“Should we stay out here?” I ask him hesitantly.
He looks at the water and shrugs.
“We’re here now. Let’s just take a quick dive and then we’ll head in.”
I nod. “Fine with me.”
I pull my wet suit on over my bathing suit and slide the mask onto my face. Gavin lifts the oxygen tank onto my back.
Quinn watches us prepare.
“Is there anything I should be doing?” he asks.
Gavin shakes his head. “Nope. The boat is anchored, so you won’t go anywhere. We’ll be back up shortly.”
Quinn nods and Gavin grabs my hand and we jump over the side without hesitation.
It is instantly calm beneath the water.
It is exactly why I love to dive.
Nothing can reach us here in the quiet underwater world. No troubles, no stress, no worry.
My flippers slide through the water with ease, propelling me downward. My hands cut through the crystal blue water and Gavin is right beside me. I glance upward and I can still see the outline of the boat above. It looks like a giant whale from here.
I turn my attention back to the water below me.
I can just see the moss-covered tip of a mast of a sunken galleon when a strange sensation ripples through my body. I stop moving and the sensation grows.
It’s a rumbling vibration, a weird shaking.
It’s literally rolling through my body, like I’m sitting in a car with the bass turned up too loud.
I look at Gavin, my eyes wide. He is frozen too, floating in place in the water.
Our eyes meet.
And then we notice that the sandy sediment on the sea floor is rolling toward us in murky billows.
What the eff?
The water continues to vibrate and shake around us and the moment that I think the word shake, it occurs to me.
Earthquake.
Chapter Five
Gavin realizes it at the same moment that I do and we both spin and propel ourselves upwards.
HolyEffingEarthquake.
I burst from the surface of the water and grip the side of the boat and I can still feel the rumbling in the sea. In order for us to feel it all the way out here, the earthquake must be enormous. We haven’t had a big one in years and years, way before my lifetime.
Gavin pulls himself over the side and then reaches over to give me a hand. I land on the floor of the boat in a clumsy heap and instantly start pulling off my stuff. My flippers, wetsuit and oxygen tank land in a pile.
“What’s going on?” Quinn asks. He can see the anxiety on our faces and I’m sure he can see the vibrating water.
“Earthquake,” Gavin tells him. Gav isn’t even undressing, he’s turning the boat toward shore in his flippers, guiding the boat with capable hands.
Quinn looks startled and he stands up to look out at the horizon. But the rough water knocks him back down. He sprawls in a seat and stares at me in shock.
My heart thumps in my chest.
This isn’t good.
And from the look on Gavin’s face, the dead-serious expression that he never, ever gets, he knows it too. We’re right in the middle of a serious situation, maybe even dire.
I gulp.
As we race toward the shore, jumping hard over waves, my teeth jar every time we land. We hit the water so hard that I can’t believe the belly of the boat doesn’t splinter into pieces. I grit my teeth and hold on.
Quinn is silent now and I almost wonder what he’s thinking, but then I’m distracted by trying to hold on to the things that keep trying to fly out of the boat, like life preservers, bags, flippers and so on. I’ve never seen the current or waves so bad.
We fly into the bay and the way the boats are rolling on the waves as they sit in their slips is unnerving. They are haunting and spooky as they move with the sea. One of them has flipped onto its side and I know that it will sink. Water is flooding its deck. Debris is floating in the water; oars and cushions and cups and pieces of wood, and I am almost too afraid to look onto the shore.
But I do.
And I gasp.
The Harbor Master’s building is in rubble, in an absolute shambles.
And the complete seriousness of this hits us.
“Holy shit,” Gavin breathes. He reaches over and grabs my hand as he noses us into his slip. “We’ve got to move.”
“But where should we go?” I ask as we scramble from the boat and onto dry land. The ground is not moving, but after a moment, I feel a short rumble.
Aftershocks.
They vibrate my feet and I gulp.
Even the air feels scary, like a premonition or foreboding. Or something. I try to ignore it.
“I don’t know,” Gavin admits. He climbs up beside me, then releases my hand to help Quinn from the swaying boat. “Somewhere other than here.”
“We should stay together,” Quinn points out calmly.
He’s right. And I say so.
There’s no one else in the harbor, something that I find strange. Although, looking back, I realize that there wasn’t really anyone here when we left. Everyone else was smart enough to not venture into the waves.
Gavin’s cell phone rings and we look at each other, startled.
In the heat of the moment, we had forgotten that we had phones.
He picks it up and I can see the relief on his face as he talks to his mom. After a few moments, he hangs up and looks at me.
“My parents are fine. But the Earthquake was bad. Roads are blocked. My parents say to go to the Old Palace and wait there.”
I gulp.
With shaking fingers, I pull out my phone. I try my house and there is no answer. I try again, and this time, I get a weird busy signal.
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