Authors: Everett Peacock
Large
amounts of glass could be heard shattering, but when she looked back
to the house, the windows were still there. They were flexing quite
a bit, bending the increasing light from the sky as the clouds were
breaking up. More shattering and then she figured out it was Larry's
wine cellar built into the lava tube in the yard.
“
Thank
god I got his Haut Bailly out of there.”
~~~
Larry
was circling higher and higher just in case he needed to make a run
for Hilo, some twenty five miles away. His iPod was his only
companion now that the walkie talkie was quiet.
8000
feet was plenty high enough, especially since it was getting
downright cold. 41 degrees was beyond his comfort level, even with
down flight gear on. He had checked in with Air Traffic Control,
just to let them know where he was, in case some VFR student pilot in
a rented Cessna decided to come barreling over his way. At least
they would tell him, and the intruder, that there was traffic in the
area.
The
Brad Paisley song playing never seemed to have that much bass in it.
Larry reached into his jacket to see if something was wrong with the
iPod. He turned it off, back on, and then noticed something very
strange. He turned it off again. The low bass rumbling was still
there, and getting progressively stronger.
“
What
the...”
Looking
down into the thinning soup of clouds far below he saw the entire
layer of moisture vibrate back and forth quickly. Several times.
Loud booms were flying up at him. The clouds were vibrating about as
fast as an open beer would on his paraglider seat if the engine was
running. That had been a mistake during that garage tune up. The
beer had spilled.
As
his turn took him toward Mauna Loa, he heard loud cracking and
watched as a massive slab of snow avalanched down the brown lava
slopes. It quickly split into a thousand fingers, spreading out
twice as wide as it had been before slowly coming to a stop.
“
Holy
shit!”
Larry
almost fumbled with the walkie talkie to the point of dropping it.
His hands were shaking as he pushed the talk button.
“
Shirley,
Jack, what the hell is going on down there?” He completely
forgot “over.”
He
waited twenty seconds and asked again, this time with quite a bit
more worry in his voice.
“
Shirley,
Shirley, can you hear me?” He looked down at the hand held to
make sure it was tuned to the correct frequency and had the power
light glowing. It was and did.
“
Jack!
Come in. Jack! Can you hear me? Over!”
Nothing
but static for a full minute, and then as he descended, “Larry,
Jack. Over.”
Larry
wanted nothing more than to get down to a few hundred feet above
ground level to see what was happening. He hadn't figured it out
until he played it back in his mind. The snow mass shaking loose.
“
Earthquake,”
he said out loud to him and his audience of zero. “Big damn
earthquake,” he whispered quietly, in awe.
“
Jack,
was that an earthquake?”
“
Oh,
yeah. Big. We've got damage here at HVO. Windows out, and it looks
like some roof damage as well.” Jack was already outside,
having fallen right out of the floor to ceiling window next to
Alice's desk.
“
How
big, Jack, how big?” Larry asked, knowing what to expect at
certain magnitudes.
As
Jack tried to make his way inside the building, through tons of
broken glass and shattered dry wall pieces, another big rumbler
approached from the south. He could hear it coming about a second
and a half before it hit them.
Something
was moving inside the earth, something big. Jack held on until it
passed and then quickly made his way over to the seismographs. The
electricity was out, but the generators had fired up. That had to be
some good luck.
The
seismographs all sat on relatively earthquake proof independent
columns of special material designed to keep them from moving
relative to whatever building housed them. Their sensors were not in
the column but outside the building. Naturally none of the
scientists wanted false readings in what was probably their most
effective measuring tool.
“
Alice!”
Jack yelled as he saw her on the floor next to the seismograph. Her
arms were bloodied. “Alice, are you alright?” Obviously
not, he thought. He pulled out his cell phone, attempting to dial
911 for the first time ever. As he held it up to his ear, he gently
tried to rouse Alice, pushing her a little. He felt her head out of
habit, as if she might have a fever.
Nothing
was happening on his phone. Looking at it for some clue, he noticed
that he had zero bars. “Damn, the towers are down.”
Alice
was moaning a little, coming out of her stupor. Jack instinctively
began to move his mental train elsewhere as he saw that Alice was
only lightly scratched. He stood up and went back to the
seismographs.
They
were still working and still recording hundreds of aftershocks,
including the big one just a moment ago.
“
Wow,
Alice. That aftershock was a 6.1!” Jack was astonished. That
was huge by any measure for an aftershock. He looked back at the
paper record, to see if he could find the main quake.
Alice
was standing next to him now, trying to wipe off the blood on her
arms with her sweater. Her cuts were apparently from the same window
Jack had fallen through.
“
Where
is it?” she asked Jack. “Where's the damn main?”
Both
of them stopped just as it came off the role. Jack whistled for
dramatic effect, even if it wasn't needed. “7.4 Alice. Not a
bad prediction at all.” Jack patted her lightly on her good
shoulder. “Good job.”
Another
smaller aftershock rolled on underneath them, coming from the north
and exiting out to the east.
“
Jack,”
Alice wondered out loud. “Where is all this magma headed?”
As
if in answer the large lava pit at Halema'uma'u sounded as if it
would do something dramatic any moment. It was rapidly filling with
lava, being fed well from the now very active ancient lava tubes.
Booms and cracking could be heard from a mile away.
Alice
was back at her desk trying to get her computer back online but with
little luck.
“
I
need a picture, I need some observers right now. Halema'uma'u,
Kilueaua and the sea entry. All this lava is going to come out
somewhere.”
“
Larry.
You still here?” Jack asked, turning back to his walkie
talkie. “Over.”
“
Yes.
Look I can't get a hold of Shirley, can you call her on the phone?
Over.”
“
Larry,
our lines are down, we're on backup power. Look, how much fuel did
you say you had?” Jack turned to Alice and moved his index
finger against his thumb in the time honored symbol of “more
money”. Alice nodded her head yes.
“
Got
an hour, maybe 1.2. Over.”
Jack
looked at Alice and smiled. “Great, can you go observe
Halema'uma'u and the ocean entry? I don't know if we can launch any
helicopters at this point. Got a feeling things are messed up
everywhere.”
“
Love
to you all of course, but not until I can find Shirley.” Larry
had his priorities straight.
“
Hold
on, cowboy!” It was Shirley.
“
Hey
honey! Are you OK?” Larry yelled above the noise.
“
Good
to go, but I've got some bad news and some good news Larry. Over.”
Shirley
was happy she had her two tiny dogs with her in the car and that it
was relatively full of supplies.
“
Go
ahead, the bad, baby. Over.”
“
Well,
your wine cellar collapsed, all the bottles seem to have shattered.
Jack
could be heard whistling a low salute to the now dead darkened
bottles he had once hoped to have enjoyed.
“
And,
the good?” Larry's voice had quite a bit of hope in it. Maybe
the lava tube had collapsed and in its place a hole full of gold bars
had been discovered.
“
I
got ten bottles in the car before it happened. Over.”
~~~
Adam
was on his cell phone while Agatha stood in line at the Honolulu
counter for Hawaiian Airlines. All flights to Hilo and Kona were
postponing and canceling. The TV monitors in the bars of the gate
areas were all talking about the massive earthquake that had just
rattled the entire state. The power was out in many places, even on
Oahu. The airport emergency power was up, so Starbucks were doing a
brisk business.
Finally
Agatha walked away shaking her head.
“
What
are they saying?” Adam asked, putting his cell phone away as
another call failed to connect.
“
Nothing
much,” she said, holding back tears. “They don't know
much more than us.” She looked up at Adam. “The
airports there are closed, that much they do know.”
“
What
a mess,” Adam swore under his breath. Their luggage was
trapped as well, leaving them with their meager carry on supplies.
“
I'm
going to use a landline, honey,” Adam said, putting his
worthless cell phone into his pocket and walking over to stand in
line at the eight payphones against the wall. “I've got some
favors I could call in with some boys at Hickam. Maybe we can weasel
a military hop down there.”
Agatha
smiled weakly, turned and walked over to the huge picture windows
facing the ramp area and the distant Waianae mountains. She watched
the gentle trade clouds, small and fluffy, move lazily across the
deep blue of the tropical sky. Her heart reached out, looking for
any sign of her son. Closing her eyes she began to listen as only a
mother can do for her own children.
Several
little songs she had often sung to him long ago came to her mind.
She let them play gently in her mind as she continued her search,
looking for any sign, any signal of her boy. She had always touched
him this way when he was at war, in Afghanistan.