‘Sister Torrens.’ A nurse cried. ‘I’m so confused! It’s not like our drills. Patients are being brought in by ambulance, and before they can be treated, they’re shipped out on army trucks or Vetos. The emergency room’s chaos. Our routines and treatment schedules are all upside down. The doctors are starting to reschedule most of the operations.’
Alex had been correct, exercises weren’t like the real thing. Nobody panicked, but now she sensed fear creeping into the nurse’s voice.
‘There’s nothing we can do about it.’ She replied wearily wiping her forehead. She could feel the perspiration clinging uncomfortably to her overworked body, and realised then that all the nurses would need reassuring. Normally they were well organised and disciplined, a hospital is that kind of environment. All of a sudden the well-ordered routine was thrown aside.
Chapter Thirty-one
The Earthquakes Friday Morning, June 9
The Platypus had been delayed in Hawaii for two days finding a replacement crew, and was now three hundred kilometres south of the Johnston coral atoll. The seas were running at a three to four metre swell.
The Pacific Tsunami Centre bellowed out the tsunami warning over the radio. ‘Tsunami bulletin number one from the Pacific Tsunami Warning centre. Earthquakes have occurred with the following parameters: Origin time: Eleven thirty hours June 8, 2042. The coordinates: the length of the Pacific Ocean fault line at a depth of thirty-five kilometres. Location: from the Bering Strait to New Zealand. Magnitude…’ The announcer paused, his voiced raised in pitch. ‘Magnitude eleven point two, ten point one, nine point nine!’
‘Eleven point two?’ Sam repeated. ‘Sweet Jesus, we’re in for it. Beau come to the wheelhouse!’
Sam wanted to call Nick, but there was no time. His main fear was losing the Bunyip over the side because he doubted the Navilon hood could take a slam from something that large if she came loose. He had no idea if the platypus could ride it out, or if he could keep her pointing into the swells. He punched the automatic pilot to select the Critical Storm level, went to enter the heading and bearing, and it registered that he didn’t know; it would be coming from all directions. The boat would slow to bare steerage way, and hold at an angle of forty-five degrees to the swells. The windows on the bridge were extra toughened Navilon, so Sam felt confident they could take the onslaught. He was not so confident about the hull, even though she had been strengthened to cut through ice.
Beau arrived from below and picked up the binoculars. ‘Sam! The horizon. Look!’ He handed the binoculars to Sam.
The sea undulated like a snake in the distance. ‘Oh, man.’ Sam breathed. ‘That’s one angry sea. Must be a one hundred foot swell at least, and it’s comin’ our way. We’re gonna to feel like we’re on the biggest roller coast on earth, make sure everyone’s in the capsules below. No-one on the deck! Shut the shield.’
The chief engineer stood beside Sam and Beau, training his binoculars on the fearsome scene ahead. His face, like the Beau’s, was white as sun bleached bone. The black wave drew closer and Sam shouted. ‘Into the capsules now!’
They buckled themselves in. ‘All crew, if you’t not in the capsules now you’ll be dead!’ Sam bellowed into the communications system. ‘It’s going to be the mother of all rogue waves’
The shock of the first wave hit them with a thundering crash that jarred their teeth. The gimbals rocked but the capsules remained level. It sounded like a freight train running over them and Sam looked to the side window and could see nothing but black water. He watched as daylight turned dark and his stomach flipped in unison with the ship as she climbed the peak, then dived into the trough, all the time resisting the waves attempts to sink her.
More waves followed, and many times she hung vertically while climbing the peaks, and Sam thought she would break in two when she crashed back into the troughs. Never in all his days at sea had he experienced anything so frightening. Platypus spun and dived like she was riding a bucking bronco, and Sam expected them all to go to the bottom of the sea at any minute. The onslaught continued for an hour, and the seasoned crew members down below were violently ill, even Sam battled to keep down his breakfast.
When the pounding eased to a swell of six metres, and remained that way for fifteen minutes Sam gave the order to resume stations and ordered damage reports. His knees wobbled as he carefully clambered out of his capsule and steadied himself by the helm. He checked their course and reset the automatic pilot while the chief engineer headed off to inspect the engines. Satisfied that all was well, he left the wheelhouse in the hands of the first mate and went with Beau to check on the Bunyip.
Beau heaved a sigh when he saw the submersible still strapped into the ties they had harnessed around her, albeit at a tilted angle. Two crew members were tightening the straps holding her in her cradle. He realised then how close they had come to capsizing and losing the entire ship. Beau pursed his lips and shook his head as he walked around the Bunyip, patting her belly. ‘Get Nick’s baby settled back in her crib boys. It ain’t over yet.’
A sudden wind thundered over the ship, bringing with it patches of foam in dense white streaks over the Navilon hood, filling their ears with a thundering roar. The sea was completely white with driving spray and foam.
Sam waved at the men. ‘Hurry boys back to your capsules.’ He yelled above the deafening roar pounding against the hood. He staggered back to the wheel house with Beau following behind, reeling and swaying on the heaving deck. Visibility was zero outside, and just as they were about to enter the wheelhouse, the ship bucked abruptly knocking Sam to his feet, and the Platypus began wallowing in the chaotic sea again. He struggled to his feet rubbing his head and grabbing at anything to hold him steady.
‘Sweet Jesus. What’s happenin’ now George?’ He bellowed to his first mate.
‘Dunno Captin.’ The Anomometer is reading sixty, or force eleven and climbing. It’s way above hurricane force.’
‘Keep a sharp lookout.’
‘Captain check the compass. Where the hell are we?’
‘We’re on course, why?’ Sam answered.
George handed the binoculars to Sam and pointed. ‘Then what’s that out there?’
Sam squinted through the binoculars. He couldn’t understand what he was seeing. It appeared to be a distant land mass where there should have been open ocean, and it was huge, there didn’t appear to be an end to it. Clouds of smoke and steam and dust bellowed from it’s entire surface that glowed with red hot lava. The boiling sea near it was stained an eerie yellowish green.
‘Volcano?’ Sam hissed. ‘There’s no volcanos here. It’s the middle of the Pacific Ocean!’
Wolf barrelled into the wheelhouse. ‘I just saw it on the satellite feed, my Got!’ He puffed.
‘Is it a volcano Wolf?’ Sam asked.
‘It’s more than that, it’s a new island and it’s huge, satellite shows it to be a hundred miles across and twice as long, and about fifteen hundred feet high.’
‘What? Are you jivin’ me?’ How the hell?’
Wolf pulled at his beard. ‘The earthquake here’s caused a giant undersea volcano to erupt and rise to the surface, and there’s a chain of undersea quakes erupting all along the new fault line as we speak, just as we predicted. The Aleutians have disappeared, along with a big chunk of Alaska and Russia, I hardly recognised the area. The North Pole’s disintegrating!’