Higher Ground

The first tremor hit at 3:47 p.m. 

David Reyes had been staring at his computer screen, drowning in the monotony of editing a client’s marketing deck, when the building lurched beneath him. It was slow at first, like the city itself had sighed in exhaustion, but then came the violent shaking. His coffee mug slid off his desk and shattered. Monitors toppled. The walls groaned. 

Someone screamed. 

David dove under his desk as the ceiling lights flickered and the glass walls around the office creaked ominously. The 4th floor of the Sentinel Building was a terrible place to be during a major earthquake. The swaying intensified, and the office filled with the sounds of breaking glass, collapsing furniture, and the sharp, collective breath of people caught in the throes of pure terror. 

David clenched his jaw and braced against the desk’s metal legs, squeezing his eyes shut. “Please, God,” he whispered. “Please.” 

Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the tremors eased. The swaying slowed, like a pendulum winding down. Dust drifted from the ceiling tiles. 

David crawled out from under his desk, his heart hammering. Around him, his coworkers were emerging from their hiding spots, disheveled and pale. The office was wrecked—papers scattered, computers broken, shelves overturned. 

“Everyone okay?” came a voice. Mark from accounting, his forehead bleeding slightly. 

David nodded, scanning the office. Everyone seemed shaken but alive. That was something. 

And then came the sound. 

A distant, gut-wrenching roar. A thunderous rumble that didn’t belong to the aftershocks or the city’s usual chaos. It was deeper. More primal. 

He rushed to the window. The view stretched out over Los Angeles, and beyond the skyline, past the sprawl, past the wreckage of fallen signs and crushed cars, he saw it. 

The ocean. 

And it was rising. 

A wall of water, dark and monstrous, was rushing toward the city. It consumed the coastline, swallowing buildings, surging inland at a terrifying speed. 

“Oh my God,” someone breathed behind him. 

“We need to get out of here!” another voice shouted. 

But where? The streets below were already a nightmare. Cars jammed every lane, honking uselessly. People ran through the gridlocked traffic, pushing, shoving, screaming. There was no time to escape. No time to reach the mountains. 

David turned to the others. “The rooftop. It’s the highest we can go.” 

A moment of hesitation, and then the group moved. 

They sprinted for the stairwell. Some tripped, but there was no time to stop. David shoved open the door, taking the stairs two at a time. His lungs burned. Behind him, his coworkers struggled to keep up. 

Fifth floor. Seventh. Tenth. 

Somewhere below, another aftershock rattled the foundation. The building moaned, the stairwell trembling. 

Fifteenth. Nineteenth. 

David’s legs screamed for relief, but the roar of the oncoming tsunami pushed him forward. 

Twenty-second. Twenty-fourth. 

The final door. 

He shoved it open, and the late-afternoon sky greeted them. The rooftop deck stretched before them, a place where they’d once lounged for office parties and lunch breaks. Now, it was their last refuge. 

David turned back to the stairwell, gripping the door. He counted—twelve of them had made it. 

Was that everyone? 

The building groaned again, and he couldn’t wait. He slammed the door shut and locked it. 

Panting, he ran to the railing and looked out. 

The wave was almost here. It had swallowed entire neighborhoods. Cars, debris, palm trees—it devoured everything. 

Someone started sobbing. 

David grabbed the nearest person—Ashley from HR. “Help me find something to hold onto.” 

They ran. There wasn’t much—the deck had lounge chairs, tables, a few steel beams supporting a shade structure. 

“It’s not enough,” Mark muttered. 

David looked up. 

A helicopter was in the distance. News crews, most likely. Too far. Too late. 

He turned back to the city. Smoke rose from collapsed buildings. The streets had turned into rivers. And still, the wave came. 

A massive surge of seawater slammed into a lower building nearby, shattering windows, tearing steel apart like paper. The Sentinel Building shook, and David gripped the railing, bile rising in his throat. 

The rooftop was high. But was it high enough? 

He felt the cold spray of salt water before he saw the first wave crash into their building. The force of it rattled the walls. Below, windows exploded. The entire structure swayed. 

David grabbed onto a steel beam as the water surged upward. He felt hands claw at him, others shouting. The air filled with the deafening roar of water and destruction. 

For one brief moment, he allowed himself to pray. 

Then, the world turned to chaos. 

The last thing he saw was the sun breaking through the clouds, golden light glinting off the water. 

And then, silence.

The silence didn’t last.

A second surge struck, sending another violent tremor through the Sentinel Building. David clenched the steel beam, his fingers slipping on the cold, wet metal. Around him, his coworkers clung to anything they could. Ashley screamed as a gust of wind nearly pulled her over the edge. Mark was muttering prayers under his breath.

The water kept rising.

David dared to look down. The city was unrecognizable—a vast, churning sea of debris.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

The building groaned again, metal shrieking under pressure.

Would it hold?

Would they?

The rooftop tilted slightly.

Then, the world dropped out from under him.

David felt weightless for a terrifying second as the rooftop deck lurched beneath him. The steel beam he clung to vibrated violently, the entire Sentinel Building groaning like a wounded beast. The tsunami’s force was relentless, dragging debris through the streets, shattering what remained of the city below.

Ashley clung to his arm, her knuckles white. “David—”

A deafening crack split the air.

The rooftop shuddered, and suddenly, part of it wasn’t there anymore. A section of the deck collapsed, taking a table, a chair, and—God help them—a person with it. David barely had time to register who it was before they were gone, swallowed by the abyss of water below.

“No, no, no,” someone sobbed.

David pressed his forehead against the steel beam, his breath ragged. The cityscape was a nightmare—a hellscape of shattered glass, twisted metal, and rushing seawater.

Another aftershock rumbled beneath them.

David forced himself to look at his coworkers—his friends. Their faces were streaked with terror, salt, and tears.

Was this the end?

He tightened his grip.

“Hold on,” he whispered.

Then, with a final, earsplitting groan, the building tilted further.

And the ocean reached for them again.