SEVEN
AS WOULD LATER BE RECORDED IN TOWN RECORDS:
Clade City’s evacuation siren went off at 2:27 AM.
The sound came pulsing through the mists of sleep and soft sheets of coastal drizzle. Griff bolted up.
BADADADABADeeeeeeeEEEEEEEE
Leo fumbled for his phone.
“Not a mistake,” Leo said.
In the house, a banging door. Slamming cupboards.
A light pulsed in the hallway. The cadence of his father’s voice through drywall. Griff fumbled on the bedside table. Flipped on the radio. The prerecorded message:
THIS IS NOT A DRILL. PLEASE EVACUATE TO HIGHER GROUND—
“Shit,” Leo said.
For a moment, Leo looked ten years old.
“Ready?” their father filled their doorway. Already dressed somehow. Black pants. Tactical vest. As if he’d slid down a Batman fire pole directly into his disaster gear.
“Remember the drills,” their dad said. “You’re doing great.”
“Tsunami?” Griff asked.
Their father listened to another rotation of the siren.
BADADADABADeeeeeeeEEEEEEEE
“Yes,” he said. “Yes. See you outside.”
Griff stood. He flexed toes into carpet, trying to anchor himself. Trainings, mixed up. Neat kits of knowledge dumped in the same toy box. Tsunami vs. nuclear bomb vs. home intruder and acronyms went soupy in his head, grabbing his EDC (Every Day Carry), his BOB (Bug Out Bag), and his INCH (I’m Never Coming Home) sack from their dedicated spaces in the closet. The boys laced their boots tight. Looked around the room.
The last time they’d see it.
“TOE Box,” Griff said. He put a hand on it. Leo put a hand on Griff’s hand. Griff flinched. Leo hadn’t done that in years.
“Goodbye,” Leo said. He nodded. It was time.
In the hallway, the French doors to the piano room were open. Their beautiful Knabe.
Gone.
“Remember your doors!” their father shouted.
Doors. They each had to knock at three homes, part of the plan. Their mother stood dazed in the kitchen as if beamed down from a distant planet. Gold hair frizzed in the overhead light. She looked at the doorway to her studio, where she made sculptures, jewelry, custom greeting cards.
“Mom,” Griff said. “Can we help you with some stuff?”
“It’s all ocean things,” she said.
Two minutes had passed. The water was coming.
Time crawled in a nightmare way, carpet turning to marshmallow, air thickening, and they could not seem to get to the garage, to get outside, to finally get to the truck, which was running, facing forward down the driveway. Their father ran south.
“You’re that way?” Leo asked, pointing north.
“Yeah, bro.”
They split, and Griff’s assignments were already moving. One couple, one family, one single woman, all with lights on. Garage doors flung up. The siren was working. Maybe they’d saved some lives.
Their father stood in the driveway calling for Leo.
“Leo! C’mon! Leo!”
In the passenger window, Griff’s mother stared ahead. She exhaled, breath trembling through her chest. When would the shaking start?
“Leo!” Griff shouted.
Now?
Leo tore around the corner, piled into the truck.
“Cranzlers were dead asleep,” he said. “They flopped around like they were getting ready for a garage sale or some shit.”
Griff laughed.
“I’m serious. They were like ‘We’d better pack up, baby.’”
“Here we go,” their dad said.
They pulled out. Raced to the corner. The truck lurched to a stop. Anticipation stretched like a wire coiling around his chest.
“Do we really have to stop, Dad?” Leo asked. “We’re at four-forty.”
“Keep your belts tight,” he said.
When the shaking started, the town’s whole infrastructure would spring like an ambush. Power lines would snap and spit sparks. Roads, cratered to pits. Treefalls. Mudslides. Their whole neighborhood was awake and moving, outside on driveways like a spontaneous late-night block party they’d never had.
Never would.
And Charity. Was she awake? He texted her without thinking.
NOT A DRILL. BE SAFE.
They passed the first TSUNAMI EVACUATION sign.
His father clutched the wheel with both hands, heading toward town, Emergency Route #4. The radio tower looked precarious in the dark sky. A glass piñata. Downtown Clade City hung out like an empty pocket. Doors open, lights on. The soft din of shouts and a small swarm outside the Drift Inn. They passed Shoreline Gifts.
Their mother watched her shop pass, lips pulled tight as a stitch.
The truck swallowed more blacktop. Leaving it all behind.
“Seven minutes,” Leo said. “Wow.”
Thomas would be proud. The system had worked. Griff texted Thomas:
YOU OKAY?
His dad turned on K-NOW. Dead air.
“Strange,” he said.
Two more evacuation signs flashed in the headlights, then they were deep into the night, NOW EXITING TSUNAMI EVACUATION ZONE. High enough to avoid water, still in critical danger of mudslides, towering trees, boulders balanced on fragile slopes—
“Why is Dad pulling over?” Griff asked Leo.
A narrow gravel shoulder just before the road split.
“Just quick,” their father said, eyes eager, “I want to show you where we’re going.”
Leo and Griff exchanged a look.
Their father had his explorer shine—the firm-set jaw and eager eyes of the man who had taught them to surf, led them through bushwhacking adventures in Alaska, brought them safely to the lighthouse. He pulled a pamphlet from the glove box with the flourish of a bouquet.
“Kissimmee!” he said, grinning. Leaning toward her.
“What?”
“Don’t worry. We’ve got a place,” he said. He unfolded the pamphlet for their mother. Griff and Leo crowded up to see. A galley kitchen. Balcony. Communal pool.
“What’s this?”
“Plan B,” he said.
“What? Where?” their mother asked.
“Kissimmee!” he said again. Griff suddenly feared their family’s future had been written primarily for a romantic punchline in his dad’s private evacuation fantasy. Knowing his father, it was possible. His mother sighed and lifted her phone.
“Dad,” Leo said, “can you drive?”
“KISSIMMEE,” his father’s phone boomed. “LET’S GO!”
Only his phone was enthusiastic about Florida.
“Kissimmee is landlocked,” their mother said.
“Well, maybe that’s better,” their dad said. “All things considered.”
“My business is coastal treasures,” she said.
He sighed. “Shoreline Gifts? C’mon, Angie.”
A bad c’mon. Mean. No one was going to Kissi-him.
“Dad,” Leo said.
A snapping sound. The brothers jolted. Their mom, grabbing the door handle.
“Let me out,” she said.
“Baby.”
“Want to be open and honest? Let’s be open and honest.”
She got out of the car. Rummaged in her bag. Lipstick? The tip glowed blue. A pipe. She walked to the edge of the headlights, exhaling smoke.
“Mom smokes pot!” Griff said.
Leo laughed. “Holy shit.”
“Language,” their dad said. “Stop!”
“Stop what?” Griff asked.
Griff’s phone buzzed. He pulled it from his pocket. Up front, their father’s phone made a soft ding. All their faces illuminated by a new green glow.
“Oh,” their dad said. He tapped his phone like a broken speaker.
FALSE ALARM. PLEASE RETURN HOME.
“Oh no,” Griff said.
“We are so dead,” Leo said.
He meant, the town would kill them.
Maybe they could keep driving. Make a clean break for Florida.
Their father wasn’t speaking. He poked his phone, as if trying to wake it up.
Griff remembered once, years ago, their parents had pulled the car over like this to dance on the shoulder of the road. Now their mother stood outside, alone in the hot lamplight of the truck. She didn’t know yet that it was fake. A plume of smoke escaped her lips and gave him a strange, dislocated feeling. Like whether the tsunami came or not, the life they’d left behind was gone.