Wave (12 page)

Every police officer from every town in Ocean and Atlantic Counties had been called in for duty. While some managed the traffic, others were dispatched to comb their respective neighborhoods in search of residents unable to get themselves out. The older and more experienced cops were given this assignment. They’d know who was too elderly to have a driver’s license, who was handicapped, and who worked at night and slept during the day with the phone turned off.

LBI residents were informed with brutal honesty that they should not expect to see their homes again. “When you’re deciding what to take and what not to take, remember that,” Mayor Harper announced over the radio and on television. Most residents acted sensibly and simply left, realizing they weren’t so much running a race against a tsunami as against time. Across the island, they gathered up their loved ones, pets, and a handful of cherished personal items and jumped into the most reliable vehicle they owned. If there was a choice, Harper instructed, clunkers were to be left behind. “If it might break down and cause traffic delays, don’t drive it.” He asked that families stay together in one car rather than add to the number of vehicles on the road. He encouraged the use of motorcycles and bicycles, as they could cruise along shoulders and on sidewalks. And he instructed people to leave coat hangers on the front doors of their homes so police officers driving by would know they had been fully vacated.

Not surprisingly, some people seemed to lose their get-moving-now rationality in their panic. One middle-aged woman in Loveladies wouldn’t leave until she’d picked out just the right outfit. A retired man in North Beach didn’t bother telling his sleeping wife about the emergency until he’d loaded his beer-can collection into the back of his pickup truck. In Spray Beach, a nineteen-year-old high school dropout who had already told his mother he’d left the house was in fact trying to find a suitable hiding place in his rusted ’89 Cutlass for the marijuana crop he’d so lovingly cultured in their old shed for the last six months. And in High Bar Harbor—one of the highest-risk areas due to its distance from the bridge—a thirty-something couple who had already been on the verge of divorce wasted almost ten precious minutes arguing over whose car would be left behind: his Jaguar or her BMW. In the end they left separately.

Most business owners were willing to leave their wares behind, but many found the time to take copies of their insurance policies. Some had no insurance. One man who had invested almost ninety thousand dollars in a video-rental shop in Brighton Beach a few months earlier called one insurance company after another in the hopes of getting a quick policy together. He had no luck, and when he finally jumped into his car he was crying like a baby.

News of the oncoming disaster spread first through the rest of the Garden State, then throughout the northeast corridor, and finally across the nation.

America watched and waited.

Karen let the phone ring at least a dozen times. It was about ten more than necessary—Nancy picked up right away when she was home. Karen couldn’t leave a message, either, because they didn’t have an answering machine. Neither Bud nor Nancy cared for them.

She was certain that if they had left LBI they would have called her first. Where could they be?

Next, she tried to call Mike on his cell phone, knowing how early it was on the West Coast. When she got an “unavailable” message, she hung up, frustrated.

She grabbed her keys and her bag and got up. Then she paused for a moment, wondering if she should take along all the framed photos, too.

“Will the water reach where we are?” she asked no one in particular. Only Scott Tarrance, Myra, and a forty-something divorcee named Alice who’d been with the firm just a few weeks remained. Karen hadn’t even noticed the departure of the others.

“Not the wave,” Scott said. “But there could be some flooding.”

She nodded and, without further reflection, began to load her personal items into the bag. There wasn’t much beyond the pictures, and there was no time to take them out of the frames.

She froze as her gaze fell on one photo in particular—a formal posed shot of Patrick and Michael that had been taken on the observation deck behind the James J. Mancini Municipal Building. The boys were wearing identical outfits—navy blue cotton slacks, white button-down shirts, dark shoes. Patrick also had a white sweater with a navy stripe around the collar. He looked like a real Ivy-Leaguer. His hair was a little too puffy on one side and mussed up in that way it always was. But he obviously didn’t care. He and his brother were smiling in the bright, happy way some children do when they’re being photographed.

The delicate innocence captured in that image combined with the crawling reality that they might not survive fell on her like a pallet of bricks. The tears came so quickly they felt as though they were being force-pumped. As her hands went to her face, Myra came over and put a comforting arm around her shoulder. She said nothing, for she was wise enough to know there was nothing to say. Scott Tarrance came forward but was unsure what to do. His instinct was also to touch her, but he held himself back because he lived in an age when making physical contact with someone of the opposite sex in the workplace, regardless of context or intention, was a gamble.

“I’ve got to go,” she said, pulling her bag onto her shoulder. The inclusion of all her personal items had given it considerable weight and bulk, but she didn’t appear to notice.

“Good luck, honey,” Myra said, rubbing her back.

Karen pushed the front door aside and headed for her car, first in a brisk walk, then a moderate jog. She wiped the tears away, leaving dark mascara streaks in their wake. The bag was thrown into the passenger seat, the rattling keys jammed into the ignition. The engine roared to life, and she thanked God her husband was diligent about car care. Mike wasn’t a mechanic but he could’ve been if he’d chosen to. He could fix or build anything. He took care of all the handy-work around the house and was more or less fanatical about making sure everything ran at peak efficiency. Karen sometimes teased him about his anal behavior, but inside she was comforted by it. She had scores of girlfriends whose husbands had to be goaded, bribed, or outright threatened to do anything around the house.

As soon as she pulled onto Route 72 she saw them—the two thick lines of traffic on the westbound side. There was a traffic light about a hundred feet up, and it had been turned off. A cop was standing at the intersection, urging everyone forward. His patrol car was parked next to him, lights swirling.

She suddenly noticed a car on her side of 72 coming toward her. For a second she was nearly paralyzed by confusion. Then she moved into the right lane and saw that there were others behind it.
They’re using the
eastbound lanes to get people out, too
. For some reason that made it more frightening; here was further confirmation that systems were breaking down, that the glue that held this community together was beginning to melt.

She became acutely aware of her place in all of this—thousands of people pouring off the island while she headed back to it. Her heart pounded and perspiration broke out all over her body. She lowered all the windows because it was suddenly too hot and difficult to breathe.

She wiped more tears from her eyes and, perhaps a little cruelly, forced all thoughts of Patrick and Michael aside. They would distract her, and right now she needed to concentrate. If she got into an accident—Jesus, she didn’t even want to think about that. What would Mike say? What would he do if she didn’t get back in time?

She decided it was time to try calling Mike again. Without taking her eyes off the road, she reached into the bag for her cell phone. When she was blocked by the profusion of personal items she’d stuffed in there, she turned the bag over and shook everything onto the seat. In direct support of Murphy’s Law, the phone was the last item to fall out. She snatched it up and, using only her thumb, hit MEMORY and then 2. She knew it was illegal in New Jersey not to use a hands-free headset when making calls on the road, but there was no time for that now. She cradled the phone between her chin and shoulder and waited.

At first there was only silence. Then a cheerful female voice said, “We’re sorry, all lines are busy. Please try your call again later.”

She tried again but got the same message.

As she approached the intersection, the cop who had been directing traffic spotted her. He was tall and heavy, with a gut that bulged like a full-term pregnancy. He wore his cap low, like a drill sergeant, and had a dark mustache. Karen watched him—watched and waited for the inevitable reaction. He moved to her side of the highway and started waving his hands.

No, please don’t. Don’t walk out into the road to stop me.

She wondered what she’d do. Run him down in cold blood? If not—if she stopped—how much time would be lost? Would it make all the difference? Would she regret it later? Would the day come when she wished she
had
run him down?

Mercifully it never came to that. The cop couldn’t make it to her lane because too many cars were speeding by in the other westbound lane. Just before the car at the front of the line—a pearl-white Lexus sedan—reached her, the driver stuck his arm out the window and jabbed a finger westward.
You’re supposed to be going that way, stupid!
was obviously the message. He was honking his horn, too. In fact, she noticed for the first time, a lot of people were honking. She glanced at the cars on the normal westbound side. Almost every face in every vehicle was staring at her. There were other finger-jabbers, too.

“I’m going to get my children,” she said through clenched teeth to no one driver in particular. “So you can just stuff it.”

She crossed the intersection, and the cop screamed over the roof of a passing car, “Stop or you’ll be arrested at the next checkpoint!”

She kept going.

The cop yelled, “Hey!” again, and she could see him in the mirror, pointing and blowing his whistle. Then, to her horror, he took his walkie-talkie from his belt, never once taking his eyes off her. She couldn’t remember the last time she saw someone who looked so pissed off.

She turned back to the road, and her heart jumped into her throat—some idiot trying to play policeman’s little helper had moved his ancient Ford pickup into her lane to act as a barrier. The driver stepped out—tall and lanky, long golden hair with a full beard and mustache. A young dark-haired woman was in the passenger seat and looked utterly terrified. But her boyfriend/husband/whatever was grinning in that way only a man can when he’s sure he’s going to get the best of someone.

Karen registered all this in a span of maybe two seconds. That left about two more to react. She jerked the wheel clockwise, driving off the pavement and onto a sandy area that acted as a makeshift shoulder. The car bumped around like a ride at an amusement park. She screeched a few obscenities and prayed, internally, that she wouldn’t hit the idiot who had forced her to do this. She was vaguely aware of him as he passed by the open window, could hear him yell a few expletives of his own, and saw him jump back to avoid being struck.

She twisted the wheel and returned to the road. It was worse than getting off—new pavement had been set down less than a month earlier, creating a rough-hewn lip of nearly three inches. She heard a loud knock, then an angry metal scrape as the undercarriage dragged across the hard surface.

The car fishtailed into position, and she jammed the pedal to the floor. The engine screamed in protest.
Tough shit
, she thought cruelly.
Now’s the time I need you the most.
The urge to look in the rearview mirror itched like a rash, but she resisted it. She had to be on the lookout for others who had heroic aspirations. Once word got around, she realized, there’d definitely be others. For a second or so this frightened her, but then the fear faded, as if it had been tossed in a tray marked “For Later.” Some kind of liquid strength—cold and potent—flooded into her.

Let them come, she thought as she passed the pizza place where she and her family had eaten just a few weeks ago. I dare them.