Can't Save Everyone

Abigail could feel the mountain tremble from a mile away inside the dockside shack. Her part was simple: keep the boat safe and ready.

Outside, the panicked voices of people and their scurrying feet felt too close and too far away at the same time. The wooden door, barricaded with the file cabinet and the heavy workbench, shook sometimes as people tried to get in or slammed against it. She hoped her her blockade would hold until they arrived. She was not claustrophobic, but the shack felt like it was shrinking around her with each passing minute, the frightened crowd outside getting more and more frantic. Angry voices competed with pleading ones.

"Move!"

"Come on please-"

"You have room! I see you have room-"

"At least take my children, please!" Abigail could not see the woman, but she could picture it. In her mind she saw a weeping woman begging a captain for the lives of her children. She did not hear a reply. She could only hope that the man took the woman's children. She knew could not save the woman's family herself; she promised Owen she would not take anyone but his own family.

She checked the bullets in her pistol. Four, the same four she counted when she first made it into this shack. The boat was simple, a small metal thing that could maybe hold six people, nine people if most of those people were the size of children.

Abigail wanted to offer a seat to one of the people outside but was painfully aware of how futile that would be. Owen drilled it into her head earlier so she would not do something stupid like sink the boat overfilling it with strangers. It was not her boat anyway. She only had a place on it because of her medical knowledge.

A distant gunshot rang out and she flinched, but the shot was not for her. People were fighting now, killing each other over what they hoped was salvation. She paced back and forth, counting her bullets again. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. What happened if more than four people wanted to storm the shack? Could she even shoot four people, let alone aim to kill?

Someone rattled the door at the same time as the ground moved. Abigail bit her lip to keep from shrieking.

"Let me in!" a man's voice demanded.

She said nothing.

"I know you have a boat in there!" He shouted. "I saw you put it in yesterday! Open up!"

The boat can only hold nine, Owen told her. You try fitting other people on it and we'll all sink. You can only save us eight, understand?

"Go away!" she yelled, trying to sound aggressive.

The man slammed against the door again. The file cabinet slid away about a centimeter. Abigail's heart leaped into her throat. The pistol shook in her hands.

A sliver of the man's face could be seen. Older than her, bearded and wild-eyed, maybe hoping to save himself or his family.

"I see you! You're alone!" he said through the opening. "You let me in and I won't hurt you." He threw himself at the door again.

Forcing the trembling from her hands, Abigail pointed the gun and fired.

She fired above the man's head, the bullet tearing a splinter through the wood of the door. The man shrank back but she waited with the pistol still aimed. She waited in that terrible silence, the sky darkening with smoky clouds overhead. Ash spun slowly through the gap, landing on the workbench. For once, the rumbling came from above instead of below as thunder rolled through the clouds.

Another man's face appeared in the gap, this one familiar.

"Owen!"

"Move this stuff!"

Quickly, she holstered the pistol and slid the barricade aside as fast she could, dizzy with adrenaline. Owen, his wife, his sister, the four children filed into the shack, taking up every inch of space on the little boarding platform. Everyone had a pack on their backs. Food, water, clothing. Owen's sister had a pistol similar to Abigail's.

"Open the doors!" Owen ordered, herding his sons, nephew, and niece into the boat. "Abigail, get the door! Isla, the motor!"

Still trembling from the encounter with the man, Abigail hurried to the wheel that would lift the metal sheet of the boat doors. She cranked it as faster as her arms could go with Owen and the others bent low in the boat to squeeze through the half-open door. Abigail jumped onto the prow, jostling Owen's sister who sat with an arm around her youngest daughter.

BOOOOMM! The kids cried out in fright, but the adults just huddled low as they entered the crowded waters.

Most boats were gone now so it was just cobbled rafts and paddling humans filling the harbor. Isla got the motor started as Owen shoved away the desperate hands of people in the water. His sister brandished her pistol, stamping on the hand of a man who might have been the one Abigail shot at before.

Rain, rain mixed with hot ash that stunk of sulfur, fell from the sky in angry patters. Steam filled the air and Abigail finally looked back.

The volcano's molten contents were pouring down the mountainside, leaving little fires and columns of dark smoke in its deathly wake. The terrible lava illuminated the dock and the fleeing bodies left behind. People floated on luggage, trampled each other in the shallows, fought over and capsized the little rafts they made. The noise was like something from hell. Screaming, crying, prayers begging, wordless wails of fear. The boat took them out into the open water as the mist thickened from the rain falling harder. Abigail could mercifully not make out more of the tragic sight. She could still hear the screams of terror though.

"We couldn't save them all," Owen said, standing in the boat, the hot ash-rain staining his somber face gray. "You know that. We saved who we could." He was looking at the little children who cried silently and clutched their toys for comfort.

"I know," Abigail murmured, wrapping her arms around her legs. "I know."