by Keith Knapp
The air was thick with smoke, dust and heat. It felt like the temperature had risen ten degrees. Even in her drunk-feeling state, Sophia knew it was because the car was off and the air conditioner wasn’t cranking. It probably never would again.
“Mom, you okay?”
Her daughter was thankfully in focus and in better shape than the windshield. The airbag lay deflated in front of Jody, limping out of its compartment above the glove box like a used mop. Her chin had reddened, a side effect of being slammed in the face by the airbag, but that seemed to be the extent of her injuries.
“I’m fine, yeah,” Sophia said. She tasted blood when she spoke and swallowed it—she didn’t think having Jody see her mother dribble blood out of her mouth right now would be helpful. “You?”
“I’m okay. I think.”
Breathing a sigh of relief as she unhooked her seatbelt, Sophia straightened up. Her chest ached. Her own airbag hadn’t deployed, so she had taken the brunt of the impact on her chest where the belt lay. There’d be bruising there tomorrow for sure.
Jody opened her door and stepped outside.
“Jody, wait!”
But the kid was already gone. She hurried around the front of the car (she had to use the front bumper of their Saturn and the rear bumper of the pick-up truck they had run into to do this) to Sophia’s side and opened the door. Before Sophia could fall out—she had been leaning on the door for support—Jody stopped her with a hand.
“Take it easy, mom. Don’t move.”
Easy enough advice to follow. Sophia laid back and let the air flow through the car. It wasn’t a cool breeze, something she really could’ve used, but it helped whisk away some of the stifling heat inside the car.
“Anything broken?” Jody wanted to know.
“No,” Sophia said. “At least I don’t think so.” Her head turned to face her daughter, who looked at her with concern. Jody reached out and brushed the hair out of Sophia’s eyes.
“I told you not to move,” Jody said. “I don’t think you’re supposed to move after an accident.”
“You’re moving.”
“I’m not the one bleeding out of my mouth.”
Sophia winced—she’d been nabbed—and lifted a hand to wipe the blood that had trickled down her chin. So much for shielding Jody from any gore. She licked her lips and swallowed more blood.
11.
“Shouldn’t there be helicopters and shit by now?” Rachel asked. Her eyes scanned the skies above to find only smoke and the occasional cloud.
“They’ll be here,” Jimmy said as he leaned against the side wall of the van. “And when they come, let’s hope none of ‘em spot us.”
“I’m pretty sure they have other things to do right now,” said Rachel.
“Maybe.” Jimmy was distant now, surveying the van like a trapped rat. Which is what they were, wasn’t it? The news of the robbery surely had hit the internet by now.
But so had news of the earthquake.
They weren’t trapped.
They were free.
“Why don’t we just start hoofin’ it to the last exit back there?” Rachel offered.
Nodding, Jimmy approved of the idea. “You good to walk, buddy?”
Brett caressed the steering wheel. “But I like this van.”
“I know you do,” said Jimmy. “So do I. We’ll get another one, I promise. You good to go?”
Brett was silent. Thinking. “Other Brett doesn’t want me to,” he finally said. “He says I won’t make it.”
“And what do we tell Other Brett when he starts laying on the bullshit?” Jimmy asked.
“To go away.”
“Right. You tell that no good piece of shit to go away, ‘cause you can make it. I know you can. And if you can’t, we’ll be there to help you.”
Brett fell silent once more, but this time he did a little bit more than just think. His mouth moved, forming words only he could hear, but Jimmy and Rachel knew what they were: Go away. Go away now. Just go away.
Jimmy lurched forward and hugged Brett from behind the chair. “It’ll be okay, my man. I promise.”
“An’ you don’t break your promises.”
“No I don’t.”
“Is he gone?”
“He’s gone.”
“Twice in one day,” said Jimmy. “You’re a super-star.”
The idea that he was, in fact, a super-star lightened Brett’s mood a little. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
* * *
Roscoe’s sensitive ears picked up the sound of someone trying to break into the back of the car. He lifted his head and aimed his snout toward the trunk. Just underneath the scent of smoke and burnt rubber, Roscoe could smell the two humans (a man and a woman, their sweat-stink was high, particularly on the man) who had been conversing back there a few minutes ago. He didn’t know what they were saying—he could only understand his owner, and just a few words at that—but he knew these people were here to help him and his mistress. And for that, no barks or threats of canine bites would come their way.
Letting out a quiet “gruff,” (whatever you guys are doing is okay with me), Roscoe put his head down on his two front paws.
* * *
The tiny screwdriver had gone half an inch into the lock and that was as far as it was gonna go. Mike grimaced each time he tried to push it in further; he had the feeling that if he pushed hard enough he’d send the station wagon right over the edge, no matter how tightly wedged the vehicle was. He also didn’t know the first thing about picking locks.
He called out to Dorothy, his voice a scratchy whisper. When she didn’t reply, he said her name again louder, and this time she heard him. She didn’t answer him verbally, but rather eyed him in the rearview mirror. The bags under her eyes had grown since they’d last shared a glance. The woman was tired, beat, maybe more tired and beat than he was. Even Roscoe the St. Bernard, who had seemed wide awake not more than thirty minutes ago, was now napping like a newborn.
“How ya holdin’ out in there?” he asked.
A petite and knowing nod answered him in the mirror, a kind of “head-thumbs-up,” then the woman’s eyes moved back to the windshield. Mike looked through the windshield himself, and it was then that he saw the odd red glow entering Dorothy’s car.
“Shit,” he said, turning to Jillian. “Her car’s on fire.”
Jillian looked through the pipeline of the wagon and saw the eerie red glow through the windshield. Then she cocked her head and squinted her eyes, then simply stared through the wagon. A puzzled pieced itself together on her face.
“There’s no smoke,” she finally said.
She was right. Although the color gave the impression of fire, there was no smoke. Mike listened: no crackle of flames, either.
“Whatever it is, it looks like it’s coming from below,” Dorothy said.
Something had caught fire on the street below. That explained it. No it didn’t. What about the lack of smoke? There should’ve been some. And Mike couldn’t place his finger on it, but this glow was different. Like the glow he’d noticed above the skyline, this was too bright, too red, like a spotlight with a red gel on it was down there pointing straight up at them, much brighter than any flame could emit. And there was the fact that they were three stories up—this glow looked like it was right under the station wagon’s engine block.
Roscoe’s ears pricked up at the sound of the car’s undercarriage scratching against concrete. He poked his head above the back seat and met Mike eye-to-eye. They shared a glance. Roscoe whimpered at him, a whimper that said, Hey, man, did you just hear that?
The scrape was followed by a much louder, deeper and terrifying sound. A low rumble began, the kind of rumble one would expect to hear from some kid pumping the volume up as high as it would go on the seven-thousand dollar stereo system in his pimped-out-low-ridin’ Honda Civic. This sound wasn’t music, but that of Mother Earth herself getting ready to let loose with the biggest belch this side of a
college dorm burping contest. The belch grew and grew until it was all Mike could hear.
* * *
Sophia’s fingers clasped tightly around her daughter’s as the ground shook. Their short lived grip was severed when Jody fell to the ground, no longer able to hold her balance. All around them people mimicked Jody, losing their balance, falling to the asphalt. Confusion took over.
The sound of twigs snapping, but much louder, deafened their ears. What was it? Sophia didn’t know, didn’t care. Her stomach rose as the ground fell six inches. The world was now at an angle, pointing down, and the freeway was going to fall.
It dawned on Sophia what the snapping twig sound must have been: the freeway tearing itself apart. As this thought crossed her mind, more twigs snapped.
Jody took her mother’s hand and placed it on her shoulder so Sophia would have some leverage. With a push and a grunt, Sophia was out of the car. Once she had her footing (or what passed for it, anyway), she helped Jody to her feet and hugged her close to her chest.
The looks of puzzlement around them was replaced by looks of fright. The young couple in the car behind them clutched one another tightly and began to run back down the freeway, moving east—the opposite direction traffic had been heading. A grand idea.
Mother and daughter ran through traffic, evading Fords and Hondas and Buicks and SUVs as they made their way through the end-all-be-all of vehicular mazes. Sophia’s knee grazed a Nissan, but she hardly noticed. She hardly noticed anything except for the pumping of her legs, her lungs sucking in and blowing out as much air as they could as fast as they could, and the knowing feel of Jody’s hand in hers.
They darted around another Buick. Sophia had never been on the track team and the closest Jody had come was a failed attempt at being a Junior Varsity cheerleader, but she was pretty sure if an Olympic event broke out right now for Running Your Ass Off When You’re Scared Shitless, they’d both take the gold.
It was then that Sophia did the unthinkable and unfortunate: she tripped…no, not really tripped…she was forced to the ground…no, that wasn’t right, either…the ground had come up to her.
Jody stumbled but regained her balance quickly. The ground shook violently below them again. What they had felt before—the motion of the earth that had caused the traffic jam, the collapse of part of the Ventura Freeway and more than a few deaths—had been nothing more than a tiny tremble compared to what was coming next.
12.
California shook Rachel Martin to the very bone, causing her feet to slip out from under her. And even though Brett was doing some tumbling of his own, he managed to quickly spiral around like a pro-football player, grab her by the elbow and pull himself below her. His back hit the freeway and knocked most of the air out of his lungs. Rachel fell on top of him, knocking the rest of it out. They were both lucky. Neither of their heads hit pavement.
Above them, Jimmy (who had managed to stay on his feet) already had a hold of Rachel’s arm and was hoisting her back up. “Holy shit,” he said. “That was one fancy move there, Bretty-boy.”
Trying to pull oxygen into his lungs, Brett said, “She…she fell.” A wheeze of air as Jimmy and Rachel helped him to his feet. “I…I fell, too.”
Rachel ruffled Brett’s hair and was about to say something, probably a very well-earned thank you, when the ground shook again. A young couple ran by, the woman holding an infant in her arms. The rumble nearly took them both down, but they were able to find support on a bus advertising the latest Disney movie in 3D next to them. The man made sure the woman and the child were alright, then moved on.
A pillar of red light emitted from below the freeway and everything slowed down. It wasn’t just a pillar, but a wave of red, like a giant paint brush had come up from the depths of the earth and started a remodeling job on the sky. It glowed like fire and looked like it went on forever.
With no words needing to be exchanged, Jimmy Nickson, Rachel Martin and Brett Nickson began running away from the reddening sky.
* * *
The planet picked up the freeway. This wasn’t like earlier, when the ground had shifted from side to side. Now the earth was vibrating up and down and side to side. They were getting a little bit of everything.
The freeway lifted three stories into the air, then slammed back down with a suffocating boom.
Sophia looked down at her daughter, but Jody was only there for a second. As soon as Sophia got her in her eyesight, Jody was gone from her field of vision.
Sophia screamed. Or maybe she had been screaming the entire time, she couldn’t be certain. It didn’t matter—she couldn’t hear the sound of her own terror above the noise of the world falling apart around her no matter how loud she yelled. The only constant in all of the mayhem had been the touch of Jody’s skin in her left hand, and now that touch was gone.
An elderly man had just enough time to put his arms up in front of his face and yell something that sounded like “Hadjka” before a Subaru that had been tossed into the air a few seconds earlier came falling down on top of him.
A couple, the man covering the woman with his body, stared into one another’s eyes. They gave each other a brief kiss before the earthquake ripped them apart. The woman tumbled one way (it looked like she was holding a loaf of bread but upon closer inspection Sophia saw that it was, dear Lord, a baby), the man tumbled the other.
A station wagon was flipped over the edge of the freeway. Two people quickly followed.
Nowhere in any of this did Sophia see her daughter. What she did see, however, was not more carnage and wreckage (although there was plenty of that), but something she hadn’t contemplated seeing at all. From beneath the very freeway she was trying to keep her balance on, a freeway that wouldn’t be there much longer, was a bright red glow, so bright it looked as though the sun itself was rising just a few feet away from her. The light grew in intensity, almost blinding her. There was no heat coming from it; if it was a fire, it’d be close enough for her to feel it and for it to burn her. But it didn’t. As a matter of fact, she felt a cool breeze touch her face.
The last thing Sophia saw in Los Angeles that afternoon was the ground crumbling apart beneath her feet as something that felt like a giant hand of air grabbed her by the torso and pulled her off the freeway.
* * *
Oh-Jesus-shit-fuck-it-all-to-hell-this-is-The-Big-One.
This mantra continued in Rachel’s head as she toppled to the ground for the second time. Or was it the third? She’d lost count. Jimmy was right behind her and he fell on top of her, forcing them into a less than pleasant spoon-position. Jimmy lost his grip on Brett. The kid corkscrewed away and was out of sight.
The sound of metal crunching against metal, screams piling on top of screams and concrete cracking against concrete filled Rachel Martin’s ears. The smell of oil and gasoline pouring out of cars filled her nose. Suffice it to say, terror and panic filled her brain.
A man in a blazer stumbled past them in an almost comical routine. He fell forward, barely able to keep one foot in front of the other. He managed to stay on both feet for a few seconds, then he hit the ground. The man somersaulted down the now violently tilted freeway then followed something that looked like it had once been a Jeep off the side.
A child rolled into Rachel’s view. She had a streak of red in her hair, and Rachel didn’t know if it was a cool rebellious punk-thing or blood. The kid’s hands reached out for the pavement, her fingernails scratching at the surface. The child’s eyes locked with Rachel’s. Pure fear.
The ground shook again, and Jimmy and Rachel both knew that they’d have the same fate as that poor fella behind the Jeep if they didn’t do something soon. The problem was—and this was something else they both knew—there really wasn’t much of anything they could do except hold on and wait for the ride to be over.
Rachel began to slide down the road. Jimmy rolled off of her back and reached for one of her hands. Their fingers touched for the briefest of seconds, then were cru
elly separated by the vibrations of the earth.
The street tore at Rachel’s jeans, tore right through them. She felt the skin of her left thigh get a good dose of road rash as she looked up to see the vivid red glow they were tumbling toward.
Her eyes met Jimmy’s, who was still looking up at her. Or was he looking down at her? She couldn’t tell anymore. The entire world was upside down. He began to cry out her name but only got out a gravelly “Rach” before they found themselves in a free fall.
* * *
Dorothy O'Connell’s 1968 Ford station wagon fell through the air. Still pinned to the steering column, Dorothy had the choice of either looking at the back of her eyelids or the ground rushing up to kill her. She wanted to keep her eyes closed, had never wanted anything more than that right now, but she found them open and wide; perhaps horror and dread kept them that way.
Or perhaps it was the fact that it wasn’t Sepulveda Boulevard that was rushing up to greet her.
The red glow that had emanated from below disappeared in a quick bright flash. Instead of a street she saw a vast open field. The greenest grass she had ever seen in her life (it was like it was in Technicolor) sprawled across the lands. As the car tumbled through the air, Dorothy felt a wave of cool wind flush through the car.
That breeze would be the last thing she would feel as the greenest grass she had ever seen in her life disappeared into the emptiness of death.
* * *
Mike felt the same cool wind that Dorothy had. A shiver ran through his body, the kind he thought people in movies had whenever they said someone had just walked over their grave. He did not, however, get to see the station wagon smash into the ground. Mike was facing the other way, looking back up at the 101.
The freeway got smaller and smaller and further and further away. Soon it was encased in that red glow he’d seen coming from under Dorothy’s car. Then red was all he could see; a giant filter had been placed in front of his eyes. In a bright flash, the red was gone and blue sky took its place. No clouds; it was a beautiful day.
