Kylee leaned with her hands on her knees as she caught her breath. Theo was fascinated by how calm she was continuing to be in what was, clearly, a pretty messed up situation. He spun around to face her and the beach and gestured with arms wide. “What the hell is going on?” he asked.
Kylee read his lips and began to answer when her eyes suddenly widened. “Look out!” She dove toward him and tackled him onto the boards. Composing himself on the shaking wooden structure and not ignorant of the light but firm weight on top of him, Theo looked to the left. Where he had been standing a second earlier a deck chair was on its side, bent out of shape. The chair and the boards around it were covered with a crumbled concrete. Looking up, Theo saw the missing piece of the third floor balcony.
His mind fought to process what he was experiencing. Somehow, this earthquake, or whatever it was, had torqued and bent the motel enough to crack the concrete, surely in many places. The fact that the chair had tumbled through the opening and fallen forward seemed to imply that the land was tilting toward the ocean, yet the waves were coming closer with increasing ferocity.
Theo looked into Kylee’s eyes and mouthed “thank you.” She nodded and rolled off him. The two of them sat side-by-side, afraid to stand as the shaking increased. Theo had been able to hear, or maybe it was feel, the bass of the rumbling, but now he could hear the rumbling more clearly, and other sounds. Sirens in the distance mingled with an electrical crackling.
“It’s an earthquake, right?” Kylee asked. She was surveying the scene with an impressive calm but her eyes conveyed concern.
“I don’t know; I’ve never been in one before. It seems like there’s a lot more happening.”
“Yeah, I noticed.” She pointed down the boardwalk to where the casinos and the Pier Mall flickered and sputtered in the distance. “Whatever’s happening is going to blow the power out soon.” As if she had magically decreed it, the lights went out one by one.
“Great. What we needed was some darkness. At least we’ve got the weird lights in the sky.”
Theo stood up and offered Kylee his hand. “We need to get off the boards. We have to find the others.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Let’s go.”
Holding on to each other, Theo and Kylee left the boardwalk and wandered down the side street to Atlantic Avenue. The main street was a disaster. Cars were abandoned in the middle of the road, though some had rammed into buildings and poles along the sides of the street. Fire hydrants spouted water into the air. “Oh my God,” Kylee said. “Look at the people.”
There were people lying unconscious or worse in the street and on the sidewalks. Others, clearly alive, clung to the ground in fear. Still others wandered aimlessly, stumbling against the roll of the earth. A middle aged Hispanic man, his eyes wide saucers of panic, approached them. He muttered, “No, no, no…” over and over. He was bleeding from a cut on his shoulder and his tanktop was stained red. As he passed Theo and Kylee, he tripped and fell. The man scrambled to his feet and ran on, continuing his refrain. “No, no, no…”
Theo put his arm around Kylee. He still hadn’t quite processed everything that had happened, certainly not the part where he was almost killed and had been saved by this amazing girl he had just met hours earlier.
“So what do you think? Is this Hell?” the voice behind them was shaken but still definitely Bill. Theo turned around and was relieved to see that his friend appeared to be unharmed.
“I don’t know,” said Theo. “It’s something bad, that’s for sure.” Just then something occurred to him. “I left my cell phone in the car! Maybe we can call somebody and find out what’s going on.”
“Oh crap,” said Kylee, “I left mine on the beach. It’s underwater by now.”
“Wouldn’t help anyway,” said Bill, holding up his phone. “There is absolutely no service. Not even one bar. Even the GPS signal is all wonky. Last time I tried it said I’m in the middle of Springville, Utah.”
“I’d take Utah right about now,” said Theo.
“Well, ok, so what other option do we have?” asked Kylee. She gestured to the wreckage all over the street. “We can’t drive anywhere while the ground is shaking. Besides, there are too many people all over the place.”
Bill hunched down as another small, concussive blast sounded “Ryan had this idea that he could get a signal from on the roof. He tried the motel and got nothing. He and Michelle are trying the building next door. It’s much higher.”
Theo nodded. Leave it to Ryan to come up with some tech idea that might actually work. “And Mark and Jamie?”
“Won’t leave the motel. Mark thinks the world is coming to an end. It’s that crap we saw on television earlier.”
Theo shrugged. “Look around you man, can you honestly say he’s wrong?”
The rumbling intensified again. “Get down guys,” Bill said, “I think another shockwave is coming.”
The three of them hit the ground and covered their ears. Theo closed his eyes but could still see the light of the biggest flash yet blooming in the darkness of his eyelids. A second later the boom arrived. Even with his hands over his ears, he could feel his poor, battered eardrums take a hit. Suddenly the ground kicked up. Theo felt himself tossed into the air at least a foot and tried hard to roll when he landed. He bumped his shoulder a little but was otherwise fine.
Theo sat up and saw Bill and Kylee looking horrified in the direction of the motel. The old building had shaken loose from its foundation in the sand and now the slow, continuous shaking of the earth was releasing clouds of dust and chunks of concrete. The building swayed methodically.
Bill got to his feet and Theo and Kylee followed. Bill ran toward the motel. “We have to get them out of there!” He made it ten feet when a massive wave slammed over the boardwalk and struck the buildings along the shoreline. The Sea Sons motel groaned and finally gave in to the elements. Theo felt time slow to a crawl. He saw the motel lean away from the wave and fall, imploding in a cloud of mud and dust.
Kylee screamed and Bill dropped to his knees. Theo grabbed the back of Bill’s shirt and, with strength he didn’t know he possessed, lifted his friend to his feet and dragged him away from the collapsed building. Bill snapped to his senses and the three of them ran across Atlantic Avenue to the far side. The wave flooded the street and then sucked backwards toward the ocean. Though some dust rose high into the turbulent sky, most of the debris was stopped by the building behind where the motel had stood, or fell into the retreating wave.
Similar dust clouds in the distance told of other collapses and a vast destruction that they had only begun to experience. Theo kept his arms around Kylee as she wept. Bill only stared toward the former motel with a blank expression.
Just then, the ground stopped trembling. Theo looked around and saw other people shaking themselves off and taking cautious steps. The grinding motor sound lessened until it appeared that it too had ceased. Though sirens and car alarms still rang out far away, the overall lack of sound was a shock to his ears. Theo stepped in front of Bill and Kylee. He had to speak; had to do something to break the silence.
“Guys, I don’t know what happened here. I’m not sure anybody knows. I don’t know if this is over or just the beginning. We don’t know for sure what happened to Mark and Jamie. We don’t, Bill! But what I do know is that we need to find some place to hide for the night. Some place safe. Bill, you said Ryan and Michelle are at the building down the street. We know that damned wave hit it too, but maybe it’s ok. I think… I think we should go there now.”
Theo paused and watched astonished as Kylee and Bill got up and started to walk in the direction of the tall condominium. His experience being a leader was somewhat nonexistent. He had felt compelled to say something but truly hadn’t expected the others to jump to follow his suggestion.