The Great Big One Read online

  Hard to breathe now, watching Leo and Charity walk toward the chair.

  Leo had likely diagrammed the route with tactical discipline. Timing his stride and shoulder position with the precision of a fox-walker. He angled his body and Charity sat in the blue chair. Room for one more. The space beside her pulled like the whooshing force of an airplane window blown out at 30,000 feet. Lights flickering. Passengers screaming.

  Griff’s blood jumped and—

  Leo pivoted and sprang into the blue chair like a ruthless cuddle cheetah. Charity, not a vole, could throw an elbow, one “no” was all she needed—but what was this?

  Mmmmmm.

  Air conditioner kicking on? Ice machine?

  Purring? She relaxed into him. Smiled. Leo smiled back.

  After all those corrections? After the binder and the song about a dry river? Goddamn then, let the earth shake. Let the ocean rear up and knock it down to nothing. Drop the bombs. Roll the credits.

  World, do your worst.

  SEVEN

  AS WOULD LATER BE RECORDED IN TOWN RECORDS:

  Clade City’s evacuation siren went off at 2:27 AM.

  The sound came pulsing through the mists of sleep and soft sheets of coastal drizzle. Griff bolted up.

  BADADADABADeeeeeeeEEEEEEEE

  Leo fumbled for his phone.

  “Not a mistake,” Leo said.

  In the house, a banging door. Slamming cupboards.

  A light pulsed in the hallway. The cadence of his father’s voice through drywall. Griff fumbled on the bedside table. Flipped on the radio. The prerecorded message:

  THIS IS NOT A DRILL. PLEASE EVACUATE TO HIGHER GROUND—

  “Shit,” Leo said.

  For a moment, Leo looked ten years old.

  “Ready?” their father filled their doorway. Already dressed somehow. Black pants. Tactical vest. As if he’d slid down a Batman fire pole directly into his disaster gear.

  “Remember the drills,” their dad said. “You’re doing great.”

  “Tsunami?” Griff asked.

  Their father listened to another rotation of the siren.

  BADADADABADeeeeeeeEEEEEEEE

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes. See you outside.”

  Griff stood. He flexed toes into carpet, trying to anchor himself. Trainings, mixed up. Neat kits of knowledge dumped in the same toy box. Tsunami vs. nuclear bomb vs. home intruder and acronyms went soupy in his head, grabbing his EDC (Every Day Carry), his BOB (Bug Out Bag), and his INCH (I’m Never Coming Home) sack from their dedicated spaces in the closet. The boys laced their boots tight. Looked around the room.

  The last time they’d see it.

  “TOE Box,” Griff said. He put a hand on it. Leo put a hand on Griff’s hand. Griff flinched. Leo hadn’t done that in years.

  “Goodbye,” Leo said. He nodded. It was time.

  In the hallway, the French doors to the piano room were open. Their beautiful Knabe.

  Gone.

  “Remember your doors!” their father shouted.

  Doors. They each had to knock at three homes, part of the plan. Their mother stood dazed in the kitchen as if beamed down from a distant planet. Gold hair frizzed in the overhead light. She looked at the doorway to her studio, where she made sculptures, jewelry, custom greeting cards.

  “Mom,” Griff said. “Can we help you with some stuff?”

  “It’s all ocean things,” she said.

  Two minutes had passed. The water was coming.

  Time crawled in a nightmare way, carpet turning to marshmallow, air thickening, and they could not seem to get to the garage, to get outside, to finally get to the truck, which was running, facing forward down the driveway. Their father ran south.

  “You’re that way?” Leo asked, pointing north.

  “Yeah, bro.”

  They split, and Griff’s assignments were already moving. One couple, one family, one single woman, all with lights on. Garage doors flung up. The siren was working. Maybe they’d saved some lives.

  Their father stood in the driveway calling for Leo.

  “Leo! C’mon! Leo!”

  In the passenger window, Griff’s mother stared ahead. She exhaled, breath trembling through her chest. When would the shaking start?

  “Leo!” Griff shouted.

  Now?

  Leo tore around the corner, piled into the truck.

  “Cranzlers were dead asleep,” he said. “They flopped around like they were getting ready for a garage sale or some shit.”

  Griff laughed.

  “I’m serious. They were like ‘We’d better pack up, baby.’”

  “Here we go,” their dad said.

  They pulled out. Raced to the corner. The truck lurched to a stop. Anticipation stretched like a wire coiling around his chest.

  “Do we really have to stop, Dad?” Leo asked. “We’re at four-forty.”

  “Keep your belts tight,” he said.

  When the shaking started, the town’s whole infrastructure would spring like an ambush. Power lines would snap and spit sparks. Roads, cratered to pits. Treefalls. Mudslides. Their whole neighborhood was awake and moving, outside on driveways like a spontaneous late-night block party they’d never had.

  Never would.

  And Charity. Was she awake? He texted her without thinking.

  NOT A DRILL. BE SAFE.

  They passed the first TSUNAMI EVACUATION sign.

  His father clutched the wheel with both hands, heading toward town, Emergency Route #4. The radio tower looked precarious in the dark sky. A glass piñata. Downtown Clade City hung out like an empty pocket. Doors open, lights on. The soft din of shouts and a small swarm outside the Drift Inn. They passed Shoreline Gifts.

  Their mother watched her shop pass, lips pulled tight as a stitch.

  The truck swallowed more blacktop. Leaving it all behind.

  “Seven minutes,” Leo said. “Wow.”

  Thomas would be proud. The system had worked. Griff texted Thomas:

  YOU OKAY?

  His dad turned on K-NOW. Dead air.

  “Strange,” he said.

  Two more evacuation signs flashed in the headlights, then they were deep into the night, NOW EXITING TSUNAMI EVACUATION ZONE. High enough to avoid water, still in critical danger of mudslides, towering trees, boulders balanced on fragile slopes—

  “Why is Dad pulling over?” Griff asked Leo.

  A narrow gravel shoulder just before the road split.

  “Just quick,” their father said, eyes eager, “I want to show you where we’re going.”

  Leo and Griff exchanged a look.

  Their father had his explorer shine—the firm-set jaw and eager eyes of the man who had taught them to surf, led them through bushwhacking adventures in Alaska, brought them safely to the lighthouse. He pulled a pamphlet from the glove box with the flourish of a bouquet.

  “Kissimmee!” he said, grinning. Leaning toward her.

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry. We’ve got a place,” he said. He unfolded the pamphlet for their mother. Griff and Leo crowded up to see. A galley kitchen. Balcony. Communal pool.

  “What’s this?”

  “Plan B,” he said.

  “What? Where?” their mother asked.

  “Kissimmee!” he said again. Griff suddenly feared their family’s future had been written primarily for a romantic punchline in his dad’s private evacuation fantasy. Knowing his father, it was possible. His mother sighed and lifted her phone.

  “Dad,” Leo said, “can you drive?”

  “KISSIMMEE,” his father’s phone boomed. “LET’S GO!”

  Only his phone was enthusiastic about Florida.

  “Kissimmee is landlocked,” their mother said.

  “Well, maybe that’s better,” their dad said. “All things considered.”

  “My business is coastal treasures,” she said.

  He sighed. “Shoreline Gifts? C’mon, Angie.”

  A bad c’mon. Mean. No one was going
to Kissi-him.

  “Dad,” Leo said.

  A snapping sound. The brothers jolted. Their mom, grabbing the door handle.

  “Let me out,” she said.

  “Baby.”

  “Want to be open and honest? Let’s be open and honest.”

  She got out of the car. Rummaged in her bag. Lipstick? The tip glowed blue. A pipe. She walked to the edge of the headlights, exhaling smoke.

  “Mom smokes pot!” Griff said.

  Leo laughed. “Holy shit.”

  “Language,” their dad said. “Stop!”

  “Stop what?” Griff asked.

  “Stop watching her!”

  Griff’s phone buzzed. He pulled it from his pocket. Up front, their father’s phone made a soft ding. All their faces illuminated by a new green glow.

  “Oh,” their dad said. He tapped his phone like a broken speaker.

  FALSE ALARM. PLEASE RETURN HOME.

  “Oh no,” Griff said.

  “We are so dead,” Leo said.

  He meant, the town would kill them.

  Maybe they could keep driving. Make a clean break for Florida.

  Their father wasn’t speaking. He poked his phone, as if trying to wake it up.

  Griff remembered once, years ago, their parents had pulled the car over like this to dance on the shoulder of the road. Now their mother stood outside, alone in the hot lamplight of the truck. She didn’t know yet that it was fake. A plume of smoke escaped her lips and gave him a strange, dislocated feeling. Like whether the tsunami came or not, the life they’d left behind was gone.

  EIGHT

  CLADE CITY DID THE FALSE ALARM WALK OF SHAME.

  It had happened before. Not like they were the first idiots in the world. Hawaii, for North Korean nukes that never came. Huntington Beach, for an imaginary tsunami.

  Traffic was a mess. Middle of the night, no one knowing where to go. Blown stop signs, horns. About 4 AM, the news finally settled into the town’s bones. The Tripp family reentered their neighborhood as part of the slow, sad parade.

  No thanks be to God. No grateful twirling of domestic partners, kissing of lawns.

  It was a funeral procession.

  Everyone returned to what they’d left behind.

  His own house looked smaller. Frowned at them from the lawn. Going in felt like trespassing. Like being a ghost. Open cupboards stared back with forsaken dry goods, quietly accusatory. In their bedroom, the TOE Box huddled like a sad pet. When was the last time he’d gone through the files, or showed it any attention? He put a hand on the box, like patting a shoulder.

  He remembered the sweetness of Leo’s hand on his.

  He wondered how many decisions had been made in thirty minutes of desperate confusion. How many hands touched? How many Floridas disclosed? He lay in bed and shut his eyes, just on the brink of dawn. Trying to untangle his own knots.

  When he’d thought it was all over for Clade City, he’d felt—how?

  Scared. Regretful, maybe. For not having lived a better life. Something else. Deeper, buried, pulsing magma-hot.

  A thrill.

  The end of this place, this life. Hunger for the whole big world.

  Leo was afraid of what the town would do to them. They wouldn’t have to worry about the people who wanted to stay. The trouble would be the ones who didn’t want to come back.

  NINE

  LATER THAT MORNING, THE FAMILY BREAKFAST EXPERIENCE sloped into an uncanny valley between Life As They Knew It and Something New and Strange. They sat together at the kitchen table. Eggs and toast. Half their mother’s office was unboxed in the living room—shell necklaces, silk screens, stamps, drawers of loose agates. Dry goods from the basement cluttered the counter: hard white wheat, survival stew.

  Leo asked: “Do we really have to go to school?”

  No one had slept much. But the bizarre ritual continued. Griff looked carefully at his mother and father, his surroundings. Everything felt a few inches off.

  “Want some juice?” their mother asked their father.

  “Sure,” he said. She poured him a bright, brimming glass. All the way to the uncomfortable tip-top.

  “Florida quality,” she said.

  “Does it have cannabis in it?” he asked.

  Their father drove them to school.

  “It’s already started,” Leo said.

  Leo looked at his phone. Griff had turned his off. Memes. Texts. Angry videos, circulating. The hallways would not be gentle.

  “Good luck out there,” their father said. He meant it.

  They climbed out and Leo walked ahead. Good combat technique. Spread out. Minimize casualties.

  Walking, Griff felt as if he had a giant, unsteady stone balanced across his shoulders. He just had to make it to tonight. His radio show, still on. He’d been working on his playlist for weeks. Charity would be listening. Near the front doors, someone kicked the back of his right foot into his left leg—Tripp twin!

  He breathed and let the boys pass. Weight on his shoulders. He didn’t drop it.

  You’ve done this before, he told himself. Tonight, you’ve got a show. Charity, listening.

  Just make it through the day.

  When Thomas and Griff arrived at the station, the Thunderbolt hung still and quiet at the top of K-NOW tower. Clouds, the bruised shade of dusk. Griff eyed the siren as if it might pounce.

  They climbed steel rungs to the small catwalk and the narrow green door.

  The sea breeze slashed through the control room, ruffling pamphlets on the wire rack. Triple-thick windows stretched from waist height to ceiling, giving a crow’s-nest view of the wild Pacific, the lighthouse, the desolate streets of the Ruins. On the walls bumper stickers, patches, flyers:

  DON’T TURN YOUR BACK ON THE OCEAN!

  SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING!

  THE DAY AFTER THE DISASTER IS TOO LATE!

  Scruggs was alone in the studio. He looked unsettled.

  “Glad it’s you boys. When y’all pulled up I almost dropped my Pop-Tarts.”

  “Why?” Griff said. “What’s going on?”

  Scruggs looked down at the parking lot.

  “A number of our fellow villagers have given me the privilege of their opinion on our alert system.” He went quiet. “Just curious, Thomas. Have you—”

  “Looking into it,” Thomas said.

  EARS might have triggered the false response, or maybe a software bug. Thomas looked like an essential space behind his eyes had been hollowed out. Like the seventh-grade talent show, when he’d failed to pull the rabbit out of the hat. He’d stayed home the rest of the week.

  “Well,” Scruggs said. “You’re all familiar with the control tower.”

  He led them to the desk, three computer monitors. Quartered screens. Scrolling information on weather patterns, alerts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, EARS data.

  “Just keep your eyes open,” he said. “With our luck the damn thing hits tonight.”

  Crossing the room, Scruggs went to the studio equipment.

  “Now I’m going to tell you everything I know about running a radio program,” he said. “Should take about two minutes.”

  Something exploded into the window.

  A crashing, percussive pop that sent Scruggs lurching to the right. Thomas covered his neck and Griff flattened to the floor. On the east-facing window, something rubbery clung.

  Again—POW!

  “What the hell!” Thomas shouted.

  Scruggs crawled toward the opposite side of the room, toward the gun safe.

  “Call 911,” Scruggs said.

  Muffled shouts outside. They saw the next one coming. The slow, loping arc of a blue bauble—POP!—a water balloon. Scruggs moved with surprising dexterity, flung open the door.

  “Knock it off!” he screamed.

  “Fuck you!” the person screamed back, giving a middle finger. They wore a black ski mask. Climbed into the cab of a white truck.

  The truck p
ulled away. Duct tape over their license plate.

  “Davis, you fool,” Scruggs said. “Everyone knows that truck.”

  Griff peeled a puckered balloon remnant from the window.

  “Our balloons,” Griff said.

  DON’T TURN YOUR BACK ON THE OCEAN

  “That’s a nice touch,” Scruggs said.

  Scruggs locked the door. He taught them how to cue up public service announcements, set and execute a playlist, proper microphone distance, the hazard of popping Ps, monitor levels, phone calls.

  “Do people call?” Thomas asked.

  “Most of the time this tower just howls like a ghost,” Scruggs said. “But people are listening. You’ll just never know who.”

  “I feel ready,” Thomas said.

  Seeing the microphones, Griff felt a sudden prickling on his back. Tongue drying up.

  “I appreciate you boys taking over,” Scruggs said. “I’ve been working too many late nights. My little kitties were about to lose it.”

  “Scruggs,” Thomas said, “how many cats do you have?”

  “Don’t ask a lonely person how many cats they have,” Scruggs said. “That’s like asking a lady her age.”

  Scruggs gathered up his rucksack and floppy, wide-brimmed hat, his jacket, and what looked to be a half-eaten can of emergency survival stew. Scruggs must’ve cracked it the moment the siren blew.

  “Oh,” Scruggs said. “Two things. One: Remember the police reports.”

  Officer Dunbar’s prerecorded reports. On-air, he always pronounced it pleece reports. Like, rhymes with fleece reports.

  “Two: Stick to the playlist,” Scruggs said.

  “Sir yes sir,” Thomas said, giving him a stiff salute.

  “Be safe.” Scruggs left the tower. Outside, his truck started. Taillights vanished around the corner.

  Alone, radio controls glimmered like the handles and levers of a rocket ship. Who might be out there, waiting for the perfect song?

  “What was that about a playlist?” Griff asked.

  “Oh,” Thomas said. “Just the songs we’re allowed to play.”

  Thomas unsnapped the teeth of a white three-ring binder, peeled off a laminated sheet of paper. About a hundred songs.

  “You’re kidding, right?”