Earthquake Terror

by Peg Kehret

  Moose saw the boy beneath him and dove deeper. He clamped his jaws on Jonathan’s shoulder, sinking his teeth through Jonathan’s T-shirt and into the boy’s flesh, just far enough to get a good grip. Then, using every bit of strength he had, he swam upward, pulling the boy toward the surface.

  Pain shot through Moose’s chest as he went too long without air. He struggled on, his neck aching from the weight he dragged.

  He did not make it. The boy was too heavy for the dog. Moose had to let go or be sucked under himself. He opened his mouth and released Jonathan.

  The boy started to sink again.

  Moose pointed his muzzle up, inhaling deeply when he burst above the surface. As soon as he had air, he dived under again. This time he swam deeper, until he was below Jonathan.

  When he was completely under the boy, Moose swam upward. His head hit Jonathan’s chest. Moose pushed, paddling furiously. He moved his paws as if he were climbing a ladder, and forced Jonathan’s body up until Jonathan’s head broke the surface. Jonathan gasped instinctively, gulping air. He choked and coughed as the oxygen rushed into his lungs, but he did not regain consciousness.

  Moose swam out from under Jonathan, filling his own lungs with air.

  Without the dog beneath him, holding him up, Jonathan’s head splashed back into the river.

  As the boy sank for the second time, Moose dove under again. He swam beneath Jonathan, placed the top of his head on Jonathan’s chest, and again pushed up. Swimming frantically, he forced the boy’s head toward air.

  They didn’t have as far to go the second time. Jonathan surfaced before Moose was completely out of breath.

  Again, the boy inhaled.

  With Jonathan’s face out of the water, Moose brought his own nose into the air, filling his lungs quickly. Immediately, the boy’s face plunged forward into the river again.

  The dog swam on, diving under every few seconds, and shoving his head against Jonathan’s chest, forcing the boy’s head back above water.

  Each time he had his head under Jonathan, Moose faced north. As Jonathan surfaced, he was propelled forward, toward shore.

  Each time Jonathan’s head emerged from the river, he choked. He coughed and sputtered, swallowing large gulps of river water.

  When Moose pushed him above the surface for the fifth time, Jonathan coughed again and opened his eyes. He felt something solid beneath his breastbone. Something was under him, shoving him up.

  This time, Jonathan lifted his head unaided, gasping for air. His arms thrashed wildly, pushing at the river.

  The pressure left Jonathan’s chest and Moose’s head popped above the surface a few feet from Jonathan’s face. Jonathan realized Moose had been under him, pushing him out of the water.

  Jonathan bent his knees and pushed, kicking his legs like a frog. His toes tingled, as if his feet had fallen asleep from being in the same position too long. Jonathan kicked harder; the blood began to circulate again in his legs.

  He raised one arm over his head and stroked toward shore. As the other arm came up, he quit frog-kicking and began to flutter his feet, settling into a steady swimmer’s crawl.

  Moose dog-paddled beside him, his snout pointed straight ahead, as if knowing the crisis was over for now.

  Jonathan’s chest hurt. River water streamed from his nose, and his head pounded with a dull aching throb. Even without touching it, he knew there was a large bump on his head. Several times he coughed hard, expelling water, but he kept swimming.

  When he could breath evenly again, without coughing, Jonathan treaded water for a moment and looked toward shore. Land was still a long way off, and he was tired. Tired and cold.

  I won’t give up, Jonathan thought, as he began swimming again. I’ll keep trying as long as there’s breath in my body.

  He didn’t know if he would make it or not, but he did know one thing. He knew one thing for certain.

  Moose had saved his life.

  Abby woke crying. Her legs hurt. Her back ached. Her damp clothes clung to her shivering body, and her stomach grumbled. It took several seconds to realize where she was. When she knew, she cried harder.

  Until now, the worst days of Abby’s life had been her regular visits to Children’s Hospital. She hated the needle they always stuck in her arm, to withdraw blood, and all the strangers in white coats moving her legs and giving her orders. Bend your knees, roll over. Do this. Do that.

  But this, Abby decided, was even worse than the hospital. At the hospital, at least they fed her. Now she was so hungry she would even eat cooked carrots without gagging.

  Abby rubbed the tears from her cheeks and shifted position, trying to get comfortable. She wanted to go home, and sleep in her own bed. She wished Mommy and Daddy would hurry up and come and take her home.

  The horrible truth suddenly occurred to her: Mommy and Daddy can’t come and get me because they don’t know where I am. They think I’m in the camper and when I’m not there, they won’t know where to look for me. No one knows where to look for me. Not even Jonathan.

  Abby lay still, absorbing the knowledge that her whereabouts were unknown to the rest of the world.

  I will have to help myself, Abby decided. But how? Without her walker, there was no hope that she could make it to a town.

  Maybe she should have done what Jonathan told her to do, and stayed on her Charlotte boat. Maybe she should crawl back to the river and look for her boat and try to get back on it.

  If Jonathan sent someone to help her, they would be looking for her on the tree, in the water. They wouldn’t look behind this empty cabin.

  The thought of going back into the cold, dark river made Abby shudder. What if she didn’t make it to her boat? What if the water went over her head before she found something to hang on to?

  She decided to wait until daylight. If no one had found her at the cabin by morning, she would return to the river. She would crawl into the cold, dark water and look for her Charlotte boat.

  A National Guard helicopter rose at dawn and headed south, toward the Tuscan River. A pilot and two medics were on board.

  As they neared the river, they saw total destruction below them. Great crevices had opened in the Earth’s surface. Half the cars on a freight train had been knocked off the tracks and lay with their bellies in the air, like helpless turtles.

  “This is a wild goose chase,” the pilot said.

  “We agree,” one of the medics replied. “But we need to go. If we don’t, one of us will have to tell Mr. Palmer that we didn’t bother to look for his kids.”

  “You have to feel for that guy,” the second medic said. “I can’t imagine losing one of my kids, much less both of them at the same time. I wonder how his wife is taking it.”

  “There’s the bridge,” the pilot said. “What’s left of it.”

  The medics looked down where Magpie Island used to be, and shook their heads. Below them, they saw only the rushing water of the Tuscan River.

  “I expected the tops of trees would still stick out of the water,” the pilot said.

  “Maybe any trees still standing after the earthquake were washed out by the river. That water is moving.”

  They continued to look down. Uprooted trees, a telephone pole, and the shingled roof of a small shed floated in the water behind the downed section of the bridge, trapped against the steel girder that now angled into the river.

  The Tuscan had flooded farther upstream, too, washing out several homes. A child’s wooden swingset, with the slide pointing straight up, floated past the broken Magpie Island bridge.

  “No kids are down there, that’s for sure,” the pilot said as he headed the helicopter west, following the river. “Nothing but junk in the water.”

  “At least we can tell Palmer we looked,” one medic said. “We tried to find them.”

  The helicopter passed Beaverville, where a dark cloud of smoke from the previous night’s fires hovered over the town.

  The three men followed the shoreline,
past a cove where an old fishing pier jutted into the water. Trees and other debris bobbed in the cove, away from the current. They looked down at an abandoned fishing cabin but saw no sign of life.

  The helicopter noise woke Abby. She blinked, remembering where she was and why. As she realized what the noise was, excitement rushed through her. They’ll help me, she thought. The helicopter will take me to Mommy and Daddy.

  She looked up, toward the noise, but could not see the chopper. She was too close to the back of the cabin, and the noise came from out over the river.

  If I can’t see them, they can’t see me, she realized. I have to crawl back to the beach. I have to get out in the open.

  She rolled on to her stomach and put her arms under her shoulders, elbows bent. Her limbs were stiff from sleeping on the ground, and she could not crawl as fast as she had the night before.

  The roar of the helicopter grew louder; she knew it was directly in front of the cabin.

  Abby flung her arms forward, pulling herself as fast as she could. She rounded the corner of the cabin and headed toward the edge of the river.

  “Here I am!” Abby screamed, but the helicopter had already flown on. She watched as it continued along the riverbank, growing smaller, until the noise died away.

  Tears of frustration rolled down Abby’s face and dripped onto the ground. It isn’t fair! she thought. If I could run like other kids, I would have been out in the open in time. I could have run down the shore, waving my arms. They would have seen me.

  Maybe it will come back, Abby thought. Maybe if she stayed out here on the shore, where she could be seen, the people in the helicopter would spot her on their way home.

  It would be fun to ride in a helicopter.

  She wondered if Jonathan was still on his boat. How far would he have gone by now? A long way, Abby decided. Maybe even all the way to Iowa, where Grandma Whitney lives.

  Her stomach hurt. Her arms hurt. Her head hurt. I want to go home, Abby thought, but she blinked back her tears, knowing it did no good to cry.

  I’ll sing, she decided. I’ll sing until the helicopter people come back and get me. She struggled to a sitting position, with her legs straight out in front of her. “You are my sunshine,” she began. “My only sunshine.”

  The waves lapped a rhythmic accompaniment and, far in the distance, a sea gull cried.

  The helicopter continued on to Kendra, where the smokestacks of a paper mill normally puffed gray clouds into the sky, twenty-four hours a day. That day, the smokestacks stood cold and empty.

  “Seems funny to see the paper mill closed,” the pilot said and then added, “With no electricity, the whole county is closed.”

  “The main road through Kendra buckled,” one medic said, as he peered through his binoculars. “I see three toppled cars and a big gap down the middle of the street, like somebody opened a giant zipper.”

  “Wait a minute!” the other medic said. “Look down there, right on the edge of the water. Is that a person, lying on the sand?” He pointed. “See that yellow blob? Right there?”

  The helicopter circled back for another look.

  The second medic swung around and aimed his binoculars where the first man pointed. “It’s a dog,” he said. “A dead dog washed up on shore.”

  “It isn’t dead. It moved.”

  “You’re right. It’s getting up. Wait! There’s a body, too. The dog was lying on top of a person.”

  “A small person,” the first medic said.

  “I’m taking it down,” the pilot said. “There’s room to land between the water and the edge of the trees.”

  “It’s a kid,” the first medic said, as they descended. His voice rose. “It has to be one of those Palmer kids. The father said they had a dog with them.”

  The other medic continued to look through the binoculars. “The kid,” he said, “isn’t moving.”

  Jonathan lay stomach down, his cheek resting on the wet pebbles. The noise of the helicopter filled his head. Beside him, Moose barked his warning bark.

  Jonathan struggled to open his eyes. He raised his head and tried to vomit, but there was nothing to come up. He lay back down with his eyes closed. His head felt as if someone had smashed him with a hammer.

  The noise grew louder, a pulsing roar that surrounded Jonathan, pushing in on him from all sides. A strong wind from the chopper blades blew across him, making him shiver.

  Moose’s bark was frantic now.

  Jonathan groaned.

  He heard voices shouting.

  “He moved! He’s alive!”

  “Hurry!”

  Hands probed him gently, feeling his neck and back. They rolled him over, tilted his chin up, and swabbed out his mouth. A blanket went over his legs, bringing welcome warmth.

  “Good dog,” one of the voices said. “You’re a fine, loyal dog.”

  “Look at that goose egg on his head,” another voice said.

  Dimly, Jonathan was aware that his blood pressure was being taken, that his arms and legs were being checked by someone obviously trained in medical procedures.

  “Can you hear me?” one of the medics asked. “Are you Jonathan Palmer?”

  Jonathan’s eyes fluttered open. “Yes,” he whispered.

  “Your dad is going to be mighty glad to see you, son. And glad to see your dog, too.”

  “We’re going to put you on a stretcher now,” the other medic said. “We’ll airlift you to the hospital in Kendra. It’s functioning with generators.”

  Jonathan licked his lips and struggled to speak. “Moose,” he said.

  “He’s worried about the dog.”

  “Don’t you fret about that dog, son,” the first medic said. “Your dog is going for a helicopter ride, too, and after we get you to the hospital, we’ll see that the dog is returned to your dad.”

  The voices continued, explaining to Jonathan what they were doing. “We’re going to put you in the chopper now,” one said.

  The stretcher was lifted and Jonathan felt himself carried along the riverside. When they reached the helicopter, the stretcher was tilted at an angle as he was lifted through the opening.

  Jonathan looked at the pilot.

  “We never thought we’d be taking you in alive,” the pilot said.

  “Alive and in remarkably stable condition,” a medic said. “I think the dog laid on top of him, and kept him warm.”

  Jonathan closed his eyes again. All he wanted to do was sleep.

  Moose was boosted into the helicopter. Moose licked Jonathan’s face. Jonathan smiled but did not try to wake up. He was floating in a halfway state between dreaming and being aware of where he was. He was so sleepy.

  The pilot opened a bag and took out a bagel. “Here you go, dog,” he said. “Have some breakfast.”

  Moose chomped down the bagel, wagging his tail.

  The pilot said, “What happened to your sister? Do you have any idea where she is?”

  Abby. Jonathan tried to concentrate but he was so tired. What had happened to Abby? She was singing, he thought. She was riding a boat and singing “Ninety-nine Raggedy Anns on the Shelf.”

  “Try to remember, Jonathan. Try to tell us where you last saw your sister.”

  But Jonathan couldn’t form his thoughts into words. Without answering, he sank into a deep sleep.

  The helicopter rose noisily into the sky. Instead of going back along the Tuscan, the way it had come, it continued west, toward Kendra.

  Jonathan woke up four hours later, in a hospital bed. There was a bottle suspended over his head, and clear fluid dripped from the bottle down a tube and into his left arm.

  Jonathan stared for a few moments at the bottle, and then closed his eyes, remembering.

  They had kept swimming, he and Moose, until Jonathan was sure each stroke was his last.

  One more, he told himself, time after time. You can’t give up after Moose risked his life to save you. One more stroke. One more. One more.

  Twice he did the
dead man’s float, to rest, and both times he had to force himself to start swimming again. One more stroke.

  When he absolutely could swim no longer, he raised his head, looking for a floating tree to cling to. Instead, he saw land, only a few yards away.

  One more stroke. One more.

  Jonathan tried to stand, and his feet touched bottom. Exhausted, he had staggered forward and collapsed on the shore.

  “Jonathan?”

  Jonathan opened his eyes and turned toward the voice. A woman in a white uniform approached his bed. She stuck a thermometer in his mouth, and picked up his right wrist and took his pulse.

  When she removed the thermometer, she said, “How are you feeling?”

  “Tired. My head hurts.”

  “I should think so. There’s a bump the size of a baseball where something hit you. You’re lucky the human body is prepared for emergencies. Have you ever heard of the diving reflex?”

  Jonathan shook his head.

  “The body’s diving reflex allows us to survive in cold water even when we’re submerged for long periods of time. The heartbeat slows and the arteries nearest the skin get smaller so that the blood carries oxygen away from your arms and legs and toward your heart and brain. In cold water, the oxygen needs of the tissues are reduced, which extends the possible time of survival. It’s really quite remarkable, and the diving reflex is more active in children than in adults.”

  “My dog saved me,” Jonathan said.

  She smiled at him. “I’d better let your parents know you’re awake. They’re terribly worried about you.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Your father is in Beaverville. Search parties are looking for your sister and others; he’s at the search headquarters. Your mother’s downstairs, in the recovery room. A young man with a four-wheel-drive vehicle brought her in, and she had surgery on her ankle this morning.”

  What a family, Jonathan thought.

  “Rest while I call the National Guard emergency line and leave a message for your father. I’ll tell the doctor you’re awake, too. He’ll want to check you again. And I’ll send word down to your mother, though I don’t imagine she’s slept off the anesthetic yet.”