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These are the people I need to see me,
I think, and I head toward them.

They don’t spot me right away, but one of them misses the ball and it rolls to a stop at my feet. I bend and pick it up, only it’s not a ball. It’s an orange.
The hell?
What kind of people stand in a circle and play catch with an orange? “Are you guys like a rehab support group or something?”

One of them shouts something, and I swear it’s ‘Argh,’ like a pirate. Okay...maybe not the best group of people to approach.

“Toss the orange!” a girl with a pink streak in her hair shouts. While there’s a wide range of ages represented here, she’s by far the youngest.

“Throw it, ya wanker.” And an Aussie? I try to come up with something funny to say, but then I spot another woman holding up two fingers in some kind of reverse peace sign. These people are a little nuts.

“You all come on the short bus?” I ask. Probably not best to instigate them, but I really can’t help myself. To my surprise, they all start laughing. Then one of them, who I swear is something close to my twin, steps from the circle. “You’re Jon Hudson.”

Perfect
. That’s all I really wanted. Recognition and an alibi. The man, who I dare say is quite handsome, shakes my hand. A real fan boy. The others start snapping pictures, and I think someone else shouts, ‘Argh’ again.
The hell are these people smoking?

“Thanks,” the man says, “for everything you’ve done.” And that’s when I notice a lot of them are wearing Nemesis T-shirts.

Wait... I know who this is... “You’re the guy who fictionalized Nemesis. Wrote the novels.”

“And the comic book,” he says, and then he turns to the group of people, who I now realize are just fans being goofy, visiting one of the locations featured in those books. “These guys are—”

“Holy shit!” the young girl shouts, pointing up at the sky.

A flickering beam of bright white light cuts through the atmosphere high above, filling the air with a sharp crackling. It’s bright enough to make me squint, but I keep watching. Then, moving within the light, something huge strobes into the view, shooting straight down at the open ocean. The massive beam of light arcs over the horizon, carrying the object toward the water and out of view. While the group of people start backing away, Collins and I head for the ocean wall.

A sonic boom slams into the park, sparking screams and the sound of fleeing people. But Collins and I watch it pass the horizon, waiting for it to hit. While we wait, I make a quick call. “Coop. I need Woodstock in Future Betty. Lynch Park. Now.”

“Got it,” she says without question.

The crackling beam of light disappears, its radiance replaced by a blooming glow on the horizon. Touchdown.

“Wait...” I say, “Get everyone on board.”

“Everyone?” Cooper asks.

A warm breeze tickles my cheeks.

“Just a precaution. Now! Hurry!”

I pocket the phone just before a shockwave reaches us with a cacophonous boom. Collins and I are lifted off our feet and sent sprawling to the ground while a hot wind scours our skin. Then it’s past us, lashing through the still recovering city.

I’m on my feet first, hobbling back to the sea wall and looking down. “Shitty, shit, shit.”

Collins arrives next to me and looks down at the receding ocean. “Shit.”

“I covered that already,” I say.

My phone rings and I answer it. “Hudson.”

“Woodstock is on his way in Betty,” Cooper says, a trace of panic in her voice. The shock wave would have just hit the Crow’s Nest, too.

“Wait, what do you mean, Woodstock?” I ask. “I said you all—”

“
Helicopter
Betty,” she says, and I can hear her continued disdain for the name. Before I can protest, she adds, “Future Betty is gone.”

“
Gone?
”

“Along with Lilly and Maigo.”

I feel about ready to explode in anger, but that’s not going to save Collins and me. “Tell him to meet us in the quad!”

Collins and I sprint through the rose garden and into the large grassy field on the other side. Cars are screaming out of the parking lot, which is at the top of a tall hill, a good fifty feet higher above sea level, which is a lot better than being here. When I spot a large white van and the group of odd Nemesis fans climbing into it, I tug on Collins’s arm and run for it. “Hold up!”

The author spots us and leaves the side door open. “Room for two more!” someone inside the van shouts, and I swear I think these loons are enjoying this. Collins and I dive in while the driver slams down the gas pedal and we lurch into a very slow acceleration, crawling up the hill.

“Look!” someone shouts, and I turn back. A wall of water envelops the park, slides across the parking lot and starts rising up the slope behind us.

As we crest the hilltop, a man in the back pumps his fist and shouts, “Woohoo!”

What he doesn’t know is that while Lynch Park is at the bottom of a hill, several beaches in the area, some in front of us, some behind us, will do nothing to slow down the tsunami. And based on the speed of the water rushing over the park, we’ve got just seconds before it finds us. Happily, the driver seems to understand this as well.

“We need to get to higher ground!” the man shouts.

I lean between the front seats and point. “Straight ahead. Turn right when I tell you!”

“Argh!” someone says.

Good Lord in Heaven, don’t let us die with these crazy people.
I open my eyes in time to see the open, wrought-iron gate of Central Cemetery. “Turn right, now!”

8

As we roar past the gravestones marking the dead, some of them still scorched from Nemesis’s passing three years ago, I wonder how many more will be dead by the end of the day. The area is still far less populated than it was pre-Nemesis, but that wave isn’t just striking Beverly. It’s going to smash into every seaside city in the Gulf of Maine. Millions of people are at risk. But my focus at the moment is saving the fifteen people crammed into this van.

“Left!” I shout, a moment before being mashed hard to the right, face pressed against glass. I see rushing water churning through the gravestones beside us, a swell rising up the sloped lawn.

The side of the van clips a gravestone and bounces hard, righting itself on the small, crumbling paved road. My head strikes the ceiling. Someone behind me cries out, but I can’t tell if they’re excited, afraid or in pain. The van shakes over the poorly maintained road.

“Seriously,” a woman with an English accent shouts from the back. “Do you have to hit
every
pothole? I’m going to be sick!”

You’re going to be dead if the driver worries about potholes,
I think, but I keep it to myself.

“Which way now?” the driver shouts, as we approach a four way intersection.

“Straight through,” the author, whose name I can’t recall, yells back before I can answer. He glances back at me. “I grew up here.”

I nod, seeing the pain in his eyes. He’s seen his home town destroyed more than once now.

“We’ll fix this,” I tell him, but it feels hollow. I don’t even know what this is. The best I can do is put my recently acquired wealth to work. It’s not really a matter of public record, but Zoomb, the Internet giant I...inherited...paid for a lot of the rebuilding projects stretching from Portland, Maine to Boston. That includes the newly renovated, now deluged, Lynch Park. Nemesis wasn’t my fault, but I also didn’t figure out how to stop her rampage until the New England coast was in shambles. If today is related, I’m going to have to spend a lot more money to squelch my guilty conscience.

The gate on the far side of the cemetery is closed, the wrought iron bars padlocked with a chain. The author turns back to me again, eyes widened at the wall of water filling the view through the back windows. “Crow’s Nest?”

How the hell does he know...? Doesn’t matter.
“Yes!”

“Go through!” the author shouts.

The driver guns the engine and ducks. “Everyone down!”

The van shudders from an impact, filling with the sound of crunching metal and shattering safety glass. I feel squares of the stuff pepper my face. The van jolts again, and the engine growls as we head uphill, out of the cemetery. The wall of water behind us careens into the fence, shoving trees, home debris and a few bodies against the metal bars before rising above it and plowing into the residential neighborhood we’re tearing through.

The chop of a helicopter turns me forward. I’m surprised to see the van’s windshield mostly missing, along with a portion of the roof. One of the metal gates is wedged in the van’s front end, where the windshield had been, just inches above the heads of the driver and author. Brave men.

Betty flies past overhead. I don’t know if Woodstock knows we’re in the van or not, but he’s trying to help.

The intersection ahead is generally a busy one. Anyone driving on the cross street might not know about the incoming wave and might T-bone us. But it’s a risk we have to take. Powder Hill is just ahead, rising two hundred feet with the Crow’s Nest at its apex.

“Don’t slow down,” I tell the driver.

He looks unsure.

The water rises behind us, just feet away from the van that is slowing, more because of gravity than the driver removing his foot from the gas pedal.

My phone rings.

I answer it.

“That you in the van?” Woodstock asks.

“Yes.”

“Intersection is clear,” he says. “But you better step on it. Second wave is bigger.”

I lean between the front seats. “The road ahead is clear. Don’t let up. Not until we’re at the top.”

The driver clutches the steering wheel and locks his eyes ahead. Moving at seventy miles per hour, we crest the rise and bounce through the intersection, hitting the much steeper climb up Powder hill. The van slows on the incline, but also keeps us from flipping around the sharp bend in the road.

“I think the water is receding,” someone says.

“It’s not,” I tell the driver.

I feel Collins’s hand on my arm, gripping as she looks back. I don’t need to look. I know what’s there. The second, bigger wave.

“What is that?” a man asks.

“Oh, shit. Oh, shit!” a woman says. They’re seeing it now, too, and their reactions are not putting my mind at ease.

When the van shakes, I can’t stop myself from looking back. A wave has crested against the hillside, white froth exploding against the rear windows, drawing screams from the group, but also giving us a little nudge forward.

The water continues to rise around us, consuming the homes at the bottom of the hill. Spray hisses from the tires and then drags us a little slower. Water rises up over the back windows, swirling with debris and dead things. A man seated behind me calmly shakes his head, mumbling, “I should have stayed in Minnesota.” He meets my eyes. “This kind of thing doesn’t happen in Minnesota!”

The guy is about to lose his mind, and I don’t blame him. But we’re not dead yet. I put the phone to my ear again. “How are we looking?”

“Clear to the Nest,” Woodstock says, “but the water is rising fast. Would
not
recommend heading down the far side. Roads are congested. Water is already moving around the hill.”

“Have them open the doors for us!” I shove the phone back into my pocket.

The engine surges as the road levels out atop the hill and we pull free of the water. We race past homes that survived Nemesis’s first arrival here, watching the water surround them. The large stone wall of the Crow’s Nest grounds is straight ahead. I point to the marble staircase leading up to the perfectly maintained grass. “Stop us in front of the stairs!”

The group of people behind stare with rapt attention, perhaps understanding that their lives depend on how they react in the next seconds. “When we stop, everyone gets out. One row at a time. Anyone who pushes ahead has to talk to her.” I motion to Collins, expecting her to just look mean, but she pulls a gun from behind her back and chambers a round.

Tires squeal and the van cuts hard to the right, slamming to a stop against the curb. The author is out of the passenger’s side before the van fully settles and tears open the side doors. Collins and I are out first, but neither of us leave. Nor does the author or the driver.

“Get them inside,” I shout to the two men. “Go!”

The van disgorges its passengers faster than I thought possible. I suppose not drowning in an apocalyptic deluge is a great motivation. When everyone is out, Collins and I follow the group up the stairs, where a brick walkway leads across the lawn to the mansion’s patio entrance. The door is already open. Watson and Cooper are waving us on. Hawkins and Joliet are in the yard helping the few stragglers move faster. Maigo and Lilly, whose help we could really use right now, are nowhere to be seen. Woodstock buzzes past overhead, shouting through a loudspeaker. “Move it! You all are slower than a pregnant three-legged moose!”

The ground shakes as a wall of water slams into the property’s wall, sending spray rocketing a hundred feet in the air. The van is swept away and slammed through the front door of a neighboring home. Water surges up the walled-in stairwell and explodes over the lawn, slapping Collins and me as we bring up the rear.

“Get everyone upstairs!” I shout ahead, as the group files through the patio doors, led by Watson and Cooper.

Hawkins stays behind and greets us, eyes on the still rising tsunami. “What the hell happened?”

“No idea,” I tell him, “but I think our WCS might have just landed on our doorstep.”

WCS is shorthand for Worst Case Scenario. Since we discovered the existence of multiple alien species, whose machinations for the human race are uncertain at best, we’ve discussed our response amidst ourselves, with the U.S. government, and with any nations that would take us seriously, despite our lack of physical evidence. GOD is very good at cleaning up their messes. We haven’t seen or heard from them since stealing Future Betty from Area 51, their former base turned flattened husk. Zach Cole and Alicio Brice...or his clones...are in the wind. While I still have the President’s ear and trust, thanks to a little brainwashing, the world hasn’t come to a consensus on the topic yet, let alone a course of action. The movies are wrong. Even when faced with doom from above, the human race probably won’t come together.