Tsunami

The ground was still vibrating beneath her feet but the booming had stopped, and Kali noticed that that the water was no longer pulling at her legs as it streamed seaward. It had stopped moving and was swirling around her feet in confused, lazy eddies, like a serpent ready to strike. No, it was rising.

She heard a burst of screaming from outside, the roar of surf and crack of splitting wood. Another wave! Another wave was coming, had already hit the shore and was flooding up into the town.

Kali turned to see a chest-deep wall of water surge into the garage, flinging the doors off their broken hinges and flooding against her. Before she had time to think, it was surging around her waist and she was half-swimming through the oily, debris-strewn water, desperately trying to reach the stairs in the back. As long as the garage didn't collapse and crush her to death, the real danger would be in the suck-back as the wave receded, dragging everything along with it back down into the sea, herself included.

She hit her foot on a submerged tire and lost her balance, fell into the swirling water and got up choking only to be knocked down by another surge that pushed her back down beneath the surface. She was frightened now and her fear made her angry, and Kali's anger was formidable. She jumped up and fought her way to the stairs
The water was to her chest and still rising by the time she grabbed hold of the railing and pulled herself out of the flood. She stood on the stairs coughing, then ran up to the roof where the family had a patio for eating and relaxing. If any of them had been in the garage and escaped the first wave, that's where they would be. Kali threw open the thin wooden door at the top and stepped out onto the roof. She saw the tables and chairs, cushions and sunshades all in disarray.

She was alone.

The water was not four feet below her, boiling and swirling and licking at the roof, filled with bits of wood and leaves and papers. She saw a child's shoe, a bunch of flowers, magazines swirling in the turbid and foaming water. She stood up and looked around her and all she saw were trees and power poles emerging from the foaming broth, not another structure standing except for the old Government Tariff house that stood across from the garage and the buildings at the flower market.

The city was dissolving around her like a lump of sugar in hot tea: buildings collapsing, trees and power poles falling over. The air was filled with the roar of the water and the shouts and screams of people swept up in the flood, the grinding crash of cars and vehicles swept along like leaves in a raging river.