Quake

by Tracey Alvarez

  Irene’s breaths continued to rasp without a noticeable response, and Ana looked up. “What about Joel? How’s his arm?”

  “It’s broken, but he’ll be fine.”

  She pointed her chin toward a desk drawer. “She keeps a flashlight in there. Take it with you, just in case.”

  He slid it open and fished out the small metal tube. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  Daniel’s footsteps faded and the reception door squeaked and sighed as it closed. Her heart wrenched apart wanting to follow him. Half tore to be on her way to her kids; the other, heavier side remained bound in duty and responsibility to her coworkers.

  Muffled under the piles of wreckage, Irene’s mantelpiece clock that she kept sentimentally on her desk tick, tick, ticked. How much time had slipped by since the quake? How many minutes had Theo and Alyssa spent terrified? Alone?

  No. She couldn’t think like that.

  Ana brushed a strand of hair from Irene’s face and lay a palm on her forehead, the same way she checked for a temperature with her kids. Cool skin shifted under her fingertips.

  “Can you hear me?” Ana squeezed her hand. “Hang on, Irene. Help’s coming.”

  “What’s going on?” Joel yelled.

  “We think Irene’s having a heart attack,” she called back. “Daniel’s gone to get help.”

  Joel replied with a stream of curses. Ana found a thin cushion from the toppled office chair and cupped Irene’s head with the intention of sliding it underneath.

  “Ron?” Irene’s voice escaped from deep inside her, cracked but eerily beautiful.

  Goose bumps rose in a rash along Ana’s arms. Ron was Irene’s husband, a marathon runner who’d died of cancer last year.

  Ana rocked back on her heels. Irene’s unfocused gaze stared into the distance, far beyond the underbelly of her desk. Lips trembling around a lopsided smile, Irene sighed, the sound of a schoolgirl swooning over her first crush.

  She didn’t inhale.

  Daniel opened the stairwell’s heavy fire door, flicked the flashlight on, and aimed it through the murky gloom.

  An instinctive and cautious action that saved his life.

  A short time ago he’d trudged up the same stairwell, and if he was honest, his focus hadn’t been on his surroundings as much as it should’ve been. Now most of those stairs had vanished. Only particles of concrete dust danced through the trapped beam of light.

  He jerked away from the missing landing. The metal handle slipped from his grip and the door slammed shut. Heart plunging into his gut with it, he hooked the door open again, this time bracing it with his foot. Holding the doorjamb with his other hand, Daniel aimed the flashlight down.

  The thin tube of light refused to penetrate through the gloom to the ground floor, but it was strong enough to see the stair treads below the third floor crumbled close to the supporting wall. No way would he test the remaining steps’ stability by venturing out onto the landing. He shut the door and walked past the entrance to Ana’s law firm to the one other door on that level.

  An accountancy firm that had moved location, according to the door sign, owned this other office space. He called out through the broken floor-to-ceiling window, but no one answered. He decided to check anyway, delaying the unpleasant task of telling Ana they couldn’t get Irene down to the street via the stairs. After yanking the tangled remains of venetian blinds aside, Daniel eased through the empty window and into the reception area.

  The offices mirrored Ana’s but lay empty. He followed a short corridor to the rear of the building, checking each room. Maybe he’d get lucky and find something useful, like a portable defibrillator. Though, God, he hoped Irene wouldn’t need one. A rope or even a decorator’s extension ladder would be more useful.

  No such luck. The place was deserted.

  The last room’s door flew open and a cool breeze puffed across Daniel’s face. His jaw sagged and his eyes widened. A huge chunk of the back wall had collapsed and fallen outward, exposing the broken building across the street. He edged closer, stopping well short of the floorboards jutting into space. Filthy water funneled through the four-way intersection below. The water appeared to be knee deep, and it gushed and bubbled through piles of debris.

  The tail end of a tsunami, as good a guess as any. Holy hell.

  Thank God Ana’s law firm was situated a few miles inland from the harborside. To contemplate the devastation a tsunami would’ve caused at the foreshore was to risk losing his mind. The surrealism of the moment, the cries from floors below, the alarms, the hiss of water, the stench of brine—all threatened to overwhelm.

  He would get his head together in a minute. Years of training and his core nature would see to it. But for now, with no one to see, Daniel closed his eyes and just breathed.

  Hey, daylight’s wasting. Think you’re at a church picnic? Harden up, mate.

  Not the barked orders of a fellow soldier, but the gruff, wry tone of his father’s voice.

  It figured. Nothing could mobilize him like one word from Andrew Calder, not even a dressing down by one of Daniel’s captains during his first year in the army. While the incident with the captain taught him not to repeat his mistakes, the tangled strands of love and respect anchoring him to his father motivated him more than simple obedience to a commanding officer.

  All right, old man. Daniel opened his eyes. I’m moving.

  He lowered himself to the floor and belly-crawled to where the floorboards vanished. Inching forward, he tested each splintered board with his weight and craned his neck over the edge. The back wall of the floor below remained intact, though deep zigzagging cracks compromised its stability. A building inspector would likely condemn the whole structure, though that wasn’t his problem.

  His problem was to figure out a way down.

  Directly across from him, the back wall of Ana’s offices was also missing. Three stories up? Far too high to jump. Part of his army and parkour training involved scaling the outside of buildings, but it had been a while since he’d pitted himself against an urban environment.

  Like riding a bike.

  Half a dozen bricks from the wall below plummeted into the churning foam.

  Then again, maybe not.

  Even if he could find a way down, they weren’t going anywhere yet. To wade into the water, to pit pitiful human strength against tsunami waves which could surge ashore for hours?

  Suicidal.

  Chapter 6

  Friday, July 23. 10:48 a.m. Lower Hutt, greater Wellington area, New Zealand.

  * * *

  Daniel slithered away from the edge and retraced his steps to Ana’s office. The reception door swung inward. A series of muffled thuds and Ana’s panicked voice came from behind the reception desk.

  “Come. On. Please.”

  Daniel hurried around the desk to find Ana performing CPR with teeth-gritted determination. Not just a pretty face too squeamish to get her hands dirty, then. Maybe he’d pegged her wrong. He knelt alongside Irene and dug his fingers into the soft, wattled skin below her jaw. No telltale bump of a pulse, so he checked her wrist. Nothing.

  He moved Ana’s hands aside. “Let me take over for a while. You concentrate on getting air into her lungs.”

  “Okay, okay.” Ana shuffled across on her knees to reposition Irene’s chin upward. “She stopped breathing a few seconds after you left. I don’t know if I’ve been doing it right.”

  Her bulging eyes begged him for reassurance.

  “Doing something for her is better than not trying anything at all.” He returned his gaze to his fists, pushing and releasing in a smooth motion.

  Heaviness bore down on his shoulders and slowed his movements. Ana’s receptionist was dead already, or soon would be. Nothing could prevent the inevitable. To live the older woman needed immediate transportation to hospital, and even then her chances of survival remained dicey.

  But Ana didn’t seem ready to face reality.

  When Ana began the next series
of breaths, Daniel surreptitiously hunted for Irene’s pulse.

  Not even a flutter. Damn.

  “I heard a snap earlier. I think I broke a rib. I didn’t mean to hurt her…” Ana’s voice cracked.

  “Ana.” He kept his tone mild, but her gaze leaped to his, wide and a little wired. “She can’t feel pain anymore.”

  He touched the back of her hand and made no move to resume chest compressions.

  Ana jerked away as if his fingertips transmitted an electrical current. “No! Why are you stopping? We can’t give up.”

  He wanted to comfort, to be a buffer to her grief, but sensed his touch would confuse and upset her more. With four younger brothers and a good part of his life spent in the army, his modus operandi in showing support was a back slap or arm punch. Fortunately, his affectionately demonstrative sister saved him from regressing into a stereotypical staunch Kiwi bloke.

  Daniel wanted to touch Ana, but didn’t. He was not her big brother. He was barely more than a stranger.

  “The stairs have collapsed. Help can’t get here and there’s no way for us to get Irene out.”

  “We could…isn’t there some way—there must be something we can do.”

  A strained cough from behind them announced they were no longer alone. Joel leaned against the reception wall, pale-faced and sweaty. Maggie stood at his side, tugging on his uninjured arm to pull him back. She shot Daniel an I tried to stop him look.

  “Honey, I love her, too, but I think we’ve got to let her go.” Joel held his injured arm against the slight mound of his stomach. “Like he says, there’s nothing more we can do for her.”

  Ana turned toward her colleagues, and Daniel’s stomach muscles bunched into knots at the rasp of her breathing. Was she about to completely lose her mind?

  Irene dead. She couldn’t comprehend it.

  In her past life as a defense lawyer, death was no stranger. Detailed reports and crime scene photos came with the job. But she’d never fought back death with her own two hands—and failed so abysmally.

  “All right.” Ana clasped her white-knuckled fingers together. “Joel, you look awful. You should go sit in the conference room. Daniel, Maggie, if you could help him, I’ll see to Irene. She wouldn’t want to be left like this.”

  Daniel stood and slanted a glance at Joel, who nodded and turned away, patting Maggie’s hand.

  “You do what you need to do for her,” Daniel said. “I’ll take care of Joel.”

  Once alone, Ana smoothed Irene’s bob of silver hair into place, folded her spectacles and set them on the desk, and straightened the older woman’s blouse and skirt. For a few precious minutes she knelt in silence. Tears tracked down her face, allowing a sliver of grief to escape.

  Though nothing could relieve the smothering weight of terror for Theo and Alyssa.

  She wished she had a sheet or blanket to cover her friend. The best she could do was drape Irene’s jacket over her face.

  “I’m so sorry.” Ana stood and trudged away from the reception area.

  Edging around glass shards in the hallway, Ana opened the conference room door. Maggie was crouched under the large oval table, fussing with a cluster of water bottles, while Joel grimaced on a chair as Daniel applied a sling to his injured arm.

  She crawled under the table. “Mags? How’re you holding up?”

  “I’m holding.” Her friend twisted off a cap and offered her the bottle. “Daniel says there’s no way for help to get here. The stairs have gone.”

  Ana drank deeply and sighed. “Dammit. We’ll be—”

  The heavy table above quivered, its wide, flat feet shifting on the carpet. Daniel and Joel appeared at the end, with Daniel helping Joel to crawl underneath. Rumbling and blustering, the aftershock rattled more glass from the windows and knocked a watercolor canvas from the wall.

  Ana’s throat constricted as if invisible hands tightened and squeezed. She held on to Maggie’s hand, but this time the tremors tapered off without further damage.

  “First of many aftershocks, I’d imagine,” Maggie said. “Let’s hope the roof doesn’t collapse.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Positive-Thinking.” Joel wriggled into a sitting position next to Ana.

  Ana tapped a finger on the heel of Joel’s shoe. “Can I borrow these?”

  Joel wriggled his foot away. “They’re two hundred dollar Italian leather, sister.”

  “Please, Joel, I need your shoes. We’ve got stuff to do and there’s glass all over the floor.” She wrenched off one of her heels and tossed it beside him, sending him an arched look. “Besides, it was your wife who talked me into these impractical things last week.”

  “All right, all right. Just don’t scratch them.”

  Joel allowed her to pull his shoes off while he settled his jacket closer around his shoulders. Thank goodness a little of his color had returned.

  She slipped the loafers on. A size too big—luckily Joel had teeny-tiny girl feet, as his wife teased him—the shoes would at least offer some protection from broken glass. Something inside her had sparked to life when the aftershock hit, igniting in her a purpose more powerful than fear. A fear which, until now, had left her hamstrung.

  She had to get back to Theo and Alyssa. Nonnegotiable.

  Priority number two was her dad, a fiercely independent widower living alone. Her father and kids were all she had left. They were her heart and her responsibility. But part of her responsibility also lay here. Hunkered under the conference table, Ana mentally prepared a list of things to accomplish before her conscience would allow her to leave.

  “Maggie, could you go through the front offices and get whatever you think we’ll need? Grab Joel’s chocolate stash if you can reach it.”

  “Hey,” protested Joel, “how come you know about my stash?”

  “Everyone knows about your stash,” Maggie said. “Like they know about Ana’s Diet Coke obsession and Sean’s cashew addiction.”

  “Ah. Right,” Ana said. “So grab all that stuff and bring it back in here.”

  “Will do.”

  “Daniel and I will check the staff room.”

  Daniel clambered out from under the table and helped her and Maggie to their feet. Feet sliding a little bit inside Joel’s shoes, Ana followed him along the corridor.

  “My God.” In the doorway she blinked at the dull winter sunshine illuminating the staff room.

  Once they’d have needed fluorescent lights to read the daily newspaper. This morning’s edition had long gone, likely sucked through the back wall’s gaping hole.

  “It’s one thing to be told, but to see it…” She leaned forward to examine more of the damage.

  “Impressive, huh?” Daniel touched her upper arm. “Don’t go any closer.”

  She shook her head, clicking her tongue. “The landlord’ll have kittens when he sees this.”

  “Kittens?”

  “I have a toddler with a well-developed ear for repeating curse words. It’s a habit to watch what I say out loud.”

  “You said a lot more than kittens when the quake hit.” He stepped over broken jars and bottles and opened the fridge door which must’ve swung shut again with the aftershock. “Some camembert, half a packet of salami, apples in the vegetable cooler, stinky cheese, and half a tub of something which looks like pureed vomit—”

  “Hummus, probably.”

  “—and some cans of Diet Coke.”

  “It’s a start. There are cookies in the cupboard and more water under the sink, too.”

  After scooping up two woolen blankets that had fallen from the high wall cabinets, Ana placed them on the staff room table. What else? Flashlight, batteries, radio. Where would Irene have stored them? She looked at the cabinets again and grabbed a chair. Good place to start. Tall people stuck stuff in high places. Easy for giants to reach; not so much for someone who scraped in at five feet three.

  Ana kicked off Joel’s shoes and climbed onto the chair. A large plastic container was on the top shel
f. Bingo. On tiptoes she leaned forward to hook the container toward her.

  Large hands clamped either side of her waist. “What are you doing?”

  Ana peeked under her arm into Daniel’s eyes, his eyebrows drawn together. “I’m getting that container. It could have some spare batteries and—”

  “I can see you’re trying to get the container. Why didn’t you ask me to get it for you?”

  Heat radiated off his palms and her skin tingled where they rested on the thin fabric of her shirt. He stood close—too close—again. Didn’t this guy have any clue about personal boundaries? She’d read once that rural folk kept their distance from strangers, used to wide-open spaces, while urbanites, accustomed to the forced intimacy of city life, were indifferent to strangers invading their personal space.

  So how come a man who lived on a farm crowded her? And why did she, the ultimate urbanite, find herself baffled and irritated by him standing so close? Ana dropped her arms, intending to dislodge his fingers. It didn’t work. A muscle twitched in her thigh.

  Get your hands off me, Farm Boy, so my heart can stop hopping around like a caffeine-infused rabbit.

  “You were busy gathering supplies,” she said, pleased her voice didn’t tremble with the blood pumping erratically past her vocal chords. “I’m quite capable of getting what I want.”

  “What if another aftershock hit while you were balanced on the edge?” He let go of her waist and dragged a hand through his dark hair. It stuck up in tufts and snarls, begging a woman to smooth it.

  She conceded Daniel had a point. Outside help wouldn’t magically arrive if she split her skull open. Ana gripped the chair back and lowered herself to the floor.

  “I didn’t think.” She tugged down her skirt and stepped back into Joel’s loafers.

  Daniel raised a shoulder, the bunched muscles under his shirt pulling the fabric taut for a moment. Nonchalant now he’d gotten his own way. He retrieved the container from the top cabinet and passed it to her. Show-off.