He nodded.
She hugged him. “I’m so proud of you. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
Wyatt padded up the stairs. The rest of the group picked up Jerry again and renewed the slog upward.
“How are you doing?” Kai asked Lani. Her breathing was a ragged rasp.
“Hurts a little.”
“I’ll give you a lift in a minute.” Even though they were jogging, Kai needed at least a little bit of a break. He ached all over from being twisted and turned by the water. He had strained his shoulder when he was holding on to the doorway, trying to keep from going out to sea. Not to mention cuts and bruises too numerous to count. Still, it could have been much worse.
Teresa put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Kai winced but didn’t pull away.
“Thanks, Kai. For Mia. If you hadn’t gotten her free …” Her voice trailed off, the implications too much for her to bear.
Kai put his arm around her and returned the hug. “I know. Same for Lani.”
“Where are we going?” Brad said. “Isn’t that building closer?” He pointed at the building directly in front of them, about three hundred yards away.
“It’s closer, but it’s only twenty stories tall. I’m not sure that’s high enough. Besides, it’s going to get the brunt force of the next wave. I’d rather be in one that has a little protection and doesn’t get a direct blast. Remember, the next wave is going to be the biggest yet.”
“I wish you’d stop saying that,” Brad said. “So which one are we going to?”
“To that one,” Kai said, nodding.
“Which one?”
“The one with the boat sticking out of it.”
On the ocean side of a thirty-story apartment building, the aft end of a sixty-foot charter fishing boat was suspended ten stories above the street. Its twin propellers were easily visible from their current position about a quarter mile away.
“Man!” Tom said.
“If that doesn’t show the power of a tsunami,” Kai said, “I don’t know what does.”
“Yeah,” said Brad, “we sure haven’t seen enough examples of that yet.” He jumped in front of Kai and led the way, Mia still clinging to his back.
Lani began coughing again from the exertion.
“That’s enough jogging for you,” Kai said. “Hop on.” She jumped on his back, and he continued to trot, albeit a bit more slowly. The debris was getting treacherous. The terrain was literally postapocalyptic. They continually detoured around large heaps of splintered wood, twisted metal, and dislodged concrete that impeded their progress.
They were still two blocks from their designated refuge when they found an intersection piled three deep with cars, buses, and trucks that had gotten wedged against the bottom of a cement foundation. Brad skirted it and stopped when he rounded the corner of the pile.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Brad said.
“What?” Kai said, coming to a stop beside him.
“There’s a couple of people up ahead. They’re heading this way.”
Sure enough, two young men were making their way through the debris toward them. Kai couldn’t tell if they were high school or college students, but they couldn’t have been older than twenty. They looked like they were in good shape, and both had their shirts off and sticking out of the back of their shorts, as if they were on an afternoon stroll. One of them held a video camera.
“Hey!” Brad yelled. “You’re going the wrong way.”
The men looked in their direction, appraising the motley crew. “No we’re not, man,” the one with the camera said. “You are if you don’t want to die.” “Look, we’re not stupid, you know. We’re heading to that building on the beach.”
“You
“Why do you think we’re taking this with us?” the one without the camera said. “We’re gonna sell the video. We’ve already got some good stuff of that building coming down over there.” He pointed at the remains of The Seaside.
“You idiots,” Brad said. “We were in that building.”
“Cool,” the cameraman said, and turned his camera on them.
Their comment got Kai to stop. He turned and stared at them, unable to comprehend how crass and greedy some people were.
“You two little shits look at all this destruction and death,” Kai said, “and all you can see is some money for yourselves?”
“Hey, the TV networks are making money off this. Why shouldn’t we?”
“You’re not going to make any money because you are going to die. That building is not going to stand against a wave two hundred feet in height.”
The two men laughed at that.
“You think this is funny?”
“Man, this is going to be great footage.”
“Turn that camera off, you asshole!” Brad yelled. He moved as if he were going to try to take it away from them, but Kai stopped him.
“Forget it, Brad. No one’s ever going to see that footage anyway. If they’re too dumb to take good advice, they’re on their own. We don’t have time for it. Let’s go.”
The two men stumbled off in the direction of the beach, talking in low voices and laughing.
Kai was angry at them, not just because they were cold opportunists, but because they made him see how futile his job could be in some cases. Kai’s job was to warn people of danger. The people could do with that warning what they wished. He couldn’t force them to get to safety. He couldn’t save them if they didn’t want to be saved. Now he was seeing that reality up close. And what made Kai feel even worse was that he didn’t want to save them. They deserved whatever happened to them.
As Kai’s group got close to the “boat building,” as he had come to think of it, Lani tapped him on the back.
“Daddy, I hear something.”
“What?”
“A voice, I think. It’s coming from your bag.”
FORTY-SEVEN
Jerry made it to the twenty-first floor before the women carrying him were too fatigued to continue. Even for three of them, Jerry’s deadweight was too much. They were spent. “What are we going to do now?” Jerry’s sister, Sheila, said, her voice strained from fatigue and worry. “We can’t just leave him.”
“He’s too heavy. We need some help. We’ll have to wait for Wyatt to get back.”
“What’s taking him so long?” Paige said. “He should have been back by now. I shouldn’t have let him go. I should have trusted my instincts. I’m going to look for him.”
Despite her exhaustion, Paige forced herself up the stairs, but before she could get to the next landing, a door slammed and the sound of light feet drifted toward them. She stopped.
“Wyatt?”
