by Bobby Akart
The guys ran past several groups who were moving slowly down the stairs. Some needed medical assistance and begged them to stop. Jack paused to help a woman to her feet who’d stumbled and ripped open her kneecaps. She leaned on his arm as he tried to lead her downward.
Tony stopped, ran back up a few stairs, and rudely pulled Jack aside, leaving the woman standing with her mouth agape.
“Jack, we don’t have time for this. We’re gonna die if we don’t get out of here.”
“These people need—”
The shrieks of people in the stairwell accompanied by an enormous cracking sound cut him off. The side of the stairwell had separated on its east side, an open wound that ran up and down for several flights of stairs.
With only a glance at the people in shock behind them, Jack led the way with Tony close behind. They pushed their way past another group of people walking slowly down the stairs. Leaving them behind went against everything Jack believed in. He’d spent his adult life helping his fellow man. However, he had the love of his life and his kids to get home to.
That was when it struck him. If this was the so-called Big One that everyone feared might come out of the New Madrid Seismic Zone, then Memphis might have been impacted. In the chaos at the Top of the Met, he hadn’t tried to call Jill.
He tried to keep up with Tony, who was flying down the stairwell now, taking the steps two at a time while using the guardrail as support. Jack tried to navigate the touchscreen of his phone to place a call to Jill. In his effort to do so, he lost his focus and stumbled at the bottom of a flight of stairs. He tumbled forward and crashed into the wall, dropping his phone in the process.
“You okay?” Tony stopped at a landing below and shouted his question up to Jack.
Jack got to his feet, located his phone, and studied the display. There was no signal.
“Yeah. I’m coming.”
The men continued their downward race to the bottom, stepping over debris and dodging others who frantically wanted to escape the building. They’d passed the fifth floor, and suddenly, they found themselves rushing into a crowd of fifteen people blocking the stairwell.
Tony shouted at them, “What are you doing? Keep going!”
Several of the women who were huddled together at the rear of the group turned to Tony and made a path for him to walk through. He studied their distraught faces before slowly walking down the stairs to the next landing. He turned the corner through the rest of the group and immediately realized the problem.
The emergency stairwell had come to an end. Four stories above the ground.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Friday, December 21
Halloran Centre
Memphis, Tennessee
The front five rows of seats located on the flattest part of the theater immediately in front of the stage had been crushed by the ceiling above them. The entire rigging system holding up the speakers and lighting had come crashing down onto the front of the stage. The families attending the rehearsal in those first five rows were killed or severely injured. Tate could have been one of them.
He rushed to the collapsed ceiling and tried to look for survivors. There were people crying and muffled voices asking for help. There was so much debris from the ceiling and the lighting was so dim that Tate was unsure how to proceed in rescuing them.
The sound of a crying child brought the focus of his efforts back to Emily.
“Emily! Can you hear me?”
No response.
Tate ran up and down the rubble, looking for a path through it leading to the stage. He grimaced and cursed in anger as he realized the access was completely blocked by the collapsed ceiling and the stage rigging.
He tried climbing across the debris, but it gave way, and he got his leg caught. He tried to free himself, and then a hand grabbed his ankle. Somebody was alive under all the collapsed ceiling.
“I can’t. I’m sorry,” he said to the faceless victim who was trying to get his attention. Tate yanked his leg out of their grip and toppled backwards onto the carpet. As he regained his footing, the roof of the building shook just as the earthquake stopped shaking.
Tate thought it was the final hurrah of the devastating quake. But the thump was too loud. He equated the noise with someone dropping a heavy medicine ball on a hollow wood floor. Only this medicine ball caused more debris to come crashing down.
Whomp!
This blow caused a portion of the roof to open up, and water came pouring in on top of the collapsed ceiling. Tate’s mind raced as he presumed the entire building was about to be crushed. He ran to his right toward a green, illuminated Emergency Exit sign. It now provided the only light in the theater other than a few dangling lights toward the center rows just beneath the collapsed balcony.
Then the light fixtures suddenly grew much brighter before the power surge that caused it took out all the electricity to the building. Tate adjusted his eyes and searched the side wall for the exit sign. The batteries kept it illuminated.
Whomp!
“What the hell?” Tate shouted his question at the top of his lungs.
More of the ceiling collapsed, including the exposed steel trusses that crossed the building from side to side. One of the black powder-coated trusses snapped in the center, allowing the roofing material to drop several feet into this end of the building.
Tate wasted no time racing to the exit. He gripped the handle and turned it. He overpowered the door and flung it open so hard the handle embedded in the drywall on the other side.
He immediately turned to his left in search of an entry door leading to the backstage area. A short corridor led to the restrooms, and Tate noticed it was filling with water. He took the short corridor to the left and found a double set of utility doors. The drop ceiling had collapsed in front of them, but the debris was no match for his adrenaline-filled muscles.
Whomp!
Tate jumped just as he cleared the path to the door. More debris fell from above on top of his head and blocked the door. He frantically dug it out of the way. He noticed the wall to the left of the doorway was starting to buckle and crack.
He flung the door open and pushed his way inside just as the front end of a Cadillac STS came crashing through the roof and smashed into the hallway where he’d stood seconds ago. Tate now knew that perception wasn’t always reality. He could deal with medicine balls. But cars falling out of the sky?
Behind the stage was a tall wall that ordinarily contained a theater screen and, above it, several rolled-up backdrops to be used during the stage production. Props of all types were built on skids with casters to be rolled into place during scene changes. All of this had either been toppled over or crushed by the falling ceiling.
“Emily!” he shouted. “Where are you?”
Tate had to focus. He thought he heard her call his name, but the voice was muffled. He moved past the fallen props toward the back wall of the theater. He hollered for her again.
“Emily! If you can hear me, knock on something.”
What happened next caused the hair to stand up on the back of Tate’s neck and caused his skin to crawl. Dozens of tiny hands began to knock on the bottom side of the wooden stage. They were gentle at first, like a young trick-or-treater shyly knocking on a neighbor’s door at Halloween. Then they grew to a crescendo as everyone trapped underneath the stage began to pound their fists upward against the raised wooden structure. Their chorus of screams were a combination of help, down here, and please.
“Okay. Okay. I hear you! How did you get under there?”
Tate yelled his question, but the trapped kids couldn’t hear him, as they never stopped pounding the floor or yelling for his help.
Whomp!
“Jeez, enough already!” Tate shouted. Between the barely-holding-on survivors, the kids pounding the floor, the chaos that had found its way into the Halloran through the hole in the ceiling, and the doggone cars pounding the roof like some kind of possessed pile driver, Tate strained
to focus as he frantically searched for the access panel to underneath the stage.
He began to throw lightweight props to the side, and the heavy ones he slid out of the way. There had to be a hatch. Then he found himself at the back of the stage’s center, where the piano sat. He thought it was in an odd place. He struggled to remove a heavy part of the rigging that had toppled over a large prop.
He found the production’s director crushed underneath, with blood streaming out of her ears. He pulled her body to the side, and then he saw the outline of the hatch door leading underneath. The woman was a hero. She’d acted quickly to shuffle the children to safety and then moved the piano over the hatch so it wouldn’t get covered by the damage caused by the earthquake. She’d given her life for those kids.
Rain was pouring into the ceiling, and the people buried under the rubble were screaming louder now. The access to the seating area was completely blocked by the ceiling. Tate knew the entire building could collapse within itself if it kept getting pummeled by the cars that were somehow coming out of the adjacent parking garage.
“I’ve got you!” he shouted as he flung open the hatch. Although it was dark, he could make out the outline of half a dozen tiny faces looking upward at him through the hatch. He positioned himself on his hands and knees. “Grab my hand.”
The first child, a girl about Emily’s age, gripped his hand and wrist. Tate flexed his powerful biceps and back muscles as he pulled the child through the opening and onto the floor beneath the piano.
“Thank you!” she yelled through her tears.
“Is Emily down there?”
The girl didn’t respond, but Emily did.
“I’m here! I’m here!”
Tate bent down and dropped his arm through the hatch. Emily put a death grip on his wrist and forearm. He jerked her upward and onto the stage floor. She immediately hugged him and began to cry.
“Where’s Mom?”
Tate hesitated before he responded, “Um, I don’t know.”
“Oh, my god! We have to find her!” Panicked, Emily tried to stand and busted her head on the bottom of the piano.
Tate tried to calm her. “Emily, hold on. We have to help the others. Mom’s probably outside waiting for us.”
“I’ll go look!”
“No, it’s too dangerous!” Tate was exasperated by Emily’s failure to listen.
“Why can’t I go—?” she began to argue when she received her answer.
Whomp!
Another car crashed through the roof and the remaining ceiling structure at the front of the stage, until it fell over backwards, further crushing those in the first five rows.
“That’s why,” Tate said calmly as he reached into the hatch to retrieve another child.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Friday, December 21
Downtown Memphis, Tennessee
Jill raced down the ramps of the parking garage, brushing off pieces of glass that had embedded in her jacket and hair. She burst out onto the street, where hundreds of people were scampering in all directions, seeking safety, unsure which way, exactly, was less dangerous. She didn’t care what was safe. She cared for her children and knew where she needed to go. Like a bull in a china shop, Jill pushed and shoved her way through the crowd toward the Halloran Centre.
She dodged cars attempting to force their way east out of the city. It was a fruitless exercise. Some drivers grew angry at the pedestrians running in between their front bumper and the car in front of them. Several panicked revelers were struck or run over in the chaos.
Jill ran between two stalled cars and crossed Beale Street onto the sidewalk packed with people fleeing the riverfront. She pushed through them onto the wet grass surrounding the Memphis Light, Gas and Water building. She was in an open space and began to sprint until she tripped over the bronze statue of Elvis strumming his guitar.
She face-planted onto the wet turf and skidded eight feet until she crashed into the legs of people hustling by. Covered in wet grass and some mud, Jill was unfazed by the collision. She was singularly focused on getting to the Halloran.
By the time she arrived at the entrance, the glass had blown out of all the windows, littering the pavement. The front roof overhang that cantilevered outward had dropped down and crumbled into large chunks of concrete. Interior rooms lining the exterior of the building were filled with debris from the ceiling and the upper storage rooms.
She ran to her right toward the Orpheum, looking for a way in. All the access points through the broken windows were blocked by the rubble.
She ran back past the main entrance toward the south side of the building, which was adjacent to the parking garage where they’d tried to locate a space at first. She thought she found an opening, and just as she lifted her leg over the windowsill, she heard the cracking of concrete and the groaning of steel. The building was struggling to remain upright.
Jill instinctively looked toward the roof, presuming the front of the building was about to collapse. She hesitated briefly, and then a man on the sidewalk yelled at her, “Get out! It’s gonna fall!”
She spun her head around, and the man was waving his arms frantically for her to come into the street. She didn’t know why she trusted him, but in the moment, she was glad she did.
She rushed toward him and then slid to a stop on the broken glass. She turned her body just in time to see the wall separating the Halloran from the parking garage give way. The top two floors of the parking structure began to tilt toward the theater building. That was when the high-pitched squeal of rubber fighting against concrete filled the air.
As the wall collapsed, the top floor of the garage tilted dramatically toward the theater. The cars on the upper level slid across the wet concrete until they crashed into the half wall and broke through. The first vehicle came crashing through and landed hard on the roof of the Halloran.
Jill joined other onlookers in screaming as the disaster unfolded.
The car tires continued to squeal, indicating their approach to the edge of the structure. One teetered for a moment as the weight of the engine in front acted as a counterbalance to the lightweight rear end. Soon, gravity won the day, and the sedan fell over and landed on top of the other car.
The determined mother had seen enough. She wasn’t gonna stand there while her children got buried alive by falling cars. She threw caution to the wind and went back to where she’d approached the building moments ago.
Suddenly, the transformers around downtown Memphis began to blow. The explosions, coupled with the intense bursts of sparks, knocked out power to the city. People shrieked and began yelling, none of their voices discernible over another’s as the scuffle to escape reached a very ugly level of panic.
Jill took a deep breath and forced herself to remain calm. She pulled out her cell phone and powered on its flashlight. She stepped across the rubble and into the building. Jill paused, beads of moisture pouring down her face as she tried to figure out where to go. She’d never been inside the Halloran before.
Following her instinct, she pushed her way toward the center of the building, climbing over fallen ceiling debris and stud walls. As she made her way deeper into the darkness, Jill would occasionally catch a glimpse of a body part protruding through ruins. She fought back the bile building in her stomach. There was no time for throwing up.
Whomp!
A third car had come crashing on top of the Halloran. Jill shrieked and instinctively covered her head with her arms. Then she chastised herself for being weak. Besides, she thought to herself, if a car was gonna come crashing down on top of her, her measly arms weren’t gonna stop it.
With less fear than when she entered and several hard kicks with the bottom of her foot, she tore her way through a hole in an interior wall that led to a forty-seat conference room. It was remarkably well preserved except for wall fixtures being knocked down and a part of the drop ceiling collapsing on top of the exquisite walnut table.
Jill studied
her surroundings for a moment and then considered how she’d entered the building. She had a hunch the theater was in the center and likely behind the longest wall of the conference room.
She pounded the wall with the back side of her fist, listening to its hollow sound until it became more solid. She’d done this a hundred times years ago when looking for a stud to hang her pictures. There were millions who relied on apps like Stud Finder for smartphones. The app used a phone’s compass to pinpoint metal studs, nails, and screws embedded in walls.
Jill didn’t have a fancy app. Her knocking technique worked just fine, and she was able to find the weakest point of the drywall between the studs. Then she turned to find a makeshift tool of some sort to break through to the next room.
A solid brass candleholder that had toppled off the conference table did the trick. She turned it over, and using the base like a hammer’s head, she began to flail at the drywall. Within seconds, she’d broken through, allowing her to shove her arm through. She clawed the sheetrock away from the studs and dug out the soundproofing insulation. Soon, a sixteen-inch-wide gap appeared, enabling her to swing her candlestick-turned-hammer against the inside of the next wall.
She hit it hard, but it barely budged. She smacked it again even harder. It gave way.
Whomp!
Startled, Jill jumped and screamed again. “Stop that!” she begged the car-dropping-gods for some relief. The ceiling of the conference room collapsed further as the aluminum grid system gave way and crashed mostly into the center of the room.
Undeterred, Jill began beating the drywall with a renewed sense of urgency. Finally, it broke through, and that was when she realized the difference in its resiliency. She had, in fact, found the theater. The inside walls of the theater space were covered with foam soundproofing panels ranging in depth from six to eight inches. The panels were glued onto the drywall and gave the sheetrock material additional support.