Desolation

by M. L. Banner

  Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were appearing in his hometown and he and his high school buddies had tickets. He played their music every day until the day of the concert. On that day, Bill was jumping on a trampoline when his favorite song came over the loud speakers outside. Then he jumped wrong and tumbled through the air. Like today, he remembered then Tom bellowing out the chorus, “Yeah, I’m free… free fallin’—” and then he hit hard.

  His feet crashed into the kitchen’s island first, jack-knifing his shoulder and arm into the Saltillo tile, which was already cracked from the earthquake. Thud-crack! His right arm absorbed most of the impact with a noise loud enough that everyone heard it.

  Lisa ran to him and knelt. “Bill! Oh my God, are you all right?”

  Bill was cradling his arm, afraid to see how bad it was. “Holy crap, was that just an earthquake?

  “Si, Señor Bill, but dat was da worst I feel before,” Miguel said, hugging his wife and child.

  There was yelling outside, and a couple of gun shots. Bill recognized the distinctive sound of an AK-47.

  “We don’t have time, let’s get out of here.” Bill leapt to his feet and jogged, holding his right arm close to his chest. It throbbed pain with each breath. With his good arm he reached into the top shelf of Max’s bookshelf, finding the latch after searching a bit. Then, he found the other one on the last shelf; the bookcase clanked and slid open slightly.

  “Señor King, this is Danny Diablo Diaz.” A loud voice, just outside the broken glass of their patio door, startled them.

  Bill swung the bookshelf door open completely. Reaching into his shirt, he grasped Max’s key and lanyard, pulling it out and over his head. Smoothly he fed it into the steel door behind the bookshelf. Miguel and Maria were mesmerized, having been to his house before. They had no idea this doorway was here.

  “Come out and surrender Señor Thompson’s house, and we will let you live. You have my word on it.”

  They slipped through the opening, first closing the bookcase behind them and then the steel door, engaging both locks. Two sounds welcomed them: the weak hum of the flickering fluorescents, and the characteristic sound of a pistol’s slide engaging a round. All heads spun around to see an outline of someone in the dark, walking towards them, pistol pointed in their direction. Everyone held their breath, not saying a word.

  “Dad? Mom? Is that you?”

  “Sally!” Bill and Lisa screamed in unison, not with fear but relief.

  A muffled voice outside made more unintelligible demands.

  The lights flickered off and back on again.

  “I think the batteries are running down, since we haven’t been able to reconnect to the solar panels yet. We’re going to lose power soon enough,” Sally stated, very matter-of-fact.

  “But how do we get out of here before Clyde or those other men burn this house down?” Lisa was frantic, her words squeaky.

  Bill was about to answer, but Sally beat him to it. “I actually know the answer to that one. Follow me.”

  39.

  Earthquake!

  Laramie, Wyoming

  Gene Larimore’s building wobbled so violently, he was afraid that he would be shaken off like a cowboy tossed by a prized Brahma. He let go of the BAR and made his body wide, palms and feet pushing against the roof’s undulating surface to maintain balance. A fissure ripped opened behind him, shooting thick dust plumes, like volcanic ash, into the air. The earth tore at the building’s foundation widening the chasm. Then like gunfire, the fissure burst to the middle edge of the building. Its enormous energy pulverized everything in its path, and exploded outward, breaking free from the building’s brickwork. A deafening rockslide of bricks, released from their previous occupation of holding up the roof, rained onto the street. Gene’s portion of the roof dislodged itself and pitched violently toward 1st Street and the invaders. Before he realized what was happening he was body surfing off the roof, head first. Even though he was below the lip of the building’s tall parapet, with the severe pitch of the roof, he could plainly see the street. All at once, he felt he was falling as his corner of the roof gave way. Gene landed in a heap on his back, looking up, caught in a dream about falling bricks and clouds of dust. Unable to move, he closed his eyes, surprised that he felt nothing and saw only blackness.

  When Sue’s perch started to crumble, she threw herself backward. Repeatedly she scrambled to her feet and tried to run, and repeatedly she was flung down. She rolled toward the middle of the roof and the only exit. Fear and adrenalin propelled her, as the world rolled past her eyes like a live version of that antique child’s toy that flipped rapidly between two pictures: roof – sky – roof – sky – roof. When she reached the roof’s opening, she felt the whole building give way, as if it had been pushed over a cliff’s edge. She and the building were floating in the air. She watched in horror, facing the roof, as the space between her and the roof grew from inches to feet. A moment later they landed and there was no more rumble. She hadn’t blacked out, even for a moment. The roof was mostly intact, and surprisingly, it would appear, she was too.

  ~~~

  Frank Patton and Jeff Rohrbach, clutching his French horn, were plunging into space, almost making it down the church tower when the earthquake hit. The force of the first jolt was like a severe car accident, jarring both of them loose and sending them careening down ten feet to the ground. Frank hit first, and Jeff landed on top of him, his treasured horn immediately after. Frank pushed him off and they both attempted to scuttle for cover, but were unable to even get up on all fours. First some plaster, then large chunks of the ceiling and walls. Frank scrambled to the side, away from the first chunk of ceiling. “Move this way!” The clamor around and beneath them drowned out his words. The next chunk struck right between them. Part of the debris hit his leg, but a larger piece smashed into Jeff’s head.

  Jeff lay flat on his back, still with the death-grip on his French horn, unconscious or maybe even dead. Frank checked his status as best he could. His own leg cried out for attention while the rumbling continued unabated and more debris fell. He grabbed Jeff’s shirt collar and tugged, then started the difficult process of inching away. Hard enough if it were just him, but pulling this dead weight …

  If he’d had the time, he would have laughed and enjoyed the irony of this whole situation. Some years back, he had been persuaded to join in some silly three-legged race for some damned stupid community summer event to raise money for this church, to fix the very tower about to collapse on top of them. And who did he draw for his partner but Jeff Rohrbach. Great, I’m paired with some liberal asshole musician who hasn’t been out to see the light of day, much less done anything resembling exercise. His suspicion was correct. Rohrbach was worthless at this event and Frank had had to carry the pudgy, pasty-faced man the whole time. Now, he was doing it all again to keep Jeff from dying. Worse yet, he actually liked the man, after getting to know him with all their lookout duties. It was Rohrbach who came up with the Paul Revere routine, volunteering to put himself in harm’s way. Frank was ex-military; he was made for these things, not Rohrbach. Yet, it was Rohrbach who volunteered. Frank was not going to let him die, not if he could help it.

  Frank tugged again and gained the side wall of the tower, when he heard a giant cracking sound like some hundred-foot giant had snapped the structure in half with his bare hands. Knowing what came next would not be good, he righted himself and grabbed Jeff around both wrists, that damned horn still locked into his grip, and pulled as hard and fast as he could toward the door.

  The church’s tower, already devastated by gunfire and cracked in half by the earthquake, started its hundred-foot descent. When that hit the ground, much of the rest of the church collapsed in on itself, killing everyone who had sought protection inside its holy walls.

  ~~~

  Sue Larimore looked up and was shocked to realize she was almost at street level and in plain view of the army of men who were less than a block away. They picked th
emselves and their weapons up off the street, unsettled but not dissuaded by the first earthquake to hit Laramie in more than one hundred years. One of the intruders caught a glimpse of Sue and yelled, “Two o’clock. Female.” He raised his automatic rifle and fired. Sue had already bolted toward the back of what had been the building, now an uneven pile of bricks carpeted in white and gray-red debris. She slipped just out of the rifle’s aim, narrowly escaping death for the second time in a few short minutes, wondering if her husband had been as lucky.

  ~~~

  Carrington forced himself up off the tangled clutter that had been the roof when he noticed that the back half of the building, including the stairwell he had just ascended, was completely gone. More importantly, the cables connecting to the stored energy in the capacitors were severed. The Zeus weapon, the corner of the building it had been resting on, and Fred Fisher were all gone. “Fred, are you alive?” Carrington called out as he ran to the edge of the sea of bricks and debris. The weapon was partially sticking out of one of the piles, shattered beyond repair. Beside it, one cream-colored penny loafer still held Fred’s severed foot, the bright teal sock soaked in crimson.

  Carrington sat down in a heap, all his energy spent, consumed by a feeling that their hope of their survival was falling away.

  40.

  Collect Call

  Fossil Ridge, Illinois

  The whole world around them rolled and growled as the earth below let out a long rumble, one that had been building up under the New Madrid fault line since 1811. The last CMEs awoke this terror, which shook off its long sleep with apparent sadistic delight.

  Paul Agabus Fairhaven, or simply the Teacher, had put in a call to God through his prayers. Often, he heard no response. No feelings, no visions, no signs, no evidence of direct replies. Today, right now, God answered.

  Paul felt the ground lift him up and drop him down, and then toss his body from side to side, like a discarded bag of trash rattling around inside a partially empty garbage truck. The wood Tudor house he had taken for his own creaked loudly, as if it were being ripped to pieces from foundation to roof. Dust kicked up from its haunches, and torn lath and old paint rained down on him from above. Glass from windows, doors, and mirrors was smashed, tossing shards everywhere, including onto him. Yet, he didn’t move. God was talking to him, knocking him about to get his attention.

  A vivid memory once more filled his head, an epoch for him that changed his life’s course. His mother was staying with Grandma in another state and she had left him her number, for emergencies, with a warning to call collect, to reverse the charges. Paul hated his step-father, whose drinking and abuse had grown with each passing day of separation from his mother. One day, he had forgotten to call her collect and talked to her for a long time begging her to come back soon. When his step-father arrived from the bar and found out his call wasn’t collect, he went crazy. Paul never learned whether the source of the rage was the cost of the call or the depth of jealousy. Regardless, his father had beaten him worse than God was beating him now.

  And for Paul, God always accepted the charges.

  ~~~

  Wright Ranch, Illinois

  Unable to hold onto his rifle, John Parkington let it go and turned onto his back to take in the sun once more. His body started to shake. He heard rumbling sounds all around him. Who knew death was so loud? So active? His foggy eyes squinted, trying to focus on the wind turbine that seemed to be signaling him.

  “J O H N D E A-”

  The tower holding Buck and the wind turbine, firmly mounted to the rocky base of the ridge overlooking the Wrights’ ranch, started to move. It creaked and groaned, and then its metal supports weakened further to an over-powering force. The tower pitched back and then forward fiercely. Pushed to their limits, the metal supports let go, releasing the tower, turbine, and its one occupant down to the earth, where it crashed into a bramble of disconnected pieces, like discarded dinosaur bones. Even dinosaurs had their weaknesses.

  John knew what this meant, feeling sadness for his new friend’s loss , but he also felt bathed in peace, his own pain now gone along with his fear. He prayed his son would fare well and that his wife and his friends would also. He closed his eyes and welcomed the everlasting light he knew would come.

  ~~~

  “Buck!” Wilber screamed as he watched, unable even to stand while the earth shook below him. The tower Buck was on crashed to the ground. This was too much to bear. It was his fault. He shouldn’t have put Buck there, thinking it was the safest place on the whole property. He looked over to Olivia to see if she had seen, and confirmed his nightmare. Her face was buried in her hands; she was sobbing.

  “These bastards took my boy away,” he yelled only to himself, since no one could hear anything above the earth’s roar. He tried to hoist himself unsuccessfully over the rock wall his grandfather had built. He and its stones were thrown as if they were paper.

  Then it stopped, just as quickly as it had started.

  Driven by anger and sadness, Wilber scrambled over the wall and ran down the hill, firing one shot after another, screaming a primal scream, which terrified the survivors below. Upon seeing this madman running, screaming at them, the remainder of God’s Army turned and ran back the way they had come. Running, shooting anything that moved, now in the grip of blood-lust, he ran through the wall of fire that still raged, created by him, not feeling the sting of its fiery fingers.

  One by one he picked off his enemies, first running after them and then running away from his anguish. But anguish caught up with him. He stopped amongst the carnage he had caused and collapsed, sobbing inconsolably, curled up, his head pressed into the ground.

  ~~~

  Darla rocked back and forth cradling her brother’s body, unaware of the shaking violence just belched from the depths. She was in her own hell.

  Joselin dutifully knelt beside her friend, resting her hand on her shoulder, unable to imagine anything else she could do. A noise from the trees alerted her and she brought up her weapon, ready to dispatch anyone else who threatened her friend.

  It was a young man, holding his hands in the air, approaching with a curious look of wonder, almost awe.

  “Darla?” he asked. “Is that you, Darla?”

  Darla continued to rock back and forth; her body and Danny’s were like one.

  The man walked up to them, stopped to look down and waited, and then asked again. “Darla, is that…” he trailed off, his voice cracking.

  She stopped rocking. Slowly she lifted her head, her face a muddled mess of blood, dirt, and tears. She looked at Steve, knowing it was him before she set her eyes upon him, and plaintively held out one shuddering arm.

  Steve fell alongside them, enveloping them in his arms and his own tears of sorrow and joy.

  Thompson Journal Entry

  Continued…

  The Passageway

  When I built my beach warehouse, I knew I would need to have some way of connecting the two places. So, I built a passageway–many thought we had bad plumbing problems because of the size of the excavation of earth–that runs underground. Besides the ability to go from one to the other unseen, the passageway offers you safety and security. And if all else fails, you can use it as a means of escape.

  You’ll find a button on the north wall behind the bookshelf that is much like the entrance bookshelf; it’s a false door. Be sure to close it behind you so that your whereabouts are not known to anyone who may enter. This passageway takes you into what would be the kitchen pantry of the beach warehouse.

  41.

  An Opening

  Rocky Point, Mexico

  “What’s happening out there?” Sally asked frantically, and then noticed her father’s arm was swollen and purplish. “Oh crap, what’s wrong with your arm?”

  “I broke it falling off the roof,” he said holding it carefully, “but that’s not important. How do you know about the passageway?” Bill moved them toward the workshop.

 
; “Well, ah…” She looked at the Fernandez family, her face tensing up some more.

  “They’re Max’s friends: Miguel, Maria, and Ana.” Bill walked with her through the workshop, its lights flickering, illuminating the room weakly, barely holding back the darkness. “Go ahead. You were telling me how you knew about the passageway?”

  “Oh, right. It’s in the journal. You know, the leather-bound book Max left us?”

  Bill knit his brows in puzzlement. “How would Max’s grandfather know about this passageway?”

  “Really, Dad?” Sally scowled at him, eyebrows raised in exaggeration. “Lame question. First, it’s great-grandfather, and of course he wouldn’t know about this, unless he was also a fortune teller. Max started writing in the journal about fifteen years ago, just a little bit at first and then a lot more recently.” She thought a moment. “I guess as sort of an instruction book for us.”

  Maria said something in Spanish to Miguel, who cleared his throat and glanced between Bill and Sally. “Sorry, but shouldn’t we go now?”