The swell caught Ethan by surprise and instinctively he flattened against his surfboard, his abdomen muscles tightening. The bulge of water passed under him, pushing him towards shore and subsequently tugging him back out to the depths. He saw the next wave suddenly breaking just behind him, and he dived to the side, abandoning his surfboard. In the water, he felt a ripple of movement, as if the earth itself shifted in an attempt to throw off the layer of water imposed upon it. He stayed under, allowing the wave to break on the surface, and conserving the oxygen in his lungs by floating, fetus-like, rather than waste his energy kicking against the churning sea. Sediment rose from the ocean bottom six feet below him. Wisps of dirt clouded before him, stirred by an unseen force, shaken from rest, as if a dust-covered beast had awoken in foul mood, a demon intent on freeing itself from under a cover of the heavy blue ocean.
He looked towards the surface of the water and stroked with his arms, paddling through his submersion to break through to the air. He came up with a splash, exhaled, and saw another wave ready to break on top of him. He took a quick breath and dove back under, curling himself into a ball. The wave broke, churning the water and sending Ethan tumbling in his suspended crouch. Bubbles swirled past him, mixing the darkness of the bottom with the whiteness of their surfaces. He remained motionless–to decide on a direction to swim now would be fruitless, he had no idea which way the surface might be. Time, so endless on the surface, with neither past nor present, held a different meaning under water, where it was measured only by the amount of air left to breathe. The water pounded as if it were drawn tight like the surface of a drum sounding from impact with the hand of God. Ethan’s lungs began to burn lightly, his body reminding him that his love of the ocean had physical constraints, practical limits to which he, nor anyone, could exceed. He began to float towards the surface, and, sensing this movement, kicked hard to speed his ascent. With another kick, he broke the surface, exhaled hard, and took another breath.
He looked offshore and saw the waves stacking up, grouped in bunches. Ethan estimated that the next wave would break on him in another two breaths. He looked towards the beach and saw the breakwater foaming with sandy water, the churn from the high breaks mixing sediment with the salt water. Where the group of half-dozen waving palm trees previously stood, only two remained standing, and these two trees swung like upside down pendulums struck by an angry child. He brought up his foot and grabbed his leg leash to reel in his board. It bucked on the surface somewhere behind him, tethered to its owner. Climbing onto it, he pointed it out to sea, faced the breaking wave, took a breath, and dived under it. He stroked with his arms, and came to the surface again, breathing hard. The next wave would arrive in three breaths. He prepared to duck again. The next wave looked bigger than the last. He knew he either needed to swim past their break or head back to shore. He took a breath and swam into the blue, heading straight at the next wave.
* * *
June heard a shattering sound–one of the display case doors slammed against the display frame and swung open again. The four foot benchtop display case in front of her, the display case she was supporting herself with, suddenly hung partially suspended in air, its base shifted sideways by half a foot.
For June, time began moving in slow motion. She saw herself leaning forward, but against a glass case which rested on foundation no longer there. For an instant this peculiar situation seemed only temporary. The thick glass of the case held for a moment, pausing, as if deciding whether to obey gravity. But the foundation did not return to its former place, and the display case began to slide away from her, until its balance had been compromised. It tipped, and June followed it, leaning over the now glassless counter and unable to straighten herself. The edge of the case hit the ground and the glass plates held their place momentarily, then, unable to fold, cracked in half, sounding as if a four-way automobile accident had occured.
A second shock sent the ground lunging again, and June felt herself tipping backwards, as if drunk. The crystal prisms reflecting sunlight near the windows swung violently, painting the walls of the shop in disco-like dancing lights. Glass animals fell from their shelves, shattering on the floor. She cleared her head and regained her balance. Her treasures were being thrown from their shelves. Stone carvings were overturning. Glass was shattering around her. Realizing the windows to her shop might not hold, she let the pride of her possessions slip. The years spent building her collection and the stories for each treasure left her mind. She took an uneven and decisive step for the front door.
A third shock jolted her forward and sent a splintering crack through the Victorian. She hit the door sideways, and stumbled outside, not stopping until she was half a dozen meters away from the front door. She stood on the sidewalk, turning quickly to find the locations of streetlights, power lines, or large trees. Finding none, and unable to keep either her strength after her sprint or her balance in the continued swaying of the earth, she fell to her knees. She fell to her knees in silence, appearing as if in prayer, just in time to hear the shattering glass of her store windows, her glass display cases, and the fragile treasures she had worked so hard to collect.
* * *
Jeremy Mitnal sprung to his feet. Adrenaline rushed through his veins. Any idea of sleep left his mind. The rocking earth brought back the drills of gradeschool, teachers suddenly shouting, “Duck! Under cover! Safe place!” These mandated drills meant to protect from nuclear war or natural disaster.
Jeremy leapt for the door frame, crouching within its shadow. His bookcase tipped away from the wall and angled forward, allowing his college textbooks to slide off the shelves. The earth swung back and the now empty bookcase returned to its upright position against the wall. His laptop beeped, indicating that either it had been unplugged, or the power had somehow disconnected.
Jeremy gripped the door frame, balancing himself. The shifting of the earth continued and he felt queasy, as if sea-sick. He felt a surge of panic–a pile of books lay on top of his laptop, and his his transceiver had also been buried. He gasped, and hesitated, desperately wanting to check on his equipment but afraid of stepping out from underneath the door frame until the tremors stopped. The waves in the earth rolled like the waves from a radio tuned to an emergency broadcast.
The rolling of the house diminished. Jeremy waited. Like waves from an FM radio bouncing off skyscrapers in a metropolis, he expected the earth to resound with echos of its original rumbling–aftershocks. The car outside continued to bleep its anti-theft siren.
* * *
“My God,” Ethan said, facing a wave over fifteen feet high, the largest wave he had ever encountered. He took a deep breath, and dived. The wave rolled over him, both the air in his lungs and the wave’s back-kick bringing him to the surface. He breathed hard, looking ahead into the next wave which began forming into its vertical wall. The question did not enter his mind–the waves were growing bigger. His uncertainty grew. “Duck dive under you?” he shouted, suddenly angry at the water, his confidence in the ocean challenged. The wave’s vertical height grew, and he readied himself. It’s peak tipped and broke, more than three times his own height, more than one hundred times his own weight. He readied his dive, thrusting his chest up and off his surfboard with his hands, then pulling the board back to him. He was under, and the wave broke on the surface, thundering through the undercurrent like a two-story locomotive in his ears. The wave spit him out its back side, propelling him up into the air. He gasped for breath, his heart pounding.
He remembered his paddle out–only a few minutes ago–when the ocean was calm and bucking with light, four foot swells. He had glanced down the coast to see another surfer, alone and paddling out to sea.
Looking down the coast now, he saw no one in the limited vision of the ocean’s angry spray. The wave which had just passed him continued its anglular break further down the coast, where the other surfer had paddled. He forced himself to take a deep breath. The wave kicked mist into the air as it passed, and then he saw a surfboard–kicked high in the air, its owner missing. He raised his arm to stroke in its direction, but realized paddling would be impossible. The waves coming towards him would break upon him, one after another, making it impossible to swim in the surfer’s direction, or any direction at all. Attempting to swim would only get him pounded, by waves taller than he had ever seen, and heavier than he ever imagined.
Ethan decided. He had to catch the next wave. Riding it into position was the only way to join the other surfer. At most, he had three breaths until its arrival. He turned his board into position and lifted himself forward. Standing up would be impossible. If he were lucky, he might ride the vertical for fifty feet before it crushed him in its collapse. His lungs filled with the second breath as he looked over his shoulder. The ocean rose up behind him into a wall of blue. He lifted his arm and thrust it into the ocean, paddling along the wave, building up speed. He felt himself lifted and he leaned in, cutting into the surface as the wave broke, gripping his board with white knuckles. Suddenly he was falling, sliding down a vertical surface which grew higher into the air, falling slower than it was rising. He felt unbalanced and exhaled through clenched teeth. The wave rose higher and threatened to throw him off its back, where he would be sucked underneath its churning froth. Instinctively, he lessened his lean and tipped forward, and found himself accellerating, just cutting into the wave’s side and falling down its transparent cliff. He saw the untethered surfboard ahead, and rode the wave towards it within a long barrel of freefall. Ethan forced himself to inhale, his chest expanding against the pressure of water falling on him from above. He reached the unmanned surfboard and cut into the wave, leaning forward and gripping hard, closing his eyes against a mountain of water. Water pressure pounded on his ears. He clenched his teeth and yanked his board sideways and down, forcing the angle of his board against the wave in order to be shot out from its underside.
The cut of his board ended in overcompensation, and he rolled, losing his grip. The wave yanked the board out of his hands. He kicked away from the board and he rose to the surface, propelled by this momentum, breaking into the air. He exhaled, winded, his face stinging.
He saw the other surfer’s board, thirty feet from him, bucking freely towards shore. “Barney!” he shouted with the air left in his lungs, his voice inaudible to his own ears which had filled with water. Then he saw the surfer, floating awkwardly toward the shore ahead, spinning with the aftermath of the last wave. He took a breath and dove, mentally forcing energy into his arms, forcing his sore fingers into each stroke. He reached three feet of depth, but kept swimming, until his hands hit sand. The next wave, forty feet out, began to break. He stood quickly, trying to shuffle out of the ocean. His foot strap dangled behind him. It had broken, setting his own surf board free.
He yanked at the surfer, whose head floated face down in the water. His awkward legs stumbled in the sand and he fell to his knees. Finally, he managed to pull the surfer up onto the beach, grip slipping on the surfer’s wet suit. The breaking wave hurled them into three feet of water, and he fell backwards, but kept a finger’s grip on the surfer. His feet began to scrape rock and he realized he was standing in the parking lot. The waves had crashed over the cars and they sat half submerged in salt water. He stumbled to the SUV and tugged the surfer’s body onto its hood. He checked the surfer’s pulse, but couldn’t feel one.
The next wave had broken, and the current began rushing toward them. The water seemed higher than before. Ethan lifted the surfer’s body onto his shoulders, and limped farther onto shore, wading through the salt water covering the seaside parking lot.
Only after stumbling with the surfer another hundred feet, and only after the waves subsided, falling back and leaving thick silt covering both the parking lot and the cars, did Ethan realize why his grip had become so difficult to hold, and why his ankle burned. His right thumb was broken and had begun to change color, and his ankle was raw from the prior thrashing of his board’s leash. He noticed this in the near-silence of the trickling water running back to sea. The silence of the coast pressed against Ethan’s throbbing ear drums. The surfer’s SUV had given up the siren of its car alarm. Only after all of these realizations did Ethan notice the way the surfer’s body hung about his shoulders, its head cocked at an impossible angle. The surfer’s neck had been broken by the waves.
