The Tsunami Countdown

attention back to Lani and Mia.

Neither of them spoke. Mia stared off into the distance, and Lani slowly flipped through the photo album Kai had saved. It was hard to believe these were the same girls who had been so chatty this morning.

Kai knelt down and smiled at Lani.

“How are you feeling?” he said.

“I’m just coughing a little.”

“You’re going to be fine,” Kai said. “You’re going to be fine.”

“Why, Daddy?” Lani cried. “I want Mommy! I want Uncle Brad!”

Lani put her face in her hands and bawled loudly. Kai comforted her the best that he could, taking his own comfort in her vitality.

“I know, sweetie,” Kai said. “I want them too.”

Eventually, her sobs lessened until she just moaned into his shoulder.

A warm puff of air tickled Kai’s ear. He turned just in time for Bilbo to lick his face energetically.

“Bilbo!” Lani said, and the dog sprang to her. Lani lavished him with coos and pats.

Kai looked up to see a massive brown hand held out to him.

“Glad you made it,” Reggie Pona said, pulling Kai to his feet, then throwing his arms around him. “I thought we’d lost you a few times.”

“If you hadn’t sent help for us, you would have.”

“I saw Teresa back there,” Reggie said, pointing to the hangar entrance. “She seems okay. Are you girls all right?”

Lani and Mia nodded, focusing most of their interest on Bilbo. Kai knew Reggie wanted to hear about what happened. The dog was just what the girls needed to comfort them after the ordeal.

“Let’s take a walk, Reggie. Lani, take care of Bilbo. I’ll be back in a little bit.” Kai saw her start to protest, so he held up his hand to stop her. “I swear that I will not drive or fly anywhere without you. We’ll just be outside.”

As they stepped out of the hangar, two trucks screeched to a halt and began unloading passengers and supplies.

“Let’s get some privacy,” Reggie said, leading the way down the tarmac. “I saw a good place on my way here. You don’t know how glad I was to hear you landed.”

Kai didn’t answer. After a few moments of silence, he said, “Is it over?”

“The DART buoy says we’re in the clear. That last monster was absolutely unbelievable. Three hundred feet! I mean, everything’s gone for three miles inland in some places.”

“I know. I saw it when we were in the air.”

“Oh. Right.”

Another silence.

“Teresa told me about Rachel and Brad,” Reggie said. “I don’t know what to say. I’m really sorry.”

Reggie was tactfully leaving it open for him to say more, but Kai wasn’t in the mood to discuss the details.

“Who’s handling the warning duties now?” he said, knowing Reggie wouldn’t have left his post without making sure it was covered.

“George and Mary finally showed up. They’re on the phone with Alaska. I left them in charge so I could take a break and come find you. The first wave won’t reach California for another two hours. The West Coast should be pretty well evacuated by then. Given the TV coverage, you’d have to be a grade-A moron to stay by the ocean today.”

Reggie stopped at the base of what looked like a World War II–era watchtower at least seventy feet in height. Although it hadn’t been used in years, it still looked sturdy enough.

“Should be a little quieter up there,” he said.

Kai shrugged and followed him up the stairs. At the top, they were treated to an expansive view that stretched all the way to the shoreline five miles to the south. The fresh breeze felt good on Kai’s face, carrying away the stink of his sodden clothes.

“This is going to get worse before it gets better, you know,” Kai said. “A lot worse.”

“Tell me about it. All the power stations are knocked out. It could take a year to build new ones. They’ve already estimated at least three hundred thousand homeless on Oahu alone.”

“We’re two of them.”

“Right,” Reggie said. “I wonder where we’re going to sleep tonight.”

Kai wondered when he was going to be able to sleep again. All he could think of was Rachel, trying to fix her image in his mind before it faded. The twinkle in her eye when she knew Kai was going to unleash a dreadful pun. Her delightful bray of laughter at Lani’s wrestling matches with the dog. The touch of her lips. The smell of her hair when she curled up with him just before they fell asleep. Without her, sleep would be a long time coming.

“Looks like we’ll have to bed down in the airport hangars for now,” Kai said. “With only one working runway in the entire island chain, any airlift is going to go slowly.”

“Hell, I don’t know how they’re even going to get jet fuel up here to fill up all these planes,” Reggie replied. “I heard someone from the government talk about resupplying Hawaii with the biggest ship convoy since World War II. Who knows how long that will take? At least two weeks before it gets here. I bet they move half the population to the mainland—”

“Reggie,” Kai interrupted. “Do you mind if we just stand here for a few minutes and not talk?”

Reggie nodded and leaned against the railing. Kai just wanted to have a moment to himself before facing the reality of the hardships to come.

So they stood there silently, reflecting on their losses and contemplating the future, staring at the flat blue ocean serenely shimmering in the distance.

EPILOGUE

One Year Later

Kai sat back from his laptop and stared out at Mount Rainier from his new house as he lost his concentration yet again. Even this late in the spring, the lower slopes of the peak were still covered with snow. The cool weather of Seattle didn’t bother him nearly as much as he remembered. He actually liked the crisp air now, but that wasn’t why he had moved back to Washington. And it wasn’t the fact that Puget Sound was a hundred miles from the Pacific. Despite the move, the ocean was never far from his mind, nor were the images of that terrible day in Honolulu.

It always struck him as odd that, with all the videography available from these kinds of time-stopping events, the most iconic images seemed to come from photos.

The sight of the USS Arizona, exposed to the air for the first time in over sixty years after it was sunk on the day that pulled America into World War II, washed inland and coming to rest alongside the USS Missouri, the ship on which the Japanese surrender was signed, ending the war.

The photos of Honolulu taken from the lip of Diamond Head the day before and the day after the tsunami hit, one showing a bustling metropolis, the other a landscape laid bare for miles.

The aerial photo of Punchbowl National Cemetery, a memorial to those who have died in the service of their country, teeming with the life of those who were protected and saved from the tsunami by its very location.

It was the Punchbowl image with which Kai identified most, and the one he had framed on his wall. It represented everything he did right on that day. He could honestly say that those people would not be alive if it weren’t for him and Reggie. It didn’t let his conscience completely off the hook for all the thousands who had died, but it was what let him sleep at night now.

He had come to terms with some of the decisions he made. Not all of them. But enough to let him not just