Shock Wave

by Dana Mentink

  This was no ordinary earthquake.

  This was the big one.

  A sudden upheaval under her feet tossed her onto her back and she found herself staring at the ceiling, sections of which were breaking away, loosening huge chunks of plaster. She desperately tried to get her feet under her, to find some stability against the violent movement.

  Somewhere she heard a scream. Antonia?

  No time to process.

  She wanted to call out for Trey, but the words froze in her throat as roar of sound enveloped her.

  Like a scene from a bad movie, she watched uncomprehendingly as the floor of the stage ripped in half, sections parting wide like the jaws of a hungry beast.

  A black chasm of splintered wood gaped in front of her and Sage rolled into the abyss, darkness swallowing her up.

  FOUR

  Trey tried to figure out which direction was up. His body filled with one desperate need. Get to your feet, soldier. Try as he might, he could not find a point of reference in the tumbling chaos. The thunderous shaking unleashed a tsunami of sound as wood and pieces of the old opera house ripped loose and smacked into him, bashing his shoulders and slicing into his neck. He threw up his hands to shield his head as his body finally made contact with what he assumed was the floor.

  Another twenty seconds of tooth-rattling vibrations and the tumult was suddenly over. He sat up, loosening a pile of grit that showered off of him. He blinked hard. It was completely dark and for a moment he wondered if he had been knocked blind. Gradually, a weak filtering of light from somewhere up above made him realize that first off, he was not blind and second, wherever he’d fallen there would no longer be the easy comfort of a light switch.

  “Sage?” he called. Trey had not felt fear since his return from the war zone, but he felt it now, thick and weighty, as he received no answer. He looked around, trying to get his bearings. He’d fallen through the stage, into this cavernous black space. Far above he could now make out the underside of the wood floor, ripped and jagged, showing through the clouds of dust that billowed everywhere. Perhaps she had not fallen with him. Maybe she was still up there. “Sage,” he shouted again. The quiet was undisturbed.

  He got to his feet, wobbling on the debris that slipped and slid beneath his feet. Every movement unleashed another tide of detritus and each sound made him stop, ears straining for some noise, any sign of life, from her. His heart hammered against his ribs as he floundered his way free, peering through the gloom to find her. Where are you? He prayed she was safe, that maybe she’d had time to run off the stage before it buckled. Yet another situation in which she would never have found herself if she’d listened to him in the first place. No time for quiet deliberation.

  “Sage Harrington, answer me right now!” he bellowed in a volume so loud it echoed and bounced through the darkness.

  It was not an answer, exactly, but a whoosh of debris stirred somewhere at his eleven o’clock. He scrambled over broken boards until he neared the spot, wishing he had not lost his grip on the flashlight earlier. He called again, treading gently on the rubble, turning over sheets of plaster until he saw a tiny pinprick of light. He got to his knees and pawed with his hands until he found the source, the luminous dial of Sage’s watch. He grasped her slender wrist and pulled her arm free, shoving aside as much of the mess as he could until he unearthed her.

  She was covered in dirt, eyes closed.

  He pressed two shaking fingers to her throat.

  At his touch she jerked awake and bolted backward, her feet scrambling for purchase, eyes wild and glittering in the gloom. “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me.”

  Trey held up his hands, palms forward. “It’s me, Sage. Trey Black. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  The crazed sheen in her eyes did not abate. Panting, she scanned the ceiling as if expecting a weight to drop down from above at any moment. Her body began to tremble and a bead of sweat rolled down her forehead.

  In the face of her reaction, his anger trickled away. He knew the look, he’d seen it before, long after the bombs had stopped and the bullets went quiet. He’d known good men to suffer from PTSD, even after they were safe at home, back with the people who had anguished over them their entire tour of duty. Maybe for some, there was no safety anymore after war imprinted that fear deep down inside. The realization added to the weight of grief he felt over what had happened to her, to them both, in Afghanistan. He tried again, softening his voice. “It’s okay. There was an earthquake.”

  “An earthquake?” she parroted back in a whisper.

  “Yes,” he said. “We’re in the Imperial Opera House. We were standing on the stage when it collapsed.” She nodded and he took that as a good sign. “I wondered if you are hurt. Would it be okay if I came closer and checked you out?”

  She might have nodded, he wasn’t sure in the dark, but he approached slowly until he was near enough to get a better visual. She’d moved to a spot where the light from above was less obstructed and he could see enough to know she didn’t have any open wounds that he could detect, except for a series of cuts on her face and hands. At his touch she flinched and tensed, so he stopped and smiled. “Just going to make sure there’s nothing broken, okay?”

  He tried again and this time she did not pull away so he moved his hands along her legs and arms, until he was satisfied that there were no bones massively out of place. It was impossible to discern if she’d sustained any internal injury or head trauma. He’d just have to pray she’d escaped those, too. By the time he was done with his makeshift medical exam, her breathing had normalized. She drew her knees up to her chest. His heart skipped a beat at how very young she looked, how very small and delicate against the yawning mass behind her.

  “It was a big one.”

  “Yes. The Big One, I’d say.” He could imagine the frenzy taking place on the city streets—fire crews, police and every available city employee working to salvage life and property. San Francisco was a modern city in every sense of the word, and it had the reinforced steel skyscrapers to show for it, but he’d seen enough of the old buildings during his morning runs to know that there would be plenty of destruction to deal with.

  “We’ve got to get out,” she said with only a slight tremble in her voice. “Will someone come to help us?”

  “I think we’d be better off taking care of our own rescue,” he said, seating himself on a chunk of broken bricks.

  “Do you think Antonia fell, too? And Fred?”

  “I haven’t seen anyone but the two of us.” No sign of whoever had pushed the boxes down on them. He looked up at the stage floor some twenty feet above them. What had probably been a set of two ladders leading up from under the stage area had been ripped away during the quake until only a few rungs were left clinging to the walls. All around them were piles of boxes, but most were smashed too badly to be of use helping them climb out.

  Sage’s breathing was steadier now. She patted her pockets and produced a cell phone, groaning as she peered at the cracked screen. “No signal here. It’s completely useless. What about yours?”

  “I don’t carry a cell phone.”

  Her mouth fell open. “What kind of person doesn’t carry a cell phone in this day and age?”

  He shrugged. “The kind that doesn’t want to be connected, I guess.” He sighed. “In a war everyone has to be accounted for every moment, for their safety. I just...” He shook his head, wondering why in the world he was telling her this. “I wanted to disconnect, to sort of vanish for a while and remember who I used to be. Does that make sense?”

  Her eyes shimmered and she gave a tiny nod. He wanted to cup her cheek just then, to make her understand that war had changed both of them, but the bite of anger stilled his hands. Her trauma had been totally avoidable. “Cell phone probably wouldn’t help anyway, since we’re basically undergroun
d, and even if we could call, the networks are probably jammed. Texting might be about the only option.”

  “I’ll text Antonia now.” She waited for a moment with no response.

  “So this is going to be a do-it-yourself rescue,” Trey said. “I’m going to poke around and see if there’s an exit down here.”

  She got to her feet. “Me, too.”

  He was about to tell her she should remain seated, the memory of her earlier reaction haunting him, but something told him she did not want to be alone, even though it would kill her to say so. So be it. Her PTSD would be the unspoken elephant in the room. At least for now. He offered a hand and she took it, rising in a cloud of dust that made them both cough.

  It was hard to access the perimeter of the room, blocked as it was by the ruins, but he found one section of brick that gave him a starting point. “We’ll work our way around as best we can, and if there are no exits, we’ll go to plan B.” He began feeling his way along the rough brick.

  “What’s plan B?” Sage said, shuffling behind him.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t come up with that yet.”

  She sighed and pressed closer to his back. He tried to ignore the way her presence made his breath tick up a notch as they climbed over boards and scraps of what looked like ancient theater backdrops.

  “What’s that?” Sage said, moving away from him. For a moment he lost track of her.

  “Where are you?”

  “Here,” she said, flicking on a light that illuminated her smile. “I found the flashlight and it still works.”

  He couldn’t help but return that smile. “That’s one blessing working in our favor,” he said.

  Her smile dimmed. “No blessing. Just a happy coincidence.”

  He decided not to argue the point, but deep down he knew the truth. Both of us just survived a massive earthquake and God tossed in a flashlight to boot. Now it was up to Trey to get them both out of there.

  “Let’s move.” He straightened his shoulders and pressed on.

  * * *

  Sage had to force her fingers to relax their death grip on the flashlight. Deep breaths. Anything to press away the fear she’d felt when she’d woken up buried, smothered and in darkness. She busied herself flicking the beam of light over the piles, assisting, being productive, not the helpless child she’d been a moment before. Not here. Not in front of him.

  The thought shivered through her mind. They were both alive and intact, but Antonia might not have been so lucky. Sage had seen her enter the theater and head through the lobby, but where had she disappeared to? By the time Sage parked her car, Antonia was nowhere to be found and the woman had not responded to a single text or call. Maybe she’d departed again, decided against talking to Sage.

  Sage was aggravated by the trembling in her knees. Part of her wished she was alone, without a witness to her struggles. The other part, a tiny part deep down in her soul, was grateful that Trey was with her to keep the darkness at bay. He did not deserve to be trapped in there with her, but she was glad not to be alone.

  Lost in her thoughts, she did not notice that Trey had stopped until she plowed into him from behind, her cheekbone meeting his shoulder blade.

  “What is it?” she asked, rubbing the feeling of him off her cheek.

  “A door, I think, but it’s covered by these broken beams. We’re going to have to shift some things.” He started to hurl some of the smaller pieces aside. She tried to help without losing her grip on the flashlight.

  “Ouch,” he said as she smacked him with the end of a beam.

  “Sorry.”

  “Just hold the flashlight for a minute.”

  “And stay out of the way?” she snapped. “Don’t order me around.”

  “I’m not ordering...” he began, an edge in his voice. “I’m asking you to please hold the flashlight while I work. If you want, we can take turns and you can haul wood and I’ll hold the flashlight after a while.”

  She didn’t answer, but she determined that no matter how messed up she was inside, she would not let Trey see her as weak. Holding the flashlight like a sword, she bit back the sassy remarks that circled in her brain.

  Trey cleared enough that they could see the outline of the door fully now. It was wooden, partially decayed and splintering in some places. He grabbed the handle and yanked. It ripped away from the door, sending him stumbling back.

  She kept her smile under wraps. “Here. Maybe we can pry it open with this.” She passed him a thin metal rod, clammy with moisture.

  He shoved it in the crack under the threshold and threw his weight against the iron bar. A section of wood crumbled. Tossing the bar aside, he grabbed the remaining door planks and exerted pressure. They pulled away easily.

  Sage shone the flashlight into the corridor beyond.

  “Where does this lead?” Trey said.

  “I’m not sure. There are a series of tunnels that connect various storage rooms and such. Barbara said she’d send me the blueprint, but I never got anything.”

  He stepped into the dark interior, disturbing a fine layer of dust from the floor. It was quiet. Not the tiniest sound to indicate there was anyone else close by. He wondered if whoever had sent the boxes down on them hadn’t survived the quake. Trey didn’t allow himself further speculation. “Well lookee here,” he called, disappearing into the tunnel and emerging a moment later carrying a ten-foot wooden ladder. “We may not have to chance the tunnel. This might be tall enough to reach up to the set of ladder rungs up there.” He pointed to the slats that still clung, against all odds, to the side of the chamber where they had fallen.

  She grabbed the rear end of the ladder and helped him carry it to a spot where he could unfold it properly. He gingerly climbed up a rung, testing the integrity of the wood.

  “Will it hold?” she said.

  “I guess we’ll find out.” He started up.

  “What happens if you’re ten feet up when it gives out?” she called to his back.

  “Then you’re going to want to make sure you’re not standing underneath me,” he called.

  Sage rolled her eyes. Typical. If he fell down and smashed himself up, how would that change their situation for the better? And if someone bad was ready and waiting for Trey to emerge from the hole? Her breath grew short as she watched him climb higher, the wood slats creaking under his feet. Reaching the top, he stretched out his arms and grabbed hold of the other set of rungs. One snapped under his hand, sending a chunk of wood hurtling down.

  “Look out,” he shouted.

  Sage dodged the falling piece. “It’s rotten. Don’t risk it.”

  “You’re telling me not to take risks? That’s a good one.” He crept cautiously up the ladder.

  Her stomach contracted. She was back in camp, an angry Trey Black arguing with his commanding officer’s orders.

  Too risky. No place for a civilian, a woman civilian. This is a war, not a photo op. Don’t order me to do this.

  But she’d used her connections and he’d been railroaded into taking her. Too risky? She’d fought hard to show him she was not afraid, and every bit as tough as he was.

  What a joke.

  And the cost of her bravado? Her foolish pride?

  Luis’s life.

  She swallowed a sudden lump in her throat, unaware that he was speaking again.

  “What?” she called up.

  “I said did you hear that?”

  She refocused and listened hard. “No. Is it Antonia?” She wished she could risk climbing the ladder behind him, but their combined weight would collapse it for sure.

  He was silent for a moment.

  “What?” she yelled again. “What did you hear?”

  “Quiet, I’m listening,” he called down.

  She wo
uld have socked him in the shoulder if he was closer. Instead she bit back her temper and remained silent, wondering if somewhere in the massive wreck he’d heard Antonia or Fred. If she was still the praying kind, she would ask God to make it so.

  FIVE

  The dust drifted past the gap in the ruined stage floor. He felt the urgent need to make a decision, but which one? Climb farther up, find the nearest exit and hope it was unblocked? Go back down, take the unknown tunnel and hope it led to an exit? Risk assessment didn’t work too well when both options were equally bad. A faraway crack sounded somewhere. A gunshot? Or his ears fooling him? Echoes from the past, Trey.

  “Did you hear Antonia?” Sage yelled. “You’ve got to get to her.”

  “I dunno what I heard,” he said, his mind momentarily bringing up the toppled boxes that had nearly flattened them earlier. He could not escape the feeling that Antonia was not the only one hiding in the shadows, though he could not for the life of him imagine why. As the ruins shifted and packed down, there was a cacophony of tiny noises and it was impossible to tell if any were caused by human activity. No more time to chew on it. Up or down?

  Neither option held enough certainty until he got more intel. He ascended one more rung on the aged ladder to better see into the gap. His foot broke through the wood. Grabbing at the rickety structure started a domino effect as the wood pieces snapped one by one, and he began to slide.

  He heard Sage cry out from below, but he could not stop his downward momentum. He busted through several more slats before one held and he clung there, feet dangling into the black space below.

  “Hold on,” Sage yelled. “I’m moving the ladder.”

  Perspiration rolled down his temples as he hung there with clawed fingers, listening to the ominous crackle and groan of the wood as it took the punishment of his bulk. He felt a bump on his foot as Sage shoved the ladder as close as she could manage. A few wild swings of his feet nearly knocked it over.

  “Stop thrashing,” she commanded. “Straight down at your five o’clock. That’s as close as I can get it with all this junk in the way down here.”