Quake

by K. R. Alexander

  Aftershocks were unwelcome blasts of fresh fear for all just when we were being guided by numb instinct. They passed without the rest of the building toppling around us and we pushed on.

  Others talked in the dark, men’s and women’s voices weighing how badly people were hurt, how long it would take for any relief efforts to reach us, what we could do, but I didn’t participate. The rush and effort of helping however I could had somewhat dried hair and shirt, kept me moving and not freezing. Having to stop in the dark brought on a new sense of doom, cold, fatigue, and pain, all so strong, they took my breath.

  Jackson talked a lot, saying we couldn’t stay here, him and some others agreeing that we had to get to somewhere at least where roads were intact to expect any help. Helicopters might be dropping food as soon as tomorrow, but they had hundreds of miles worth of people to help. If we were going to make it, we had to do our part. Then there was the opposition. People were hurt. This was the tip of the iceberg. Not everyone could make it any farther, plus, what about those of us able to keep searching for survivors right here?

  No one could figure out the answers in a night, but they sure tried, arguments growing heated. Trent and I wrapped our arms around each other and said nothing.

  It made me cough to call Jackson over to us later. Almost everyone was still coughing up saltwater, or just coughing in general. Because of this trauma or because they were sick? Blasted right out of quarantine? No one asked.

  Of course, we didn’t sleep. But we couldn’t act in a city devoid of all light, even clouds in the night sky now, with a deep hush settling over everything when the talking finally faded to nothing but whimpers, coughs, and sniffs.

  “You’re hurt,” I whispered to Jackson in the dark as I realized no one had ever looked at his wounds, those with serious injuries taking priority.

  “So are you. Tuck your arms up in front of your chest. We’ll keep you warm.” We curled up on the stage, close against others.

  “Hey, Brook?” Trent’s teeth were chattering in my ear.

  “What?”

  “Never mind…”

  “What is it?

  “I was just going to say … at least we’re not dusty anymore.”

  I snorted, which turned into a sob that I choked down against Jackson’s shirt. “I don’t know how we survived that,” I whispered, “but … thank you.”

  Only then did all the speeding time slow down, leaving me to think of family, what had just happened, Seattle and the whole coast, to wonder, to get more and more afraid, not less, until I stopped myself with a count of my blessings—Trent and Jackson, camping stores, shoes, pickup trucks, strong doors, everyone and everything left to cling to, no matter how little. Right now, all I had, compared to thousands of others … that was a deep drink from the saucer.

  Dragging hours of darkness gave way to everyone up at the merest hint of light to see by. Water had receded to no more than shin-deep right here.

  Early efforts brought more people to us and turned up a few more resources from the ruins of the mall. Soaking coats, shoes, finally a few bottles of water. One of the nurses also had the bright idea to find the concert hall’s existing first-aid kit backstage, remarkably in tact, if wet.

  Small dressings went to deep wounds. The three of us were able to look after our flesh wounds and get slightly cleaned up. I gave the man back his shoes and wore a mismatched, soaked pair that someone had brought back with others from scavenging. A too-small hiking boot and too-big tennis shoe. My tattered shirt was now warm and dry. I gave that to the nurses to wrap up wounds and instead zipped on a green fleece jacket that I hoped would be fast-drying.

  Several dogs had followed us or joined us in the night, with now an assortment as motley as the humans. They crouched, shivering, hid among the orchestra section, or fawned on people who were only too glad to hold them and cry into their matted coats.

  Of the humans, we now numbered around fifty, with a couple elderly and a few children, but mostly young to middle adults who had been healthy and strong in the first place to make it this far. With light, they were back to arguing about our next move and likelihood of any help.

  It went on all morning as people did the best they could to bring in goods and survivors, tending to injured and hanging up coats or blankets, trying to get stuff dry. The day started with a drizzle, but there was a collective sigh, a sort of silent prayer, the moment the sun broke through at what must have been about 8:00 a.m.

  I joined others in a moment simply facing into it, eyes shut, tears slipping from below my lashes. No more nights like last night, mind spinning on loops of horror and helplessness and loss, all black, nowhere to go, nothing to do. We were the lucky ones. Time to make good on that.

  “We’ll have to split up,” a man said among the debaters grouped around what used to be the stage door entrance, door now gone and one side of the frame caving in. “We’re both right. Some people have to stay, some should stay, and some should go.”

  I turned with Trent to watch them. Jackson was part of the discussion with several others out in the new sun.

  I’d seen the speaker last night, and heard him mostly. Dark, tall, with military posture and a voice to match. A voice that said, This is what we’re doing, this is how we’re doing it, if you don’t like it, too bad. If not military, a CEO. I wasn’t surprised that everyone watched him.

  “Those who stay, look after everyone who needs help. Search for survivors and supplies. Keep in mind we’re on high ground here. You won’t find the water so far down everywhere. Also watch out for shifting rubble. Medical supplies, water, shelter, and food—maybe canned, energy bars, freeze-dried, anything sealed and safe. Those are your priorities. Find something bright—blue tarps, orange road cones, or some other way to make a sign big enough for helicopters to see. Bring survivors here until you can find better and safer shelter.”

  He looked around, including us who were slightly scattered. “Those striking out, we’re trying to reach I-90. We can’t expect any better than this before Lake Sammamish, but the wave should have run out of reach before the plateau. By Issaquah we’ll be finding people with working phones, cars, generators…” Looking around again. “I know it sounds daunting to get there in this. But we’re only ten or twelve miles from Issaquah. If we can get there, we’ll be able to scout ways in and out, get news out of what conditions are like to rescuers, and hopefully find and help more people along the way.”

  Jackson was nodding along, ready to go. A woman beside him said, “What about flooding? Even if we find passable roads, past Eastgate and it’s downhill all the way. The water that settled in the lake basin will still be there, that whole stretch of 90 through Issaquah underwater.”

  Others nodded to this, but Jackson said, “We’ll just have to go around.”

  “Go around?” The woman stared at him.

  “That’s right,” our tall, dark, and handsome CEO/army general said. “We don’t have to go far south of the interstate to get into Tiger Mountain. All of that high ground might be crippled by the earthquakes, but it should be dry. The wave was already running out when it hit Seattle.”

  “Sure,” Trent muttered in my ear. “Feeble little thing…”

  I glanced down at my shoe situation. Even that motion hurt my stiff and battered neck.

  “Okay,” the man went on. “It’s time to go. We’re restricted to daylight and we don’t know how long this will take. On our way, we’ll look for anything useful. Whatever is around here is for the rest of you to find and put to use. You might have hundreds of people here before the day’s out. Let’s pray you do. Whoever’s coming with me, this way. The rest of you, good luck, and I hope to see you on the other side.”

  He moved along the sidewalk, strewn with furniture and rubble, hidden below saltwater.

  I followed, only a couple steps when I realized Trent wasn’t there. I looked around.

  He was shaking his head at me, frowning like I should know better. “Brook, don’t be
crazy. You’re hurt. They’ll never get through on the road. It’ll take them days, if they ever even get to Issaquah before FEMA is flying in here anyway. Besides, the whole city could be under water.”

  Those were really valid points. And probably why hardly anyone else followed the guy either. Jackson did, and a few other men, then a young couple who’d managed to hold onto each other through the wave like we had. That was it. They didn’t think we could do it.

  Maybe we couldn’t.

  I met Trent’s eyes. “I’ve got to try. I can’t sit here like last night. If this were just Seattle we’d think, oh, well, someone will be along soon. But we have to assume most of the West Coast is…” I swallowed, cleared my throat. “It might not be days before help comes to us. It might be weeks. By the time we figure that out…” I shook my head. “I’m going. You don’t have to. They need all the help they can get here also.”

  “Brook…”

  But I turned again, surprised to see Jackson waiting for me. He offered his hand, even smiled a little when he met my eyes. The fleece was drying in the sun. The shoes didn’t fit but protected my feet. A row of three band-aids closed the wound on my shoulder. Jackson even found something to smile about when he looked at me.

  I went to him, meeting his welcomingly strong hand in my own, and we set out south.

  I looked back, offered my free hand.

  Trent was already following.

  Chapter 7

  I didn’t know Bellevue at all, and certainly not in this condition. Street signs were gone, whole buildings transplanted with a wall here and door there. Half our group was thrown here from Seattle, others local, able to piece together where we were, moving in the right direction from our theatrical beginnings.

  Our guides and leaders were locals: young couple Jeff and Christine, and our CEO, Ramak. He wasn’t a CEO.

  As the three picked their ways through wreckage, trying to follow a cracked road and keep to it after detours around rubble, they talked about their work and where they were during the earthquake and tsunami. All would have been in high-rise offices—now dead—without the lockdown. Instead of Jeff and Christine’s advertising office, they’d been working at home for three months. Ramak was a lawyer, work delayed or remote, and had been home near the lake when he was caught and hurled through the city.

  It never struck me as a strange topic of conversation—as we struggled through ruins and helped one another clear flooded clefts in the roads, never trusting a puddle for just a puddle. What should they have talked about? Their spiritual lives and families? The sickness that had turned the whole world upside down for months? The Megaquake? The Pacific? Our injuries and fears? The stench of sewage in the air? Or smell and sight of dead dogs, cats, wild animals, and humans that we passed in flood waters and wedged in rubble?

  No … I understood. Maybe denial or distraction was to the aware mind what shock is to the overwhelmed mind in those first moments of trauma.

  Jackson asked if I was okay. He assured me we’d get there, telling me to be careful with my steps, holding my hand as we progressed by aching inches at a time. I didn’t need that. Being told we’d get there made me question if we would—when I hadn’t been anyway. Like when you feel fine but someone says you look feverish, so suddenly you wonder if you have a fever.

  After watching our guides for a while and having to reassure Jackson, I said, “Tell me … about snowboarding.”

  “Snowboarding?” He grinned crookedly at me. “Are you even into snowboarding?”

  Nice of him to ask this time. “Where’s the best place to go around here?”

  “Nowhere now. The slopes were closed almost all winter, like everything else. But next winter, with this virus in check and life back to normal, I’ll take you to my favorite places here and up to B.C. Ever been to Whistler?”

  I shook my head, smiling, because this was why. Because you couldn’t believe life could ever return after this if you talked about here and now. If you talked about advertising and snowboard weekends, then you couldn’t believe life wouldn’t return.

  “I’ve never even been skiing,” I said.

  “There’s not much relation anyway,” Jackson said, jaunty as he’d been in Starbucks last winter. “Different motions, different skills.”

  “And your feet are locked together.”

  “Feels awkward at first, but it’ll be natural as taking a step once I’m done with you.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

  Trent had been trailing, but drew up level as we spoke, all walking in the flooded lee of a tall concrete foundation. He was looking at Jackson, frowning, and I glanced at him.

  “Are you Jackson Carrel?”

  “Very same.” Jackson grinned.

  Seen him on Facebook, maybe? Then Trent said, “Whoa, dude, that’s so cool. I had no idea you were still boarding. How are you doing? Wasn’t it like four years ago? The injury?”

  “Six,” Jackson said, “and no. I never went back to the circuit. It’s only been a few years even that I’ve tried the slopes for fun.”

  “Wait,” I said, “so you two knew each other years ago?”

  “Knew each other?” Trent looked a little dazed. “Jackson was, is, a world-famous snowboarder. He was a top pro by the time he was eighteen.”

  “Now I understand all the snowboarding posts. So you were hurt?” I glanced to Jackson on my left.

  “I was nineteen, Switzerland, fresh snow…” He shook his head. “You’ll think less of me.”

  I had to laugh, startled that Jackson cared that much what I thought of him, but, much more, that he wasn’t too macho to say it, especially in front of Trent, who was all wide-eyed, starstruck. No offense to snowboarders, but I wasn’t feeling weak in the knees at the news. All fame being relative, as they say.

  “Go on,” I said. “I promise I won’t think less of you.”

  “I don’t know. You’re pretty … down to earth?”

  “So?” I grinned. “You did something stupid, didn’t you?”

  Trent was also chuckling. “It didn’t even happen on the course. Those are controlled.”

  “Drunk driving?” I asked. “Come on, you’ve got to tell me now. You were a teenager turned loose to hurtle down mountains on your feet at the speed of a race car. Of course you were a little reckless. No one’s holding that against you.”

  “New friends and I went one evening to try free slopes—thought we could take anything. We did, in the sense that we survived.”

  “Oh, God,” I groaned. “What a standard.”

  “The standard we’re going by right now. Well, it turned out, this one drop just didn’t have the friction I was counting on. I knew it was powder, and knew it was a bad drop. Mostly knew I could make it. I was only wrong about the last part. Broke both knees, tore tendons, broke my jaw…” He blew out a breath. “Fucking fierce, man… Year of surgeries, two years recovering, and I still get aches, but I was never expected to walk unaided so I count that a major victory.”

  “And you go back? After all that?”

  “That mountain didn’t hurt me. My own shitty choices did. Best day of my life was getting back out for the first time a few years ago. I won’t push my legs to compete anymore, but didn’t do it for prize money in the first place. I competed because I fucking love it. I don’t need applause to justify it.”

  “I’ll applaud you,” I said.

  “Me too,” Trent said. “Do you give lessons, or is that only for girlfriends?”

  “We’re not—” I started while Jackson was laughing.

  “I’ll take you both up to Stevens Pass next winter. And Brook and I mostly know each other online. I thought you two were the ones involved?”

  Trent’s cheeks flushed even darker than his natural warm tone. “We’re both at Seattle U, that’s all.”

  “Oh.” Did Jackson seem disappointed?

  “What do you do now?” Trent asked. “You vanished after the accident.”

  “S
omething I’d never have imagined.” With a wry grin. “My new ‘lifestyle of recovery’ made me crazy. I had to get out, get better, beat the system like it didn’t apply to me. I had a physical therapist who inspired me, who said that never walking stuff was bullshit. I’ve been in practice a year now. Sports injuries mostly. Never thought it was me—nursing, nurturing, all that—but, damn, I love it. It’s awesome to work with people who otherwise might be totally crushed, and you come in and say, ‘Don’t let this crap get you down; I walked, you can walk.’ Sometimes that’s all they need to hear to give back a hundred and ten percent. In January, though, the whole place had to close down. Working with people remotely, coaching at home … it’s not the same. I tell you, man…” Slowly shaking his head. “This virus … it fucking sucks.”

  “And, after months isolated, guess what’s not even our biggest problem?” Trent averted his eyes from another swollen corpse.

  “We’ll walk again,” Jackson said quietly, looking ahead. “Walk and run and board… We’ll keep going. That’s what matters.”

  Chapter 8

  For hours we picked our way down the road, then another, moving with shocking slowness. Everything was every which way; a tree on a roof with shopping carts in its branches, cars upside down in broken, flooded roads, a toilet standing impossibly neatly beside an antique trunk like a chair and coffee table in a waiting room. So many bodies.

  Many times, we found survivors in small groups, directing them back the way we’d come to join up with others, and once gaining two new explorers who wanted to come with us. We also lost a member when one man fell out to help others get to the concert hall.

  On three or four occasions we stopped to watch helicopters, which should have been reassuring to see, knowing we weren’t alone, that someone was out there in the world thinking of us, trying to figure out plans for rescue or at least dropping supplies for now. But they never dropped anything, never even flew terribly low, and, worst of all, there weren’t many. Again, I wondered how big this was, how far it spread, how many people homeless and dead and trapped, how many able to mount rescue missions. We kept walking.