know,” Gunter said, “but we have to move!”
A shadow passed over them and he looked up to see massive clouds of steam billowing into the sky. The downslope eruption on the Cumbre Vieja ridge grew closer, climbing north, heading straight for the main caldera.
Breaking out into a cold sweat, Gunter lurched to his feet, dragging Isla with him. “Up! Everyone up—we have to go!”
Heidi grabbed the closest pine tree and pulled herself to her feet. She looked over Gunter’s shoulder and screamed, covering Una’s head.
Gunter turned away from the steaming caldera and looked south, toward the erupting Cumbre Vieja ridge. He swore in Swedish. Before him, the ridge volcano bisecting the southern half of the island in a north-south line, was shrouded in gray smoke and ash. Jets of fire, bright orange in the gloom, created a border that ran south down the island’s spine, with a perpendicular cut directly below their position. It made a dancing, jagged orange line west, dividing the island.
Heidi stood in a junction of paths and looked west, the direction most of the other hikers had fled. “Which way do we go?”
Gunter struggled to remember which way was the fastest descent. There weren’t many options on the teardrop shaped island. Taburiente occupied the rounded northern half, and the now very active Cumbre Vieja ridge ran down the middle of the elongated southern half of La Palma. Gunter and his family were right between both.
Specks of fire jumped and writhed along the Cumbre Vieja ridge, like fountains at a fancy water garden. Gunter’s chest tightened. Those weren’t jets of water, they were plumes of lava.
With a tremendous roar that forced him to his knees again, the entire western flank of the Cumbre Vieja volcanic ridge shuddered. The ground shimmered like a mirage, and it took Gunter a few seconds to realize the whole side of the island south of the caldera had moved.
Moving slowly at first, the massive landslide picked up speed toward the Atlantic. Behind and above the giant slab of rock, a waterfall of lava gushed from the wound, filling the deepening void. La Palma had split itself in two.
“Go!” Gunter yelled, stumbling toward the eastern path. They had to head east, it was their only hope. Afraid of falling on her, he put Isla down and urged her forward. “You have to run, now—run fast!”
Enormous geysers of black smoke and ash shot into the blue sky before them. Billowing out overhead in the prevailing winds, the plumes merged, creating an enormous, flat-topped cloud streaked with pink lightning. It towered overhead and cast the whole island in sudden twilight.
Gunter tripped over a tree branch and found himself spitting dirt from his mouth and looking south through the trees at the landslide. The coastal towns of La Bombilla, Puerto Naos, and further down the coast, El Remo, vanished in the racing wall of debris. Tens of thousands of people lived, worked, and vacationed in those towns. In the blink of an eye they were all gone.
Their hotel had been in Puerto Naos. Gunter threw up his breakfast into the dust and gravel. He pushed himself to his feet, noticing the ground felt unusually warm, now that the cloud above had cooled the air around them.
The ground rumbled again, and Heidi pulled him forward. “Keep moving!” she cried over the noise. She’d put Una down and the girls ran ahead, hand-in-hand.
Gunter forced himself to catch up. If they could make it to the trailhead, they could get in the rental car and drive east, away from the eruption.
Through gaps in the trees, he spied a wall of white sea-foam rise up from the coast where the leading edge of the landslide crashed into the Atlantic.
Heidi paused to stare, mouth open and eyes wide.
“Don’t stop!” he called.
The terrible explosion of water climbed into the air, higher, higher, and higher still as the titanic landslide just kept going, building speed.
Gunter stared at the sight, breathing heavily and drenched in sweat. His children began to cough from the fine ash in the air. The smoke, ash, and steam all combined to create a hazy atmosphere, obscuring anything more than a mile away in misty fog.
Then the wall of water at the beach emerged above the haze. And it continued to rise.
Gunter stared in horror as he realized that the wall of white wasn’t just sea-foam, it was the crest of an enormous wave. A wave that continued to grow and grow and grow.
He charged headlong down the path, feet thundering off the packed gravel. Heidi screamed for him to go faster and pounded downhill just behind him. The girls sprinted ahead, nimble as mountain goats on the shifting gravel path.
Gunter glanced back at the wave—it seemed almost half as tall as the caldera itself. “That’s not possible,” he panted,
