The Disaster Days

by Rebecca Behrens

  “It’s getting kind of hard to see in here,” Zoe pointed out, in between spoonfuls.

  The flashlight. I’d forgotten we needed to find one before it got totally dark in the house. Stay focused, I reminded myself. And calm. Moods were contagious, like yawns and laughs. If I panicked, so would Zoe and Oscar.

  “How are you doing on the ice cream?”

  “I’m already done with mine,” Oscar said. When I gave him a look, he replied, “What? There was barely any Mint Moose left.”

  “It’s hard to eat with my left hand.” Zoe sped up her pace. “But mine’s almost gone too.”

  “Finish quick, so we can find a flashlight.”

  “Can we not race this time?” Oscar asked quietly. It made my heart cramp.

  “I promise we’re not going to race anymore. We’re going to stick together.”

  While we waited for Zoe to scrape out the last caramel bits, I listened to the quiet. A house without power seems silent, but it’s not. There are all kinds of strange, unfamiliar sounds. Creaks and knocks and whirs. Although some of the sounds might have been the aftereffects of the shaking-up. Who knows what kinds of damage it did to the house, in places we couldn’t see… We had no idea what things were like upstairs or outside in the yard or in the basement, with all the pipes and the boiler and flammable art supplies and whatnot. Important things that might be on the verge of toppling over or caving in. I swallowed hard. I wished my dad could take a walk-through and tell me that everything was safe and structurally sound.

  Scenes from news reports and movies of people wandering through earthquake rubble flashed in my head. Those were always in far-off places—or California. After a quake, wasn’t the power sometimes off for a long time, hours or maybe even days? Weren’t people stranded on highways, trapped in building collapses, stuck without food and water… I wanted, more than anything, for Andrea or one of my parents to burst in through the door. Hug us and tell us that it wasn’t like that here. That we were all going to be fine.

  But I couldn’t dwell on that. The only reason we could see anything in the kitchen was because our eyes had been slowly adjusting as the light dimmed. It was dangerous to be in the kitchen—to be anywhere in the house, in its present state—in darkness. I squinted to see if Zoe’s bandages were holding up. The wound pad was red beneath the plastic coating, but blood wasn’t leaking out of the adhesive sides, at least.

  “Done, Zoe?” I worked hard to keep my voice calm and even. Enthusiastic. The opposite of how I felt: scared and ragged. Wanting to curl into a ball. My breathing was starting to feel funny. Like I was trying to suck in soda through a straw with a hole; like I wasn’t getting what I was owed with each inhale. When this happens, I know I’m supposed to use my inhaler. But I didn’t have it. I pictured it sitting on top of my nightstand, next to a framed family portrait and a photo of me and Neha on the stage at fifth-grade graduation. I inhaled for four counts and exhaled for eight. I’m not sure if that helped.

  Zoe swallowed her last spoonful and nodded. I guided her hand to take mine’s place on her arm. Then I rose up to check my phone one last time. The text had failed again. No Wi-Fi icon, no bars. I didn’t tell the kids. I just pressed to try again, even if that was pointless without service, and then switched on the flashlight app, to help us see what lay ahead. “Oscar, let’s find a real flashlight. Zoe, I think you should stay here and keep your arm elevated.”

  She shook her head. “I can hold it up while I walk. I don’t want to be alone in the dark.” She paused. “You promised we’d stick together.”

  “That’s right, I did.” Slowly I led Zoe and Oscar out of the kitchen, our tentative footsteps, and Jupiter’s chirps, drowned out by the pounding in my ears of my own panicked heart.

  5

  Where do we keep the flashlights in my house? I closed my eyes, trying to picture their hiding spot. There. Tucked away in the closet next to the kitchen, a small plastic tub of emergency stuff—some water, food like granola bars, and a big flashlight with extra batteries. I know this because during spring cleaning every year, my mom changes out the water bottles and checks to make sure the food isn’t expired. She tests the batteries too. I asked her once what kind of emergency the tub was meant for, and she gave me a vague “just in case” answer. I think she didn’t want to scare me by mentioning what could actually go so wrong to make us have to subsist on granola bars and water, eaten by flashlight. But honestly, it’s scarier not to know what exactly has freaked out your parents enough to make them designate a special tub in an overcrowded closet.

  We were back in the Matlocks’ front hallway, but it looked different than during our bathroom trip. Through the window, the trees outside cast creepy twilight shadows that slid around our feet as we stepped carefully across the runner.

  “Shouldn’t I go first? It’s my house—I know which doors are which,” Zoe said.

  That was true, but I didn’t think her leading the way was such a great idea. It was as though the whole house had been booby-trapped. “You can direct us, but let me go first—in case something is in the way.” Like a pile of glass or sparking wires or who-knows-what. Another appliance that had toddled like the fridge. I gripped my phone tighter. I didn’t particularly like wandering around dark houses in normal times, and especially not when I had no idea if actual danger lurked around a corner.

  “Stop!” Zoe commanded. When I shined the phone’s light on her, she nodded toward the door in front of me. “That’s the coat closet. There might be a flashlight somewhere inside.”

  I opened the door, an inch wider at a time, in case something was about to tumble out. I waved my light into the dark space—a mess of parkas, galoshes, umbrellas, and shoeboxes. It looked like the entire lost-and-found bin at school had been dumped onto the closet floor.

  “I guess the shaking messed this closet up pretty bad,” I said, kneeling down to sort through it one-handed. I was holding Jupiter.

  “No, it always looks like this,” Oscar said, managing to make me laugh.

  “I can hold the light while you look,” Zoe said. “Since you’ve got Jupiter, and I have to keep my arm raised anyway.”

  “Great idea.” I stood and passed my phone to Zoe, who held it overhead, shining it down on us like she was a human streetlight. Oscar and I sifted through the stuff until he found his missing tennis racket and started plucking at its strings. “Let’s stay focused, guys.” He put it back down and crawled deeper into the closet.

  “What does it say on this box?” he called up to me. I leaned in, and Zoe swept the beam of light toward him.

  “It says ‘emergency’! Bring it over here.” Oscar crawled back to me and tugged open the lid. Zoe shined my phone over the inside of the box. A metal cylinder reflected back at us.

  “Yes! A flashlight.” Oscar pumped his fist in the air.

  “What else?” I asked. Jupiter was getting tired of being in the crook of my arm, and I had to keep readjusting so he wouldn’t wiggle out to freedom. It wasn’t safe for him to run free.

  Oscar pulled out a small, clear plastic box with something red inside. “A…radio?”

  “Oh, sweet. An emergency radio. Can you hand it to me?” I reached down to take it. Having a radio packed away for times like this was really smart of Andrea.

  “That’s pretty much it, just a big water bottle and…wrappers.” Oscar wrinkled his nose and held up several shiny granola-bar wrappers. “I guess someone ate them?”

  Zoe looked sheepish. “Sorry. I got hungry playing hide-and-seek with Liliana.”

  “It’s fine,” I assured her. “It’s not like we need them. We’ll eat everything in the fridge first, since the power’s out. Oscar, can you turn on that flashlight, so I can look at this?” He shined it at me. The box the radio was in said: Emergency Radio with USB Phone Charger—Crank-Powered and Solar-Powered.

  “Perfect, this thing has a phone c
harger too.” Which was excellent news, because my battery had only been at 70 percent before the shaking, and using the flashlight app and trying to send desperate SOS texts had surely drained it even more.

  Oscar had moved the flashlight underneath his chin and was flicking it on and off, making spooky faces. “Great faces, Oscar, but now let’s keep it on so we can find our way back to the living room, okay?”

  Feeling flush with the ability to charge, I kept my phone’s flashlight app on, for extra light while we crept back through the hallway to the kitchen. Last thing we needed was another incident with broken glass. “How’s your cut, Zoe? Are the bandages holding up?”

  “I think so,” she said. “Can I put my arm down now?”

  I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t paid great attention during the first aid part of my babysitting course because, really, what would I have expected to do other than slap on a bandage? For anything serious, you’d call the parents or a doctor. We were passing the kitchen phone as I thought about calling doctors, and I shivered. That wasn’t even an option. Andrea will be home really soon, I reassured myself. It was close to eight, which made me wonder why my mom hadn’t already come over to check on us. Even if she somehow missed the shaking, she must’ve tried to text me by then and I hadn’t replied. If there’s ever a time to be overprotective, I think this is it.

  In the kitchen I had the brilliant idea—although it probably came rather late—to get the kids to put on their shoes. They were lined up by the door to the carport and had only moved a foot or two during the quake, like they’d all shuffled in a line to the right. With shoes on, we could walk in the living room without risking more wounds. I helped Zoe get hers on one-handed and checked her arm again. “We should change your bandages.” When I peeled them off at the sink, the pads were heavy with blood. It seeped onto my fingers as I dropped them to the countertop. I shuddered and gagged. But her bleeding had slowed to a trickle, to my relief. To conserve the supply, I only put one bandage back on.

  We had almost reached the safe zone of the couch when it happened again. A vibration surged through my feet up along my spine, followed by shaking so hard my teeth rattled. It was harder to tell what was happening around us now that it was dark. But we knew right away to be scared. Zoe and Oscar screamed. I turned and enveloped them in a hug. Jupiter, now in Oscar’s arms, squealed. The noise was louder this time, or maybe it only seemed that way because we couldn’t see. The beams from my phone and the flashlight Oscar held wavered like a light show at a concert. There was a huge crash—the biggest yet. So loud we all cringed. I held my breath, wondering if the falling thing was about to squash us.

  A few seconds later, the shaking stopped.

  We huddled there, my arms still around the kids, afraid to stand tall. Zoe and Oscar were crying. Where were my tears? I’d been numbed by fear.

  “What’s going on?” Oscar’s voice was barely above a whisper.

  It took me a few seconds to catch my breath. “Another aftershock. But it’s over.” I think. I hope.

  The really big crash had come from behind us. I lifted my hand to shine the beam of light into the kitchen. The fridge had loomed in the center of the room before. Now, it was gone.

  “What… Where…” I took the real flashlight from Oscar and focused it on the middle of the kitchen. The beam landed on a huge rectangular shape, covering the floor. The fridge.

  We’d been sitting in front of it, eating ice cream. Only seconds before the shaking, we’d walked directly in its path, after I’d changed Zoe’s bandage. What if we had paused right there when the aftershock started? It could have crushed us. I’d thought that, aside from avoiding the debris, we were safe in those moments. But we hadn’t been.

  We weren’t safe anywhere in the house.

  One time, Mom and I were driving home at night and a deer wandered across the road in front of us. It froze as the car approached, and then Mom slammed the brakes. We were honking and yelling for it to move. The deer stared at us, unblinking. After a few seconds, it seemed to wake up, then bolted away. That’s when I realized what “deer in the headlights” really means—when you’re so scared you can’t even move. And that’s what happened after I saw the fridge flopped on the kitchen floor and imagined us flattened by it. I froze.

  “Hannah?” Zoe sounded tentative. “Um, what should we do now?”

  Her voice woke me up. But unlike the deer, I didn’t even have a safe place to run to. I don’t know—Mrs. Pinales never covered deadly refrigerators. Nothing I’d learned had prepared me for this. I can’t handle this all on my own. But I had to at least determine somewhere safe-ish for us to hide out until help arrived. What’s the farthest spot from anything that could hurt us? I shined my flashlight across the living room. The couch seemed the best place, not near any shelves and far enough away from that precarious pendant light. “Follow me to the couch.” I didn’t feel calm or sure, but I tried my best to sound it.

  After I checked for pottery shards and glass, we curled up on the cushions together. I turned off the flashlight app on my phone, checking for bars again. None. I reopened my messages, crossing my fingers that my text to Andrea had somehow gone through. I turned away from Zoe and Oscar, so they couldn’t see the screen. They were busy comforting Jupiter anyway.

  Message failed. I swallowed a groan. Come on, phone. I pressed to resend it again, crossing my fingers. Please go through. Please, please go through this time. My chest began to ache.

  It was unnerving to sit in the silent dark. “Hey, let’s try out the radio.” Oscar tossed it to me, and while Zoe shined the flashlight on the box, I opened it and pulled the little red radio out. “When’s the last time you guys listened to a radio? And I don’t mean a podcast.” Maybe if I acted like everything was totally normal, it would be.

  “Um…” Zoe tapped her fingers on the flashlight, thinking. “Never?”

  I tried to remember. “Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever used one. Maybe at my grandma’s house.” In the car, I mostly talked to my parents or we played music off one of our phones. “This is like time travel, back to the olden days,” I said with artificial cheer, flicking the buttons. I turned it on, but no sound came out. I pulled the antenna out as long as it would stretch. I spun the volume all the way up, but still, nothing. “Maybe I need to crank it first.” The solar-powered feature was unlikely to help us.

  I began turning the crank on the back, which took a surprising amount of arm effort. For some reason, Oscar found this hilarious to watch, and he dissolved into a fit of giggles on the sofa. I was grateful for anything to distract him. We were all on the verge of total freak-outs, and I didn’t know how—or whether I had the strength—to stop tears once they started. Including my own.

  When my arm grew tired, I quit cranking. “I seriously hope that was enough,” I muttered, flicking the on button again. Static filled the room.

  “It’s working!” Zoe bent to kiss Jupiter’s head—the noise had startled him into chattering.

  I slowly tuned the dial, searching for words instead of sandpaper sounds. Finally, I heard a series of beeps, followed by an official-sounding voice. “Shh, everybody quiet.” I made a silent wish to hear good news, like that the power would be back on momentarily.

  “This is Beth Kajawa with the latest on the Cascadia earthquake event.”

  Even though the woman speaking sounded professional and calm, how fast and forcefully she spoke worried me. This is urgent, her voice communicated. This is a big deal. You must pay attention to this. It also occurred to me that she wasn’t calling it the “Pelling earthquake.” Cascadia meant she was referring to the whole Cascade mountain range. So the earthquake must have been felt beyond our island. I sucked in a breath. And then another, because the first one wasn’t sufficient.

  “In brief: At 6:17 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, an earthquake occurred along the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which runs approximately seven
hundred miles from Cape Mendocino, California, to Vancouver Island, Canada. Preliminary reports suggest a magnitude in excess of 8.6. There are widespread reports of serious damage to homes, roads, and other infrastructures throughout the Seattle metropolitan area. All communities west of the Cascades are presumed to be affected by the event. The power grid is currently down as well as most cellular phone networks. Parts of I-5 are closed due to damage. Ferry service to and from Seattle is not operating. There are several reports of bridge and highway collapses in the region. It is difficult to estimate the number of casualties with the current disruption to mass communication, but anecdotal reports suggest area hospitals already are becoming overwhelmed with patients. Residents are advised to shelter in place.”

  I had stood up while cranking the radio. Hearing that news, I slid back down to the carpet next to the couch. Highways shut down, no ferries, hospitals overwhelmed with patients… That was bad. Really, seriously bad. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. I fought them. I couldn’t fight the urge to cough, to get enough air. I wish I had my inhaler. Why hadn’t I remembered it that morning? Now it was another kind of rescue I needed.

  If the damage was everywhere in and around the city, the shaking had happened where Andrea was, where Neha was. Wherever my mom was. What about my dad? Seabrook was hours away from Seattle and the Cascades. At least he would be safe.

  “We will continue to keep you updated as information becomes available. Now we have a message from Seattle’s Director of Emergency Management…”

  I heard a whimper from Oscar. He had curled into a ball on the far cushion. Zoe sat next to him, hugging Jupiter close. Fresh tears rolled down the tracks on her cheeks. I turned the radio dial off. The silence in the living room felt thick with dread. I looked away from the kids.