SWIM Book 1 (Complete three-hundred pages)

Day 7 Saturday, November 25, 2017

I awoke to the nauseating sway of the cabin, and the feverish chill that struck my feet. My teeth were chattering and the slew of blankets had been pulled off of me.

"Zara! Zara!" Shouted a voice. "Get up! We've got to go!"

At first, I thought I was just dreaming, and in fact, when I opened my eyes, all was dark in the cabin. That is until the overhead door swung open and a gust of howling wind and the shadows of two running figures appeared bolting down the steps to retrieve me.

"The tide is pulling far, far out from shore! The boat is going to sink into the sand as the ocean is yanked out from under us!" Came the voice that sounded a lot like Brett's.

The figure who had woken me yanked me out of bed and pulled me by the arm to the door. "Come, my love, hurry!" It was Jack, and I stubbed my toe following him as he dragged me up the steps to the main deck without any time to put on my Tom's.

"What's going on!" I said, rubbing my eyes and with one hand foolishly trying to wrap my hair in a neat bun.

Travis was the one to answer that question. But he needn't answer it because once we came to the cold morning air on the main deck, I could see the bow of the boat dipping downward with a sudden jolt that had us all falling and sliding on the hardwood floor, as the loud rushing sound of the tide scraping toward the ocean, pulled the yacht permanently into the sand—behind me, as I gained my footing and turned to look at the sea, I could see a massive blue wave building high up into a towering wall along the horizon. I gasped as the five boys snatched their instrument cases and raced with me to the back of the boat and jumped two at a time off the yacht and with a splashing thud onto the wet and rocky shore.

"There's a fence leading up that cliff!" Shouted Jack, pointing forward down the shore to a long wall of cliff backed by silver fencing—above the cliff was a bird line of three-story beach houses. All of which would be lucky to avoid destruction when the rising wave behind us finally collapsed and charged with full speed toward our town!

Jack and Craig both clutched my hands and the six of us charged at full speed, adrenaline pumping through our veins, toe skin slicing over the seashells and urchins, and broken beer bottles and slimy seaweed and round rocks and igneous boulders, squirming sand crabs and fussing fields of gnats, random sticks of straw and around a wet charcoal laden firepit. We ran for our lives. And when we reached the fence, the Earth beneath us shook, and my head turned in a heated frenzy, as my eyes popped, and I saw the blue tongue of Poseiden's land lash down in a death-sentencing sweep onto the now miles long stretch of sand, and a booming crash of white waves crescendoed over the shore, and the boys clawed up the fence and tossed up their ten thousand dollar encased instruments up and over it in an attempt escape death by rising to the ocean view balcony of the nearest beach house. The Jack screamed down at me to climb, climb, climb, and like a cat suddenly caught in the midst of a rabid dog, I pounced up the jangling fence covered in wet morning dew, struggled to keep from slipping as my hands and feet pulled and pushed my body upwards—and as the ghoulish screams of the tsunami rocketed onto our tails, three hands snatched my hands and armpits and pulled me over the wall and onto a tile-floored balcony. My teeth were chattering in fear.

I caught sight of Brett, Jack, Travis, Craig, and George's ghost white faces as the held their breaths and scrambled to their feet, snatching their instrument cases again and pulling me up from my ass. To the second floor! To the third floor! But Travis Gibbs was somehow in the lead and led everyone in order of Brett, George, Craig, Jack and me around the side yard, through the side fence, then onto the house's front lawn, across the street, through another side fence, through a side yard, up a sloped backyard, over the wall and into another backyard with a pool, across the side yard, through the side fence, then along a busy side street where suddenly every person in the neighborhood was running and driving their cars over sidewalks in a wild erratic fray through the down streets to escape an imminent doom-!

Suddenly screams pelted through the cloud covered sky and an alarm system surfaced and the hard kaboom of the hand of God smacking against the cliffs and spraying the entire ocean in a wet sweep over the town commenced! I don't know how but I found I started screaming and the Earth beneath our feet seemed to wobble when the sound of crunching houses behind us and squawking armies of birds bit the air, barking dogs, and crashing cars, the sounds of roaring rapids and the high-pitched snaps of telephone wire plunging in whipping crackles onto the ground.

Reaching the end of the street after dodging cars and running people, the nearest house's front door snapped open and a woman and her two toddlers burst out and ran for the car in the driveway. The boys ahead of me took. Taking no notice to the danger about to consume the mother and her children, the five boys ahead of me hurried me past the family and trespassed up the steps to their porch and bolted through the front door. Upstairs, upstairs! Go to the highest floor as you can and then to the roof! I hadn't caught a glimpse of how tall the beach house was that we were trespassing, but as we found the stairs and the crashing waves, and wallowing screams, and squawking birds and woofing dogs showered the walls with a shaking tremble of a storm, we reached second floor—ran up and around with heavy stomps—third floor—our bodies bouncing against the walls as the windows lining the stairway grew darker and darker as the cackling wash of a giant wave blocked out the sun—fourth floor—when suddenly the stairs reached a climax and the boys all rushed me as close to the opposite side of the house from the incoming wave as we could—and when the sounds pierced the highest decibel volumes and my eardrums burst and the ocean seemed to take the place of the sky and flooded our eye sights into complete darkness, a violent crash knocked us all onto our knees and faces, and in only a one final second—there was silence. . .

And I wondered who died.