1 When the earth broke open, there was a noise that came before the quake. It was so deep Kai felt it on his skin almost before he heard it. It came before the crack of falling trees, before the hard rain of broken glass, even before the pop and whoosh of blue fire when the transformer behind the playground blew. One boom like a single beat from the odaiko, the big drum at the temple, only sounded for the most important festivals of the year. That beat passed through Kai''s body like a wave of radiation, quick as lightning, invisible, irreversible. Kai knew at once what he must do and what it would cost him even if he succeeded. It was a maverick choice, one that would mark him as even more of an outsider, a hafu, neither properly Japanese nor glamorously American. But the alternative, to do nothing, was unthinkable.
One sharp word from the teacher and every student slid from his chair, crouched under his desk, and held up a jacket to shield his head from the glass that was already shattering. Kai waited until his teacher had pulled his suit coat over his head. He scrambled silently for the door, snatching his outdoor shoes from the cubby as he went. A shock wave ran along the floor like a ripple on a pond. Lights flickered and went out. Another tremor followed, and a third, and then nothing. Kai ran. He cleared the front door, crossed the play yard, scaled the fence, and headed into town.
Tsunami sirens blared a rising note of warning. Kai sprinted past the turn that led to his parents'' apartment. They would be fine at the power plant behind the seawall. Their full attention would be needed at the reactor to keep it running safely. Kai knew where he was needed. He flew down the hill, the last direction anyone would go--toward the curve of shoreline and the small fishing boats moored there. People streamed out of their homes and headed for high ground. Ocean bottom appeared where the bay should have been.
The decaying hull of a boat that sank years ago sat exposed in the mud. Fish flopped in the unexpected air. Kai spared less than a second to look for the Ushio-maru at the marina. He and his grandfather hadn''t sailed it in months, not since his grandmother had a stroke. But the Ushio-maru was there in the marina as always. It was beached like all the rest of the boats, but Kai knew the ocean would be back, as relentless as a freight train, showing mercy to no living thing. "Oji-san! Oba-san!" Kai called as he rounded the corner to his grandparents'' house, a block above the harbor. One side of the blue-tile roof was already a heap of rubble burying his grandmother''s garden.
He took the wooden steps in a single bound. He found them in the main room of their house, kneeling beneath the futon Oji-san had pulled from the closet and held as a shield over their heads. Kai slid to his knees. "You can''t stay here." "Kai, why are you here?" Oba-san reached to cup his face, even as Kai bowed his apology. "You should be taking shelter with your schoolmates at the shrine," Oba-san said. "What will they say if you are not there?" "Come with me," Kai said. Another boom sounded from the odaiko under the earth.
The floor lurched forward and back. Cabinet doors swung open, and dishes and cans tumbled out. Daylight showed through cracks in the walls. Books toppled from the shelf. Kai scooted closer to his oba-san to shield her. Oji-san bent the futon over all three of them like a tent. Kai closed his eyes against the dust. When the shaking stopped, Oji-san lifted the futon and looked at the ruins of his house.
"We should all go to the shrine," Kai said. "It''s only two kilometers. Two. I''ll carry her. I''m big enough." Oba-san''s walker and the dining table were the only upright objects in the room. "So far!" Oba-san said. "You go.
We''ll meet you there." "Together!" Kai insisted, lowering his head to apologize for his stubbornness but then looking to his grandfather, imploring. Oji-san stood up slowly, testing his limbs and the uneven floor. He reached for his wife and helped her stand. He moved to her weaker side, supporting as she found her balance, speaking softly into her ear, to help her find courage. "Together," Oji-san said. "We will go as far as we are able." Kai took his grandmother''s other arm, and they made their way across the tilted floor and into the ruined street.
2 Three minutes and forty-seven seconds later, on the far side of the Pacific, Jet watched her dad bring ships across the Columbia Bar. She sat on her porch roof, binoculars trained on the mouth of the river, resting against the frame of her bedroom window. Afternoon shadows stretched across the yard below. The rough asphalt shingles were worn smooth from the hundreds of times Jet had watched her dad piloting tankers, car carriers, and container ships through the shifting currents and past the mountain of sand that made the entrance into the Columbia River the most dangerous passage in the Pacific. Jet''s stereo played the unmusical chatter of marine radio. On her phone she toggled between the day''s weather, the ocean''s currents, and the local tides. Her dad was navigating the trickiest part of the passage, the eye of the needle--a narrow spot between Point Adams and the Desdemona Sands. As the container ship drew closer to Astoria, Jet could make out the name on the starboard side, Hanjin Oslo 952.
She checked the vessel-traffic list. It was a Korean ship bound for Portland: 623 tons of cargo, twenty-one feet of draft. Dad had piloted plenty of boats with a deeper draft; no way he''d run this one aground. She pictured him on the bridge of the Hanjin Oslo in his yellow float coat with PILOT written across the shoulder in block letters. The captain would be at his side to translate his directions to the crew. An alarm sounded on her phone. It was from NOAA--the ocean guys. A tsunami warning flashed across the screen.
Jet dropped her binoculars and flicked through the website for details. Quake magnitude: greater than six. Epicenter: a hundred miles from Osaka. Flooding expected on the southern third of Japan in the next twenty minutes. Alerts went up for all the islands in the Pacific and the western coasts of North and South America. Osaka? Jet tried to remember the name of her cousin''s hometown. Wasn''t it somewhere in the middle? No, it was south, definitely south of Osaka. Kai was fine last time, when the quake was in the north.
Besides, his town had mountains just like Astoria, plenty of high ground to get away from rising water. Every town on the Oregon coast had evacuation routes for emergency flooding. Jet had more tsunami drills than fire drills at school. No worries there. But what would her dad do about his ship? Last time there was a quake on the Japan side of the Pacific, it took hours for the high water to get to Astoria. Last time the warning had come to nothing--barely a ripple on the north Oregon coast. But down by the California border, it had crushed whole marinas and stacked the fishing fleet three deep as if the vessels were bathtub toys. Would Dad close the bar? Would he turn the ship around and make it wait out the tsunami in deep water? A pilot had the authority.
He could stop a million dollars'' worth of river traffic and delay shipping schedules as far away as Chicago. Or he could make a run for it and get the Hanjin Oslo up the Columbia far enough that the surge of a tsunami couldn''t touch it. Jet grabbed her binoculars and gave the Hanjin Oslo the most careful examination that three miles of distance allowed. It was a newer ship, no visible rust or broken equipment. She was fully loaded, but a sliver of red along the side of the ship showed she hadn''t exceeded her load water line. Had Dad piloted this ship before? Jet pulled out her log and flipped through it. Yes, ten months ago, so he''d know the captain and the quality of her crew. The warning came over marine radio.
High water in two hours in the Philippines, in four hours on the coast of New Guinea, seven hours for Hawaii and Alaska. He had more than seven hours. Plenty of time to get the ship miles up the river and all three of the tankers moored in the mouth of the Columbia out into the safety of deep water. Jet stood up, gripping the gutter on the roof above her window and straining for a better view of the ship. She willed herself to see into the bridge. Imagined the array of instruments at his command. "Come on, Dad, you can make it!" Jet said to nobody. She watched and waited.
When the Hanjin Oslo inched its way past the mouth of Youngs Bay and moved into position to go under the Astoria Bridge, Jet pumped a fist in the air just for the satisfaction of knowing she''d made the right call. 3 "Run!" Oji-san''s last word echoed in Kai''s head as his feet pounded the ground behind the fish cannery, propelling him forward even as his heart called him to turn back. Kai had thought they were safe. Four floors up should have been safe, but one boat after another had broken loose from the marina and plowed into the old cannery building, breaking through the loading area and collapsing the ocean-facing wall. Most of the cannery workers had fled, but it had taken all their strength to get Oba-san to the cannery and up four flights of stairs. The Ikata Seafood Company was the only tall building on the waterfront. It was concrete and steel. It should hold.
And yet the walls shook as if they were made of paper, and the lowest floor was already submerged. Oji-san had shown him an escape route,.