Johnson's Port, WA

It's early afternoon on a July summer day, and a small crowd has gathered near the stairs that ascend from the boardwalk below, up and over the Coastal View train tracks, and finally to The Daily Catch restaurant above. The staired climb gradual, diffusing any worry of pedestrian vertigo all the while maintaining a height safe for railway travel underneath. And also while the large-blocked concrete pillars of the walkway and decayed brick in the walls on the way up aren't necessarily pretty, any aesthetic concern is answered by the fresh blue paint on the safe rails along the wall edge and nautical coloring/neon signage of the Catch. The restaurant sitting at the midpoint of the entire boardwalk, drawing large foot-traffic from tourist and the locals working to serve them. The printed (on pamphlets and sent to tourist centers across the tri-state region) estimate on the sleepy town of 5,000's yearly visitors: 1.3 million. The crowd below isn't blocking (human) traffic or anything, as it's 10' or so in a line from bottom stair to boardwalk edge/crowd. Most are passing by without turning head or eye.

The city of Johnson's Port finished construction on the boardwalk two years prior, cutting ribbon at north's end near the docks, where Mayor Lucas opened the ceremonial and special-ordered 25" scissors to render the pathway's opening truly grand before a rogue cyclist swooped past (completely ignoring the temporary, ribboned barrier and subtextual message that came with it) and bumped the town's elected leader off his mark, who nearly stabbing tourism director Abe Finch in the process. Finch himself jerking his right shoulder/half back to avoid sharp impact, thus his remaining arm pulling on the ribbon (which wasn't actually ribbon, but a cheap alternative due to the unexpected price hike of the back-ordered and then rush-shipped scissors) so hard, he snapped it down the middle between him and his assistant Ms. Shelly Halpern. Gasps and low-stakes shrieks from the crowd as Mayor Lucas's aide, young Steve Donovan (since fired), popped the small confetti cannon he was explicitly ordered to fire upon ceremonial "cut", bathing both Mayor and Tourism Director in rainbow scraps of paper as the cyclist hauled ass down the boardwalk and towards the south end.

The 15-20 gathered all staring out into the choppy water. Assuming a drowning or stuck animal, members of The Daily Catch waitstaff stand at the windows overlooking, confused as to why emergency services weren't called upon yet. Before restaurant manager and rules-tyrant Cole Michaels pointed out (literally) into the water at what appeared to be a man inexplicably standing, and he then pointed out (verbally) that emergency services aren't needed for standing men regardless of improbability and directed everyone back to work, as they are "summer-fucking-packed".

"Who is he?" a voice from the crowd below questions.

The man standing on what was estimated by those assembled to be a 10 square foot rock plateau, the top of which raised about 4" above the waterline normally, but currently taking on more and more water with the wind increases over the last hour. The plateau itself over 20' out from the shoreline, so the man had obviously deliberately expensed the effort to make it out there. His stillness unaltered by the waves pushing at his shins every other second, his top half swaying only slightly with the rare (to this point, at least) bigger gusts.

"Was he swimming?" a waitress above asks.

"I don't usually swim in cargo shorts," a waiter responds before Cole Michaels snaps them both towards the kitchen.

The navy cargo shorts being the man's only clothing. The bottoms of which splotch an even darker blue as another wave hits and his feet tense and his brunette hair flaps up like a doggy door.

"Hey!" Tom Evans yells out to the man, from the boardwalk. "Do you need help?"

Whistling wind the only reply as the crowd stays quiet and Tom's son Tommy (in government terms: Thomas III) sucks on a red lollipop. Tom is the local accountant, and doesn't particularly care for the boardwalk due to a beer darts accident in college that left him with a slight limp and constantly tender outside foot on his left side. That morning, young Tommy was especially rambunctious to the point that his mother, Clara, stared at Tom Jr. with wide eyes that normally preceded her "losing it". So the realization his wife needed a break and some quiet trumped his apprehension on long-term walking. And so then he coaxed his only child with the promise of candy and dock-views of his beloved marina boats.

Police Chief Elaine Roberts was alerted some 10 minutes prior of the boardwalk commotion, and is about to step out towards the crowd from the stairs before two teenagers on electric scooters zoom past in close proximity, northbound.

"Slow down!" she yells after them, alerting everyone gathered that the law is now involved. "Tourists," she winks at Tom before parting the crowd all the way to the front.

She stands, her all-black, non-slip boots toeing the line between boardwalk plank and rock beach, staring out at the man. And then to the water behind him, and then the empty 30' stretch of gradual hill covered by dark sand and multi-colored rock behind that, and then finally back to her own feet. The crowd stirring around her as she retraces the path three more times and searches the surrounding area and water without clue gathered.

"Is that Louis?" she asks to nobody in particular.

"No, I called him and he's still getting ready to open the shop," book club organizer and town busybody Caroline McKinsky answers.

"Yeah, Louis does have smaller calves."

"It's just so odd," Caroline says, pushing through two preteens to get closer. "He won't answer. At all. I was out here an hour before the Catch opened yelling. Nothin'. Then I brought Sneakers home quick —"

"So that's..." Elaine interrupts. "...four hours already?"

"Four hours and twenty-two minutes," Caroline corrects. "That I know of."

"Okay. Thank you Caroline."

"So odd," Caroline repeats, to those surrounding more than badged authority. "This kinda thing doesn't happen here."

Elaine turns and notices the crowd grew by 12 during her short "investigation", with both new and old participant looking at Caroline with concern.

"I mean," Caroline continues, soaking up the attention. "Not in a sleepy town of 5,000."

Her statement true in that Elaine hadn't had much work to do (at least in the investigative and TV cop show-sense) since she took over for the retiring (and now deceased due to lung cancer/two-pack-a-day habit) Chief Parker. Truth be told, and even though she naysayed concerns from her academy friends regarding steady policework with statements like "That's the way I like it" and "A sleepy town is a safe one", she was constantly bored. Riding in the annual Memorial and Labor Day parades while waving with aching smile, pulling the town drunk Bill Richardson out of McCauley's Bar for a ride each Saturday night, perching her cruiser on a hill overlooking the marina each day for 1 PM lunch, eating in silence. In short, the recurrent outcomes weren't exactly what she envisioned before leaving the city and taking the job. The young, idealist (as the young always are) version of herself dreamed of mystery and solving said mystery with the wit she discovered as a young child, sitting on the floor between each of her parent's fold out La-Z-Boy's and revealing the Movie Of The Week's murderer by the end of act one. Relying on that wit too heavily as a confused late-teen away from home, unsure of what she wanted "from it all" to the point she made a (rash and since re-evaluated incorrect) decision for a career in badge and gun on the supposition there would be much mystery and much solving. But, if she answered her friends with honesty, she liked the job little and would describe sleepy Johnson's Port with a different adjective.

"Let's just calm down everyone," Elaine says to the pockets of tumulted crowd and a nearby crying baby. "There's no need to panic."

Gently snaking through them, Elaine breaks the assembled's back wall and moves towards the underside of the stairs for privacy, followed in eye by the concerned townsfolk/tourists and in body by Caroline until the chief raises a "stop" hand and forces a smile. Left hand on the fence barricading animal, children, and chemically imbalanced adult from the train tracks, she looks up at the staring Daily Catch waitstaff before activating her shoulder-velcro'ed radio button.

"Rooster, you on yet?" she asks.

"This is Roosevelt, over," a young voice answers, through what sounds like a mouthful of chips.

"We've got a situation down at the boardwalk in front of the Catch. I need the megaphone and the radar out here for the next few hours. Looks like the weather's turning."

The clouds above stretching from sea to town like a shadow at dusk. It's creeping darkness recoloring the beach's usual and tourist-friendly waters from light blue to oxford. Elaine can feel the temperature drop in the air. The baby is no longer crying.

"It's supposed to go to hell here soon, I know. Over."

"Rooster. I know. What I don't know is when, exactly."

"Well weather reports ain't exactly 100%, statistically speaking. Over."

"The percentage they have is better than my finger in the air, deputy. Just check it and get me the blaster."

"10-4...Where is it again? Over?"

"It's on the lockers. And how many times do we gotta go over this issue with the "overs"? We aren't covering a tree line."

"Ha ha. We sure ain't. J-Port's always been a sleepy town —"

"Now, Rooster."

"You got it, Chief. Over."

The two scootering teenagers return, southbound and with even more speed. Suggesting they either stopped and charged the solar-powered devices, or have somehow hacked the machines to remove the speed governor. Either outcome impressive in its pursuit of young recklessness or seriously pissing off the boardwalk's current populace (also possibly both, or neither).

"Slow down!" Elaine yells with a noticeable increase in volume and tension. The yell itself call/responded by a crying shriek from the baby stroller next to her. Elaine giving the mother a "lost it for a second there" apology with her face and hands, pushing them (her hands) down like the air needed a gentle glide akin to the pressure given to a child's back upon a training-wheeled bike. To which the mother returns an understanding smile.

"He won't quit, huh?" the woman's husband says, returning with ice cream and their two other kids in hand. He kneels down to coo his youngest as his wife stares at him and then her dairy-lapping children. And then to herself. She got up early at the hotel to feed the baby and get ready, applying dry shampoo and her make-up in the relative silence of a 5 AM bathroom. Carefully unfolding and working out the creases in the outfit she picked out for this vacation the previous Saturday. Her black, slightly (but fashionably) baggy pants of "workout" material with a white top that she hoped represented a blend of casual/cool to the families she expected to see on the boardwalk. That with a pair of overpriced "walking" sneakers she purchased alongside the blackout sunglasses she slides down from her frontal bone to double-cover the dark circles she hid with foundation. Her husband's attempts to soothe unsuccessful, even with offers of ice cream and repeated reminders of the situation being "Okay" to the nonverbal one-year-old. The husband looked at the wife that AM, having slumped out of bed around 7:30 and straight into a warm shower before dressing into his two-stained jeans (she forgot to wash, never assuming their packing) and favorite t-shirt from his alma mater (aged 16 years, the shirt), with a mouthing of "Okay?". And she stared at him for a nanosecond over of the right shoulder of her middle child that was slipping on a backpack filled with toys, before nodding "Okay" even though it wasn't okay and she'd just spent the time to get her three children up and snacked and dressed while checking the hotel's full length mirror every open second to ensure she was indeed ready, simultaneous to her husband's "routine" and him exiting the bathroom door ready. So while ultimately they both were "ready", it didn't really feel that way at all.

The man's back is vertical in a way that defies the temperatures of the water spraying and the air whipping. Save micromovements of muscle twitch and squeeze, he still hasn't moved in a real way. Elaine caught in awe of his displayed discipline, while also simulating out expected crowd growth and scale of news story if they don't get a handle on the situation.

"Rooster," she speaks into her walkie. "C-View comes in when? 4:15?"

"Which locker exactly is this thing in, chief?" Rooster asks. "I tried yours but it's locked up pretty good. I can't recall exactly where the law stands on crime within a station, but I can grab a crowbar and —"

"Rooster."

"Ah, yes ma'am? Over."

"Look up."

Elaine stands, eyebrows lifted in anticipation and obviousness, for what feels like ten minutes.

"Oh. Hey! Chief I was about to —"

"When does the train get back, deputy?"

"4:15. And then departs back out around quarter to or so and —"

"So that's another hundred tourists here in...ten minutes. Okay," she says, doing some more simulating. "I need that thing before it pulls in. And we gotta get the mayor in the loop, too."

"What exactly is going —"

"And Rooster?"

"Yes, chief? Over."

"Run."

An especially violent gust of wind hits the crowd to gasps and slanted moves back to heels. Calf muscles tested en masse as a child near the back loses his emerald green balloon to the greying above, reaching up to catch the uncatchable as his mother swings an arm around his waist and adjusts her stance to deal with the added weight. He never takes his eyes off of it. Tommy, face half buried into his father's chest and lollipop now split on the ground, tracks the balloon up with his partial view. It's 20-degree flight trajectory like a breakneck chairlift on a too-flat mountain, the balloon bumps into the brick wall, jerks up as if grabbed by a puppeteering God, and soon it's in the air above the Catch. The rubber orb disappears from the view of its two person audience on the boardwalk and into the sky above Johnson's Port.

Hands of the two boys still aerial while the other 30 or so in the crowd hold their Spartan stance against the wind. Several hats and one pair of sunglasses ripped from head to the brick 20+' behind and slammed/shattered. There's no real way of knowing if the impacts made any noise. Elaine, now at the front and hand firmly on service cap, sees the man in the water is still standing. Cargo shorts and hair soaked, arms at side and hands not balled but untensed and tremor-like in their slight shakes against the wind; he only slightly adjusts to level as the elements finally let up.

"It's coming!" Bill Richardson screams from the railing above, a dribble of brandy still on his lip.

"Bill, get to McCauley's and get inside!" Elaine screams back. "Everyone else, please get to your home or hotel immediately."

"But, what about him?" Caroline asks, pointing into the water. "We want to help," nodding her head and looking to the crowd — who is, at max, half in agreement.

Elaine looks to the stairs, but there's no answer, only a handful of tourists scurrying up and towards the Catch. Every single person in the restaurant (save Cole Michaels) stands at the second floor's large-paneled windows, watching and windless. The hurried tourists' plastic bags from the south boardwalk's shops buoying and flailing behind them until they're inside the safety of the doors. The bags mass-ordered and distributed to all shops around town with a screen-printed blue smiley face and the town's motto: "Sic itur ad mare".

"Daddy," Tommy says, tugging on his father's shirt. Tom, hand gently on son's back and concerned eyes darting back and forth from the man to the crowd, ignores him. "Daddy?" he repeats.

Tom squats down to get down to eye level and give his son the full spectrum of his attention, but pain also shoots up his left side when he does so. "Yes, buddy? We'll get out of here soon." His face wears panic.

"Why..." the III starts, pointing down to a manhole cover, "Why does it say sewer?"

"What — What do you mean?" his father responds, genuinely confused to a point he forgets the total calamity around them.

"Where else would it go?"

"...I don't know."

The "Summer Daze" banner above 8th street stretches with the wind, its midpoint in a peacocking extension out to too-taut maximum and stringed arms holding on for dear life at the stop light poles. Rooster sprints below the banner, megaphone in hand. He is wearing a bulletproof vest and riot helmet. Mrs. Wallace flips the chocolate shop's door-hung sign to CLOSED as he flies by.

Another violent burst from the sea and a handful of rocks fly from water's edge to about the middle of the beach. Their small impacts unnoticed by crowd and unheard by Elaine as she stands facing the crowd, subconsciously evaluating the phrase "protect and serve" while staring at the tourist woman attempting to add a second layer of shield to her in-stroller baby. Her husband is closer at crowd's edge. His ice cream cone half gone.

Rooster bounds down the stairs, his hair heavy with sweat. He gets to the bottom and waves the megaphone in the air towards an unaware Elaine before the scootering kids swoop by northbound, giggling as Rooster snaps backwards to avoid a collision and one kid taps the mobile public address tool out of the deputy's hand. Rooster's hands slap at it to reverse its groundbound course, catching it on horn's edge between index and thumb about two inches above the ground. Sighing in relief and getting up slow, he looks both ways with the amount of attention Mrs. A taught him in pre-K. Sweating, vest-strapped, and wearing Keen sandals, he hands Elaine the megaphone.

"What are..." Elaine trails off, unsure where to start the questioning.

"Oh. My. God," Rooster says between labored, out-of-shape breaths while looking out into the water. "Is that...What's...Going on?"

"Take a second deputy," she responds, looking at the side-handle settings of the megaphone. Another big gust of wind comes. A few more rocks flown from water's edge. The man doesn't move.

"Is he a terrorist?" Rooster rushes gets out, a few gasping behind him.

"He's not —"

"What are his demands?!" Wide-eyes and bigger gasps from the crowd in unison, now totaling over 40.

"He is not —"

A violent gale hits. The man in the water's upper body moving from midsection to head like a wave, while a bigger group of rocks shoot towards the crowd. The largest among them colliding so hard against an even bigger rock mid-beach that it splits in two. The crowd goes into a frenzy. Someone actually screams.

"He. Is not. A terrorist!" Elaine bellows over the noise of human and nature. She looks to Rooster, who is rising and clearly about to protest.

"WouldYouShutTheHellUp!" she sputters towards him through gritted teeth.

"Everyone. Everyone! Again, please return to your hotel or home," she says before squatting down and getting close to the ear of a now seated Rooster.

"Get to the mayor's place. Let him know we've got a situation down here that is absolutely not terrorism related, and ask him what the hell we're supposed to do with all these people around. Now."

Rooster looks at her with eyes curious as to why she is trying to kill him. Getting up, his ill-fitting vest moving to his chin like a child in a too-big life jacket, he gives his superior one last look and nod before parting crowd towards the stairs. His back is covered in sweat and there is no gun in his holster.

The tourist husband returns to his wife and children. The baby currently soothed, but each gust brings with it more wails. She holds her daughter's hand while her son hides behind her.

"We need to leave," she says to her husband.

"Oh, come on. It's not that —"

But they are interrupted by a shriek from Tom Evans. He extended his left leg out while squatting and talking to his son, unknowing of the southbound (again) scootering kids, one of which clipped his always-injured appendage at an absolutely hellacious speed. Half the crowd looks to him while the other half sticks to the other sources of mayhem. He sits on the ground, hands gripping left foot in agony as Tommy looks at his father in fear. Rocking back and forth, howling in pain like a dog at moon. Caroline heard and is on the way before she looks up towards the Catch.

"It's coming!" Bill Richardson repeats from the blue railing. Today being the final time he's seen in Johnson's Port, although government men will eventually look for him (and fail).

"Get to McCauley's!" Caroline and Elaine yell in unison.

Elaine is looking at the megaphone buttons and panicking in real time, as she's never had to use it before. She taps a big, blue button and hears the wind whistle through amplified electronica before raising the horn quickly to her lips. Breath sucked in and mouth opened wide to wail at Bill and crowd in stereo sound, before a metallic whistle blasts discussion and wind and everything else mute. The train has a bigger horn.

Every head in the crowd turning towards the unseen but absolutely heard Coastal View train carrying more life and — to Elaine — more trouble. She stares, body in concrete despite the assumptive action out of her badge and authority. The assumptive being a shout and corralling. A stoppage of chaos. But she's standing there, staring like everyone else, save one tourist with analog camera in hand framing the man and rock and turbulent clouds surrounding. Her eyes flicker to him and she thinks of the time her mother brought her to California to see her aunt. And how they stayed there for a week with her and her cats. Walking steep Franciscan hills and eating fresh cinnamon rolls from the shops in the mornings. Riding in ferry out to the prison turned attraction and listening to the exploits of barred ghosts through puffy headphones, standing before the pinched doors of solitary confinement and feeling the sting of salted air on her neck and shoulders. Considering the now-known names of these men in numbered shirts not in singulars, but as a whole. As a monolith of conditions she'll never know and a feeling she didn't understand yet but soon would. The tourist's camera clicks.

The wife looks at her husband's back. He's turned towards the water, away from chaos and duty. Her daughter squeezes her hand tight.

Tom Evans overloads his weight to right side while Caroline assists on the left. He gets to standing, nodding thanks to her before winking and pulling in Tommy.

The train whistle blares. Its accompanying chain of smoke draws closer, an antonym to the inky cloudburst sky.

"Listen!" Elaine yells after, forgetting the megaphone. "Listen!" I need everyone here — including those of you up — "

"It's coming!" Bill Richardson screams again from his pulpit above, pointing with finger and bloodshot eyes at the man in the water.

His cargo shorts soaked and skin covered in goosebumps nobody can see. He heard the train but was the only one to pay it no mind. He can't hear Bill Richardson and would pay him the same attention even if he could. His head facing west for hours now, and, for the first time since he arrived and climbed up and stood erect, he moves in a deliberate way. His balled fists released and untensed, his fingers spread wide like a flower in bloom, his shoulders moving lateral as his arms slowly rise up. There is so much chaos in the crowd that only Caroline notices. Her small gasp a raindrop in an ocean of uproar. Tom and Son eventually look too, as the man's arms continue the ascent to Vitruvian. A large wave slams the west side of the rock and swallows his entire body, but his routine continues unchanged. His body stoic against the violence. Arms reaching shoulder and his entire body locking. His hair no longer flapping, now windswept back and fastened to head like a brunette helmet.

Members of the crowd not participating in hysterics finally notice this and go wide-eyed. They themselves unmoving, watching, amongst the human maelstrom of now 50 plus. Young Tommy turning his attention and the only one clocking something else out in the water, beyond: stillness. The plane deep but moving towards the shore and town steady. A slow blade through jagged hydro, a road roller on a horizon-wide dinghy. It's oncoming unnoticed until everything goes calm in a way that doesn't make sense. In a way that sounds like God put all life on mute. A silence eerie and wholesale. One that hangs on the ears and eyes of all involved, them searching for any sensory answer to the now-universal question. The wife and kids, Tom, Elaine: all staring forward and without clue. All trapped in an invisible box of literal nothing. It's a stillness so total and encompassing that it feels malicious, a sudden suffocation of any and all. Bill Richardson stands above, his hands untensed and monk-like on the blue rail, his eyes heavily closing as a single tear streaks down his cheek. His mouth opening paper cut-wide for a long and tranquil exhale. Nobody sees the flock of birds exiting the north trees, because nobody really can. Their transfixion ripping them from audience as the birds loop and swirl in silent ballet. Graceful and unpredictable as they soar above and dip below into brief view of the stuck humans. There is no birdsong and no acknowledgement of it anywhere as the feathered fly zig-zag south, their wings unheard while they rip through the blackened sky. They disappear on the horizon, for all what will be the final time.

Bill Richardson's eyes release quickly. He stares silently ahead like the others, but not at the man, rather on the black clouds. Unblinking as his fingers drift wide on the blue rail of cold metal and he breathes in deep and his chest puffs to shoulder height. He holds for a brief second before fingers lock white-tight on the rail and he lets out a Pentecostal scream.

"IT'S. COME-MING!" he belts at everything in front of him. The shout seemingly unlocking all of nature as the crowd comes to and looks to him for a brief moment before the Coastal View whistle rips through the air fierce. The noises a nightmare wake up for the senses of the again panicking group.

Coming to, the husband looks back and to his wife and children. It's a stare of fear and confusion, and one that matches his two eldest. The baby wails and the mother soothes. A gust whips her hair back and sunglasses off her head as her son's grip tightens on her white-cotton top. She stares at her husband in exasperation. The scootering kids speed through their line of sight, northbound.

"We — " he starts.

"I want — " she says over him, but never finishes.

"We should — " he begins before a grapefruit-sized rock crashes into his cheek and temple. The impact releasing red, and then primal noise from him and his family. The unholy gust that proved his mortality also launching several other rocks and pebbles that buckshot the crowd and send all further into hysterics. Most sprint away, some one way and some the other, a few with a noticeable limped-leg sweep. The wife looking at her partner in communion, his face sideways and slack-jawed. His eyes unmoving. A nanosecond that feels like days passes before she corrals her children and rushes them towards the stairs. Blood from the husband's head sputters east with each gust, his body a complete picture of nonchalance.

Elaine stands, her arms limp at sides, as the boardwalk empties. An older man with broken glasses sits and grips his rock-bruised thigh as his friend attempts to shield him from any further debris. A muscled, firefighter-type in the back ushers a group up the stairs after the wife and children reach the Catch's doors. A woman, her arm bleeding with a bruise and tremor wobble, winces and walks with good arm around her teenage daughter as they travel up the walk. Elaine doesn't move.

"It's okay, buddy," Tom yells to his son, hiding the truth. "Let's go see your boats, okay?"

They squat-walk south and his son doesn't confirm, nor does the young boy have the facilities to calculate anything outside of reaction right now. The wind is moving them laterally as much as they can progress forward.

"I'm scared, too," Tom says.

The "Summer Daze" banner lies in the gutter up on 13th street. The "Daze" portion a spasm above while the "Summer" lies hidden in the dark within the storm drain. Rooster stands at the mayor's door a few blocks away, panting. He knocks (for the 11th time) before noticing how much darker the west sky got during his sprint. He stares at it for some time. The mayor isn't home.

Elaine is still. Two rocks rush by her cheek with a ferocious speed that she can really feel, even over the projectiles' tailwind. A handful remain behind as Caroline calls her name unanswered, and the man's hands and arms quiver violently.

Tom and Tommy near the beach's south end and tree line. Tom's right arm extended forward with elbow at his extension's tip, to elongate his body and ensure every inch is shielded for son beside him. Tommy looking to his father with each step, answered by nervous smiles and half nods. The III's right hand his only steady attribute, currently. Extended outward, staunch and small and clenched around the chest of his father's shirt. His body tilted inward for protection, Tom Jr. sees the two scootering boys weaving around and inexplicably avoiding all launched and boardwalk-littered rocks, speeding towards them. His teeth grit a little extra before the teens zip by and his son lets out a small yelp. Tom pushing his chest up what couldn't be more than an inch or two in preparation to scold into wind, but he doesn't get to open his mouth before a tackle-box sized rock slams into his back and he goes to the ground breathless. He shouts asphyxiated instruction at his son that comes out as a whisper. Tommy hugging at him and pleading while he struggles with dyspnea. The round rock of murky grey and burnt orange sits behind Tom, as Tommy cries and neither moves.

A small pebble pings off the badge protecting Elaine's heart. Her head moving out of stupor and down to look, noticing the micro-scratch it left behind. She touches at it with index finger to smudge it away, even licking her fingerprint on second attempt. The wind rips at and in her ears, and the metal stays tarnished.

Caroline, hunched and holding hair for the sake of public display despite the current social clime being a literal hell, looks north towards a pack of older tourists. One, a man in his 60s wearing a Johnson's Port sweatshirt and carrying a blue smiley bag with high number of mugs for his friends at the Elk Club, got hit towards the top of forehead. The small projectile doing disproportionate damage, as the skin tear is long and gushing in a smear down his face. He leans on the concerned crowd, but one man — his old friend and buddy he traveled some 200 miles to visit the ocean with — keeps looking towards the western sky and saying "We need to leave" with little indication the "we" includes the wounded. One of the ladies gathered glares at the friend but he has literally no idea. How can the clouds keep getting darker, he questions to himself.

"Get the hell out of here!" Caroline yells, pushing a few of the pack up the boardwalk. She keeps at them as they shuffle in obedience and the wounded man's bag breaks, shattering his mugs on the boardwalk. Caroline kicks them out of the way and ignores the mumbles from those pushed. She turns to the nearly empty view south as another wave of rock hits and an especially large one splinters near the stairs. She sees only the stoic Elaine near the beach line, an unknown body half-hid behind rock and blue metal handrail, and the Evans boys laying on the ground all the way across. Months later, when the government agents come to her house and she makes them coffee and they compliment her numerous times on her chocolate chip cookies, they'll ask why she decided not to escape. She still won't know why.

After hiding under the stairs and avoiding injury as yet another spate flies — a few with such force against the flight up her ears ring and one bleeds — towards her, she sprints to a crying Tommy and hugs the boy against his wheezing father.

"You're okay hun," she shouts, a drip of crimson falling off her ear and dissipating in its flight towards the train tracks. Tommy's eyes still puffy and wet, with hand still clenched to shirt.

"Let's get you out of here, okay? Just to those trees right there," she says, pointing.

"But dad!" he exclaims in a wail.

"He'll be okay, hun. I'll come right back for him after we get you safe, alright? It's not far," she says while scooting him onward and the child swaps safety grip to her light jacket.

"Everything will be okay," she says, not to him. "This does not happen here. This is a sleepy town of — This does not happen here."

They reach the south trees and Caroline pushes the boy even further down the path. She turns around to Tom, whose movements are sparse and reserved for the abdomen, like suffering roadkill. Tommy notices the level of quiet the trees provide, even though many are now leafless and late-autumn looking. The sensory switch reminding him of an astronaut cartoon he watches before school sometimes. The helmeted hero hitting the airlock button before turning wheel and venturing out into the black. The Kevlar tether his only safeguard from spinning into oblivion, as young Tommy watches on and slurps his cereal bowl.

"This does not happen here...This does not happen here," Caroline repeatedly mutters to herself as she inches towards Tom, wind ripping another group of rocks about 10 feet behind his body.

"Tom," Caroline says in close and desperate. "We have to get out of here." His breathing labored, deliberate.

"Tom! It's getting darker and — Tommy is safe, he's okay. But you need to get up so you can get to him."

Tom turns to her, his eyes glazed and half-shut, and points over her shoulder with a limp finger. She turns with it, as he lets out an unintelligible croak. His target unknown, but near the top of the stairs where Bill Richardson stands and stares directly at her.

"Tom, what? We need to get out of here!"

But he answers only with another /l/ sounding croak, his hand unmoving against a small cloud of pebbles that flies in. Caroline's confusion turning to desperation as she follows his point again and sees Bill Richardson now turned towards her, still staring and but now also pointing south.

Her eyes plead at Tom's, and his stare at hers, glossy. When those agents sit in her dining room and sip coffee and nibble cookie, this is the moment she'll think of in regards to their question. Not to the mugs or Tommy, but here. Staring. Too long to notice Bill Richardson's disappearance or Tommy's screams or the huge and apparition-like plane moving across the top of the water and directly towards her with hellacious speed. It's impact on beach so total it lifts all remaining rock and some sand airborne and oncoming to any unlucky enough. Staring being the only real thing preceding its impact, save Tom using a taxing amount of effort to grab Caroline and pull her under him. Rock pelting Tom's back and boardwalk and already-thrown rock one final time.

Elaine's face is burned by wind and feels tight. A field of rock surrounds her non-slip boots and the small scratch remains, but it's the only exterior damage she suffered. Her, the figurehead at boardwalk's bow, untouched despite the screams, blood, and loss around her. She blinks wet eyes slowly and looks to the horizon, seeing what could be an opening of grey against black, or a mirage. A cynical voice laughs in her head. Tommy Evans cries and there's a bustle of folks exiting the Catch and stepping on broken glass behind her, but she only hears what she hears. And has seen what she's seen. And remembers that day in San Francisco on a different boardwalk. Of the picture her aunt took and her mother hung in the living room until the house was empty and possessions were boxed. Her mother, standing behind her with hands extended up to heaven in celebration, as Elaine held out a freshly-won and completely oversized midway teddy bear. A smile across her face only parents receive. And she thinks of how photos are used to index moments so we can look back at them with happiness.

The train blows one final time and pulls past behind her, as Elaine stares forward and thinks truly and deeply about how the prism of time can change those moments into something else.