Chapter 90

Honoli‘i Beach Park, Hilo, Hawai‘i

All residents of Hilo had been warned to take immediate shelter. But the young guys from the Canoe Club had decided to head over to South Point anyway, transporting their two outrigger canoes on the flatbed owned by Kimo Nakamura's father.

"If this is the end of the world," said Luke Takayama as they unloaded their OC4 boats and paddles from the back of the truck, "I want to be on the water when it happens."

All ten of them, four paddlers and a steersperson in each boat—Luke the steersman in one, Manny Kapua in the other—agreed, taking their lead from Luke, as always.

Luke knew he would get into trouble with his father, the head of Civil Defense in Hilo, if he found out what they were doing. But Luke had barely seen Henry Takayama recently. He had been in his office all day and most nights in anticipation of the eruption at Mauna Loa.

The boys from the Canoe Club were out on the water, a few miles to the east of South Point, when they heard the sirens.

Luke was Henry Takayama's son. He knew what the sirens meant as well as anyone.

Eruption.

The rowers stopped. They all looked back then and saw the lava cascading out of the hills, rushing toward the beach like a wave about to crash there.

Lava that wasn't expected to come anywhere near here. Or them.

"We need to get to the truck and get out of here!" Luke said.

His friends began to row furiously back toward the beach, but they were in a different kind of race now.

"Everybody said it wasn't supposed to come this way!" Manny yelled to Luke Takayama. "That it never comes this way!"

Luke knew he was right. But he saw what they all were seeing, the rising tide of orange and red getting closer and closer to South Point Park. What had happened before did them no good now.

It wasn't supposed to come in this direction, not according to his father.

And never this fast. "Power up!" Luke Takayama yelled to both boats. "Dig in now!"

He knew that if lava was hot enough it could boil seawater and all the life in it; knew they needed to get out of the ocean before it got its chance.

"Go, go, go!"Luke yelled, his eyes fixed on the lava that was crossing the narrow beach and moving into the ocean.

Luke's boat was the closest to the shore, Manny's to his left.

Even as the boys cut their paddles into the water with almost blinding speed, they could see steam rising up like a marine layer all around them.

The lava was already across the beach.

Scalding water was splashing into the two boats. As the ocean waves suddenly rose up all around them, Luke was afraid the boats might huli, capsize, dump them all into water that felt as if it had just been set on fire.

"Luke!" Manny yelled. "What do we do?"

Before Luke could answer, he began to choke on the acid smell that was trying to swallow them up along with the waves; his throat felt as if it were scratched raw by the combination of steam and glass particles in the air.

All of them were gagging and choking now, eyes tearing up, not wanting to let go of their paddles even though they wanted to wipe their eyes so they could see their way through water now streaked with orange and red.

This was the volcanic tsunami that Luke had read about and knew could be caused by lava flowing into the sea, and now it was happening to them, in real and terrifying time.

They were nearly back to shore.

A few hundred more yards.

That close.

Too far.

They felt as if they were trapped in a burning building, these boys who'd come to this beach thinking the eruption would happen somewhere else on the Big Island, up near the sky.

But the eruption had followed them here.

Then the boats were flipping, turning over in the air, huli, the boys falling out of them; then they were all in the boiling water, seeing their skin turn the color of the lava, violently choking on gases and fumes suffocating them.

Kids who thought they would live forever, not believing something like this could happen.

Not to them.

Not here.

Luke felt as if he were drowning, though he managed to keep his head above the water that began pushing them farther away from the shore.

All around him, his friends were shouting, some of them crying, the ones still in the boats asking Luke what they should do even as the water in which they'd grown up, the water they loved, started to burn all of them alive.