His eating habits were peculiar. Even a juicy piece of meat didn’t spark any great enthusiasm in him. He would calmly take the meat and disappear to eat it secretly. He didn’t bother with the other dogs and they totally ignored him; not with any distain, but as if he just didn’t exist. Also, Brillo Pad was not nervous with him around as she was with the other dogs. Tim had the feeling that he was an observer or a spy. Ann, of course, told him how silly that was.
*
Tim had gone silent and let Ann talk for a while. He couldn’t get his mind off Arty and his mom. When Ann realized he wasn’t really listening she became quiet too.
After a while, she asked him, “Worried about them, aren’t you?”
“More like scared. It’s like when the soldiers came to our house years ago. My mother’s drinking like that because she’s scared. She knows Arty’s not going to make it so she’s going to give up too. I don’t know what to do. I can feel myself being all alone real soon,” lamented Tim.
His eyes started to fill with tears, and his mind flashed back to Wisconsin. He was racing along the ice on his skates with Arty close behind.
*
“Look out! I’m going to get you. I’m going to get you,” shouted Arty. Tim’s small legs were pumping like crazy and completely out of control. His mom and dad were standing in a snow bank along the skating rink, and they were laughing, cheering the game on.
“Faster, Tim, faster! Don’t let him catch you. Faster,” his father shouted.
*
Tim returned to the present. “It’s so unfair,” he spoke softly.
“About Arty and your mom?”
“Yeah, I feel so helpless. I need to do something tomorrow—you’re right about that—but what? I’m fifteen in a grown-up world. I don’t have anyone to help.” Tim finished with a big sigh.
“I help, don’t I?” Ann sounded hurt.
“Oh, of course, but you’re also just fifteen and living at your house is no picnic, I know that. I don’t think I could put up with what you do.”
“What the hell can I do about it?” said Ann. “I’m stuck just like you. You don’t have anyone. I don’t have anyone who cares. I wonder which is worse.”
At Ann’s house a woman was a second-class person. Ann’s complaints or any thoughts of elevating her position were not acknowledged.
Ann always set her sights high. All her mother said when she expressed her wishes was, “Honey, you’ll just frustrate yourself with those impossible dreams.”
“I wonder what’s out there,” she said, looking up at the stars.
“Whatever it is it’s too far away, and we’ll never get the chance to go there,” said Tim. “What brought this on?”
“I’m just thinking exciting thoughts. Did Arty ever talk about flying?”
“Oh, sure. I think that was the hardest thing for him to accept—that he couldn’t fly anymore. He told me speed is the greatest thrill, the best drug. Arty says that’s what the term rush means to him. That is what’s so unfair because now he can’t even move.”
*
Tim got up and walked over on the grass and laid down, Ann following. The grass was cool and comfortable, and the breeze was sweet and refreshing. It would have been one of those perfect nights, but the dogs continued to howl and yelp. In the far reaches of the din the coyotes joined in the confusion.
“Those dogs are scared shitless!” exclaimed Tim.
“Oh, come on, what could scare them that much?”
“I don’t know, I wonder if we should be scared too?” he whispered.
The barking started to subside almost as if on cue. In a matter of moments the din was gone. Tim sat up and listened. There was not a sound as the insects had fallen silent too. The group of kids across the street had noticed the silence too and they in turn had quit talking.
“What’s going on?” Ann asked.
“I don’t know, this is weird, man,” Tim said as he thought he detected a far away rumbling. He lay back down on the grass putting his ear next to the ground and he thought he heard the earth sort of sigh.
Chapter 2
Earthquake
And then the earth broke! In a sudden, tremendous release of energy the solid ground that had always been the stable base of everything real or imaginary leaped into motion. One-second Ann and Tim were lying on the cool grass and the next moment they were thrown violently sideways, then thrown violently upward. They were temporarily suspended in the air and then they were slammed back to the ground. Tim was disoriented immediately. He tried to get to his feet, but as he tumbled and bounced he had no idea which way was up or which way was down. He was slammed onto his hands and knees, but when he applied pressure to his legs to gain control the ground dropped again. Unimaginable power was being released causing deafening sounds of thundering, roaring, and crashing.
“Unreal! Fricken unreal!” Tim realized he was shouting at the top of his lungs, but the noise was so overpowering he could barely hear himself.
He had given up trying to stand and was in a semi-state of panic and delight. He was watching the pizza parlor across the street. One moment it was below him, the next it was above. Then it collapsed in a shower of dust and sparks. The trees were being whipped back-and-forth and one was thrown completely out of the ground.
The animals had known. They had sensed this, but how, was Tim’s first cognizant thought?
The violent shaking decreased somewhat, and he was able to gain some control with the ground. Ann was lying flat on her back a few feet away. He managed to grab her and felt that she was limp. He felt for her face and turned it toward himself. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was hanging open, spittle at one corner.
“You okay? Please be okay, please,” Tim pleaded.
He didn’t get an answer at first, but she finally blinked and was looking at him with a questioning expression. She was confused, but okay.
Huge fireballs shooting into the night sky brought him all the way back to reality. Ruptured gas lines mating with severed electrical lines were producing huge, fiery explosions all around them. The broken power lines crackled and danced like they possessed life. The earth was still emitting growls and rumbling like it had been mortally wounded.
*
The valley where they lived rested at mostly sea level behind a coastal mountain range. It was known for its sand, swaying palms, golf courses, tennis courts, swimming pools, nightclubs, and tan people. It was surrounded by mountains some of which rose to eleven thousand feet. The mountains kept most of the rain out and the heat in. With the clear skies and warm temperatures came the people.
At the base of the mountains to the North a line of stately palm trees hardly catch a glance. They grow there because a crack in the earth allows moisture to seep up from below and nourish them. The crack is a seam between two of the giant plates that form the Earth’s crust. The plates of the crust travel on top of the liquid core of the planet, maybe a few inches a year. Most of the time, these plates slip by each other, but sometimes they catch here and there. When they catch a portion of the Earth’s crust stretches. When it has stretched too far something breaks and the result is an earthquake.
The plates below this valley had been stretched to their limits. When they broke they produced an earthquake of tremendous magnitude. It was recorded as an 8.8 on the Richter scale. The valley of fun and sun was now a graveyard.
*
Through the noise of the disaster, explosions, ominous rumblings from the tortured earth, another sound was evident. Screams and wails of anguish were coming from all directions. The human suffering had begun.
“What happened? Oh my God, what’s happening?” Ann shouted as the earthquake’s intensity subsided. Tim was holding her, and she was shaking badly.
“A damn earthquake! Unreal, a fuckin earthquake!” he shouted. “Outta sight! Shit, I don’t believe it! Did you feel the power? Pizza Palace just fell apart! Man, what a trip!” Tim was both elated and scared, but mostly excited now tha
t the quake was over.
“You sure it’s not a war? Oh geez, I’m scared Tim. What is happening?”
“It was an earthquake. I’m sure. See, it’s all over. We’re okay. It’s over.”
Tim and Ann were free of injury, but when they crossed the street to the fallen pizza place the situation was far different. It was a grim scene and the first time either Tim or Ann had seen death. It was eerie because moments before everything had been normal, but in such a short time, everything had been reduced to rubble. Now there were the injured, the dying, and the dead, all of them lit by the fires burning around them.
*
Sometime after midnight, Ann and Tim started toward the top of the cove and their homes, scared of what they would find there. Ann had been strangely calm and remote since the quake, but the continual aftershocks made her freeze every time they happened. Half a block from the park, the street they had taken disappeared. The ground had split and the far side had fallen twenty feet. The split continued as far as they could see in both directions. They worked their way to the left for a hundred yards before the fissure offered a way down and across. All around them, all the structures were destroyed, many of them still burning. Many people were hurt or dead, but the two kids had no time—or will—to stop and help. What mattered most to them lay a long way ahead.
People dazed and in a panic constantly confronted them, begging and pleading for this and that, but there was nothing the kids could do. Ann kind of wanted to stop, but Tim pushed on. All about them terrified people wandered, some with meager belongings, some with nothing, not even their senses. The ultimate disaster had occurred, and all order had disappeared. Thousands of people were experiencing it together.
What would become of them? Tim thought.
*
It took six hours to travel the distance back to the top of the cove. All along the way it had been the same: houses destroyed, the land twisted at crazy angles, fires. The worst was the suffering. The survivors were confused, and there was nowhere to turn for help. It was obvious that police, fire fighting, and medical assistance were first, inadequate, and second, stranded. Any kind of transportation was impossible. The quake made every street impassable to anything other than foot travel, and even that was difficult and dangerous. The earth was still shaking from continual aftershocks. With so many fissures in the ground the earth could swallow a person at any moment. At one point, they witnessed where part of a house had slid into one of the cracks. Three people were trying to salvage some articles from the house and had made the mistake of climbing down into the fissure. A sudden aftershock causing a collapse of dirt and rock spelled their doom. It was traumatic for Tim and Ann to watch the dirt cover them and not be able to help.
*
It was getting lighter as they finally arrived at Ann’s house. The eastern sky was turning a delicate rose color with shafts of deeper red probing up into the dark sky. Tim had never seen a sunrise like that before. He realized all the smoke and dust in the air was responsible. The rising sun was lighting up just a sliver of the horizon. Not much of the light was able to penetrate the dirty air. The mountains to the West were dark and completely hidden. The mountains to the South, where the Walls were located, were dark too, except some of the dawn had reached the Walls. Tim strained his eyes at the canyon. He could just barely see the top of its outline, a soft blue, jagged line. Tim looked quickly to the East where the Sun would be coming up.
The light is red, no pink, maybe a little on the orange side, but definitely not blue.
He rubbed his tired eyes and looked toward the Walls again. There is a soft blue light coming out of the Walls.
Yes. . .no. . . maybe? He squinted. Then he concentrated and focused his eyes as well as he could. He was sure that he could see some blue, but then again he wasn’t positive. He blinked again, but he still wasn’t sure. He stared at the canyon for a few more moments, but the red from the sunrise was capturing the mountains.
I’m probably imagining it. This has been the longest night of my life, and imagining a few things should be no surprise.
*
Ann and her family lived in a large, stone and reinforced concrete Spanish bungalow. The quake had damaged the house severely, but miraculously all her family had escaped serious injury, receiving only minor cuts and bruises. Her brothers were in the swimming pool when the quake struck. The pool was dug into a hill that fell away. It broke open, spilling the water and its contents into neighbor’s yard below.
Sammy said he had been on some good rides—Disneyland, Magic Mountain, “But nothing like that!” he explained wide-eyed.
Brillo Pad was safe and only had a light coat of dust to show for the ordeal. She was calmly eating flowers from the side of the neighbor’s house. Before the quake the animals had sensed in some way the forthcoming event and had been terrified. Now that it was over the animals were calm. The unending aftershocks did not seem to bother the horse or any of the other animals.
“How did they know?” Tim asked as he watched the horse.
“Who?” Ann asked.
“The critters!” Tim replied quickly. “I can’t believe I was so stupid!”
“What are you talking about?”
“The animals! Come on, think! They knew the quake was coming. We had a warning, but we were too stupid to realize it. I mean, shit, think of all the people that got wrecked because they didn’t pay any attention to the animals.”
“Well, just because some dogs barked—”
“Barked? You call that just barking? Something was wrong and they knew it! I don’t know, but it just seems so incredibly stupid that we didn’t pay attention.”
“You already said that!” Ann snapped.
“Well, I think that maybe we’d better start to pay better attention, don’t you?”
“Oh, Tim, don’t be so dramatic. The worst is over. We’ll be okay now.” Ann was trying to lessen the tension, but she had been listening to Tim. I do remember reading about animals behaving strangely before an earthquake. We had a warning, and had indeed ignored it. We have been dumb,” she admitted to herself. “We’ll be okay,” she reminded Tim. “Please?”
*
It was only six blocks from Ann’s house to Tim’s, but now it seemed like miles. They had gotten to within half a block before they could see the house. The second half of the block had tilted away from where they stood, and Tim’s house had slid off its foundation, though it had moved only a few feet. It was twisted and sitting at a strange angle. Terror gripped him because the last memories of his once happy family were in that house and now the house lay damaged before him. Although the house had moved, it was mostly intact. The garage had separated from the house, but had not collapsed, and there had been no fire.
All the doors were jammed, so Tim entered through his broken bedroom window. Inside, the house was a shambles. Most of the walls had come apart and pieces of the ceiling covered everything. Tim’s mother was still lying on the couch where they had left her.
Tim rushed to her, followed closely by Ann. A few pieces of plaster had fallen on her, but she had suffered no apparent injuries.
“Come on, Mom, got to get you out of this mess before it all falls down.”
She moaned slightly as he picked her up, but otherwise gave no response.
“Shit, she’s so drunk, she slept through the whole damn thing,” he mumbled as he made his way outside with her cradled in his arms.
Ann brought the cushions from the couch along and arranged them on the front lawn for Tim to place his mother on. He wiped as much of the dust off her as he could, then returned to the house to retrieve whatever was worth saving.
*
He was inside only a couple of minutes when he heard Ann scream.
He rushed back outside.
Ann was kneeling over his mother, shaking her.
“What the hell’s wrong?” he shouted as he ran to them.
“She’s not breathing,” cried Ann. “Damnit, she quit
breathing.”
“Bullshit! She was okay a second ago,” Tim cried and reached down to check her.
“What the hell? Oh Christ, this can’t be!”
He bent over her and put his face down to hers and put his hand on her chest. He couldn’t feel her breath, and her chest was still.
“Mom! Damn it! Daaaamnit! Wake up!” he pleaded.
He performed mouth-to-mouth, then pounded on her chest. He repeated his clumsy attempts to revive her repeatedly.
Ann held her wrist, trying to find a pulse. She was crying softly. Tim’s mother was like a sister to her. She had always been a confidant, a friend, and was always encouraging. Ann was sure she was dead now.
Tim continued his lifesaving attempts for a while longer, but his hope and energy ran out. He remained kneeling over her body for some time, then stood up and walked into the remains of the house.
Ann stayed, holding the dead woman’s hand. She was afraid to let go. When she did, it would seem so final. For the first time since the disaster struck, Ann had time to really cry.
Tim wandered through the rubble of his house in a daze, finally sitting on the couch where he had found his mother. Inside his head the thoughts made no sense. He would flash to this, then to that.
Arty, Mom, school, fires burning, friends, fun, sadness, death. It went on and on, until he snapped upright and said, “Shit!”
He took a slow look around the demolished house and the ruined belongings. Through the front window he could see Ann sitting with his dead mother.
What is to become of me? Where will I go?
He happened to glance down to the base of the couch. There among the fallen pieces of plaster, next to the ashtray and bottle of whiskey was a prescription bottle. Tim recognized it as his mother’s sleeping pills. It was empty and it had been full just the day before. Mother Nature had not been responsible for her death. Thousands had lost what one had not wanted.
*
Tim and Ann sat at the end of their block which was fifteen feet higher than it used to be. He remembered the days when he had to walk half a mile to the nearest mountains to get a good view of the city. Now, from the end of his block there it all was.