Cross Currents (37 page)

Instinctively, he threw himself against the bungalow's door. The sea mirrored his action from the opposite side, though, crushing the door as if it were a battering ram—ripping off its hinges, hurling it inward against him. He tasted salt and blood. Dao screamed as she was lifted and then compressed against the roof. Suddenly they were underwater. As the sea stung his eyes Ryan tore at the thatched roof. He slammed his head against it. He bit it, ripped it, and kicked it. Though the hole he opened was no bigger than a toilet seat, it was big enough. The sea shoved them through it, and suddenly they were on the surface, being driven inland by a mass of water that seemed infinitely powerful and irresistible.

“Dao!” he screamed, kicking toward her, pulling her close. She clung to him, wiping blood from a gash above her eye, struggling to stay afloat. She tried to speak but no words came out.

The sea spewed forth, collapsing bungalows, toppling buildings, pulverizing everything in its path. A man clinging to a palm tree wailed as an overturned boat plowed into the tree, severing his hands from his arms. He shrieked again and disappeared. In his wake swirled bodies—those of cats and children. The bodies were torn and incomplete.

Something snagged on Ryan's shorts, and he was yanked underwater. In the blackness objects battered him, striking his head, ankles, and groin. He managed to get out of his shorts and, following bubbles upward, swam. Dao shouted when she saw him, and they were together again. Their fingers met and clutched.

Ryan was astounded by the speed with which they were pulled—at least as fast as a passenger train. Another boat tumbled past, punching a hole in an Internet café. Next a hotel disintegrated, its balcony falling atop a man clinging to a floating door. A woman wailed as she saw him die. She dived after him and was swallowed by the hotel. People on the upper level screamed as the building collapsed. They jumped from windows. They ran inside. Clinging together, they disappeared as the hotel and the sea consumed them.

A mound of steel and concrete remained slightly higher than the water. A Thai man swam frantically toward this island, only to be impaled upon the rubble. Ryan shouted at Dao to swim away from it, and she did, wincing as her feet struck debris. The brown water, laden with filth, choked her, and she spit and struggled.

A fishing net filled with thrashing creatures entangled the pair, and they went under for a few heartbeats. A dead shark hammered into Ryan's side as he desperately held his breath. Kicking upward, they emerged from the net, their bodies now bloodied in a dozen places.

Dao was weakening, angry welts all over her body. Her left arm hung useless, and Ryan feared it was broken. He shouted at her to fight, to clear her mind of anything except the need to survive. But to his dismay, she didn't seem to hear him, not even when he pressed his lips against her ear.

A life-size wooden Buddha floated by, and Ryan grabbed its torso with one arm and Dao with the other. They were moving slower now. For an instant the water ceased to flow. Then they were dragged backward, out toward the sea. Something ripped into Ryan's thigh, and he shrieked in pain.

As Ryan and Dao were pulled toward the deep, he struggled to keep her alive. He tried to do so many things—to hold her afloat, to kick toward a distant palm tree, to maintain his grip on the Buddha. The thought of losing Dao provoked a fear within him that made it difficult for him to breathe. His world seemed to spin, and he panicked, clutching her against him so hard that his fingernails made her bleed.

Again something struck his legs, raking them like an ancient weapon of steel. The pain was overwhelming. He screamed. He screamed again and again, and this newfound despair gave him the strength to lift Dao higher out of the water. She was barely conscious, and a large contusion dominated one side of her head. He begged her to stay awake, salt from the sea clouding his vision. Dao suddenly seemed to recognize his voice, and her lips formed into a fleeting smile.

Ryan prayed as he kicked toward a palm tree, kicked with his pulverized and aching feet. He prayed to God, to the Buddha he grasped, to anyone or anything listening. He cried as he prayed, four or five lifeless bodies swirling about him like flotsam in a river.

“Please . . . no leave me,” Dao whispered through bleeding lips.

He pulled her closer and kicked harder, groaning when they became snagged on the outrigging of a half-sunken fishing boat. His body was caught within ropes and cables, as was Dao's. The sea continued to withdraw, and the pressure against them was enormous, unbearable, in fact. Debris jammed against them, striking their legs, slashing their faces. With a supreme effort, Ryan moved to his right, lifted Dao out of the water, and set her on top of the wheelhouse. The steel roof was secure, and the fishing boat was large, heavy, and seemingly immobile—wedged within a cluster of stout trees.

“You're safe,” he said, feeling cold.

“Climb up here!”

He shook his head as the current pulled on him. “My brother. I have to find my brother.”

“No!”

“I have to.”

“Please stay,” she said, and reached for him.

He kissed her hand. “Be happy. Always be happy.”

“Please!”

His lips pressed against her skin again. “Thank you.”

“Why? Why you thank me?” she asked, weeping.

“Because I know . . . I know you would have loved me.” He turned then, leaving her, letting the current pull him toward the other side of the island, where he knew Patch would be. Though the water was red near him, red from his blood, he swam as hard and fast as possible, the bond he shared with his brother giving him a strength he had never known, a ferocity he hadn't dreamed possible.

The water tried to suck him down, to sever that bond, but he screamed and swam on, heedless of the dangers around him, of how the cold was spreading deeper into his limbs.

SARAI HAD ALWAYS TRIED TO control her world, working hard to ensure that everything was as it should be. But now, as she struggled for her life, she felt so very small. She and Lek had been swept inland, like everything else, but had managed to grab onto a wooden sign that had once pointed tourists toward a pastry shop. The thick sign was five feet long and a foot wide, and was buoyant enough to keep them afloat. Resting their upper bodies on it, they kicked hard, trying to head back toward Rainbow Resort. Though they could have reached safe havens on several occasions, once they determined that none of their loved ones was amid groups of survivors, they continued to search.

Even as she bled and suffered, Sarai focused only on her children, constantly looking for them. No thought or action was for herself. She had seen Patch grab Suchin and Niran, and then the water had consumed them—just as it had swallowed up Yai, Achara, and the American woman. Her tears incessant, Sarai begged Buddha to give strength to her family and to those who were helping them. She had been tempted to leave the board, to try to swim toward their resort, but no one could fight against such currents. To swim meant death, and dying would not help her loved ones.

She beat her fist against the board, beat it until Lek stopped her. “You're going to hurt yourself!” he shouted, kicking so hard that he seemed to have the hip of a twenty-year-old. “Stop, Sarai! Stop doing that!”

“Where are they? Where . . . where have they gone?”

A woman's body floated past. To their right, a complex of new bungalows disintegrated, glass shattering, roofs collapsing. Screams came from inside one of the structures, which were simply lifted up and pulverized into shards by the sea. The screams were vanquished, though in the distance, other shouts and cries pierced the constant tumult created by the raging water.

Sarai's sarong caught on something, and she was dragged down. She kicked, her feet seeming to strike nails, and Lek pulled her up, his face contorted. The sarong ripped and disappeared. Suddenly she was free, though her feet hurt so badly that she could hardly kick. Thinking of her children enduring such pain, she began to beat the board again, wanting to take their suffering and make it her own.

Lek stilled her once more, assuring her that they were alive.

“How do you know?” she asked. “How, how, how?”

“I'm not—”

“Tell me!”

Her eyes seemed crazed, and he nodded. “Patch grabbed them. And Achara . . . the American woman—”

“The wave took them all! They disappeared!”

“Look,” Lek said, pointing to a boy who had climbed a coconut tree. “People live.”

“And people die!”

Lek, barely able to see, wiped tears and grit from his eyes. “We should have . . . sent Patch away weeks ago.”

“So?”

“Why did we keep him with us?”

“To help! For selfish, disgusting reasons.”

He shook his head. “No. He was meant to be here today. That's why . . . that's why, my love, I think they all live.”

She put her head against his shoulder and started to sob, praying as she had never prayed, beseeching Buddha to let her husband be right.

As if her plea were answered, a longboat appeared ahead, vacant and seemingly undamaged. “There!” she shouted, kicking furiously as the water swirled around her, pulling her down. She wasn't afraid of death, but she wouldn't die now, with her children still out there. And so she called upon the last reserves of her strength and will, refusing to submit even as people around her were sucked under, even as the strongest and stoutest finally surrendered, disappearing beneath the sea that had always comforted them.

CLINGING TO A VOLLEYBALL-SIZE YELLOW buoy that might have been from a crab trap and that couldn't quite save them from sinking, Patch struggled to keep Niran and Suchin alive. Though both children were unhurt except for a variety of scratches and shallow cuts, they appeared to be in shock. Suchin's teeth chattered and her eyes were blank and unfocused. Niran tried to swim but seemed to have forgotten how. And while Patch's mind still sped and schemed, his body, which hung down into the debrisfilled water, was bruised and bloody. The initial impact of the wave had twisted his right knee, and that leg now throbbed and was nearly useless. He could kick with his other leg, but his hands gripped the children and the buoy, and keeping everyone above the surface was becoming increasingly difficult.

The sea was now withdrawing from the island, sucking boats and trees and buildings back toward the bay. Here and there survivors gathered on the roofs of half-demolished buildings or concrete hotels. Though these people called out to him, Patch didn't expend his energy shouting for their aid, as there was nothing they could do. Instead he tried to comfort the children, humming to them, kissing their foreheads, and even joking on occasion.

Though he pretended otherwise, he was gripped by despair. Oil and gasoline coated patches of the surface, and his eyes stung from the chemicals. He'd swallowed so much filthy water that he felt nauseated. He tried not to panic, but his breathing was becoming ragged, and the world started to spin. The water seemed to be moving faster, pulling back, as if the island were a submarine breaching the surface. Objects too small or waterlogged to be of use swirled around them. Patch sought to shield the children with his own body, grunting as coconuts thudded into him. Suchin tried to climb out of the water onto Patch, and he was pushed under, debris striking his face and neck. With an almost superhuman strength, he kicked to the surface, shouting at her to be still and to pray.

With a free arm, he told himself, he could save one child. Letting one die would likely allow the other to live. A free arm would allow him to swim to a tree, to grab hold of something before they were swept into the bay. He wept as he wondered which child to release, which child to save and which to let die. Suchin was so happy, and that happiness shouldn't be extinguished. But Niran was bright and eager, and his love of science would surely lead to good things.