When the small-boat harbor came into view again, Valerie slowed her pace to look for Angie and Jeremy, but they had gone. Where, she had no idea, and she couldn’t help but worry about what they were up to. Nevertheless, she continued walking and stepped onto the causeway, telling herself that it wasn’t her problem to solve. Jeremy and Angie were adults. She had Cameron to care for now, and all she wanted was to leave the clatter and commotion of the busy Valdez waterfront and take him home to the peaceful serenity of Wilderness Lodge.
She had just begun to dream about the rocking chair in front of the fire when a flock of seabirds swarmed into town from the cannery. They darted wildly in all directions over her head. Then a dog began to bark a few blocks away, and another galloped past her at full speed in the direction of the mountains. Valerie looked up at the sky. Was a storm rolling in?
Suddenly the ground began to shake. It shuddered like a jackhammer and shook every bone in her body. A thunderous roar from deep inside the earth drowned out the commotion on the docks behind her. As she clung to the handle of the baby carriage, her insides flared with alarm.
The shaking intensified, and the ground beneath her rolled a full foot in one direction, then two feet in another. Valerie could barely keep her balance.
“It’s the Russians! We’re being bombed!” a woman shouted from the sidewalk. She staggered into the center of the street while parked cars bounced up and down, rolled, and crashed into one another.
The boys who had caught the oranges on the dock dashed past Valerie and shouted, “It’s an earthquake! Run!”
They were heading inland, away from the waterfront, so she followed as fast as she could, pushing Cameron in the unwieldy carriage over bumpy slabs of ice while the earth rolled like giant waves in theocean. The swells made their way up the street, lifting houses and cars on rising crests, then dropping them into the troughs.
One of the boys stopped and looked back at the dock, his eyes wide with terror. Valerie stopped and turned as well.
TheChenawas bobbing up and down like a plastic toy, its shrill horn blaring. The warehouses on the dock creaked and groaned. Within seconds, they began to break apart. Roofs caved in, and the buildings crumpled. Before Valerie could comprehend what was happening, the entire dock gave way and collapsed into the sea, taking everything with it—cars, trucks, buildings, and people. All of it sank into the bay and disappeared before Valerie’s horror-struck eyes.
She knew she had to run but struggled to keep her footing as the road slanted to one side. Glass exploded out of twisting, contorting buildings, and telephone poles swayed back and forth like windshield wipers. Utility lines snapped and whipped across the pavement. The earth heaved and bellowed. Cameron began to cry.
A huge crack opened in the road in front of Valerie, and dirty black water jetted out like a fire hose. She pulled Cameron back, but the fissure closed as quickly as it had opened. She didn’t know whether to go forward or back, but when she turned to look at the waterfront, theChena’s stern was rising on a huge wave until the ship was nearly vertical. She blinked with fright, paralyzed by the sight of the large brass propeller spinning slowly in the air. She stood a few seconds, dazed, until the 440-foot cargo ship came crashing down thunderously on whatever was left of the dock and the people flailing about among the wreckage in the churning waters. She had never seen anything like it, and she choked back a cry of despair.
TheChena, now adrift and out of control, was moving on its side at a terrifying speed toward shore, plowing through small boats and debris. It generated an enormous wave that began to rush into town. Valerie stood paralyzed, staring as it surged up Alaska Avenue.
Desperate to outrun it, she gripped the handle of the carriage and pushed with all her might, sprinting hard. The ground was still rolling, and the tidal wave roared like a beast on her heels. Her mind screamed with a frantic need to save herself and Cameron.
She ran past a building just as its concrete facade collapsed into rubble and sent a cloud of masonry dust into the air.
The dark wave was still racing into town, gaining on her. Pure survival instinct took over as she pushed Cameron farther inland.
Another deep fissure opened in front of her. The front wheels of the carriage plunged into it. Valerie tugged and wrenched at the handle, but the vehicle was stuck. She scrambled in a mad panic to rescue Cameron from the trapped carriage, to take him into her arms and keep running, but frothy, ice-cold water slammed into her and knocked her off her feet.
No!The wave sucked her under, tossed her up to the surface, and sucked her down again.
Cameron!
Something struck her in the head, and she went numb, her body weak and immobile in a black, silent void. There were no more thoughts or fears. Only darkness. Nothingness.
Then the nightmare resumed. Valerie was engulfed in cold. She broke the surface of the foaming water and gasped for air. She was thrown against a car wedged vertically in a deep crevasse. In that instant, the wave slowed and began to retreat toward the bay, but it had carried Valerie two full blocks into town.
Dizzy and disoriented, wet, and shivering, she found her footing and chased after the outgoing wave, sprinting toward the fissure where Cameron was trapped, still buckled into the carriage, she prayed. She ran faster than she’d ever run in her life, but when she reached the crevasse, the world turned white as her hyperfocused gaze darted left and right, searching. The carriage was gone.
She took off again, chasing the wave that had retreated into the bay and taken theChenaback out.
“Cameron!”
The docks and everything upon them had been sucked into the sea. But all she cared about in that moment was Cameron. Her frantic eyes searched everywhere. The earth was still shaking, but she was barely aware of it. Then another deep fissure opened directly beneath her, and before she realized what was happening, she dropped straight into it.
PART I
THE CALM
CHAPTER 1
Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia
May 2017
It was blissfully quiet in the pink, hazy dawn. Not a single breath of wind disrupted the stillness. The only sound that morning was the steady tapping of Gwen’s running shoes on the asphalt.
