This Deep Panic

by Lisa Stowe

  “I’ll go with you,” Max said, and then caught something, a shadow, in Casey’s eyes. “What?”

  She pulled off her baseball cap, ran a hand over her hair, and put the cap back on. Raindrops collected on the shoulders of her jacket and she felt the damp chill sink into her skin. She shook her head and looked past Max, up at the high wall of granite over them. She didn’t want to answer, didn’t want to say something that would make him think less of her. And didn’t want to follow that thought any further down its road. But he stood there looking so…safe. She drew in a deep breath.

  “I’m scared shitless.” She caught his arm. “I don’t know what the hell we’re going to do, Max. I think this quake was the big one everyone’s been predicting for years. And it’s just us here. People are terrified, hurt, and isolated. It’s going to be dark soon. And you know what comes out in the dark, how it changes people. Looting, vandalism.”

  Max looked at the ground. He knew how hard it was for Casey to admit to any weakness, let alone fear. But this…it was legitimate. She should be afraid. They all should be. He met her eyes.

  “So am I. Scared shitless that is. And if you tell anyone, I’ll never pay for your hot chocolate again.”

  That lame joke got a shaky smile from her.

  “I think you’re right about the quake,” he said. “That means no help for a long time. No infrastructure. Tsunamis along the coast. You’ve seen the projections. Water all the way to Monroe. The freeway destroyed. Bridges down. Sultan’s dam will breach if it hasn’t already. It’s going to be a long time before anyone can reach us, unless it’s by air. And these little towns in the Sky valley aren’t going to be a priority. The cities will be. Seattle. Everett, what’s left of them.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “No clue.” Max ran a shaking hand over his face. “What we can, I guess. But we need to be thinking long term.”

  “So for right now, help out the crews we got going. Find the injured that we can. Figure out how to find shelter for everyone.”

  “Yes. And let’s try to get everyone together before dark. Maybe we won’t see the vandalism and destruction here that the larger cities will face tonight.”

  “Let’s hope,” Casey said.

  They both knew what kind of people crawled out of the shadows in chaos like this.

  Max looked at the deep worry still in her eyes. “Shep will be okay. Your guy is resourceful.”

  Casey, startled, looked up at him and then simply nodded. She couldn’t think of anything to say so she headed toward Index Avenue knowing Max would follow. But her chest felt light and hollow, with something almost like shame settling in there.

  She hadn’t once thought of Shep.

  What did that tell her? She wasn’t sure, and wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

  7

  “Curtis.”

  Curtis opened his eyes. He had a vague sense that someone had been calling him for a while.

  “Can you tell me where you are?”

  He looked around, struggling to focus, as if he’d been deeply asleep and was only just now waking. He saw the sign for the general store. There was something wrong with it.

  “Index. I’m in Index.” He thought for a moment. “The sign fell.”

  “It sure as hell did.”

  Curtis looked up at the young man speaking and slowly became aware of the fire department uniform. And then saw the deputy standing behind him. “What happened?”

  “An earthquake. A big one. Maybe the big one. Can you tell me if you’re hurt?”

  Curtis thought for another slow moment. “No, I don’t think so. Maybe…I think I hit my head.”

  The young man aimed a penlight in Curtis’s eyes. He winced away from the bright light and raised a hand to wipe his cheeks as his eyes watered. He started to move but was restrained. He looked down and realized he was in his car and still buckled in. He reached for the release on the seat belt and let it go.

  The deputy gripped Curtis under his arm and helped him out into light rain and then left them, heading toward the town hall. He stood carefully and leaned against his car, shivering. The old phone booth no one used except the few local drug users, rested in pieces of metal and shards of glass across the front of the car. The front fender and hood were crumpled.

  “Oh wow, I hit the phone booth,” Curtis said. “What happened?”

  “Like I said, earthquake.” The firefighter studied Curtis. “Look, it’s crazy right now and we have lots of injured and missing people. I think you’re okay, but if you start feeling worse, like dizzy, nauseated, blurred vision, come find me. Ask for Samuel. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Curtis said faintly, his head throbbing.

  Samuel left him, jogging across the street toward the fire department.

  Earthquake? Had Samuel said earthquake?

  Curtis ran a shaky hand over his face and looked over his shoulder at the general store. One back corner of the building was collapsed in a mess of shattered timbers, hanging wires, strips of insulation, and broken glass.

  He frowned, thinking hard.

  He remembered coming down Fifth Street and pulling into the parking lot. A flash of movement, a second of realization that a utility pole was falling. He’d swerved to avoid it. That was how it happened, swerving. He must have driven, or been thrown, right into the telephone booth.

  Sounds started to filter through the haze that was his brain. Distant thunder that rolled, silenced, rolled again. Voices, some panicked, some angry. Someone in the distance screamed but he wasn’t sure where it came from. The rotten-egg scent of propane was sharp in the damp air.

  Soft rain pattered around him and on him. He shivered and bent, head pounding, to pull out his raincoat from the back seat. He slipped it on and tugged up the hood.

  The bridge that curved so gracefully over the North Fork of the Skykomish River was missing. Just gone. The old rusty train trestle downriver from the bridge was also gone. The far bank of the whitewater river had collapsed, sending dirt and boulders into the water. Cables and pieces of concrete hung where the bridge had been. Water gushed up in front of the general store, where a water main had obviously broken. The tiny town wasn’t recognizable and Curtis could only stare.

  The town hall still stood although it listed heavily and the front steps had pulled completely away. The flagpole rested against the roof of the Old Fire Hall, a small community center that was next to the town hall. Some houses were completely flattened like someone had stepped on them, some were in pieces, and all were impaired. One, a gray-blue historical home that had been expensively renovated, had only one historical wall still standing.

  Curtis pushed away from his car and moved out into the street. His legs shook and he shivered uncontrollably. The extent of the damage terrified him but he had to see. Had to know the reality. What his eyes told him, his brain was simply unable to grasp. This wasn’t something that was going to be fixed in a day, or a week, or even a month.

  Another thunderclap echoed in the town and rumbled down the canyons. Curtis jumped. What he heard wasn’t thunder. Couldn’t be. The sounds were too close to the ground, too close to the town. It had to be boulders coming down from the granite Wall.

  Curtis walked toward Index Avenue, making his way carefully over the torn up asphalt of the road. The Railroad Hotel, another historical building recently renovated, had massive damage. The top floors had collapsed like an accordion. A piece of one balcony hung from the corner, and as Curtis watched, it fell with a crash. Relief flooded him as he remembered the owners had never opened for business. He wondered, briefly, where the building’s local ghost had gone.

  He stumbled down Index Avenue and saw a body in the grass. With heart pounding, Curtis ran across the street. His mind was a sudden panicked blank, years of first aid trainings gone. But then he saw movement and recognized Bert.

  The man rolled on his side and pillowed his head on his arm. “Brother, I’m show drunk.”

  Curtis knew that
without being told. Even from a few feet away he smelled the fumes.

  “I mean, brother, really drunk,” Bert said. “You should have sheen the earth jusht rolling, brother. Rolling.”

  Locals had jokingly named Bert and his partner, Ernie, because no one knew their real names. The two homeless men, with scruffy long hair and longer beards, had worked their way into the psyche of the tiny mountain town.

  Curtis stood there a moment longer, but when he realized Bert was snoring, he turned back toward the town center. Let Bert think the earthquake was the result of alcohol a little longer. And sleeping in the rain was the least of their worries.

  Back on Avenue A, the double doors of the Old Fire Hall had been pulled open and leaned, crooked, against the outside walls. People milled in the street, some with rain gear, some with umbrellas, some just getting soaked. The mayor, Albert, was asking for tents, or anything that might work for temporary shelters, for generators, for search teams. His voice was a calm center in the crowd and people gravitated toward him.

  Two sheriff deputies moved through the crowd, stopping to talk, to listen, to hand out first aid supplies. Curtis recognized the deputy that had helped him out of his car. And he realized now, it was the same deputy that had helped him with the piece of Henry’s scalp.

  He joined the people but stood at the fringe of the activity, not sure what to do. A slight, older man wearing a metal hardhat said something about getting on the radio with emergency management. No one seemed to be listening as they milled around the mayor and the deputies, their eyes dull with shock.

  Betty, from the general store, stood by one of the doors, an arm in a sling made from a belt. She glanced at Curtis, but then waved at a young man standing a couple feet away. “Don’t you have a huge canopy that you rent out for weddings?”

  The young man nodded. “We can get that set up. Maybe some kerosene heaters.”

  “Um…excuse me?” Curtis said, raising a shaking hand as if in school. “You might want to save that kerosene until we really need it. Maybe assign some people to start gathering firewood instead. Build fires to gather around.”

  “Save it?” the young man asked. “Why? Snohomish County will get the bridge fixed. I’m a councilmember. If I ask our state representative, I can get this taken care of quickly.”

  Without even being aware of the transition, Curtis slipped into lecture mode. “No, we can’t. For one thing, how are you going to contact them? Maybe fire department radios if we’re lucky. Maybe a ham radio if anyone has one. Cell phones won’t be working. And with all due respect, responders are not going to prioritize Index.”

  “Of course they will. I have contacts. I’ll have help here quickly.” The young man started to turn away.

  Curtis grabbed his arm. “Look around you. This wasn’t a local tremor. I bet this was the quake they’ve been predicting for years.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” the young man said. “You’re just scaring people.”

  But the mayor, Albert, nodded toward Curtis. “Keep talking.”

  “Well…freeways beyond use for one thing. Tsunamis from the Sound coming all the way to Monroe.” Curtis’s voice shook. “No one will even be able to come up our two-lane highway, let alone help out a tiny town. All the bridges will be down. Resources will be tied up with big cities and infrastructure.”

  He stumbled to a stop, fear making him oddly breathless. His words, with their ring of truth, overwhelmed him.

  “Who are you again?” the young man asked. “And what makes you the expert?”

  “Well, I’m not an expert,” Curtis said, his cheeks warming. “Just a University of Washington professor. But you don’t have to be an expert to know this was major. People need to think long term.”

  The young man threw up a hand as he turned away, as if blowing off Curtis’s words. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Curtis watched him leave, but then the old man with the hardhat spoke, making him jump, startled.

  “You’re right. Help won’t be coming soon. We need to find a way to communicate with the outside world and figure out what resources we have here.”

  Albert shook his head. “Okay, but right now we have to find the injured. House to house searches.”

  “And don’t forget Henry,” Curtis said quickly.

  “Henry? What’s he got to do with anything?” Albert asked. He raised his hands, waving people toward him.

  “Well, a piece of him was on my car,” Curtis said. “I thought maybe someone should go look for the rest of him. I found a fault fracture on the Wall. He might be down in there.”

  “There are lots of people missing,” Albert said. “I’ll add him to the list and we’ll do what we can.”

  A long, undulating scream from down the street made everyone turn. A man, walking with stiff dignity, came down the middle of torn up pavement. In his arms he carried the blood-covered body of a small girl, lifted as if in offering. Her head lolled to one side, her brown hair trailing over his arm. A woman behind him caught his shirt, her screams now sliding into keening. Samuel came out of the fire department and ran to them.

  Betty touched Curtis’s arm. “Samuel’s the only medic here. No one can get to us. What are we supposed to do?” Rain soaked in to her hair and trickled down her face.

  Samuel took the little girl and lowered her gently to the ground, his fingers going to her neck. There was a long pause, and then he slowly shook his head.

  Curtis brushed warm tears away from his face with cold fingers. “We help,” he said simply.

  8

  Ramon’s fingers left bloody tracks on the cell phone. He flipped it shut, struggled to control his rage, and then blew, throwing it at the pile of rubble that had been his brother’s house.

  “Fucking hell!” He raked fingers into his dark hair, digging into his scalp as if he could forcibly pull a solution out of his brain.

  Sirens wailed in the distance, drew near, then faded away. They’d been going like that for almost an hour now. But was anyone coming to help him, or any of the people around him? No. Could he get anyone to answer when he called 911? No. Because the stupid piece of shit cell phone wasn’t working.

  He coughed from the smoke that moved in tendrils through the rain. Several collapsed homes were on fire. He was surrounded by a nightmare scene of rubble. People staggered down the street, some sat in shock, some wept, some, like him, raged. Blood and bones and bodies. Isolated by their terror, frozen in their individual horrors, no one came to help.

  He bent again to the debris and heaved bricks aside, cut his fingers again on broken glass, stumbled when his boots broke through wedges of sheetrock. This had been a beautiful small home, built in the 1960s, renovated last year when Tómas moved in with Therese and their daughters. Ramon’s nieces, home from school on their half-day.

  No way to get hold of his brother and sister-in-law, no way to get through to 911, and his nieces were trapped, injured, maybe dying, alone. He was supposed to keep the family safe. He was. Not Tómas, who had never been good at it.

  He dug into the rubble with a vengeance. A shovel clattered down beside him.

  “Use this, son.”

  Ramon, panting with exertion and a stomach-wrenching panic for his nieces, grabbed the shovel and glanced upward. Standing next to him was an old man with another shovel. The stranger didn’t speak, simply went to work. He was stoop-shouldered under the weight of years, with the fuzzy remains of gray hair creating tufts over his ears. Ramon took in the blue bib overalls and the old fashioned black framed glasses and without a word started digging in earnest. With the old man helping, they cleared debris away, creating a sizable hole where the front door had been.

  Ramon hoped he would find some sort of way in but as he worked that hope died. He saw only downed beams that had once supported the ceiling. He dropped to his hands and knees.

  “Alegria! Marie!” Ramon shouted then held his breath, willing a response.

  “Hear that?”
the old man asked. “Someone’s there.”

  Ramon lunged forward, slamming the shovel into the broken home. Pain arced through the muscles of his shoulders and arms. He barely registered a woman’s voice behind him.

  “Be careful now. You won’t do those girls any good if you get hurt yourself.”

  Ramon shook sweat and rain out of his eyes. An extremely overweight elderly woman stood above him, holding out a bottle of water. He shook his head, no breath to answer, no time to spare. The woman, her white hair curling up from the rain, offered the bottle to the old man.

  “Later, Mother. Got work to do.”

  She stepped backward, and Ramon was barely aware of a hurt expression in her eyes.

  “I want to help,” she said.

  “Mayhap you can, Mother, when this man’s family is out,” the old man said. “Right now stay out of the way.”

  Ramon squatted down and crawled into the opening they’d created.

  “Careful now,” the old man said, coming in behind him. “Got to go slower, shore up these beams so we can get back out.”

  Ramon saw the wisdom in the words, but shoved through debris anyway, leaving the old man to brace and secure the small space. Ramon paused only call out, to listen, to follow the responses that became clearer as he forced his way forward.

  He saw the small foot, the slender ankle, Alegria’s bright hot pink tennis shoe half on, half off.

  “Alegria, talk to me.”

  “Tío Ramon?” And then, sobbing.

  “Hush, baby,” Ramon said, carefully lifting a two-by-four from across her ankle. “We’re here. Talk to me, tell me where you’re hurt.”

  “My arm is broken, I think,” came the thirteen-year-old’s voice, choked with tears. “My head hurts.” Her voice rose. “I did what teachers said at that stupid drill! I stood in the doorway!”

  “She’s panicking,” the old man said.

  “No shit.” Ramon grabbed a chunk of sheetrock, handing it back to the stranger.

  “Calm her down. Talk, touch her.”

  “Alegria, listen, baby.” Ramon spared a brief second to put his hand over her ankle, the only thing he could reach. “You’re not alone. You’re going to be okay.”