When she turned to Amber, she knew by the look on her daughter's face that she was thinking of her father as well. "I'm sure he's fine, honey,” Cami said in a tight voice. “Your daddy's out on that big boat in the ocean—"
“Isn't that worse than being here?" Amber asked, her voice trembling.
“I don’t think so,” Mitch scoffed. “Out on the ocean, a tidal wave would only be like, what, a foot high?” He offered a smile for Amber. “It’s only when it comes in close to shore that...” His voice trailed off as he looked from Amber to Cami. “...but you already know that.”
Amber snorted, raising a mud-streaked hand to her mouth, making Mitch go red again.
"I'm not sure how…but I know your father’s okay, honey…" Cami said as she wiped at her face.
The continual roar of snapping wood, bricks breaking, cars crunching, blaring horns, and people screaming created a background noise that was sure to give Cami a headache if she was exposed to it much longer. She and Reese had watched all the news shows about the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, but the videos she'd seen came from towns and villages right along the coast. At most, that wave had carried trash and debris a mile or two inland. This far north of downtown Charleston, she was already more than ten miles from the ocean.
Ten miles.
Cami swallowed, her mouth parched. If North Charleston looks like this…what does the coast look like? Is there anything left at The Battery? Fort Sumter?
A new rumbling shook the church. A series of vibrations rattled the stone building--Cami felt them through the crenellations at the top of the tower. It was not a comforting feeling.
"Look!" Amber said, pointing east. A column of smoke erupted into the sky, and Cami watched a pair of chimneys disappear.
"Buildings are collapsing," Mitch observed quietly. He reached out and took Amber’s hand in his own. Neither blushed as they stared at the destruction.
"All those poor people," said the young mother softly. Her kids sobbed into her legs, clinging to their mother for dear life. The oldest--Cami guessed he was maybe seven or eight—held his mother's hand in a death grip and stared at the wall.
"What do we do now?" Amber asked.
"Look,” Mitch said as he pointed at the bridge and the struggling people still trying to cross it among the debris clogging the south end. “The water falling off the bridge—it never made it all the way across—that’s gotta mean something, right?“
"Yeah,” Amber agreed dubiously. “But look at the Ashley…” she said, pointing at the raging rapids flowing under the bridge, choked with lumber, trash and bodies.
“Should we try for the bridge?” asked Mitch.
Cami shook her head. "There's no way we can make it across that until the water comes down some. I mean, look at it," she said, peering over the side. "There could be anything in there…the current’s just too strong for us to wade across. This mess needs to recede at least a little.”
Cami checked her watch. She wasn't sure exactly when they’d made it to the church, but it felt like the waters had been building for the past ten minutes. She looked up again and stared out at the devastation.
Ten minutes was all it took to bring the entire city of Charleston to its knees, to wash away so many lives—she couldn't even begin to think about how many people had been caught in their cars. And the people in that building that collapsed!
Another sobering thought struck her as she looked out over the debris flowing in the waters all around the church. They were technically in North Charleston, just south of the airport. How many hundreds of thousands of people were trapped in the city closer to the shore? Was downtown Charleston even still there? Based on the destruction she’d witnessed so far inland, downtown might very well look like a war zone.
Her phone buzzed in the purse on her back, tickling her spine. That dreadful emergency tone sounded muffled under the gear in her bag.
Amber's phone chimed in, then so did the other woman’s. All three looked at each other. Shaking hands fumbled through purses for phones, and they all got them out at the same time.
"It is just the first wave," Cami breathed, reading aloud. "There's at least a dozen more waves to follow."
“How…I don’t…it’s not possible…” Amber said, shaking her head as she scrolled through the message.
“A dozen?” asked Mitch, incredulous. “Dude…we are so screwed.”
She looked up and stared out across the bridge to the far side of the creek. Hundreds of people had gathered on the far side, where the water hadn’t quite reached. They stood with their phones up, taking pictures and videos of the destruction as more debris and bodies poured across the retaining wall on the east side of the creek, flooding the tributary with seawater and debris. As Cami watched, a dozen limp, lifeless bodies sailed over the temporary waterfall and splashed into the frothy torrent below. She felt her gorge rise and turned away, closing her eyes again. Deep down, she knew that those corpses wouldn’t be the last that she'd see.
"This alert from NOAA says the next wave is even bigger than the first one,” Mitch warned, looking at his phone. “That’s gotta be a mistake…this one went almost ten miles inland!”
“It says survivors along the coast need to prepare to stay where they are…” Amber said, reading off her phone. “If they try to leave now, they’ll get caught in the bigger waves coming…” She looked up, her eyes wide. “If we stay, we’ll be trapped…if we leave, we could get caught
