There were two anchors working together and they explained it very calmly, but the woman was shaken. You could see she had been crying. Her eye makeup was all smeared around her eyes and I wondered why nobody fixed her makeup. It was CNN, for God’s sake.
The man in the blue suit said he would repeat the chain of events for anyone just joining the broadcast. That was us. He said a volcano had erupted on an island called La Palma, in the Canary Islands.
Shaky, handheld images of ash and a fiery mountain appeared on the screen behind the anchors.
The woman with the bad makeup said that the western face of the entire island had exploded with the eruption of the volcano. Five hundred billion tons of rock and lava had avalanched into the ocean.
They didn’t have footage of that.
Blue Suit said the explosion had created a “megatsunami.”
A wave a half a mile tall.
Moving at six hundred miles per hour.
Bad Makeup said that the megatsunami had grown wider as it approached the coast of the U.S. Then she stopped talking. Her voice caught in her throat, and Blue Suit took over.
The megatsunami had hit the Eastern Coast of the United States at 4:43 a.m. mountain time.
Boston, New York, Charleston, Miami.
All had been hit.
They couldn’t estimate the number of fatalities.
I just sat there. I felt completely numb.
It was the worst natural disaster in recorded history.
The most violent volcano eruption in recorded history.
The biggest tsunami in recorded history.
They played some footage.
It played so fast they had to slow it down so you could see what was going on.
From the street, a shot of the Empire State Building and a tall cloud drawing closer and closer, frame by frame, but it wasn’t a cloud—it was a wall of water—and then the image went blank.
A beach and you’re looking out at the water, only there is no water, just a boat stranded about a mile out into the ocean bed and you hear a voice praying to Jesus and then the image is shaking, shaking, and a wave so high the minitab can’t see the top thunders up. Then darkness.
Chloe said she wanted to watch kid TV. We ignored her.
Bad Makeup said the National Connectivity was down because three of the five satellite centers had been located on the East Coast.
Blue Suit said the president had declared a state of emergency and was safe at an undisclosed location.
We watched, mostly in silence.
“Turn it to Tabi-Teens,” Chloe whined. “This is bo-ring!”
I looked at her. She was totally clueless. She was listlessly picking at a label stuck on the minitab counter.
None of the little kids seemed to understand what we were learning. They were just kind of slowpoking around, hanging out.
I had to keep watching the TV. Couldn’t think about the kids.
I felt gray. Washed out. Like a stone.
Bad Makeup said the megatsunami had triggered severe weather conditions across the rest of the country. Her voice caught on “rest of the country.” She mentioned storms called supercells, sweeping across the Rockies (that was us).
I looked over at Josie. She was watching the screen. Caroline had crawled onto Josie’s lap, and Josie was stroking Caroline’s hair absentmindedly.
CNN showed more footage from the East Coast.
They showed a house carried up the side of a mountain. They showed a lake full of cars. They showed people wandering around half naked on streets in places that should have looked familiar, but now looked like locations from war movies.
People in boats, people crying, people washed down rivers like logs on a log float, people washed up along with their cars and garages and trees and trash cans and bicycles and god-knows-what else. People as debris.
I closed my eyes.
Near me, someone started to cry.
“Put it to Tabi-Teens!” Chloe demanded. “Or Traindawgs or something!”
I took my brother’s hand. It was ice cold.
* * *
We watched for hours.
At some point, somebody turned off the television.
At some point, somebody got out sleeping bags for everyone.
There was a lot of whining from the little kids and not a lot of comforting coming from us.
They were really bothering us. Especially Chloe and Batiste.
Batiste kept talking about the “end of days.”
He said it was just like Reverend Grand said would happen. The judgment day was upon us. I wanted to punch him in his little greasy face.
I just wanted to think. I couldn’t think and they all kept crying and asking for stupid things and clinging to us and I just wanted them to shut up.
Finally Astrid bent over and grabbed Batiste by the shoulders.She said, real clear and kind of mean, “You kids go and get candy. As much as you want. Go do that.”
And they did.
They came back with bags from the candy aisle.
That was the best we could do for them that night: candy. We took the bags and ripped them open and made a big pile in the middle of the floor, and everyone gorged on fun sizes of all brands and types.
We ate it like it was medicine. Like it was magic candy that could somehow restore us to a normal life again. We ate ourselves numb and got in our bags and went to sleep.
There was a lot of crying from the little kids and occasionally one of us would yell, “Shut up!”
That’s how we got by, that first night.
CHAPTER FOUR
EIGHT POINT TWO
We were shaken awake around eight.
It wasn’t that thing that happens where you’re dreaming that you’re running through a forest chasing a fox or something and suddenly a tree grabs you and starts shaking you and you begin to wake up and realize it’s actually your mom shaking you and your alarm is going off and you’re late for school.
Not at all.
This was: You’re in a sleeping bag on the floor of a giant superstore and suddenly the floor starts pitching and heaving and you’re getting bounced around like a piece of popcorn in a hot pan and things start falling off the shelves and everyone is screaming and scared out of their minds and you’re one of everyone.
It was more like that.
* * *
And here’s the hilarious part—it was a FORESHOCK. Apparently, that’s what happens when you’re about to experience an 8.2. It’s an earthquake so big it sends messengers ahead.
“Get to the Pizza Shack!” Niko shouted. “Under the tables!”
I grabbed Alex with one hand and picked up Ulysses the first grader with the other and ran for it. Stuff was falling off the shelves or had fallen. From the Food section and elsewhere you could hear glass bottles crashing off the shelves and onto the floor.
The rest of the kids were right behind me. I saw that all the big kids had grabbed one or two little ones. Astrid was escorting Josie. Tripping and falling and hurrying as best we could, we made it to the Pizza Shack and got under the tables. They were bolted down, which was why Niko wanted us there.
“We’ll be safer here,” I told Alex and Ulysses, whose nose was streaming wet snot.
“Hold tight to the table legs,” Niko shouted.
“This is dumb,” Brayden growled. “The earthquake is over. Why are we hiding here—”
And his voice began to shake.
Because the ground had begun to shake.
And he sure did grab himself a table leg.
The quake was less scary than the foreshock, in my opinion. We were ready for the quake. We were awake already.
We started shaking and shaking and you could hear things falling and crashing all around us.
* * *
It’s a miracle the store didn’t cave in, but, as we would discover, the store was built like a safe. It held. Rock solid. Pretty much everything was tossed to the floor and lots of the shelves toppled over, but the damage to the store was not as bad as it could have been.
“Is everyone okay?” Jake asked.
“Um, I would say, no,” Astrid answered. “The world as we know it is gone. We’re locked in a Greenway and an EARTHQUAKE just smashed the store to pieces!”
She was furious and she looked gorgeous.
“I know that, Astrid!” Jake snapped. “Obviously everything has gone to hell but I am supposed to be in charge so I just thought I’d ask!”
The kindergarten twins burst into new sobs. I saw that they, like Ulysses, had lots of grime and mucus on their weary little faces. All the little kids looked pretty bad off.
“Jake is doing the best he can so why don’t you back off, Astrid?” Brayden said.
“Screw you, Brayden! You’re the last person I want to be stuck here with!” she answered.
Josie had her hands over her ears. The little kids were crying and Chloe was starting to scream.
“All right, everyone just settle down,” Jake said. “Astrid, you’re out of control. Pull yourself together!”
“Excuse me,” Henry said to Jake. “Me and Caroline have decided. We want to go home.”
Henry and Caroline wanted to go home. Like it was some sleepover that had gone wrong and now he’d like Jake to call their parents so they could get picked up.
“Yeah! I want my nana!” Chloe yelled.
“Guys, we gotta wait for Mrs. Wooly,” Jake said calmly.
But the little kids were in a full-blown meltdown now. Crying, noses running, snorting with sobs, the works.
Ulysses was near me and he nodded his head, agreeing with the shouts and demands and wails of the other kids. These tears, fat like jelly beans, plopping out of his eyes and running down his face, were so profuse they were actually washing his face because he kept wiping at them with the sleeve of his sweatshirt.
“It’s going to be okay,” I told him.
He just shook his head and cried all the harder.
I got up. Determined to go find a godforsaken Spanish-English dictionary.
“Don’t go yet,” Niko told me. “More aftershocks.”
He was right. The floor started to pitch and I dropped down and ducked under the nearest table. It just so happened to be the table Astrid had ducked under, too.
This was certainly the closest I’d ever been to her. I held the center pole under the table. Her hands were just below mine.