She turned and embraced Mitch and Amber as they plowed through the opening, both gasping for air and red faced. A few more people erupted from the stairwell, wild-eyed and panicked, including the mother they’d rescued with her two children.
The tower trembled and people screamed, but Cami rushed to the side and peered over. “Look!" Mitch said as he pointed down the street.
The same dark brown water that had chased them into the church poured out of alleys, now flooding the street next to the river. The overflow by the bridge snaked across and squirted out through the guardrail supports, creating a line of small waterfalls that grew in length as more and more seawater pushed inland.
“How is there this much water so far from the coast?” Amber demanded. “It’s not possible!”
Cami took a moment to watch the scene unfold and catch her breath. “It is possible,” she replied quietly. “Charleston is a peninsula—the wave surrounded it and buried it—what we’re seeing is the edges. The wave is flooding the Ashley,” she said and pointed at the fast flowing water below going in the wrong direction. “See how there’s so much more water in the river than on the streets? It’s like electricity, it’s seeking the easiest route. Rivers and creeks around here are going to be flooded for miles and miles.”
“And Charleston?” asked Mitch. “How far do we have to go to get out of this?”
Cami watched the raging water swallow people and drag them into the flotsam, arms and legs flailing. “I don’t know, but this might just be the first wave—”
“Wait, there’s more?” blurted Amber.
Cami shrugged. “No one’s ever seen a tsunami like this, guys, I don’t know…sometimes tsunamis come in groups, not just one big wave…” She looked down as the water below enveloped the stone church. Pieces of wood, paper, bits of trash, and bodies…so many bodies—Cami’s eyes watered at the staggering loss of human life right before her eyes but she forced herself to look as the deluge continued its relentless march inland.
Several cars, jammed up at the intersection with the bridge, had broken free in the deluge and formed a new barricade of jumbled metal, tires, and flotsam spanning the width of the bridge. Water continued to pile up behind the new barrier and foam exploded over the top like a wave hitting a seawall. Metal groaned and shrieked under the tremendous pressure, and cars turned into accordians. Cami hoped there weren’t any people in them, but feared the worst.
Jets of brown muddy water squirted between the cracks in the cars and shot like fire hoses out over the creek. One unlucky woman was hit by the spray and flew like a discarded toy over the side of the bridge, her high-pitched scream stabbing at Cami’s heart. A waterfall—a true waterfall—had emerged almost halfway out across the bridge as water poured under the railings and streamed down to the now raging waters below.
"So much water…," Cami muttered, moving from one corner of the tower to the other. The scene was much the same: people screaming and panicking, clinging to lampposts, and were swept away or pulled under, reaching and grasping in the air as they twirled in eddies spawned by the seawater. Bodies choked the rapids, some floating, some tumbling beneath the surface to emerge at the whim of the water, only to disappear once more like cast off rag dolls. Trash and debris, bits and pieces of buildings, signs, cars, and every imaginable remnant of human activity rushed past, around, and through the now gutted church.
Amber threw up at the sight and Mitch moved next to her but stared out at the apocalyptic scene with his mouth open.
From behind the church, Cami heard a grinding and snapping wholly different from the sound of metal cars being crunched. She rushed to the far side of the tower and squinted in the bright sunlight. The shattered hull of a boat with huge outboard motors, far too big for the Ashley River that raged at the bottom of the hill, scraped its fiberglass hull down the lengths of the brick buildings next to the church as the surge carried it forward. A man in an orange lifejacket and a baseball hat rode on the side of the boat, clinging to a rope for dear life. People leaned out windows and tried to reach him as he went by, but no one came close.
The man screamed as the boat smashed headlong into the church in an explosion of shattered fiberglass and steel. Cami gasped—it sounded like someone snapping celery. She leaned over the crenellation and looked down at what was left of the boat, smashed to pieces against the church's immovable granite foundation, shredded fiberglass jutting up from what was left of the side. She saw a red stain on the stone and the man was nowhere to be seen. A small wave slapped at the church and erased the blood, leaving no evidence the man had ever been there.
Cami put a hand to her mouth and turned away, unable to breathe. Seeing the man on the boat in the surging waters had made her think of Reese. She closed her burning eyes and swallowed as her chest tightened. As the tears leaked down her face, she told herself he was a thousand miles away, and hopefully safe. She had Amber—and she supposed Mitch, too—to worry about at the moment, and they had to get across the Ashley
