Night of the Howling Dogs (9 page)

First came the sound.

Somewhere far, far below. Under me. A groaning, like a stubborn nail being pulled out of wood. My eyes popped open as the earth trembled. I sat up on my elbow. My sleeping bag was jiggling. Then it jerked, leaped, and tossed me into the air. The dirt floor came up and hit me like a hammer. “Uhhhn!”

Get out! Get out!

I kicked my way out of my sleeping bag, tearing at the zipper. Broke free, tried to stand. Fell. “Casey!”

Outside, the night was black as tar. I fumbled for my flashlight, but the earth belched again and threw me up with a violence I would never have thought possible. Then it rolled under itself and sucked me into it, went down like a broken elevator.

“Caseyyy!”

It rolled back up and tossed me into the air.

I hit the ground hard.

I could see the black shadow of Casey ripping at his bag. The earth was slamming him around like a pebble in a tin can, shuddering, making a terrible noise. He freed himself and tumbled out into the night.

The world was tearing itself apart. Ripping, twisting. The whole island screamed and howled and rattled like a monstrous jackhammer…
Da-ka-da-ka-da-ka-da-ka!

I could hear Casey grunting and gasping as he banged around on the hard dirt, air rushing out of him. Outside the shelter a new sound, terrifying beyond any other: the roar of an army of dump trucks dropping gravel from their beds over all of Halape. The cliff.

No, no, no!
The cliff is coming down!

My glasses! My glasses! Where are my glasses!

I felt around, slapping my hand on the ground. There! I gripped them as if they were life itself. Without them I’d be nearly helpless. I put them on and thanked God they were tied to the fishing-line cord.

Casey shrieked, his voice nearly lost in all the noise.

“Casey!”
I called.

I yelped as the shelter’s rock walls started caving in. The tin roof clanked down, nearly hammering me on the head. I rolled out onto the sand. Casey called, but his voice was swallowed by the darkness, by the shrieking earth. “Here! Casey, over here!”

The ground slowed and shivered, straining, the popping sound of a ship pulling at its dock ropes.

Then the boulders.

Boom! Bam!

Pu’u Kapukapu was coming apart, huge chunks of cliff falling away in the darkness.

“
Casey,
we got to get to the water! The boulders!”

His shape crawled toward me.

“Flashlight!” he shouted. “Where’s my—” He found it and turned it on. Its beam wobbled in his shaking hand. He dropped it, and the light bounced on the dirt, the earth now shaking like a dog with a rat. The light went out.

Boulders pounded down, their concussions vibrating through dirt, sand, and rock.

Over in the coconut grove someone screamed, and horses shrieked.

My hands trembled wildly, but I managed to stand and scramble away from the shelter with Casey. Again, the earth slammed me down. Pain stabbed my shoulder. My glasses came loose and fell off my face and would have been lost in the blackness if not for the cord.

Casey bounced up and came down hard. “
Ayii!
My knee, my knee!”

I crawled over to him. He was rolled into a ball, both hands gripping his knee, moaning. “Ow, ow, ow!”

“We got to get away from here, Casey. Can you walk?”

“Ahhh…it hurts!”

“We got to move…. The boulders—”

“I can’t.”

I gripped him under his arms and dragged him across the sand toward the ocean. Thundering vibrations buzzed through me as boulders slammed down from Pu’u Kapukapu and bounced toward the sea.

I looked up, remembering Zach. “Zach!
Zach!
”

A car-sized rock careened toward the sea, a giant shadow crossing the trail between our shelter and the coconut grove. The island shook, as if laughing. Earth broke under me. I lost my grip on Casey, because we were falling. The earth sucking down, down. I tried to scream but nothing came out. Casey bounced into me, and the earth tossed us back up. Somebody cried out, not far away. “Zach!” I howled. No answer.

Far below, I could hear the earth shifting into some new place, and the noise would not stop, would not stop, would not stop, the land was coming apart and it would not stop.

I heard Casey crying. I couldn’t help him. I couldn’t help myself. “Zach!” I shouted. “Where are you!”

More boulders tumbled toward the sea.

I covered my head with my arms. Any one of them would crush me like a bug. My throat burned with grief: we would all die. We would be smashed.

Then it stopped.

The earth rolled over and slowed. The terrifying snarl subsided and the crushing boulders bounced into new places and settled.

It was over.

The earth hissed and sighed.

All was silent.

I gasped for air and rose to my knees with my arms still shielding my head. I could feel the wetness of a bloody nose. I rubbed the blood away. My shoulder ached.

Soft cries whimpered in the darkness.

“Zach! Are you out there?”

Still no answer.

Casey was curled into a ball near me in the dark, his hands gripping his knee, sobbing low.

The earth gasped. It was something I could sense, not hear. Catching its breath. Pressure building. It wouldn’t be long. The rattling would come back, and this time it would kill us!

“Casey,” I whispered in the eerie silence. “We got to move! We got to go by the grove, by your dad. Closer to the sea.”

Out of the blackness, two figures stumbled over us. Louie and Mike. Louie flicked a flashlight on.

“It’s us!” I said. “Me and Casey.”

“You hurt?”

“Casey’s knee.”

Louie crouched. “Show me.”

Casey’s eyes were pinched in pain.

Mike glanced at our crumbled shelter. “Ho,” he whispered. “You got out just in time.”

“I can’t find Zach! Look for him.”

Mike tried, but it was too dark. “We need another flashlight. You got one?”

“No. We lost it.”

We were all in shorts and T-shirts, barefoot. My boots were probably under a pile of rocks. I’d have to dig them out.

Casey took his hand off his knee. Blood oozed between his fingers and streaked down his leg. An ugly gash across his kneecap showed the bone.

“Pretty bad,” Louie said.

“Mike!” I said. “Check Zach’s tent!”

Mike borrowed the flashlight and ran over to peek into Zach’s tent, which still stood. “Not in here.”

“Maybe he went to the grove.”

Louie stood and helped Casey to his feet, then slipped an arm around his waist. “We go…while we can.”

The four of us lurched through the dark over the sand and rocks toward the grove, Louie with Casey, Mike with the only light. How long until sunrise?

Too long.

We stopped when we felt the earth coming back to life. Dread swelled in me. No, no!

“Haw!” Mike said when way out on the horizon a flash of unworldly light lit the ocean, like some silent scream from the deep emptiness beyond.

“What was
that
?” I said.

We couldn’t even guess. It wasn’t stormy out there, as far as I could tell. The soundless flash made no sense.

“Keep moving,” Louie said.

We were almost to the coconut grove when the earth trembled. Like before, in the center of the earth. “Here it comes,” Mike said.

The land rolled up, and up, then fell, and we fell with it.

Down, down, down.

Then up.

It knocked the air out of me and I gasped.

The earth grabbed Casey from Louie’s hands. Casey screamed, coming down yards away. Mike hit hard and Louie bounced like a rubber ball.

There was a huge shudder. A sigh. Then everything broke apart, sand slipping through cracks—the dirt, the rocks, and the coconut grove.

All that was around us.

Sank.

And the ocean rushed in.

We’re dead, I thought as I heard the ocean churning toward us. Rumbling in, slow at first, then rising up, faster and faster.

“Pop!” Mike shouted, trying to run toward the coconut grove. He never made it.

Water rushed in. It grabbed my ankles, swirled around them, and rose higher. I tried to slog inland, but there was nowhere to go. Louie flashed his light out at the mountain of white water boiling toward us as the earth continued to sink, taking us down with it. He whipped the light back toward the cliff. Boulders flashed in the beam, tumbling down. In the eerie light, two huge monsters bounced over our shelter, crushing it, then rolled on to vanish in the oncoming sea.

“Louie!” I howled. The sea was bearing down on us like a garbage truck.

He whipped the light back.

The wall of water came at us head-on, a mountain in the puny beam of light. We stumbled back, falling over rocks we couldn’t see. Going down, struggling to stand. Louie heaved Casey up onto his shoulders and staggered inland. He tried to hang on to the flashlight, but it was lost in the ocean rushing around our waists. The light glowed underwater and went out as it sank.

The ocean knocked me off my feet. I flailed inland, my glasses tight in my fist. I would never let them go. No matter what.

I gasped a last breath…and went under.

The water dragged me over rocks and bushes with sharp branches. Tumbling, tumbling. It tossed me up for one more merciful gulp of air, then pulled me down again and carried me back, back, back, back toward the cliff.

Then it slowed and sucked me the other way, out to sea, so deep now that I felt nothing, no bushes, no rocks.

My foot hit something once—a branch, a body—then whatever it was vanished and I spun in a watery void, not knowing up from down, spinning, spinning, spinning in a bubbly mass.

Air!

Need air!

I felt the horror of deep water sucking me down.

Breathe!

Can’t.

Surge. Moving back. Going inland.

Gagging.

Rolling, tumbling.

Drowning.

Back over land. Upside-down, dragged through bushes, branches. Banged, scratched, ripped.

Stuck.

Caught in something; a bush.

Got to get out!

Need…air….

Need…

No….

Let go…. Let go.

Let…go….

It’s over.

Easy.

Glasses…Don’t need them…. Don’t need anything…. Easy…I opened my hand and let my glasses drift away, the cord unraveling. Gone.

Mom…Dad…

In that moment the wave subsided.

Stars.

I was out! I coughed and gasped and heaved in great gulps of air as the angry ocean withdrew and left me twisted in a mess of sharp branches.

My eyes flooded.

Alive.
I’m alive.

I lay in the bush, gasping and tangled. I sucked in air, my heart pounding. Slowly, I struggled free.

Where was I?

Farther in, that was for sure. But how far?

My glasses! Why did I let them go?

I felt around the wet ground in the dark. You let them go because you were dead, remember? There was no reason for you to keep them. You didn’t need them anymore.

Yes, yes.

I was dead.

I would never forget that.

Being dead. Being nothing. How easy it was to be nothing. A sob broke out of me. I sagged and folded on a wet patch of sand. Then I popped up, remembering I wasn’t alone.

“Casey!” I croaked. My throat was raw. It hurt to call out. I had to. “Louie, Mike! Where are you?”

“Over…here…”

I turned but saw nothing. “Where?”

A shadow appeared. “Louie?”

The stars were bright and clear beyond, reflected on a calming sea that seemed to know nothing of what had just happened. “Come,” Louie said, grabbing my hand and pulling me to my feet.

“My glasses,” I said. “I dropped them.”

“We find um later. Too dark now. We got to go higher.”

“Where’s Mike?”

“I don’t know. Come, walk.”

There was a groan.

I saw movement, someone limping. “That you, Mike?” Louie said.

It was. “I have to find Pop.” He walked past, zombielike, back into the darkness.

Farther up someone screamed, panicking. Billy or Tad. Then the screaming stopped and I heard voices.

“Help me…someone…anyone.”

I whipped around.

Casey was sprawled in a patch of mud, moaning. I knelt down. His knee still bled. More blood oozed from a new cut on his cheek.

Louie knelt beside me. “’S’okay, brah. We help you.”

We looked up when a paniolo appeared out of the darkness. Then another. In the light of the stars I saw that one was Masa. His wet clothes clung to him and a dark line of blood dripped from his hair to his jaw. “You boys all right?”

“We okay,” Louie said, somehow not stunned speechless like me. “Casey got a cut knee. The rest of us drank some salt water. You seen Mr. Bellows and the Reveren’?”

“Nobody but you,” Masa said. “Come. We climb higher now. Talk later.”

“But the guys in the grove,” I said, finding my voice.

“The grove is gone.”

Louie and I glanced back into the darkness. I couldn’t see a thing. “Gone?”

Masa tugged my shoulder. “Hurry. Carry this boy before more water comes.”

We lifted Casey to his feet. He was heavy; his head hung. He moaned. Masa and I got on either side of him.

“Ready?” Masa said.

“Got him.”

We started uphill, slowly picking our way over rocks we couldn’t see. My glasses wouldn’t have helped even if I’d had them.

“Go,” Louie said. “I catch up.” He headed back toward where the grove had been.

“Boy!” Masa said. “Too dangerous down there!”

But Louie was already gone.