Megalopolis - Table of Contents

The room was buzzing with activity. Jacob Willemson, the head of Geologic Studies at the USGS building, was perspiring from forehead down to neck.
Another call came in from a Brazilian tanker in the Atlantic Ocean. The radio operator, who had a heavy European accent, again described a horrible, massive wave coming toward the west. He desperately told the men that it was as if the Earth was tearing apart. A huge mountain, he said, was coming from inside the planet. For five minutes the radio operator declared everything he could about the situation. Then, the man cried with pain. Something hit him on the head. Then, there was a small bump and two small thuds, one after the other. A sound of rushing water came, a crackling sound occurred and then the radio signal was completely blank.
Jacob could take no more. Already calls had been made to TV and radio stations all over the country. CNN constantly aired breaking news after breaking news.
The government was in a scramble to evacuate the residents along the coast. Time was running out. The tsunami would arrive soon, devastating the shoreline.

Jacob decided that this was the time for something frantic. He ran through the white door, without waiting to reply to his friend, who was baffled by Jacob’s sudden action.
“Jake! Where are you - ” started the custodian outside the room.
“No time!” Jacob replied and ran on. He opened the heavy wooden door and dashed up the staircase. Once he reached his office, he started looking around desperately. He took the papers on his desk and threw them away. And then he found it - the key to the file cabinet in the information room.
He ran out of the office and down the empty hallway, lit by a flickering, old hallway light. A room came into view on his left, with a sign that said, “Authorized Personnel Only”. Well, this was en emergency, he told himself. Turning the steel knob, he literally threw himself into the room.
There was nobody there. That is, except for a dozing police guard who was sleeping cozily in his black leather chair. Jacob walked quickly up to the gray file cabinet, inserted the key and turned it.
It didn’t work.
Stupid key! he thought, but then he realized that in his haste, he put in the wrong key.
Then he inserted the bronze, slim key, and turned.
It still didn’t work.
Jacob growled.
He then punched the metal cabinet. However, he hit it so hard that in effect, the old rusty cabinet backfired and metal box sprang out, hitting Jacob in the chest. Jacob spun away as the metal clattered noisily to the floor, startling the guard who was dreaming of a splendid mansion.
“Smooth,” whispered Jacob under his breath. The paper he was looking for lay right in front of him. He took it in his hand and crawled away until he was out of sight, behind a large rack of books and binders.
He hardly took a breath as he heard the guard mumble out of sleep, start to pick up the documents, and groan, “Dumb cabinet! You never know what can go wrong with these things…” Jacob tiptoed to the edge of the rack. He bent forward slightly, and saw the back of the guard, who was cleaning up the mess.
He silently crept behind the guard and once he was outside the door, sprinted at top speed down the hallway and then down the stairs. He pushed open the exit door, and walked out into the parking lot.
Then he looked at the paper. It was an article about volcanic activity in East Asia. Written on the paper, in his handwriting, were a name and a telephone number.
It was written in black ink – Charles H. Gareth, 202-334-8710. Charles was a key agent in the FEMA, or Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Jacob dialed the number as fast as he could. The phone rang four times, and then a man with a deep voice picked it up.
“Hey, Jake! How come you’re calling?” he said.
“Well, why do you think I’m calling? We’re at a period of disaster!” replied Jacob.
“Well, I know – the tsunami and everything, right? What do you think we’re doing? Polka dancing or something? "Look man, I know perfectly well what’s going on.”
“Not just that, but I fear something more is happening!”
“Like what? Total devastation of the coast?”
“Not just that! Do you realize what has happened? An island is rising out of the sea! Nobody knows what in the world is going on, but I know one thing for sure.”
“What’s that? A lot of people are going to die? We all know that! I’m up to my eyeballs in work right now! We’re doing everything in our power to save people from those waves! Why the hell are you even calling me now?”
“You idiot, listen to me! The tsunami is just the least of our problems. At least twenty super-volcanoes have sprung up from that ocean, spewing ash and rock into the sky like never before!”
“Uh, Jacob, what are you talking about?”
“By next week, all daylight will be blocked! Summer will turn into winter! Crops will fail!”
“Jacob? Are you insane?”
“Livestock will die! It’s gonna’ be a world wide famine! Millions will die! No, I’m wrong! Billions will die! It’s inevitable! We’ve got to do something about this!”
“Jacob, relax, we need to concentrate on what’s going on right now. Don’t worry about those volcanoes. What’s going to happen now is the tsunami. And I’m very sure that this earthquake was just a shakeup under the ocean, nothing that huge.”
“Please, Charles, we have no time! We must warn the news agencies now!”
“Jacob, please..”
“Charles!!! We have NO TIME!!”
But Charles had already hung up. Jacob sighed and walked back inside.

- - - - -

The US Coast Guard helicopter drifted across the sky like a giant beetle. The two rescue pilots had been airlifting people for almost an hour, and by now they were sure the tsunami was on its way.
Still, they were rescuing stranded motorists and other people who did not have enough gray matter to realize that the best thing to do was to run away.
They were flying the orange-and white chopper back from the safe zone, which was north of the resort town, five miles inland. Sighing, he turned his head to the left, where the eastern was darkening slowly from the arrival of evening. Something long and large was forming at the edge of horizon. His eyes grew large.
“Alex! Hey, Alex! Oh my --- god, look over there!” he cried.
The other man turned. His eyes grew even larger.
On the far edge of the horizon, the massive waves were reaching shore, faster and faster yet. The two men in the helicopter watched in awe as a wall of water about two hundred feet tall rolled over the empty beach, hurled itself over the yellow and peach-colored resorts, ripping them to shreds in an instant, glass breaking on contact with the deadly wave. The bigger building, a casino, toppled down like a giant domino. Lethal shards of glass fell on the black asphalt of the street below. Tons of steel and stone came crashing down, shoved by the wave, and landed heavily as the huge wave swallowed up the entire beachfront. Many more buildings were engulfed by the wave, and the whole city was going under. The wall of water continued forward. A tall high-voltage power line located to the east of the city collapsed straight down into a chemical storage, and two brilliant explosions lit the dusk sky. A flame of orange shot up into the sky, but was immediately fused off by the oncoming wave that gulped down the inferno in one massive swipe. In a few seconds, the wave had traversed the whole resort town and the pilots watched in utter amazement as the wave drove on underneath their helicopter and continued inland. It would not stop until it was five miles inland.
They wiped their foreheads, thinking it was over. But once they turned around, they found they were very much incorrect. Another wave, taller than the last one, washed up onshore. The drove the helicopter higher up to avoid the wave. Five more followed. After seven poundings, the coast line had literally vanished. Debris, wood planks, rooftops, and cars were floating in what once was a placid coastal vacation spot in Florida, but now looked more like somewhere in the middle of the ocean, just with some extra props for effect. The water was receding back into the Atlantic, but it was hard to tell the difference between land and sea, anyways. People who were caught in the middle of the tsunami were instantly sucked under and dragged back into the sea. No one had a chance for survival. It was modern-day apocalypse. The top of a radio station tower poked out of the sea like a monument to the disaster, the light on the tower no longer blinking.
The three Coast Guard Emergency Rescue crew on the helicopter was completely shocked. The pilot turned on the channel to talk to the radio operator at the safe zone to tell him that the tsunamis had already arrived. He pressed a red button, picked up the microphone, and then pressed a switch on its side.
“Unit 15 to Base White Sands, we have a report. Tsunami intercepted. Total damage to town,” he said into the speaker.
On the other side, there was no sound, except for an empty electrical hiss.
“Base White Sands 00912EA, do you copy?” he repeated.
The empty hiss continued, followed by plain, continuous dial tone.
“Base White Sands, do you copy?”
There was no reply. The hiss continued.

- - - - -

It was evening at Lisbon, Portugal as Neil Tyerson settled into his hotel bedroom overlooking the city. He was on a business trip, and his delayed flight had arrived at the Portuguese capital just half an hour ago. Neil was tired, and sat down on the warm, soft bed with a sigh. He took out his slim, expensive cell phone and dialed a number. He had to use a calling card, as he was trying to connect to an international number.
Lisbon was a busy port city, a vibrant center for trade, commerce, and shipping. Looking out the clear-glass window, Neil sighed as he viewed the beautiful, old city from his vantage point thirty-two stories high on a five-star hotel. At last, the phone stopped ringing, and a man with a heavy, deep voice slowly said a tired-sounding “Hello” on the other side of the line. A friendly conversation followed.
“Hey, Daniel, it’s me Neil…,” Began Neil, turning to face the other side of the room, “Oh, yeah…Yeah, that’s because my flight got delayed…Yup, two hours…I know, really…Heh, heh, heh…Yeah…Okay…” Neil was completely engrossed in the discussion. He called his colleague Daniel at New York. Neil had to meet with a senior executive of the Portuguese company they were working with, so Neil got right down to business as soon as he came into the hotel. Tonight, he figured, I’m gonna’ sleep for ten hours.
Behind his back, Lisbon was in a commotion. Actually, it was in a total state of pandemonium. Neil did not realize this.
He finished the short, businesslike conversation with a smile on his lips. The deal had been finalized, and four more contracts had been activated in the company’s name. He turned around, content with the day’s events.
The smile faded.
For three perilous seconds, he thought of just two explanations to what he saw. Either there was window-cleaning work going on, and for some strange, unknown reason, the workers had strung up a long curtain on the windows, resembling an odd picture of Lisbon, flooded with muddy sea water and debris, buildings collapsing. But then again, pictures didn’t move, did they? Of course they didn’t. That’s when a second solution, slightly but not very accurate, came into his mind. Maybe he was witnessing a large flash flood. Nonsense, he thought. There was absolutely no rain for the past few hours.
A third solution came into his mind once he saw an ocean wave ten times as tall as the hotel he was in came charging from the surging sea.
“Tsunami,” he whispered, terrified.
He was simply awe-struck upon seeing the wave. A part of his body, the fight-or-flight one, told him to run for his life. The other, dominant one, told him to stay where he was. He was, for a second, confused. When he was just ten years old, he saw a tsunami on TV. There were pictures of big waves, up to twenty shooting out of the ocean, spraying the coast, and large surges swarming up the beach, engulfing an almost-abandoned resort, and flooding the entire resort town in the movie clip. He thought it was pretty amusing, laughing as he saw debris like beach chairs, umbrellas, and cars being dragged by the swift, deadly water. He never expected to be in a front row seat, however.
He muttered a silent prayer as he watched, transfixed, the massive wave gathering speed, growing to three hundred feet, and swallowing up the city in one gulp. At last, his primitive instincts overpowered his brain. He grabbed his coat, yanked open the door, and ran for his life. Behind him, the wave was engulfing the sunny Portuguese coast. He reached the eastern balcony of the hotel, and when he turned around, he saw the wall of water crashing through windows and rooms on the other side. He looked in front of him. In a split-second, he realized that there was a very narrow street below him and everywhere, there were old buildings and brick apartments. It was more than a twelve story drop. But now, he could hear the wave rushing toward him.
He backed up, threw away the suitcase and the jacket and ran as fast as he could. Once he reached the balcony, he doubled up over the short handrail and sprung toward the old apartment on the other side. He saw the wave some forty yards behind him.
Sprawling into mid air, he stretched his arms out, and hoped for the best. He managed to jump up to edge of the building, and grabbed on the gargoyle figure plastered into the wall.
A rushing sound could be heard behind him. The agile man somehow shinnied up the wall, recovered his wits, and then sprinted. He looked behind him, after narrowly dodging a clothesline.
The hotel had collapsed. In its place, a wall of blue-brown water was racing toward the east.
He kept running. The building was very long and flat, and after a few seconds, he reached the end, with the wave almost thirty-five yards behind him. He grabbed on to a fire pole, and then tried to slide down the staircase at the edge. But his grip was not strong enough. Trying to outrun a tsunami was not easy. He fell ten stories.
Neil closed his eyes. This is it, he thought, you’re going to die. But then he heard a thud and felt himself crashing into a pile of plastic-like material. He opened his eyes. And then he realized it.
He was miraculously saved. He had fallen right into a small pickup truck, passing by, which was carrying big sacks of clay, probably to be transported to a construction site. He had fallen right into a large open sack of hay. The truck took a left turn, and then Neil looked in front of him. The tsunami was probably only twenty-five yards behind them. The truck was going at 40 miles per hour. The tsunami was at 120.
He jumped over to the back window, and broke the right part of the window with his fist. The driver, startled, turned around.
“Do you know what you’re doing? THERE’S A TSUNAMI BEHIND US! Go faster!” He screamed in slightly accented Portuguese. The driver seemed to understand when he saw the wave, twenty yards behind them. He revved the gas. The vehicle careened forward.
“Faster!” yelled Neal over the sound of an explosion.
“Me already is at full speed!!!” retorted the driver.
The driver swerved through the oncoming traffic.
They were driving at almost a hundred miles per hour. Narrowly missing cars and buses, they continued forward, in total chaos.
Neil turned around. Vehicles were swallowed whole by the wave, now fifteen yards from them.
Up ahead, they were driving toward a fence. Beyond it, some airplanes could be seen.
“The airport! It’s our only chance!” cried Neil.
“But, sir, I see fence? What I do?” replied the driver.
“Go through it!”
They braced themselves. The truck broke the fence like an axe splitting a pencil. It happened so fast that Neil almost didn’t even feel the force of the collision. The wave was behind them. They speeded forward, towards a small aircraft, whose passengers had seen the oncoming wave and the speeding vehicle, and were hurrying onboard the plane. Some twenty feet from the plane, the two men stopped the truck, jumped down, and ran to the plane.
“Stop! Help us!” said Neil, waving his bloody fist. But it was no use. The plane continued taxiing toward the runway, gaining speed. The two men ran along. The plane picked up speed, and the two men grabbed onto the tail wing of the plane. The plane dragged them along at dizzying speeds. The wave was ten yards behind them now. The plane kept going faster. 60 mph. 70 mph. 80 mph. 100 mph. The men held on desperately. Neil felt something burning. He looked down, clutching the wing. His shoe was on fire, from friction. Yelling in pain, he kicked off the burning shoe, which exploded on contact with a runway light.
“Golf Cricket Red 9-0-2, you have a person grabbing onto your tail wing,” said the air-traffic controller, seconds before the tower was brought down by the wave.
“What? A person…tail wing…” exclaimed the copilot. He ran back into the passenger cabin.
The plane started lifting, and the two men held on with all their strength, with the wave just five yards behind them. The aircraft picked up speed and altitude. It climbed almost two hundred feet into the air, leaving the wave behind it.
Then the driver let out a cry. Neil looked in horror as the man’s arms slipped from the wing because of the wing ailerons; he stretched out his hand just in time to catch the man’s hand. They were dangling from the aircraft, three hundred feet in the air. Any fall from here, he knew, would be a really bad one.
Copilot Jamienssohn looked out of the backboard window. His jaw dropped when he saw the two men. He ran back to the crew cabin. “Lower the plane! Now! We’ve got people holding onto the back!” he hollered. The terrified pilots lowered the plane until it was about a hundred and fifty feet in the air.
Outside, Neil thought his body was just about to quit. And then a man suddenly opened the aircraft door. The man was almost blown away by the force of the airplane’s speed and the air it was slicing through. Still, the crew member extended his shaking hand, with squinting eyes and hair being blown away by wind.
Neil positioned his head on the wing, balancing, and then did a weird action, a cross between a jump and a jerk, to grab the man’s hand. The man would have fallen out, if it wasn’t for three more people holding his hand inside the plane. They pulled the dangling men in while the plane continued to fall. It was at eighty feet now. The copilot closed the door. The plane began to climb, now far ahead of the killer wave.
There was lot of talking to be done. But the men had narrowly escaped the killer wave. 800 million people wouldn’t get so lucky.

- - - - -

Sharon Alcester put down her cell phone. She hurried into the living room.
“We have got to leave. Now. I just got a call from Louise in London. She says there’s going to be a huge tsunami coming right at us.”
“What?” replied her husband, Ron.
Sharon and Ron had brought their family to Ireland for a vacation. It was only three days, and now things were looking very grim.
“Louise said there’s been an earthquake in the Atlantic, and that the European Geologic and Seismologic Organizations have been warning about tsunamis that may be drawing near to the European coast. We’d best move inland and not stay near here at the coast.”
“Well, let’s see what the news channels have to say,” said Ron, slowly switching on the television. The floorboard of the hotel creaked softly as Sharon walked over to the couch.
The television came on with a slight crackle and blinking of a small red light on the bottom panel. Ron switched the channel to the national English news channel. Some advertisements were going on, showing a person speaking in fluent Gaelic, holding up what looked like a bottle of painkillers or aspirins. Probably a medicine commercial, Sharon guessed.
As soon as it had started, the commercial ended. Music came on, and the screen showed a title for the news channel. A journalist appeared, chatting about politics. This went on for seven minutes, and once the news channel had gone through all of the day’s latest news, and ended the show, they were convinced that nothing had happened.
“See that? I told you nothing happened! Your friends are just a little too excited about things,” said Ron.
“Oh, well…” muttered Sharon softly.
Ron switched the channel to a music show. It was showing a live performance from Lisbon, Portugal. A rock band was playing, and its lead singer, a tall, thin guy with very long hair, was screaming into the mike.
“Ah, the climax,” joked Ron. Sharon smiled.
And then, the strangest thing happened.
In the show, a loud beeping sound of microphone feedback occurred, stunning the audience and the performers. The musicians stopped playing, and the singer stopped yelling with a confused “…huh?”
Now everyone in the stadium looked to their left, and started screaming. People suddenly stood up and started running in the opposite direction. Even the video journalist yelled a distinct “Oh my God!” and could be heard running away. All the people fled, the musicians clattering along with their instruments.
“What’s going on?” thought Ron and Sharon.
The whole arena was going empty, and now an explosion and a moaning sound could be heard. The next thing that happened is that the screen suddenly went black, fizzing with distortion and noise.
After half a minute of black screen, a new screen came on. It was light yellow, and with dark, green letters, said:

PLEASE WAIT

We are having technical difficulties.
This channel should be available shortly
We apologize for the inconvenience.

“What in heck’s name was that?” cried Ron.
“Did you hear the sound of an explosion?” said Sharon.
Ron was confused, and proceeded to scratching his chin. Sharon took the remote and switched the television back to the news channel.
The news anchor was back, and in just a fraction of a second, dramatic music came on and a red-orange screen was seen, with the words “BREAKING NEWS”.
A younger, female newscaster came on, speaking with slight anxiety.
“This just in – breaking news has arrived from our affiliates at Lisbon, Portugal,” she began, “A mega-tsunami has completely overwhelmed the city’s sea walls and has totally devastated the entire town. Similar calls are coming in from Oporto and Dakar, Senegal, and other cities as well. Tsunamis up to three hundred feet in height have been reported. A tsunami warning has been forecasted for the entire western coast of Europe, Africa, the southern coasts of Ireland and England, the eastern coasts of North and South America, and the southern coasts of Greenland and Iceland. Record breaking waves are being reported also on the Western coast. Daniel Newman has the rest of the news.”
The screen faded into a picture of a man standing inside what looked like an air traffic control tower room. A few operators in white shirts could be seen, responding to an endless stream of phone calls. A woman in a blue shirt walked up to a large map, brandishing a small red marker.
It was a map of Western Europe. There was a myriad of red and blue ‘x’ marks, and many black triangles. The woman took a short look at her notebook, glanced at the map, back at the notebook, then, hesitantly, put a red ‘x’ on a spot on a the French coastline, and another one slightly north of the last mark, and then she walked away out of view.
As this was going on, a newscaster was sitting next to an old-looking man in an expensive suit. The man, who looked like some sort of expert or official, had grayish, untidy hair, and droopy eyes with dark circles around them.
And so the newscaster began, “Hello, I’m Daniel Newman, BBC field journalist, reporting from the British Geological Society Headquarters in Keyworth, Nottinghamshire. As Rachel told you, we are receiving global reports of tsunami all over Atlantic coast. We have the honor of being with Mr. Adam Canters, an expert on this field. Mr. Canters, can you tell us a little bit of what’s going on.
The old man nodded slightly and then started to speak. “We are about to witness probably the worst global disaster ever recorded in history. Right now as we speak, waves taller than the Eiffel Tower have pounded the Western Europe coastline, and more are plowing towards the southern English Coastline. The BGS has currently issued a Tsunami Alert for the entire English and Irish southern coast. We are asking every one in these affected areas,” and as he spoke, a map came on the screen. It was a gray map of Ireland and England, with the “affected areas” colored in orange. Sharon gasped. Ron’s eyes widened. They were right in the center of orange. In fact, there was orange 7 miles to their North. The old man continued to speak, undaunted, “The earth is sort blowing out in a certain area in the center of the Atlantic Ocean. A huge hotspot has blown itself apart and in effect, the crust has received a shockwave measuring 8.2 on the Richter scale. Seven more shocks followed, the largest one measuring 10.4. Because of these shocks, people near the coastline, will at first, see the tide recede very quickly, almost eerily. But don’t be fooled. If you are near these global affected areas, please evacuate as far inland as possible, this wave will not spare anything in its path. 8 tsunamis are expected to pound the Atlantic Coasts of North and South America, Africa, and Europe, and even Antarctica. Our predictions even continue to state that the waves could reflect towards India, Indonesia, Australia, and the Polynesian Islands. Again, if you are in these areas, please - ”
Sharon did not need the geologist to complete the sentence. Ron sank into the seat, head in hands. Rachel screamed, “Ron, what are you doing? We have to move now! Come on!”
Ron got up and followed Sharon as they stuffed their clothes one by one into the bag, ran outside, not bothering to lock the door of the motel room.
Oh well, what kind of devastation could the tsunami possibly bring to Antarctica, anyways?, Ron thought in a sense of last-moment humor. Well, maybe if you were a penguin, you’d know. At any rate, this cataclysmic nightmare would prove to be even worse than the geologist had predicted. And you wouldn’t have to be a penguin to know that. In fact, you wouldn’t even need to be human being to know that.