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EUREKA, CALIFORNIA:
Sam Carter slips the tongs around a bratwurst in the hot water, places it into a bun, then hands it to a young girl standing beside his cart. When she offers him money, he refuses to take it. “This one’s on me, Penny, just don’t tell your friends about it. Are you still sleeping at the row?”
“Yeah, but now that it’s summer, it’s getting too crowded. Panhandling doesn’t work too well with so many of us begging for money. People start getting annoyed, and they tell you to get lost. Or worse.”
“Why don’t you go home, Penny? That old building isn’t safe anymore.”
“You sound just like my grandpa. You kind of look like him too.”
“Okay, so two grandpas think it’s the right thing for you to do. You should take our advice and go home.”
Penny turns her back to him, “You don’t know what it was like, Sam.” She takes a bite of her bratwurst and stares out over the ocean. “Hey, check it out.”
Sam turns to look and his lips part. Since he began working the boardwalk fifteen years ago, he has never seen anything like it. Normally, the seaweed doesn’t grow any closer than eight-hundred-yards from the low tide mark, but suddenly the slender brown tentacles and glistening leaves lay flat on the muddy beach, exposed to the sun by an extremely low tide.
Penny turns to look at Sam. “Have you ever seen the tide that low before?”
“Not here, but in Alaska. It’s the first sign of a tsunami, but I don’t think that’s what we’re looking at. It’s the tidal effect from the moon, and will be much worse than yesterday. We had better get to higher ground.”
“Do you really think that’s what’s happening?”
“Not for sure, but let’s not take the chance.”
“Okay, but where do we go?”
“Up the hill to the Presley Estates. That’s the only place high enough.”
“Those rich people aren’t going to let us through the gate.”
Sam reaches down and shuts the propane tank off and closes his portable hot dog stand. “You let me worry about that. Now let’s get going before it’s too late.”
“How are we going to push this thing a quarter mile up that steep driveway?”
“When I was younger, I used muscle power, but those days are over. I modified this one with an electric motor. Those are solar panels on the roof. Just hang on going up the hill and it will do the work for us.”
Penny stares up at the small cover above the cookers and accessories. She began visiting with Sam three months ago and never noticed much difference about his cart compared to all the other vendors along the boardwalk. Now that she knows it’s electric, it appears to be more modern.
Sam grabs the steering arm, swings it out straight with the cart, then smiles at Penny. “Let’s go.”
The speed of the three-wheeled vehicle catches her off guard, and Penny hurries to catch up with Sam. “You aren’t kidding. How fast can this thing go?”
“As fast as I can walk. I used to be able to run with it, until the arthritis in my knees told me it was payback time for all the abuse I put them through.”
It doesn’t take long to reach the parking lot, now jammed with cars so their passengers can walk down to the new beach. High up on the steep mountain, cars on the highway began honking their horns as traffic grinds to a standstill. Everyone wants to stop and stare across the massive stretch of mud and seaweed.
Sam has difficulty steering his cart between all the cars and silently curses the ones who leave their doors open while they gawk at the view. He looks over at Penny, who is staying out of the way a step behind him. “I’ll have to add a horn to this cart before I come back.”
When Sam reaches the two-lane road leading up to the highway, he sighs with relief. All the cars have parked off to the sides, leaving a wide space up the road. When they reach the highway, they don’t have to wait for the traffic light to change, since not a single vehicle is moving.
On the other side, they begin the long uphill journey to the mansions, high on the ridge. Slender vertical rods of the ten-foot-tall steel fences on either side of the road are to keep trespassers out of the private community.
Penny waits until she can’t stand the pain in her leg muscles and grabs the handrail on the back of the cart. She looks up at Sam, who is grinning at her. “I just wanted to let you know I’m more capable than I appear.”
Sam laughs. “I imagine you need to be pretty tough to live on the streets. You don’t have to prove anything to me, Penny.”
She turns away, not wanting Sam to see the sense of regret showing in her eyes. This is her life now, but she doesn’t have a choice. She had to get away, or end up living in a rundown trailer park in Hicksville, USA.
She looks up when the cart suddenly stops in front of a large steel gate. Massive ornate stone obelisks support the hinges, and it has an electronic lock to keep visitors out. “Crap! Now what do we do?”
Sam stares down at the beach, now stretching out toward a sparkling line across the horizon, and has a sinking sensation in his stomach. He knows why dozens of people are walking far out from shore, but their curiosity could get them killed. What goes out must come back in, and the question is how fast.
When Sam doesn’t answer, Penny turns in the direction he’s looking and sees the sparkling line across the horizon, and all the people way out on the beach. Below the sparkling line, a twenty-foot wall of water is racing toward the shoreline. “Oh, my God! You were right, Sam. Why didn’t we hear any tsunami warnings?”
Sam can’t take his eyes off the scene developing below. The power of the wave slams into the running figures, driving them face down into the gray mud, before smothering them in a deluge of churning ocean. When the wave hits the concrete barriers built to keep it at bay, the water tears them apart like straw. It keeps coming in, filling the parking lot with screaming bodies, their flailing arms desperately trying to find something to grab. He drops to his knees and tears slowly run down his cheeks.
Penny catches a movement out of the corner of her eye. When she looks down at Sam, he appears so frail and vulnerable. She feels bad for the people below, but she can’t imagine why Sam is taking this so hard. Perhaps something terrible happened to him in the past. She realizes she doesn’t know much about him. He is just a nice old man who sold hotdogs and is interesting to talk to on the boardwalk.
When the wave hits the base of the hillside, massive chunks of mud and rock slide into the ocean. The water keeps rising, and the two-lane highway below breaks into large chunks of asphalt, tossing the crowded vehicles into the water before it vanishes beneath another landslide.
Penny realizes they are trapped. She desperately tries to crawl over the tall fences, but there is nothing to stand on for traction. Tears roll down her cheeks as she kneels beside Sam and squeezes his hand. The hillside disappears in front of her feet, and she screams when the ornate entrance collapses onto her and Sam as they slide into the ocean.