Natural Disaster (Book 2): Quake

by Lou Cadle

  “I’m ready to get out of here any second.”

  “Hang tight. We need the town water flowing again, as soon as possible. I’m sure the police have things under control.”

  “Do they?”

  “Yes,” Gale said, though he wasn’t certain of that. He didn’t want to be in Flint’s shoes right now.

  Dan had been right — it wasn’t a barge he was seeing but a boat. As it drew nearer, he could see pipes hanging off its sides, muddy water blowing out of them. He realized it must be a dredging boat of some sort. It flew a flag he didn’t know, a red castle on white background.

  As it came close, he could see, a couple hundred yards behind, the actual barges. His pulse sped at the thought that there was food, and water, and shelter and heat for the townspeople who so desperately needed it.

  He looked back at the barriers. For now, the crowd was still behind them, but it seemed larger than the last time he’d looked.

  The dredger passed him, wafting a stronger chemical scent from the river in his direction, and the barge made its way slowly along after. A half dozen khaki-uniformed people stood at the front lip of the barge, under a U.S. flag. As it came closer, he could see it was a double line of small barges connected together somehow, with the tug pushing it set back three or four lengths behind the last barge. Six or eight barges was a lot of supplies.

  Relief flooded him, and a weight seemed to lift from Gale’s chest. He knew he had to leave town. But at least, with these supplies on hand, the town he had worked so hard to help would have a chance at surviving the winter.

  The barge began to slow, dawdling its way up toward the landing site. The heavy equipment operators fired up their engines and pushed at the makeshift dock, moving it slowly out to meet the barge, which slowed more. Gale heard the tug engines reverse as it braked the barges, slowing their momentum. When it was finally stopped, the dock was pushed out until its end kissed the edge of the lead barge.

  Gale went, accompanied by an assistant chief of police, Dan, and Oralee, to the end of the dock. He stepped onto it where it floated in the murky river. As he moved cautiously forward, the thing bounced beneath him. He offered his arm to Oralee. “I’m fine,” she said.

  “I’m not,” he admitted, and she shot him a tense smile.

  At the end of the dock, awful water sloshed up and over his shoes. The shoes would have to be not just tossed out, but thrown into a toxic waste dump. Many hands reached down to offer him help up a ladder. He, then the other two, were hauled up onto the barge’s metal deck. Despite the choking chemical smell of the river below, Gale smiled at the sight of the tarp-wrapped wooden boxes. The tarps could be used as ground cover. The pallets and boxes would heat food. Here was, if not salvation, relief for thousands.

  A uniformed fellow stepped forward and saluted. The assistant police chief returned the salute, but Gale settled for a nod.

  “Major Callahan,” the army fellow said.

  “Thanks for coming.”

  “So how do you want to — “ the Major stopped, looked over Gale’s shoulder and said, “Shit, not again.”

  Gale turned to see the crowd had surged over the barrier. As he stared in horror, the leaders picked up steam and came barreling down the road toward the dock. A person in front fell and got trampled.

  “Get that dock out of here,” said the major, at the same time signaling someone else behind him.

  A woman officer said into a handheld radio, “Move ‘em forward.”

  Gale yelled at the workmen on the shore to push the dock out of the way, sink it if they needed to, but they couldn’t hear him over the noise of yelling people and the tug’s revving engine. He pointed and gestured wildly. But by that point, the crowd was nearly to the end of the dock.

  People ran out on the dock. Gunfire started, whether from the police or the citizens themselves, impossible to say. The crowd spilled out from the dock, and several people were pushed into the water.

  Gale could finally feel the barge start to move, and as it slowly picked up speed, it scraped against the end of the dock. The far section of dock got torn away from the rest, sending more people tumbling into the polluted river. A few had made it to the barge, and without hesitation, army officers peeled their hands off and dumped them into the river.

  Gale was yelling for everyone to calm down, but he may as well have been a songbird singing in the middle of a war zone. It is a war zone, he realized, as he heard more weapons fire. Feeling helpless to do anything but watch this craziness, he glanced to Oralee. “You see Flint?” she said, her voice high with strain. Beyond her, the assistant police chief had a weapon drawn.

  “I can’t see anything that makes sense,” Gale said, and then something big hit his leg like a battering ram. He spun, lost his balance, and found himself falling from the barge, scraping his back along its metal sides before he hit the water with a muddy splat.

  As he sunk, he closed his eyes and lips tight, trying to keep the poisonous river out. Would the tug push the barge right over him? His last thought was of Bash, and then something hit him in the head and it was all he knew for a long while.

  Gale woke on a hard bed. His eyes were wet. Something was dripping in them. He blinked to clear them and saw Bash leaning over him, drawing back a small squirt bottle. The chemical smell of the river was still everywhere. Gale was naked under a sheet. And it was painfully noisy.

  Bash leaned close, yelling into his ear. “You’re on an evac chopper. We’re about to lift off.”

  “What?” He had a hundred questions.

  The noise increased and Bash leaned back, shaking his head and pointing to his ears. He mouthed “you’re going to be fine.”

  Gale reached out, and Bash took his hand.

  Then Gale closed his eyes again, hanging on to his husband. He felt the helicopter lifting, turning, and picking up speed.

  Epilogue

  In their rented efficiency apartment in Long Beach, on Christmas Eve, Bash sat in a chair pulled up to Gale’s bed and read aloud from the snail-mail letter from Dan.

  “There’s a cold, hard frost this morning in southern Missouri, with freezing rain predicted for later.

  “Even more people have left town in the past two months since you got out. At least no one is still living in a tent city. Where deaths are verified and homes of the dead still standing, we’ve decided to let the homeless squat there for the time being. Stand-alone propane heaters and canned propane, brought in by barge, have been distributed, and there’s just enough water being pumped out to houses, so most people will survive the winter, barring another big quake or a major epidemic. Fewer than 8,000 people remain, and if there is another 8.0 quake next year — and you told us there could easily be — this once healthy community will, very likely, turn into a ghost town.

  “The only way this all works is with much tighter martial law, and after the barge riot, Flint let it be known that a day of punishment for so much as a fistfight is guaranteed. He’s kept the promise. There are no trials, just prison, in the dank, smelly jail downtown. No one-day prisoner is even fed. The long-term prisoners, including looters, the barge rioters, and our one post-quake murderer get one meal a day, 600 calories. They’ve grown too weak to complain, much less riot. The crazy preacher who instigated the attack on Bash is there, too weak any longer to preach hellfire, much to the relief of the other prisoners, I don’t doubt.

  “I have mixed feelings about all this, as you can imagine. We’ll probably get sued a year or two down the road.

  “There’s not going to be much celebration in town this Christmas. There are no presents to buy, no roast turkeys coming in, and no electricity to run blinking lights. There’s a bit of loud preaching planned at a couple churches in town and some more decorous candlelight services at others, including a lay mass at the Catholic church, where I’ll take my family. Attendance will be sparse, though. Many have lost their faith.

  “The hospital and EOC are still functioning, and often a thought is
spared there for the two men whose quick work helped mitigate the disaster’s effects. I’m sorry to end on a sad note, but Angela and her husband are still listed as missing. There’s no hint of what happened to them.

  “I wish you both the best of New Years and hope you’re on the mend.”

  “Thank you,” said Gale, from the bed. “Have you heard from McKenna again?”

  “I’m sure she’ll text me tomorrow,” said Bash, folding the letter. He was happy the girl was out, reunited with her mother, and safe. Haruka had make it back to Japan the second week of December.

  “Nothing in the mail on my disability judgment?” asked Gale.

  “Not yet.” Bash’s insurance had finally started paying a few of the bills, but with both of them unemployed until now, they were worried about money. If the stock market ever recovered, they could pay the debts off, but if they tried that now, they’d lose everything they’d worked years to save. With unemployment and food stamps, they were barely covering their basic needs. Bash said, “I hate to leave you to go back to work.”

  “I’ll miss you. But I’ll be fine.”

  “And you’ll do your PT.”

  “Three times a day, I promise. I want to get back to work, too.” The experience had made Gale even more determined to help other communities prepare for disaster. He was thinking about consultant work, but based in a more progressive city where they’ll both be happier and safer outside of work.

  “I’m going to make some mint tea — you want some?”

  “Sure. Thanks, love.”

  Bash kissed him and left the bedroom.

  They’re warm and dry and fed, he thought, as he put water on for the tea. They were eating fresh food every day, and he wasn’t taking that for granted. They didn’t have much in the way of things, not money, nor furniture, nor clothes, nor treasured mementos lost in the house fire, but they had each other, and they loved each other more than ever. He missed the old things, he still mourned them from time to time, but he knew he was a lucky man. He had what really counts.

  The End

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  Thank for reading!

  Thank you to my proofreaders, Liz and Peg.

  Please take a moment after reading this to look up information about how to be prepared for likely natural disasters in your area.

  Keep reading for the opening to my post-apocalyptic novel series, Gray.

  Gray

  Lou Cadle

  Chapter 1

  The midmorning sun lit her way as Coral pulled in near the cave’s entrance. She parked, climbed out of the cab of the motor home, and looked around the small clearing. An evergreen forest stretched down the slope ahead of her and back up to the distant mountain ridges. The woods were eerily still, not a bird singing or insect buzzing.

  She shook off a vague sense of unease as she walked over a pad of fallen pine needles to the cave’s entrance. She could see inside to curved walls marked by horizontal striations, carved patterns of water cutting through the rock in centuries past. Beyond the first few feet, the darkness of the cave beckoned.

  Returning to her brother’s aging 20-foot motor home, which he kept for hunting getaways and had reluctantly let her borrow for this trip, Coral found a flashlight in the glove box, shoving it into the daypack she always kept ready on the passenger seat for spontaneous hikes. Hauling the pack with her, she crawled back between the bucket seats to the living area. In the propane-powered mini refrigerator were two one-liter bottles of cold water. She made sure the cap of one was tight and tossed it in the pack, then, thinking better of it, grabbed the other, too. From the closet, she pulled her gray sweatshirt off a hook and tied it around her waist.

  She had nowhere to be and no one to report to until July 1, when her summer job started. Over the past ten days, she had lost track of days and calendar dates, a loss she found made her nearly giddy with relief after the past year of a rigid and packed freshman schedule at the University of Michigan. She was pre-med, and the classes were tough. This month was her well-deserved reward for a freshman year spent working while most of her friends had spent theirs partying.

  At the cave’s low entrance she stooped to peer inside. The floor was flattened by time and wear. She hesitated. She wasn’t afraid of the dark, or of small spaces. And the website had said it was a safe beginner’s cave, right? But caving alone, she knew, was a risk. Maybe she should leave a note on the windshield of the motor home, with the date and time she went in.

  Then something—not a sound, but some other sense—made her look up into the sky.

  A dense black cloud was boiling up in the southeastern sky. It rose high and fast, like a time-lapse movie of the birth of a thunderhead. But it was no rain cloud. Deadly black, it reached up and loomed over her, blocking out the sun.

  What the—? She stood and gaped. The menacing cloud was nothing like any Coral had ever seen before. Nothing natural. Four mule deer crashed through the clearing, running to the west. They disappeared, and Coral stood alone again, staring at the coming blackness.

  She had no idea what it was. It looked like some Renaissance vision of the world’s end. It looked like death itself coming, silent and swift. And damned fast, she realized. Coral’s shock turned to fear. Logical thought fled. She stooped and dove into the cave’s maw.

  The sky outside went dark. Blackness covered all the world around her. A hissing wind whipped through the clearing, whistling at the cave entrance.

  She dropped to the ground, covering her head with her arms. Her bare arms were stung by tiny pricks as pebbles rained down outside and bounced inside. Coral scrambled away from the barrage and farther back into the cave, scuttling like a beetle. She escaped the rain of rocks and curled into a tight ball, her eyes shut, hoping desperately she was having a bad dream.

  Her panic may have lasted only a minute. It might have been as long as ten. When she forced herself to raise her head and look around, the world to her right was a bit lighter than to her left. The cave’s entrance was barely visible.

  Groping to the sides, she touched a rock wall, rough and cool to her fingertips. That reassured her. Anything solid—anything normal—was reassuring. The outside world had just gone crazy, or maybe she had just gone crazy, but rock walls in a cave were a comforting link to the real world.

  She dug out her flashlight, flipped the switch, and a thin beam of LED light came out, enough to illuminate the ground before her feet, to see the sloping ceiling. She crept toward the entrance, shining the beam outside. The flashlight beam reflected back at her, like headlights bouncing off fog.

  Black, menacing fog.

  What was going on out there? A memory pushed its way forward—a television show on Mt. St. Helens erupting in 1980, clouds of ash, a downwind town turned to twilight at midday.

  Was that what this cloud was? A volcano had erupted to the southeast? Something dark and solid was falling in the sky—hanging there and falling both. Not rain. Not hail. So ash?

  But the Cascades, the only collection of volcanoes in the lower forty-eight states, were far to her west. What, then, was this black cloud that had come from the southeast? Yellowstone was due east of her, so it couldn’t be that. Her mental map of the country didn’t have any volcanoes in the right direction. But couldn’t new volcanoes pop up? Maybe, but she didn’t think they popped up like this. Not in an instant, without warning, and not this vast.

  …to keep reading, click here

  Also by Lou Cadle

  Gray, a post-apocalyptic series

  Gray, Part I

  Gray, Part II

  Gray, Part III

  Stand-alone natural disaster novels:

  Erupt

  Quake

  Storm

  Dawn of Mammals:

  Saber Tooth

  Terror Crane

  Hell Pig

  (and more coming)

  Again, if you’d like to know about new releases, sign up for my mailin
g list at www.loucadle.com, and I’ll give you a link to a free short story as a thank you!