Chapter 3

Fort Severn, Ontario, Canada

19 December 2012

4:27 American Eastern Standard Time

There were still some broken cumulus clouds drifting across the dark sky as Garry Molson pulled his rusting pick-up truck to a stop next to the dock and cut the headlights. He reached across the dashboard to pick up his cup of coffee and popped off the plastic cover. The steaming beverage formed small patch of fog on the top of the windscreen which quickly crystallised because of the cold outside.

It was off-season for fishermen like him, but he was still an early riser on chilly winter days such as this. It had seemed like a good time to pay a visit to his warehouse and check to see how the repairs to his trawler were coming before the workmen arrived for the day.

He noisily sipped his creamy, sweetened drink for a moment. The morning newspaper lay folded in the passenger’s seat, awaiting dawn’s light to allow him to read up on local events and see who was selling what and who had passed away during the week.

Molson replaced the plastic lid on top of the coffee cup, glanced in the rear-view mirror, out at the black water behind his vehicle, then cracked open the truck door and stepped out, bringing both the cup of coffee and the newspaper along. His breath misted heavily in the air, lit from a lonely street light near his building. He dug deep into his trousers pocket to find a tangle of keys on a tarnished brass ring, and strode purposefully toward the warehouse.

He slotted the key into the door’s lock and began to twist it open when everything around him started shaking furiously, followed quickly by a rumble that grew as the rattling continued. Molson dropped his beverage, newspaper and keys and threw himself to the ground. The street light flickered and died, while the buildings and the docks creaked and groaned as they rocked with the ground. A number of simultaneous snaps and pops echoed in his ears and there were crashes as gutters, shutters, doors, roofs and walls gave way, collapsing in a cacophony around him.

A fierce snap made him swing his head round to his warehouse. It sounded as if a tree had broken in half, but little light from the cloud-obscured moon to help, he barely realised that the light pole had given way until it landed with a resounding boom and the crash of metal and glass breaking. He could didn’t need any light to know that the pole had landed on top of his beloved pick-up, but couldn’t spare it any more thought as the ground continued to buck wildly beneath him. One wall of the warehouse buckled and collapsed, followed by cracks and splintering sounds as the rest of the building shifted. Then, the central beam fell inward, the roof following it.

Other buildings nearby collapsed in similar fashion, many in much worse condition. The wharf to which boats often docked had fallen into the Bay, leaving countless piers sticking up out of the water like limbless trees.

The shaking subsided, but the structures still standing shifted and groaned under the weight of the materials of which they were made.

Molson rose to his hands and knees, then got up to his shaky legs. It took a long minute before he could put his thoughts in order and remembered that he had a small electric torch in his coat pocket.

The torch flickered dully in the blackness of the pre-dawn hour, giving off just enough light for the fisherman to see the ruins of his warehouse and where his pick-up lay beneath the light pole. He swore mightily at the elements, never once considering that he was still alive despite the aftermath. All that concerned him was the broken masts that poked through the collapsed roof, knowing that his ship would probably be beyond repair. He swore again, his voice echoing oddly against the ruined landscape.

Another thought entered his mind. If this is what the waterfront looked like, his home might be in similar shape, which meant that his wife might be trapped inside or worse. He fished his mobile phone from his trousers and started to ring his home number, but when he pushed the “send” key, there was nothing. No dial tone, no busy signal, just silence. The mobile network had probably been knocked out as a result of the tremors, too.

He sighed and turned off his mobile. He pulled the torch from his pocket and looked over the remains of his warehouse, pondering whether the insurance agency would pay off his policy and how long he’d have to wait before he could clear the site and rebuild.

As those thoughts rolled around in his head, he became aware of the sound of rushing wind, though the air was practically still. He turned round toward the noise, noticing that the quarter moon had appeared from behind the clouds. Half-moonlight glinted off a large, glassy, black mountain a short distance ahead of him, in the Bay. The rushing grew louder and louder as the wave front expanded higher into the sky.

It would only take another minute or two, but the tsunami generated by the earthquake beneath Hudson Bay would crash nearly a mile inland, crushing everything in its path and sweeping the debris, along with Garry Molson, out into the black depths of the Bay.

That, at least, Molson had enough time to comprehend before the towering wave of water crossed above his head and crashed with an unearthly explosion, trapping him beneath the water that he had fished for four decades.

* * *

19 December 2012

near Zermatt, Switzerland

11:27 Central European Time

Despite a warm, drier-than-normal summer and autumn, winter had turned wet and cold. Snow in the higher elevations of the Alps was a hundred and thirty centimetres deep already and the weather showed little signs of turning away from the current pattern. The amount of snow and its relative dryness made for good skiing conditions and the Alpine ski lodges were booked to capacity, as holiday-makers from across the world flocked to the slopes to use their new winter gear.

Despite the lack of humidity in the snow, the ski patrol was required to check conditions from time to time throughout the day. Teams had detonated charges in the higher elevations very early in the morning to assure that the snow that could set off avalanches had tumbled down the mountainsides in advance of skiers taking to the slopes.

Today, the skies were clear with few wispy cirrus clouds visible on the horizons. The sun glared harshly off the white landscape that surrounded the Matterhorn. There was no sign that anything would disrupt anyone’s enjoyment of winter activities.

That was, until the tall granite monument that rose 4,478 metres above sea level started to shake along with the surrounding mountains. At first, there was a flurry of snow that cascaded down to lower elevations, then the quaking got much, much stronger. Skiers fled frantically, taken by surprise by the tremor.

The snow muffled much of the noise as energy from the underground event expanded outward toward the surface. Stones then boulders broke away from the metamorphic rock that made up the Matterhorn’s peak, setting off avalanches on the scale that no one had ever seen. Rocks collapsed on surrounding peaks as well, but larger and larger chunks of material broke off from the Matterhorn, its peak seeming to peal open like a flower in the early morning hours of the day.

The Earth continued to tremble and boulders poured off the side of the Matterhorn and nearby peaks; the once-pristine snow now buried beneath tonnes of rocky debris. Numerous people had disappeared beneath the avalanches of snow, ice and rock; survivors would be left wondering how such a catastrophe could take place in an area not known for such activity.

Finally, the earthquake subsided. Stone dust and snow fluttered carelessly in the air. The damage had been done. The Matterhorn’s once proud, majestic peak had crumbled, leaving a chimney-like structure that began spewing clouds of steam and dust that blanketed the skies. All the land to the east of the Matterhorn now lay in a deep, dark shadow that contrasted starkly to the sunshine to the west.

* * *

19 December 2012

Axum, Ethiopia

13:27 Eastern African Time

The tour group leader waited for the bus to stop before calling his flock to attention.

“Ladies an’ Gentleman,” he said into the bus’s public-address system microphone. “We have arrived at the Church of Our Laydy Maree of Zi-yon. Please collect your affects and depart the bus in an orderly fashun.”

He hung the microphone back on its cradle before opening the bus doors and stepping out into a small car park outside a wide, round building topped by a sizeable dome. Nearly two dozen people exited the tour bus, one by one, staring up at the grey concrete dome on top of the cream-coloured stone walls, taking photographs with digital cameras and mobile phones.

The tour leader stood at a point some five metres from bus, most of the tourists gathering near him in a quarter moon shape, while a few of the more daring strayed from the group, pointing and talking in slightly hushed tones at the sight of one of the country’s most important religious sites. The tour leader called out to draw the stragglers back to the group and started to explain the historic significance of the church — and its two previous incarnations — to Christianity in Africa.

Round back of the church stood another, much smaller, squat, square building topped with a burnished copper globe and a big cross. The Chapel of the Tablet, said to be home to the original stones on which the Ten Commandments were carved, was surrounded by a tall, wrought-iron fence to keep uninvited guests from entering the holy site and potentially stealing important relics.

The chapel’s tall windows were crossed with finely sculpted stone grille-work featuring Christian motifs and let in sufficient light that a visitor would be able to see the cases in which the stone tablets lay under bulletproof glass, another protection against would-be thieves.

Dust motes floated aimlessly about in beams of sunlight that slashed through the grille-work. Suddenly, the motes were joined by masses of their mates as the entire structure shuddered jarringly. The movement struck again and again, causing the ceiling and roof to crack and sending bucketfuls of dust and debris cascading down from above, slowly burying the tablets in their resting place.

Another tremor, much stronger than the previous ones, arrived with a roar. A loud crack sounded from the ceiling and everything seemed to go absolutely silent in a second’s time.

The ceiling groaned once, twice, thrice, then stopped. Silence reigned again for a long moment, then another earth-shattering crack sounded and the bronze globe fell through the ceiling and crashed smack-dab in the middle of the table holding the Ten Commandments.

Outside of Axum, a twenty-four-metre-tall obelisk had descended two times, coinciding with the quakes. It finally settled into a near thirty-degree angle and an earth-covered door suddenly dropped open. A fine mist wafted up from the newly open hole in the ground, mingling with the dust stirred up by the quakes.