The Didymus Contingency (38 page)

“We have to leave!” he said. He glanced up the shoreline where they had landed the helicopter, a football field away. “Get to the helicopter!”

He took Vika’s hand and helped her across the loose rocks. The rising heat made his heart beat wildly in his chest, urged him to sprint at full speed. But he couldn’t leave Vika behind. She had saved his life. She was his life. He would not let her die now.

Viktoriya slipped on a stone and fell forward, but Dima was there to catch her. He swept her into his arms and stumbled toward the copter.

The heat continued to rise. Dmitriy struggled to keep his eyes open. The heat was so intense that it felt as though his eyes were peeled grapes. He looked at Viktoriya. Her eyes were clenched shut.

They were halfway to the copter now, and Dmitriy was wheezing. His body was dry. Every bead of sweat that his body produced evaporated. A loud
crack
drew his eyes back to the forest. He saw a tree falling to the ground, pushed over by the punishing winds, but what shocked him was the state of the trees. The needles, moments ago vibrant green, were now tinged brown, dried out. Dead.

A rising cloak of darkness, like an evil apparition, caught Dmitriy’s attention as it plumed into the sky above the forest. It assaulted his nose first: acrid smoke laced with sulfur. The trees were burning, and while he couldn’t see it, he suspected a volcano had erupted. The blackness poured out from the tree line and rolled over the beach. Dmitriy found it impossible to breathe.

He struck out for the helicopter again, Viktoriya now a dead weight in his arms. He glanced down to check her condition, but found his eyes blinded by the heat and smoke. A jagged boulder caught his shin and he fell forward, dropping Viktoriya and landing on top of her.

The intensity of the heat blistered Dmitriy’s skin. His scream was cut short from lack of breath. Through parched eyes, he looked back at the forest in time to see the trees explode into flame. Their heat washed over his body, blinding, searing, and suffocating. He hoped that Vika might survive the inferno protected by his body, but he sensed that she had already passed. So close, he thought. So close.

With a seismic boom, the gas tank of the helicopter exploded. It was the last thing Dmitriy heard before his parched body burst into flame.

Chapter 6

Mirabelle Whitney glanced past her shoulder and out at the town. Everything looked normal. Traffic was still congested. The red brick buildings still glowed in the sun. But something was off. She leaned out her bedroom window to look further.

Strawberry Banke was a well-maintained park, complete with historic buildings and a flower garden. It was often used for functions during the summer months: clambakes, lobster fests, and chili cook-offs. Whitney searched the sea of people for a sign of today’s event. She found the answer in the gleaming white glow of a veil caught by the seaward wind: a wedding.

Whitney looked away quickly, avoiding her own memories, and moved her eyes out to sea.

What she saw next made her forget the pain from the emotional scab that had just been picked open. The ocean seemed more distant. In its place was a very long beach where there had been no beach before. This was a port town. If you wanted a beach, she thought, you go south to Hampton or north to Ogunquit. Not to Portsmouth.

Whitney noticed the wedding party and park patrons clambering onto the docks along the river. They saw it, too. She followed the waterline up the Piscataqua River and saw that its shores had shrunk inward. The water that remained was quickly rushing out to sea.

When she looked back, all that was left of the coastline was a small river flowing out of the Piscataqua and a sliver of blue, far on the horizon. The ocean was gone. All that remained was a sandy expanse speckled with grounded boats and flickering reflections of light that Mirabelle realized were struggling fish drowning in the open air.

As the hordes of vacationers began running in droves, fleeing Strawberry Banke and flooding into the downtown streets, Whitney realized what must be happening.

Tsunami.

Remembering a lesson learned from the killer waves that had recently struck Indonesia, India, and so many other countries, people headed for high ground. Whitney watched as rooftops began to fill with people in a panic. The top level of the five-story parking garage was full in minutes, and people on the lower levels struggled to get higher, but room was running out.

Whitney tore her eyes away from the impending train wreck to wonder if there was something she should do. She couldn’t get any higher without heading up Route 16 into the mountains, but she should do something.

Whitney turned from her deck and entered the house. She walked into her bedroom, which had once been a decorative masterpiece but was now a laundry disaster area. She took the hallway stairs two at a time, moving swiftly. One by one she swept through the downstairs rooms, closing windows and locking doors. She paused at the front door and looked out at the green grass of the estate that had once belonged to her parents.

She missed them now.

A hiss of leaves drew her attention to the green maple trees bordering the yard. The wind had picked up, but was still headed out to sea.

Whitney slammed the door shut and headed for the basement. Two years ago, she had converted the basement into a base of operations for her photography work. She spent six months of every year on location in one remote part of the world or another, shooting landscapes and animals that most people avoided for fear of life and limb. It was dangerous work, but exciting and rewarding. She worked in the field, but this was her home base for expedition prep, film development, and camera maintenance. For the past year, the room had served as the staging area for her upcoming Antarctic venture. The dim basement was now stacked with food supplies. Gear for surviving the frozen wasteland filled the main room, and electronic gizmos lined the workbenches. Leaning over the GPS satellite phones, she picked up a pair of binoculars and charged back up the stairs.

As she passed through the bedroom, she noted the time: noon. It had taken her five minutes to lock up the window and doors and return to her bedroom. She burst onto the deck and squinted against the sun, which shone down directly above her. She put the binoculars to her eyes and colorful blurs filled her vision. She adjusted the focus and settled on the parking garage. Like penguins huddling from the cold, a mass of humanity crammed itself onto the top floor of the garage, some dangerously close to spilling off the edge. She lowered her view. The next two floors were also full, and everyone was moving in one direction—up.

Whitney removed the binoculars and shook her head. Looking through the field glasses again, she turned her gaze toward the ocean . . . or what used to be the ocean. It had not returned. In fact, she could no longer see any water, save the trickle of the Piscataqua, all the way out to the horizon.

She wracked her brain for an answer. A sinkhole. Something must have opened up in the ocean and sucked the water down . . . something huge. It was the only answer.

Keeping her vigil, she scanned all of Portsmouth. Word of the phenomenon must have reached every nook of the seacoast town by now. The only cars she could see were driving away from town. Even the emergency vehicles were clearing out. They weren’t fools—all the sirens, flashing lights, and ladders in the world wouldn’t stop whatever was coming. Downtown was deserted, except for the rooftops. Whitney felt the anticipation of every soul on whom she gazed . . . all waiting for something to happen.

She paced about the house unsure of what to do or think. She frantically cleaned her counters and shined her sink; ridiculous, given the situation. When she could no longer stand staring at her warped reflection in the perfectly polished sink, she looked at the clock. It had been an hour.

She looked again at the parking garage; it looked less congested. People were lowering their guard, moving down to the lower levels, some even out onto the street. Whitney wanted to shout at them to run, to leave town, but they seemed slow, almost dazed by the surreal events.

Whitney looked up, forehead furrowed. It was past one o’clock, but the sun still appeared to be directly overhead. In the past hour, the sun had not moved.

“What . . .?”

Everything changed in that instant.

The sun began moving.

The wind shifted directions, billowing southwest from the barren ocean bed.

The temperature dropped and continued to fall with every gust.

Biting her lower lip, Whitney raised the binoculars to her eyes.

She saw an illusion. It had to be. A wall of blue and white churning water surged back into view, spilling from the northeast straight for shore. As the wall grew closer, she knew it was real. A tsunami, more massive than she’d ever imagined the phenomenon to be, was headed straight for her home town.

The people atop the parking structure were the first to see it. They were also the first to realize they weren’t high enough to avoid it. Whitney shuddered as a collective wail of panic and despair rose from the city below. Tears brimmed and spilled over onto her face. They were all going to die. And she could only watch.

She’d seen death before and knew she lacked the stomach to witness what was coming. Turning away from the city of her childhood, from the home she had made, from all the places and people she loved, Whitney ran to her bedroom and closed the deck doors behind her. The distant voices were silenced. She leaned against the wall and slid down to the floor, hoping the water wouldn’t reach her as well.

The next minute was spent in silence as she waited. In her mind’s eye she saw the citizens of Portsmouth clambering over each other, trampling the weak. She knew it was human nature to step on the next guy if it meant saving one’s own life. She felt certain a number of people were already dead, long before the wave struck. A sob escaped her as she remembered Cindy’s office was downtown. The tears flowed freely now.

Then the voices returned. Grew louder.

Closer.

Whitney stood, opened the door, and stepped out onto the porch. Her timing couldn’t have been worse. A seventy-foot wave of water slid through Portsmouth and consumed it all. The people still on rooftops ceased to exist. Those on the streets were swept up and churned in the grinding waters as easily as the brick, concrete, wood, and mortar that held the city together.

The voices returned: “Open the goddamn gates!”

A small group of perhaps fifteen people had flocked to her front gate, probably neighbors who knew her home stood on the tallest peak of the hill. She cursed her father for building the eight-foot stone wall and metal gate that sealed off the estate from the rest of the world, protecting her from unknown predators.

Whitney glanced toward the downtown. The rising waters had consumed the city and were now racing toward her, pounding up the steady incline. Whitney dashed back into the bedroom, calculating how long it would take her to reach and unlock the front door, sprint the hundred feet to the gate, unlock and open it by hand, sprint back to the house with fifteen people, and shut the door behind her.

Too long.

If only she’d fixed the gate’s remote! That kind of thing hadn’t been her concern lately, and she’d let it go for six months.

A slight vibration in the floorboards at the base of the stairs reinforced the idea that she wouldn’t have time. Still, she had to try.

She reached the front door, unlocked the deadbolt, and flung it open. Vaulting down the five front stairs in one leap, Whitney hit the driveway at a sprint. She heard roaring water, breaking glass, and the horrid wrench of metal as the unseen torrent pounded relentlessly forward.

Not waiting for the gate to be opened, the fleeing group began climbing over it. To the left, a little girl struggled with the smooth metal bars. The others were leaving her behind. Whitney leapt at the gate and clung to it like a monkey. She yanked herself to the top, feeling the muscles in her arms tear. At the top, she reached over and thrust her hand out to the girl. “Take my hand!”

The little girl’s fingers intertwined with Whitney’s, and the girl was pulled steadily up. A bearded man next to the girl saw that she’d clear the gate first and took hold of Whitney’s arm to hoist himself.

“Let go!” Whitney shouted as the gate dug into her arm.

“Amber!” another man shouted with shock in his eyes. He lunged at the bearded man pushing the girl back down, and Whitney knew the girl’s rescuer was her father. Amber’s father wrapped one arm around the aggressor’s neck and pushed off the gate with his feet. The action added an unbearable amount of weight to Whitney’s arm, but both men fell to the ground. The father seemed willing to die for his child, and as the two men rolled away from the gate pummeling each other, she realized he would.

The water was upon them.

Whitney pulled with all her might, but her muscles had little strength left. The water hit her like an explosion. Whitney was flung back ten feet, her grip on Amber’s arm lost. She sat up quickly and looked to the gate. The people were gone, replaced by a churning wall of water that roared like a wounded Kodiak bear.

Whitney shouted as she pushed herself up and ran back to the house. Ten feet from the front stairs, her feet began splashing through ocean water. A surge of water hit her knees and threatened to knock her down, but she lunged up the stairs, freeing herself from the water’s grasp.

She entered the house, closed the door, slammed the deadbolt home, and careened for the stairs, hoping another ten feet would be enough to save her life. She reached the top stair in four leaps. As she stepped into the hallway, a force struck the house so hard that she was shaken from her feet. She fell forward and heard a loud crack, but it wasn’t the house; it was her head. A stab of pain shot through her skull. As she fell, she saw the wooden chest she’d struck as she’d fallen.

It was the last thing she saw. Her vision blurred and turned black.