“I hope you’re wrong,” said Samantha.
He looked over his shoulder and saw that she had started to walk toward the master bedroom. He caught up with her, and she stopped. He could hear her sniffling, trying to stifle the need to cry. He wrapped his arms around her stomach and pressed his chest into her back, kissing her ear.
“It’s going to be fine, honey. We’ll figure out a way to get down there and bring her back,” said Ed, nuzzling his forehead into the back of his wife’s neck.
“What if it’s not fine? What if Charlie’s right and the cars are dead? Shit. They’re probably flooded and useless anyway.”
“She’ll be fine. Alex’s son is a few miles away at BU. Ryan’s like a mini-Alex. They’ll find each other and survive until we can get them back. Ryan has her address, and unless I’ve read all of the signals wrong, the kid is still crazy about her. I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but he’s probably on his way to her apartment right now,” Ed whispered.
Samantha relaxed infinitesimally and nodded, which was a start.
“The water’s receding!” Charlie announced.
Everyone piled into the hallway to verify Charlie’s dubious report. Daniel pushed past them and walked down the stairs to the waterline.
“This is unreal,” he said, plucking their wooden napkin holder out of the water.
“Careful, Danny,” cautioned Ed.
The water’s retreat was barely noticeable, but Charlie was right. The water sat an inch below the ceiling line and appeared to lower another inch while they watched.
“Samantha?” Charlie called.
They all looked back at their red-faced, crew-cut neighbor.
“You don’t worry one bit about Chloe. I’ll help you get her back safe. You can count on me for that. If we have to push a shopping cart to Boston to get her, then that’s what we’ll do.”
“Thank you, Charlie. I really don’t know what to say,” said Samantha. Her eyes moistened, but she held back the tears.
“You don’t have to say anything. I consider you guys family. That’s just what we do,” he said. Ed opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Charlie interrupted. “Don’t get all feminine on me, Ed. One thank you from the family is all I can handle,” he said, slapping Ed on the shoulder.
“Thanks anyway. That means more than you know. One question, though. Why the hell would we need to push a shopping cart to Boston?”
“I don’t know. That’s what they do in all the apocalypse movies and books.”
Chapter 10
EVENT +03:42 Hours
Portland Harbor
Portland, Maine
The
Katelyn Ann
cut through the debris-clogged water off Portland’s Eastern Promenade at five knots, as Alex did his best to steer between the larger obstacles, ignoring the smaller ones. His real concern was the quality of the water. Whatever had reached the outer harbor through Portland’s main shipping channel had churned up the bottom, dragging along an incredible amount of seaweed and mud. The seaweed tended to wrap around the propeller shaft, putting an additional load on the engine. The muddy water congested the filter supplying seawater to the engine’s cooling system.
He felt a solid thump against the hull, which activated his “boat preservation” instinct. He dropped the throttle and put the engine in neutral, hoping to save the propeller if something large scraped along the boat’s hull. He glanced over the side and saw a partially submerged, overturned motorboat, roughly half the size of the
Katelyn Ann
, pass astern.
“That’s the kind of shit you need to call out!” he yelled to Kate, reengaging the propeller.
“I didn’t think you could miss that!”
“Well, I did miss it! I’m watching the gauges!”
Kate nodded, mumbling under her breath. No doubt a few caustic words, fueled by the tension of their approach to the harbor. Kate had been stationed on the bow for nearly an hour. The hour and a half transit turned into two and half hours when they decided to avoid the main shipping channel, opting to navigate the Hussey Sound between Long Island and Peak’s Island.
Studying the charts below deck, Kate had made a sobering observation about the geographic orientation of the channel. The channel ran north to south, partially obscured from direct southern exposure by a long stretch of shoreline off Cape Elizabeth and South Portland. If a second wave arrived, it would no doubt slow down when it swept along the shoreline, piling an incredible amount of energy into the relatively narrow lane. The shipping channel would become the least desirable place to be caught in a thirty-eight-foot sailboat.
They had opted to put a few of Casco Bay’s islands between their boat and the next tsunami, which cost them an extra hour of time. If the engine continued to overheat, it might cost them more than an hour. South Portland Yacht Club was a mile away, on the other side of the harbor. Alex tucked the boat as close to the Portland side as possible in case the engine died.
Raising the sails and trying to harness the wind for the rest of the trip wasn’t really an option. As usual, the winds were dead in Casco Bay at eight in the morning. If the harbor’s surface hadn’t been covered with a thick layer of brown foam and trash, the water would resemble glass, interrupted only by the wake of an early morning harbor ferry or returning lobster boat. The harbor was eerily devoid of activity as he approached Portland’s first commercial marina along the Eastern Promenade. It didn’t take him long to figure out why. The tsunami struck the steep southeastern face of the Eastern Promenade, diverting north over East End Beach and southwest into Portland, sparing stately homes along the edge of Munjoy Hill.
The mooring field off East End Beach was in complete disarray. Most of the boats had been flipped, either sinking in the shallow water or floating overturned nearby, still attached to their mooring balls. A dark blue-hulled sailboat stood defiantly at its mooring, appearing untouched by the morning’s disaster, while a similar boat lay on its side, keel exposed on the beach. Off his starboard bow, Portland Boat Service’s mooring field and docks looked the same. Devastated. None of the business’s shore structures had survived the wave, and nearly every boat littered the flat expanse of ground that previously held the Portland Boat Service’s massive storage warehouse. Everything was gone, including the century-old brick buildings that marked the beginning of the Eastern Promenade Trail.
Kate looked back at him from the bow and mouthed,
holy shit
, shaking her head. The wave had continued unopposed, sweeping through Portland’s tightly packed “Old Port” commercial district. Many of the older, historical buildings on the outskirts of the Old Port between India Street and Franklin Street had been toppled, but the visible damage stopped there. The taller, more venerable brick buildings and hotels in the same area still dominated the cityscape like nothing had happened. Alex knew differently.
Without warning, a wall of water had washed down Commercial Street and Fore Street, at an unimaginable speed, taking parked cars with it. Anything or anyone caught in the open would have been swept down the streets and dashed against the concrete structures. Fortunately, the tsunami struck at roughly six in the morning on a Monday. Dozens of people had been tragically killed going about their early morning routines, but the casualty numbers would have jumped twenty-fold if the wave had struck an hour or so later, when the Old Port was filled with thousands of employees.
Kate pointed at the water a hundred meters ahead of the boat and signaled for him to turn to port. He eased the rudder over until she gave him a thumbs-up. He never saw the obstacle she had detected.
Alex had been so focused on dodging obstacles and gawking at the Eastern Promenade that he nearly missed the most obvious damage caused by the tsunami. A massive oil tanker sat high and dry with its propellers and rudder exposed, one hundred feet west of the Maine Oil pier. Listing forty-five degrees on its starboard side, the vessel had been ripped from the concrete pier and stranded in shallow water. He recalled seeing the tanker when they passed by the pier on their way to Jewell Island yesterday morning, which gave him hope that the tanker had offloaded its payload of crude prior to grounding. His next observation rendered the thought irrelevant.
The fuel farm normally visible just beyond the pier, which consisted of several white crude oil storage tanks, had disappeared—swept into Portland Harbor by the force of the tsunami. Their yacht club sat less than two thousand feet away along the same South Portland waterfront, the distance casting serious doubt on his ability to approach their mooring. Each tanker pulling into the pier discharged hundreds of thousands of barrels destined for oil refineries at the end of the pipeline in Canada. If the tanker had already offloaded its payload into the nearby tank farm, a thick layer of crude oil would blanket Portland’s inner harbor.
Kate pointed toward the grounded tanker and shook her head. He simply nodded. There wasn’t much to say. Portland Harbor was ruined. Every nook and cranny would reek of crude oil for years to come. Given the deeper disaster scenario unfolding, he couldn’t imagine the harbormaster or Coast Guard engaging in efforts to contain the spill to the harbor. All of Casco Bay would be contaminated in short order.
He reduced the throttle as they approached the most congested part of the inner harbor and did his best to avoid larger objects that could foul the boat’s propeller. An incredible amount of debris had been swept into the water from Portland’s commercial district, mostly wood from flattened buildings and plastic patio furniture from dozens of waterfront bars and restaurants. The marinas on the Portland side had fared decently well, spared a direct hit by several major commercial and industrial piers staged along the waterfront.
Most of the boats within the marinas had been ripped from their pier lines, left floating within the protected wooden coves, jammed against each other in one place. Dozens of pleasure boats had broken free from their wooden corrals, set adrift in the calm harbor. Alex passed an exquisitely maintained picnic boat with a deep green hull and considered towing it back to SPYC. If he could start the boat, they could put the
Katelyn Ann
on their mooring, reserving it for future use, and utilize the picnic boat to go ashore. The plan was too complicated, so he continued to motor past the derelict craft.
The next time Kate turned her head to confirm that he received her hand signal, he yelled out to her, “Can you tell if we’re cruising through oil!”
The surface of the water was thick with mud, silt and foam, making it difficult for him to determine if they were pushing through petroleum. The engine temperature had spiked into the red zone over the past few minutes. Lowering the throttle hadn’t lowered the temperature. Kate lowered herself to the deck and pushed half of her body through the bow rail, examining the boat’s waterline along the bow. She sat back on the deck, facing him, and nodded.
“We have a thick layer of oil running down the side of the boat!” she replied.
Shit
.
Now he wasn’t sure what to do. Reduce speed further to delay the inevitable? Speed up and get there faster? Pull right into Portland and deal with the walk across the bridge? Was the bridge even safe? He envisioned the engine’s cooling system circulating oil at this point. How much longer would the engine run?
He decided to go for the club or Coast Guard station. He didn’t want to deal with the mess in Portland and the trek to find a passable bridge. The Casco Bay Bridge looked intact, but looks could be deceiving. Bridges further down the harbor would be better options, but would put them miles off track and drag them through some heavily congested industrial and residential areas. If there was one thing Alex knew from previous experiences, it was best to avoid crowded areas in a crisis or disaster—and this qualified as both.
“I’m taking us in! Look for a pier on the other side!” he said.
As soon as she nodded, he turned the wheel, pointing the boat at a tangle of wooden piers and pilings across the harbor. Reluctantly, he increased the throttle, accelerating the boat toward its final destination.
“Kids, I need you topside to help. We might only get one chance at bringing the boat alongside,” said Alex.
Emily tumbled into the cockpit first, her auburn hair pulled back tightly by a black scrunchie.
“Do you have makeup on?” he asked.
“Yeah. Why? It’s not like I didn’t have the time,” she said, looking at him like he was an idiot.
He couldn’t really argue with her logic, though in the context of their situation, he could have said,
Are you out of your friggin mind?
and satisfied most adults with his response. He let it go, marveling as the “center of the universe” stepped onto the deck and walked carefully toward the bow. He couldn’t wait to see Kate’s reaction. The two of them had been battling each other like gladiators for the past year. Ethan stepped through the hatchway with his backpack firmly strapped to his back, distracting him from the potential melee between Kate and Emily.
“Ethan, you don’t want to have that on your back for this. You might have to jump James Bond style from the boat to the pier,” said Alex.
Ethan removed the pack from his thin frame, placing it on the starboard cockpit bench. He adjusted his hunter green ball cap, tucking his hair under the brim, and surveyed the harbor.
“Where do you need me, Uncle Alex? Stern line?” he asked, noting Kate and Emily on the bow.
“Exactly. Why don’t you take down the lifelines on both sides and get ready to make the jump when we pull up. I’m taking us wherever we can get alongside a solid-looking pier. Could be either side.” Alex peered through the chaotic mooring field ahead. “And make sure to run the lines outside of the stanchions and rails.”
“Like this?” asked Ethan.
Alex risked a quick glance and saw that Ethan had run the lines over and along the rails, placing them in a neat coil at the opening on each side. All Ethan would have to do was grab one of the coils, depending on which side Alex would expose to the pier, and jump onto the dock, pulling the stern in for a quick tie off.