The First Wave

By Katherine Franks

EARTHQUAKE!
Somewhere off the coast a sudden submarine landslide has caused a massive tsunami, the likes of which Queensland has never seen.…
The First Wave is an edge of your seat thriller set in the beautiful Sunshine Coast of Australia. What starts as an ordinary day fast turns into a disaster, with the fight for survival pushing Amy Jacobs and her husband Mark to lengths they never thought possible. …
What would you do? Where would you go?
Amy starts the day like most days, pulling on her sneakers and taking her baby and 4-year-old in the pram along the ocean boardwalk. when the water pulls back, she knows something is deadly wrong.
Amy's husband Mark is getting a haircut when he gets the emergency text to head to higher ground. With nothing but flat ground as far as the eye can see, he makes for the only high ground around - the penthouse of the holiday apartment building.…
Gazing out the window of her Brisbane office building, Nikki Bush is contemplating her next coffee when she suddenly notices strange readings on the Bureau of Meteorology's deep sea buoys. Realising a tsunami is imminent, she begins the emergency warning protocol, knowing that the communities on the ground don't have enough time to evacuate. Powerless to stop the unsurvivable weather events, Nikki must battle bureaucracy and her own lack of confidence in order to be believed and warn the public. …
Impossible to put down from page one, The First Wave takes you to the Sunshine Coast of Australia, and asks can ordinary people survive extraordinary events?

The First Wave is an edge of your seat thriller set in the beautiful Queensland Coast that you won't be able to put down. Katherine Franks brings a uniquely Australian voice to her novels and in her second novel, she has taken one of Australia's most idyll locations; a favourite holiday spot for thousands and turned it into your worst nightmare.
Katherines first book, Beneath the Red Dust,  has sold thousands of copies internationally. Katherine writes fast paced thrillers and Aussie mysteries. Katherine has a Masters degree in Politics  and has worked as a University teacher. She has four children and lives in one of Australia's most picturesque locations – Queenslands Sunshine Coast.
The First Wave is a perfect holiday thriller and readers will be taken away on an adventure on the beautiful, but deadly, Aussie Coast.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Katherine Franks
• Release date: Mar 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223153078

Book preview

Prologue

In the middle of the ocean, a long way from Australia and a very long way from New Zealand, a crack appeared in the ocean floor. The crack started small, like a little worm. The worm snaked forward, thickening up until it was the size of an eel. The crack turned into a split, widening until it had two quite defined sides. The sides split, taking seconds to come apart.

Then, one side fell downwards. In a fraction of a second it slid more than a metre.

The nearest Deep Ocean Tsunami Detection Buoy was coming up to its 13th year in the ocean. The last regular maintenance appointment was signed off by a 3rd year maritime studies student who was in a rush to get back to the bar and didn’t actually check the condition properly. It registered the massive movement, then promptly went offline, thus never sending the critically important information back to the mainland.

On the ocean floor, a shell rolled down the newly made hill. It bumped over a rock and slightly slowed as it hit a dip, then gathered speed as it hit the slope again. Faster and faster it rolled, until finally it sailed off the edge of the sandy hill and into the now massive chasm.

By the time the tiny shell sailed into the abyss, it was not alone. Other shells and rocks floated downwards with it. The earth no longer shifted. But the movement did not end with the earth and the shells. The force of the earthquake was massive. Devastating.

Unparalleled.

And that energy had to go somewhere.

9:00AM

It was mid-morning as Amy pulled her sneakers on. Nine o’clock, just a bit later to miss the going to work traffic, but early enough to miss the really hot part of the day. Mismatched socks hid beneath the lip of the dark blue shoes. Amy gathered nappies and baby wipes to put in the nappy bag with one hand as she pulled one shoe on.

‘Artie! Are you ready? Do you have your shoes on?’ she called through the house, leaning down to grab her second sneaker.

‘Yeah, here I am!’ Blonde curls sped around the corner towards the front door, throwing Amy off balance as she finally pulled her second shoe on.

He ran towards her and nearly tripped over his sister as she crawled towards Amy.

‘Pumpkin! What are you doing? Are you ready to go for a walk? Here you go, let me pop you in the pram’. Amy picked up her youngest child, Coco. Nine month old Coco cooed in response, trying to grab a lock of her mother’s hair in her chubby fist as Amy leant over her to do the harness.

‘You’re a good girl, aren’t you? Now let go of Mummy’s hair, sugar’. Amy chatted away as she put the nappy bag in the bottom of the pram. She grabbed the baby carrier off the side table at the last minute.

She slipped outside, locking the door as her husband Mark was already out.

As she thought of him, her mobile phone dinged. She pushed the pram with one hand as she unlocked the phone and read the message.

.... Still waiting at the barbers, super busy here for a weekday, be a while longer xx Mark....

Amy texted back the thumbs up emoji and tucked her phone into the pocket on her tights. She might even beat him home at the rate he was going.

As they were crossing the street past the supermarket Artie stopped and pointed upwards, forcing Amy to grab him and pull him the curb. He stood staring even after they had stopped.

‘Look, Mum!!’ he exclaimed pointing to the sky.

Above them a large flock of sea birds were squawking as they flew westwards. Amy stared in wonder. She had never seen such a large flock, there must have been a hundred or more. They ducked and weaved among each other, giving the effect of ribbons floating in the breeze, fluttering.

‘Look Coco! Can you see all the birds?’ Amy leant down beside the pram, pointing out the birds to the baby. There were so many, and they were making such a racket that even Coco noticed them, tracking them with her eyes and a chubby finger pointed upwards.

The flock flew over, finally disappearing out of sight above them. She could hear them as Artie turned to her.

‘Wow, Mum! Did you see all those birds?? What were they?’

‘I’m not sure, but there were a lot. I guess they are just going inland for food. Birds like to move together, like a family’. She ruffled his blonde hair. He looked up at her and smiled, before putting his left foot on the ground and pushing off. He jumped his small scooter a few times on the wide footpath, going slow so Amy kept up with the pram.

They reached the wooden boardwalk that snaked up the side of the hill on the Coolum Main Beach. Amy looked out over the beach, taking in the azure sea, lapping the edge of the golden sand with white curling waves. There were not many surfers out today, she figured either the surf was a bit rough, or the surfers were at work. Or both.

Amy smiled, enjoying the walk. It was going to be a good day.

MARK JACOBS SAT IN a slim wooden chair outside the Marcoola Barber. He had arrived a few minutes after nine, but there were already four other men in front of him. He had done a quick calculation and figured it would be quicker to sit and wait than drive the fifteen minutes home to Coolum and back again.

It wasn’t the worst place to be really. Above him was one in a line of tall white apartment buildings, resorts, and holiday apartments right opposite the ocean. The barber was one of a group of small shops servicing the apartments. There were a few takeaways and some tourist shops selling sand buckets, towels, umbrellas, and other necessary beach gear that always got left behind during packing.

Opposite the apartment buildings was a line of single-story shops, a tattoo parlour, and bank among others. And behind the shops was the Sunshine Coast airport. Every so often another plane full of holiday makers would touch down, and a plane load of people going home would lift off.

He was glad he wasn’t one of them. Looking up at the endless blue sky, the still air was only sometimes broken by a breeze which lifted the palm fronds fractionally. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to go back to living in the city.

He and his wife Amy had moved to the Sunshine Coast a few years back, when their eldest Artie was a baby. They had decided that living in the city was not how they wanted to raise their kids and found this little hamlet north of Brisbane. It was ideal really. His job as a software designer meant he could work remotely, and they had found a place with a space for an office. Amy had worked in the public service but was thinking of a career change when the kids went to school.

He had been able to take up surfing again, which he hadn’t done much since he was in his early twenties. And had joined a dad’s group. They drank coffee and talked about poop and surfing.

It had been one of the dads in his dads’ group who had recommended this barber. He had tried a few in Coolum and Noosa, but none had given him exactly what he wanted. So here he was on a Thursday morning, waiting for a haircut and wondering if the shop across the road and hidden up an alley was actually a brothel, or if it was really a massage parlour.

He sent a message to Amy, letting her know he would have to wait. She would be walking now; it had become a habit on days she didn’t go to playgroup. He walked with her some days, if he didn’t have meetings that he needed to be at home for. Artie would take his scooter or his bike, and they went down to the boardwalk, then walked along beside the ocean. Coco loved to be near the ocean. When she was a newborn, they would take her to the beach, and she would fall asleep on the towel on the sand. He figured the rhythm of the surf put her to sleep.

An older man walked out the doorway next to him. His hair was swept back towards his neck, longer on the top and back, short on the sides. It looked great.

Mark breathed in. The air smelled of salt and takeaway food. The summer heat made everything feel heavier, even this early in the morning. He flicked through news stories on his phone and checked his bank balance. Not too much longer now.

ARTIE TURNED AND WAITED as he reached the top of the boardwalk. Here, the wooden slats gave way to a wide cement pathway. In one direction was the Point Arkwright lookout. In the other, the path went downhill again before curving around the unpatrolled First Bay and going up again to look out over Second Bay.

‘Can we stop here, Mum? I don’t want to go to the next hill’.

‘Sorry bud. We’re gonna keep going a bit. We’ll check out the lookout on the way back’.

‘Aww, Mum!’

‘Come on, let’s go’. Amy kept walking, knowing Artie would follow her.

‘Wow! Look, Mum. More birds!’

Sure enough, more of the large white birds were flying above them. Amy glanced up, not stopping this time as she was heading downhill, and the pram pulled her onwards.

‘Look! Is that a Bimini Kite?’

‘Yes, hun, that’s a Brahminy Kite. Good spotting’.

More birds joined the mini migration inland. As she walked, she saw even small birds take flight from the cliff side bushes.

‘Wow, Mum, look at that!’

‘What is it honey?’ Amy was still watching the birds fly over the hill towards Yandina.

‘The ocean is going away!’

Amy turned to see what her four-year-old was pointing at, nervousness stabbing through her as she took in his words.

Amy watched the water sucking back from Coolums First Bay. Amy, Artie and Coco stood at the lowest point in the hilly boardwalk, so the ocean should have been right in front of them washing up next to the wide path.

Instead the rocks became more and more exposed until they were stark against the horizon. Then she could see the sand, yellow with specks of brown here and there. But it wasn’t just the sand from the beach, she could see the sand beneath the waves, dark and wet from where the water had been.

Amy had been in her early twenties when the Indonesian tsunami hit. She had watched the videos taken by holiday makers marveling at the sudden changes in the beach. The ocean had drawn back such a long way that tourists, and some locals, had gone out to the beach in wonder. They had stood on the ocean floor, taking pictures, and shouting in amazement.

She had watched on in horror as helicopters traced the 2011 Japanese tsunami across the land, watching the relentless inundation cross fields, overcome buildings and towns, and destroy everything in its path. She had stood and hoped against hope the cars trying to outrun the wave would make it.

She knew what she was looking at now.

‘Shit’.

NIKKI BUSH STRETCHED her arms upwards, breathing in then outwards, practicing the in-chair mindfulness that her yoga teacher had been encouraging her to try every day. Since her boyfriend had left three months ago, she had been on edge and depressed. After the third week in a row when she had snapped at a fellow member of her yoga class for being too close or too noisy, her yoga teacher Cam had pulled her aside. He had been lovely, of course, but firm that she needed to chill out.

So here she was: stretch up, and breathe out.

Her gaze fell to the large fig tree outside. She knew she should see the green against the grey of the city buildings, the sway of the leaves, the myriad of creatures hidden in the branches. Instead all she saw was the bird crap building up against her window and the overflowing rubbish bin in the square below. She was thirty-three, single, and still in middle management. Her flat, while in the city, was boxed in by a cranky old man on one side and a loved up, very friendly couple with a screaming baby on the other.

A short beep drew her attention from the window back to her desk. The Bureau of Meteorology, or BOM, had a small office in Brisbane but it was big enough to give even middling staff like her a pretty large space to herself. She didn’t have to rub elbows with anyone and had plenty of room to spread out.

Her computer beeped again, and she clicked into the screen, happily stopping her mindfulness to get back to something that she actually cared about.

An alarm was going off, showing a Deep Ocean Tsunami Detection Buoy was registering a change in water pressure.

A really big change.

‘Hey, Jerry? You got any strange readings?’ Nikki called to her coworker, a couple metres behind her.

‘Nope. Nothing unusual here. What you got?’ Jerry was younger than her, slightly more senior and heavily overweight. His favourite lunch, burgers and chips from the fast food restaurant in the food court next door, left him panting for breath as he got up and walked over to Nikki’s side of the small open plan cubicle. He leant on the desk next to her to look at her screen. Screens actually, she had three lined up in front of her, to enable her to monitor...

‘Ok, that’s weird. I haven’t registered any seismic activity. A wave that size...’. He tapered off. But both he and Nikki knew what he was about to say. If the buoy reading was right, a wave that size would inundate the coast.

‘We are talking Rogue Wave here, Nikki. A wave that size..... Could only be rogue wave. Unless...’

Unless a wave that size was a tsunami.

‘How could we get a wave that big with no earthquake? Do you think it’s a fault? Shit. If it isn’t...’

Nikki moved the mouse and opened some new readings on the middle screen. She was searching to see if any of the other Deep Ocean Tsunami Radars or DART buoys were registering big columns.

Nothing.

A rogue wave could present significant issues for the large amount of shipping trade that occurred off the Queensland coast. But they were rare, super rare. Amy had only read about them and had not seen one in her years at the BOM.

Tsunamis were even rarer on the Queensland Coast.

She decided to err on the side of caution.

‘It’s probably a fault. Can you just double check and see if there has been any earthquake activity, anywhere?’

Jerry nodded, waddling back to his desk. As she watched he started several different searches and picked up the phone.

‘I’m just calling GA, he called over his shoulder to her.

GA was short for Geoscience Australia. If there was an earthquake that was able to trigger a tsunami, they would be the ones to find it. But they should have called her if there had been something, not the other way around.

Nikki continued to check the DART Buoys. When a DART Buoy registered something which had the potential for a tsunami, it changed into event phase. Once in event phase, it would send her a reading every sixty seconds.

As if on cue, another ping drew her attention to the right screen.

‘Whoa. It’s even bigger. How can this be? Have you found anything?’ No response from Jerry. She turned and saw he was silently gesticulating that he was on the phone.

She would have to decide soon. Whether to send this up the line and start the process of notifications so an alert could be sent out. It was her job and Jerry’s, along with GA, to make sure the public had 90 minutes lead time if there was a tsunami. And then there was cargo and passenger traffic on the major ocean trade routes.

But if what she was looking at was right, there wasn’t going to be that much time.

There wasn’t going to be much time at all.

‘Nikki, I’ve got GA on the line and they say they haven’t registered any seismic activity in the area of the east coast of Australia yet.

‘OK, thanks, Jerry.’ She turned back to her screen. She only had one DART buoy showing this anomaly so far. If it was faulty.....

No, she needed to proceed on the basis that it was right. She put her head in her hands and massaged her temples. If she got this wrong, it would come up in every professional evaluation from here to eternity. She would be the one who misread the DART buoy and wasted the taxpayers money raising an alert.

But if it was right and she did nothing....

There were tens of thousands of people on the Sunshine Coast of Australia. Right on the coast. She glanced over at the map on the wall, part of the décor since before she had started here. It showed potential inundation sites for a major seismic event and tsunami. And nearly the entire east coast of Queensland showed red. Only where large mountains butted up close to the coast was inundation less likely. But those were few and far between, the Great Dividing Range was well off the coast for most of the south east.

If the DART buoy was right and she did nothing, thousands could die.

This was not what she expected when she came into the office today.

Another ping. That was three. Three minutes apart. All showing significantly higher pressure.

Another ping.

Another site was showing increased pressure.

‘Jerry?’

‘Yeah, hang on Nikki, I’m still on with GA. They haven’t got anything. It’s probably a false alarm they reckon.

‘Uh, I don’t think so. I think we’ve got a big problem here’. She moved aside so he could see the alerts on her screen from his desk on the other side of the cubicle.

He didn’t say a thing. Just hung up the phone. Stared at her desktop.

‘Ok. I’ll get the alerts started. You can call the boss.

He turned around and started working.

Nikki picked up the phone and dialed extension 1.

‘Kym. I’ve got a level 5 tsunami alert with less than ten minutes lead time. We need to do an all stations alarm broadcast straight away. Jerry’s working on the alert. I’ll send you the data.

Kym went straight to response. ‘Ok, I’m on it. Good work, Nikki’.

She hoped it was.

AMY WATCHED THE WATER suck back from the beach. Overhead, birds continued to fly inland but she didn’t notice them anymore. All she could see was the water disappearing. All she could feel was the horror of being in the one spot she didn’t want to be in while seeing this. Right at ground zero. She couldn’t be closer.

‘Mum, the waves are so funny!’ Artie was staring too, but in wonderment, not horror. She looked down at her son, who was completely oblivious to the mounting danger that was building off the coast. He swung his scooter around in circles lifting each foot as it turned.

She looked down at her daughter. Coco played with her toes while sitting in the pram, all soft edges and cuddly.

They were her whole life. The most wonderful human beings she knew. And they were in the path of a tsunami.

She had to do something.

The thought of her children galvanized Amy and her brain kicked into action. She looked around, sorting through her options. The boardwalk in front of them wound upwards to the top of the cliff above First Bay. Behind her was another hill, the lookout at Point Arkwright, above Main Beach. Both were much higher than her current position. But both would corner her close to the coast. If she went up either, she would be hugging the coastline. And she knew, instinctively, that she needed to get away from the ocean.

To her right was another hill. The road next to her went perpendicular to the coastline. That’s the direction she needed to go. But it was also steep. Maybe too steep. She guessed at about a 45 degree angle. There was no path. She would need to go up the road.

Seconds had passed since she had noticed the drawback of the ocean. It felt like minutes.

‘Artie. We are gonna go up that hill, hun. And we are gonna do it fast. You need to stick with me. Can you scooter for a bit, then I’ll help you?’ She was already moving, looking left and right as she dragged Artie on the scooter with one hand and pushed the pram with the other. She dashed across the road, just slipping in between cars which were speeding up.

She reached the other side of the road as Artie responded.

‘Aww, come on, Mum. I wanna watch the water. Pleeeaaaasse!’

‘No, we need to go up the hill. And fast. We can see it