“Oh, dear Lord,” Earl said at the window. “Lost another piece from the barn.”
“Mama,” the small girl said. “Is Peaches okay?”
Hazel placed her hand on her daughter's head. “I hope so.”
“Peaches is my horse,” the girl said looking over at me.
The children were tucked under the stairs. Caleb and I were across from them with another wall behind our back.
Hazel folded her hands together. “Can I get either of you anything else?”
“No,” I said waving my hand. “We’re sorry for intruding. We really don’t want to be a bother.”
Earl hit the wall by the door. “We’re gonna lose the barn.”
“He should come away from the window,” Hazel mumbled as she lowered herself to the floor. She sat on the outside of her children as if trying to make her body act as another wall.
Caleb glanced at me. Our eyes connected and I was pretty sure we shared the same thought. If one of the funnel clouds came toward the house, there wasn’t anything we could do to survive it. The walls weren’t going to hold up and the stairs weren’t going to be nearly enough to protect us.
I watched the man waddle back and forth from window to window. He looked like a potato with legs.
Hazel frequently looked over her shoulder. She wanted to beg him to sit with them but she apparently didn’t feel comfortable saying something again. Maybe for fear of getting scolded in front of us again.
“All of this is the fault of people like you two,” Earl said poking his finger toward Caleb and me.
Hazel shot him a look filled with both anger and embarrassment. Her cheeks were cherry red and they looked as though they were ready to pop.
“People like us?” Caleb asked.
He seemed genuinely curious about what the man meant. I was too scared to question him or feel angry about his comment.
“You young people. You all thing you need to create things to fix everything,” Earl said stomping back and forth. He waved his hands in the air. “How is messing with everything going to help? Reset the planet.”
“What did you hear?” Caleb asked.
“It was on a radio program Earl listens to every night,” Hazel said. “They speculated that this was going to happen.”
Caleb shook his head. “That what was going to happen?”
“They put something into the atmosphere or something,” the man said. “Some kind of device. You see the light?”
“We saw it,” Caleb said moving closer to me.
“They did that. They shot that thing up into the sky and this happened,” Earl said.
I shivered and Caleb put his arm around me. Hazel stared at us, blinking every three seconds.
Caleb let his arm slide away and after a few more blinks, Hazel looked away from us. Her eyes shifted downward and she smiled lovingly at her children.
“Put your heads down on your pillows, my little dears. It’s well past your bedtime now,” Hazel sang in a soothing voice.
“Okay, mama,” the little girl said sweetly. She couldn’t have been more than five years old.
“Okay, mah-mah,” the younger body said copying his sister in an even sweeter voice.
The wind blew hard against the front door. Earl froze as the windows rattled aggressively and the walls seemed to shake. The big bad wolf was outside and we weren’t in the house made of brick.
Hazel laid down next to her children, placing her arm protectively over their little bodies. She knew things outside had gotten worse. The noises were terrifying. I couldn’t even guess as to what was going through the children’s minds.
Caleb wrapped both arms around me. He didn’t care about dirty looks if we were about to be blown away.
I ducked my head and pressed my hands over my ears. It sounded like we were about to be driven over by a giant dump truck.
My teeth clenched together so hard it felt like they were going to shatter. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Earl wobbling as fast as he could toward us. He dropped down to the floor next to Hazel and held them all tightly.
It was the first time I’d seen such a frightened look on a grown man’s face. I pressed my head against Caleb’s chest, squeezing my eyes shut so tightly I couldn’t hear anything but a fuzzy sound inside my head. That was until a window shattered and my jaws pulled apart with a gasp.
The wind blew through the house with a sharp whistle. I could feel the cool dampness against my cheek.
The kids began to cry. Hazel repeatedly sniffed as she tried to hum something comforting.
I shook with fear.
11
Adam
Eva bit her lip as she held on to me, waiting for the earth to stop. The shaking was making acid spin in my stomach. If the vigorous movement didn’t stop soon, I was going to be sick.
In the distance, there were loud banging and crashing sounds. It was like being in the middle of a construction site where the buildings were being demolished. Were the buildings in town crumbling to the ground?
The look on Eva’s face was more than enough to know she was having a similar thought. I squeezed her hand tighter but it didn’t do any good. She was beyond terrified and I couldn’t blame her.
The ground below us felt as though it was rising but after moving upward a few inches, it dropped back down to its original position. A tree less than twenty feet away tipped to the side. Its big, thick roots pulled out of the ground and reached up like old, gnarled fingers.
Eva screamed. Her whole body was trembling with fear.
“Oh, Adam,” she howled as she wrapped her arms around me.
She wasn’t hugging me because she loved me or because she cared about me. Eva was afraid we were going to get sucked into the earth and she wouldn’t be able to post about her traumatic event on her social media.
I frowned at my thought.
“Why is this happening to us?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Mike had been scared when everything started. What had he said? That someone had done something?
Trees creaked and dipped around us, pulling out of the ground one after the other. They looked like a crowd of dancers moving to music we couldn’t hear.
It felt like a wave underneath the ground rippled below us, raising us up and then lowering us back down. The movement was smooth but it was terrifying nonetheless.
“What should we do?” Eva asked.
I swallowed hard. We only had two choices. We could try to make our way down the hill trying to avoid the trees or we could wait and hope that the shaking would stop.
Fortunately, we didn’t have to wait long. The shaking slowed and eventually settled to what it felt like when I had my phone on vibrate in my back pocket.
Eva and I stared into each other's eyes, breathing heavily as if we’d been running. She looked up toward the sky at the same moment the rain poured even heavier out of the sky.
Her hair flattened over her face. She shook her head like a wet dog.
“Is it done?” she asked.
“I hope so,” I said. “Come on. Let’s keep moving but be careful.”
It was even harder to make our way down the hill than it had been before. The rain was making the ground slick and with the slope we were walking down, we took turns falling. Tree roots reaching up out of the ground would stop us before we slid too far.
“There!” Eva said seconds after a flicker of light.
I saw the house closer than a quarter-mile away. It wouldn’t take us long to get there.
We approached carefully. The stone and concrete walkway was uneven and the landscaping was a disaster. Plants were flattened and there were deep puddles of water scattered over the yard, only getting deeper with each passing minute.
Eva walked up to the door and knocked. “Hello!” she shouted after stopping her fist. “Anyone home? We need help!”
I stepped over the window. The curtain was open so I peered inside.
“Shit,” I sa
id when I realized I could see right through the house to the other side. There was a pool on the other side of the crumbled down back wall.
Eva started pounding again. This time when she tried the door, it wasn’t locked.
“Eva,” I said reaching out to stop her.
I missed and she stepped inside. She froze and her shoulders drooped heavily. It was like in that instant, she gave up.
“Eva,” I said again taking her hand into mine. She yanked it away. “The earthquake… it was a bad one.”
She walked forward slowly. Looking at the things that had once been nice. Now it was soaked, covered in dust and debris.
“We’ll keep looking,” I said.
She stopped and slapped her hand over her mouth. It wasn’t strong enough to hold her scream in.
“Dammit,” I said pulling her back toward the front door.
There was a body on the ground. Part of the roof had fallen and landed on the poor guy’s head. He still had a slipper on one foot.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
“Why?” she asked sharply. “What’s the point? You know as well as I do what we heard out there. This probably isn’t even the worst of it.”
“We’ll find help,” I said.
She snorted. “When did you become a positive person? Hmm?
I pressed a finger to my temple. I was close to losing my shit the way it was. Why should I even bother trying to keep calm for her?
I opened my mouth but after a second, I snapped it shut. The last thing I wanted was to make this nightmare any worse.
Eva started to walk back through the house. She stepped over the man on the floor and headed toward what looked as though it might have once been his kitchen.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I didn’t eat breakfast,” she said flatly. “I’m hungry.”
She probably hadn’t had lunch or dinner either. “This is kind of weird, don’t you think? Maybe we could raid a gas station or something. Like normal looters.”
She shot me a look over her shoulder. I shrugged and she continued searching.
“Want something?” she asked.
“Um,” I stammered. She must have lost her mind. “We should get out of here. In case there are aftershocks, you know?”
“It’ll only take me a minute,” she said.
It was a solid five minutes before she walked back to me, stepping over the man once again. Two dead bodies in one day. Something told me that it wouldn’t be the last of them either.
“Here you go,” Eva said handing me a bottle of water. The bottle was one of those half-sized plastic bottles and I chugged it in one quick drink.
“Thanks,” I said, tossing the empty bottle to the side.
“You should ration it,” Eva said. “I think that’s what that one survivalist guy on TV would have said anyway.”
I drew in a deep breath. “I think we’ll be able to find more.”
“You better hope so,” Eva said. “Because I’m not going to share mine.”
We stopped at the door and stared out into the pouring rain. The part of the roof that had remained had blocked the rain and I hadn’t realized what a relief it had been until that moment.
“We could stop to rest,” I said.
Eva looked like she considered it. “What if that guy followed us?”
I looked around, searching the debris for something I could use as a weapon. There was a metal fire poker next to the brick fireplace that was still standing.
“There’s probably knives in the kitchen… area,” Eva said.
I swallowed hard. I didn’t want to walk over the poor dead man. It just didn’t feel right.
“This will do,” I said. “Besides, I don’t think he’s after us. I think he got spooked by whatever is happening. He could have killed us on the spot but he didn’t. I remember the look in his eyes.”
“He was weird,” Eva said. She looked down at the poker in my hand before sitting down on the floor, setting her snacks down in her lap. “Think you’ll be able to use that if necessary?”
I shrugged.
“I don’t think you will,” Eva said. “You should probably give it to me.
“I thought you wanted a knife.”
“I’d have to get close to use a knife,” Eva said biting into a snack bar of some kind. “What I need is a gun.”
I couldn’t hold my laugh in. Eva eyed me but it didn’t stop my laughs from trickling out.
“What do you know about guns?” I asked.
“I know enough to know we should have one,” she said.
“We don’t need a gun,” I said. “We just need help.”
Eva raised a brow. “So, does everyone else. It’s like you don’t even watch movies.”
“That’s just it,” I said. “This kind of stuff only happens in movies.”
After a long moment, Eva sighed. She wiped her hands clean on her wet pants.
“I should have the poker,” she said.
I looked over at the fireplace tools and grabbed a small shovel. “You can have this.”
She studied it for a minute before giving me a quick nod and snatching the poker from me. “This will do.”
I exhaled and turned back to look out the door. The ground shook again, but it wasn’t even close to what we experienced in the woods.
If we had to run out of the building, we’d be ready. But it only lasted a few seconds before settling again.
I sucked in a deep breath and coughed. My lungs felt as though they were just as soaked as I was.
I turned back and looked at Eva on the floor, munching away on another bar. “Let’s just hope we won’t have to use them.”
12
Stevie
Since Gage couldn’t see well, we worked together as we moved through the office methodically, digging through the desks, drawers, cabinets, and closets.
We found a flashlight that still worked, more snacks, and several sweaters, one of which I used as a towel to attempt to dry my hair. It was too bad we hadn’t found a change of clothes. I hated the way the wet clothes felt on my body… itchy and tight, like it was starting to become part of my skin.
We’d also found a backpack on one of the office chairs still opened. It had been stuffed with notebooks and a laptop. If I had to guess, whoever had left it had done so in an awful hurry. Too bad, he hadn’t stayed at his desk.
“We’ll fill this with food and water from the break room,” I said dumping out the contents on top of the desk.
I opened the laptop and the screen lit up the area around us. The owner of the cubicle had one picture stuck to the sidewall. A young girl with a bright smile and beautiful blue eyes.
Gage leaned closer, narrowing his eyes at the screen. “Password protected.”
I smacked the laptop closed. “I’m not surprised.”
“Hey, don’t give up so easily. Maybe I could have cracked the code and learned what’s going on,” Gage said.
I held my hand out toward the laptop. “Be my guest.”
He sat down on the squeaky office chair and opened the laptop again. The screen illuminated his face with a pale blue glow.
I threw the backpack off my shoulder and kept working my way through the rest of the office. My feet squished into the carpet and I noticed that the water near the stairwell had seemed to have risen again. It was over the top of my shoe, leaking between the laces, making my feet feel even colder than they already did.
I swallowed hard, glancing over my shoulder at Gage. I wasn’t sure if it was time to tell him about the water. If we should consider making our way to the roof.
Suddenly the room went back to its original darkness. A quick snap cut through the air, echoing throughout the office.
“Dammit,” Gage grumbled pounding his fist on the desk.
“What happened?” I asked. “Couldn’t guess his password?”
I wasn’t exactly sure why I assumed the owner of the laptop was a he but maybe it had som
ething to do with the lack of pictures and inspirational quotes hanging on the cubicle wall.
“Managed to log in as a guest but there was only one percent battery left,” Gage said. “Couldn’t even get a page to load before it shut down.”
I wasn’t surprised. The entire city and probably beyond was under water. There was no power and therefore, the wireless internet probably wasn’t working.
“Well, it was worth a shot,” I said.
Gage covered a yawn as he walked toward me. “Anything I can help with?”
“Not really,” I said. “I think we did everything we can. Although I really don’t even know what we should be doing at this point.”
“You did great. You found food and water. I think all we can really do now is wait,” Gage said pausing briefly. “Right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess so. I wish I knew more about this kind of thing.”
Gage shrugged. “How could anyone know exactly? Besides, from what I heard, you’re a survivor.”
“What did you hear?” I asked my brows squeezing together.
“Jace talked about you a lot,” Gage said. “I mean, like, a lot.”
“What did he say?”
Gage held up his palm. “All good stuff, don’t worry. He was totally in love with you.”
“Oh.” It was the only word I’d be able to get out of my suddenly parched mouth.
“He thought you were the greatest,” Gage said with a smile. It looked like he was remembering something. “And after what you did for me, I kind of think so too.” He quickly started waving his hands around him. “I don’t mean I’m in love with you, I just mean I think you’re pretty great too… you know, for saving me. You could have easily left me. It would have made things easier if you had.”
I huffed and quickly waved away his words. The look on his face was turning dark and with our situation, we didn’t need any more darkness.
“I didn’t do anything special,” I said.
My heart was pounding harder. I hadn’t done enough to save Jace. I wasn’t a survivor or anything special. The truth was I failed.
“Anyway, he told me you took care of your siblings and I know you worked a job you hated,” Gage said keeping his eyes down.
The Reset Series (Book 1): Flood Page 6