by Nick Courage
The puddles rippled underfoot as Alejo climbed aboard the helicopter, helping Emily up behind him. Breathless from the sprint, he strapped in to his old seat, snapping the buckle shut with this good hand like he’d been doing it his entire life. The cameraman set Elliot down next to him as the woman flipped through the channels on her walkie-talkie, trying to find a frequency strong enough to cut through the noise of the storm. Alejo watched her chew her bright blue fingernails as she paced back and forth across the tiny cabin, the walkie-talkie spitting static in her hand.
“Go time,” the cameraman shouted, scrambling into the front seat next to the waiting pilot. “Everyone else is over and out,” he said, pointing at the fading red taillights of the SUV on the avenue. The pilot nodded and reached for a switch on the ceiling, initiating takeoff. The rotor started spinning, slowly—wobbling as it worked against the wind.
“Wait,” the woman with the walkie-talkie said. “I know this kid.”
The cameraman twisted in his seat, looking back into the cabin.
Emily’s eyes narrowed as she looked from the woman to Elliot and back.
“His parents,” she said. “I think they’re still out there.”
Alejo could feel Emily stiffen next to him.
His parents were her parents, too.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, pulling at her seat belt.
Her fingers fumbled as she unbuckled the clasp that was holding her down. Everything had happened too fast. She’d been so swept up in their own escape—so frightened for her injured brother—that it hadn’t occurred to her to worry about the rest of her family, too. For once, Alejo was thankful that his own mother was so far away, but he couldn’t help thinking about Padrino Nando.
He was out there, too, somewhere.
Alejo hoped he’d made it to safety….
That he wasn’t lost in the storm, like Emily’s parents.
The adrenaline pumping through Alejo’s veins chilled at the thought of it.
“We don’t have time,” the pilot shouted, pulling at the cameraman’s sleeves—trying to stop him as he clambered out of the copilot’s chair and jumped into the storm. The pilot glared—red-faced—in the rearview mirror as the cameraman jogged back into the park, shouting for stragglers. “He gets two minutes,” the pilot announced, brusquely and to no one in particular. A fresh downpour strafed the windshield and he squinted through it, trying to keep track of the cameraman as he disappeared into one tent and then another.
“Two minutes and we’re gone,” he mumbled.
Alejo’s knees bobbed uncontrollably, toes tapping the metal grating beneath his feet as the seconds ticked away. Elliot was half asleep, drooling against his shoulder straps, and Emily looked anxious. Like she was planning to jump out of the helicopter, too. Alejo unbuckled his seat belt, just in case she did. He didn’t want to go out into the storm again, but if it came down to it, he would help her look.
With more eyes, they could find her parents faster.
And when they did, they could leave this place behind.
As Alejo bounced nervously in his seat, the woman squeezed past him and climbed into the cockpit—taking the cameraman’s place in the copilot’s chair. She propped her walkie-talkie on the dashboard as she settled down next to the frowning pilot, speaking softly as she gestured toward the empty field. The storm echoed through the cabin as the rain slashed against the helicopter, so hard that Alejo had to strain to hear her.
“We need more eyes on the ground,” she said. “That’s an order.”
Alejo watched the pilot’s frown deepen in the rearview mirror.
“I don’t care,” the pilot spat.
He looked at the woman like she’d lost her mind.
“I’m not going out there—”
The woman interrupted the pilot, holding a chipped fingernail to her lips as a fuzzy voice broke through the static of her walkie-talkie. “Joy,” the voice said, crackling so loudly that Alejo could hear it without straining. “Finally. It’s the president’s office. She wants a situation report, and you’re the closest to the situation.”
Joy smiled at the pilot.
“It’s the president,” she mouthed.
The pilot shook his head in disbelief but grudgingly opened his door—climbing down from the cockpit onto the trembling grass. Joy leaned out into the rain, calling after him as her contact on the walkie-talkie patched her through to Washington.
“Five minutes,” she shouted. “No more, okay?”
Alejo grinned and turned in his seat, giving Emily and Elliot a thumbs-up with his good hand. The president of the United States had tracked them down to see how they were doing…but nobody else seemed to care. Elliot was still asleep, his skinny legs splayed out across the cabin, and Emily was sitting very still with her backpack on her lap, looking like she was going to puke or cry.
Or both.
But Alejo wasn’t worried, not anymore.
Not with Joy in the cockpit.
* * *
—
Joy scraped the polish from her nails as the helicopter’s windows fogged.
The first wave of the storm was passing overhead, and she was all alone.
All alone…with three bruised kids dripping in the cabin.
She rubbed a hole into the fogged glass and shivered, wishing Rob had found the kids the first time around—before he evacuated, empty-handed, with the rest of the team. Wishing she’d had more of a search party to send in the first place—that the “alpha squad of the NCRC” hadn’t been too sick to help. She was up against the clock, and every step of the way, circumstances had been working against her.
The flu, the exhaustion, and the storm—so far ahead of schedule.
So much bigger than they could have ever predicted.
And now that she had the missing kids, their parents were nowhere to be found.
“Typical,” she muttered, peering into the rain.
There was no question about it; they’d overstayed their welcome—and the storm was only getting worse. But Joy couldn’t leave. Not yet. Five minutes wasn’t long enough to sweep the park. Not even on a clear day. And the tremors were intensifying—imperceptibly at first, but the longer they waited, the more the grass started to buckle and shift. Joy could feel it, rolling beneath their skids. There was always some seismic activity with BDDs—that was simple physics—but before today, Joy never thought a hurricane could ever be strong enough to cause an actual earthquake.
She just didn’t think it was possible.
The president’s office had called to confirm that it was.
Before she’d lost the signal, they’d told her to get out as quickly as possible.
“Godspeed,” they’d said, their voices crackling and fading in the storm.
Joy hadn’t been able to find an active frequency since she’d heard the news.
She chewed on the end of a ragged nail, biting it down to the raw nerves underneath. Every second felt like a lifetime in the tiny helicopter and she didn’t want to leave without the parents. She hated the thought of it, but she wouldn’t have a choice—not if the pilot and the cameraman came back empty-handed, too. “Come on,” Joy said, picking up her walkie-talkie and flipping through the channels.
Praying for an open frequency.
“This is Joy Harrison,” she whispered, not wanting to scare the kids. “Can anyone hear me?”
Static filled her ears and she turned to face the kids as she waited for an answer. The boy with the bloodstained shirt was curled into himself, out cold—his cheek resting heavily against the shoulder strap of his seat belt. The other boy was smiling to himself with his eyes closed, his arm swelling on his lap. Only the girl met Joy’s eyes, her expectant face wreathed in mud. Joy smiled encouragingly.
But there was no reply.
; “I’ll be back in two minutes,” she said, unable to wait any longer.
She bit her lip and opened the door of the cockpit, slapping the side of the helicopter for good luck as she jumped lightly onto the waterlogged lawn.
“I promise, okay?”
The girl nodded, watching Joy jog into the darkness.
Emily didn’t like waiting in the helicopter, and she definitely didn’t like being left alone with Elliot and Alejo—not after everything they’d been through. Not with Elliot so hurt and so helpless. The rain slashed against the thin aluminum hull, hard enough that she could barely hear her own anxious thoughts as they bounced around her head.
Joy looked young, she told herself, but she was with the government.
She knew what she was doing.
Or at least, Emily hoped she did, because there was no way she was going to leave her brother again. Not with the city so dark and the wind screaming through the trees. She swallowed, checking Elliot’s phone for what felt like the hundredth time. There was still no reception, so she wiped another hole in the window’s fog with the palm of her hand and leaned her forehead against the glass.
Keeping her eyes peeled for her parents.
Emily knew she was supposed to stay put, but it felt wrong, not searching for them with everyone else. They were her parents, and she couldn’t stand the thought of them outside in the storm. Looking for her and her brother. The window fogged over again as Emily sighed. A flash of lightning forked through the trees while she wiped it clean, casting the park in a sickly pink light. In the split second after it struck, Emily saw movement out of the corner of her eye.
Elliot’s phone slipped from her fingers, clattering to the grated metal floor.
Momentarily forgotten.
“Look,” Emily said, quietly at first and then again, louder…shaking Alejo by the shoulder. Startled, he clutched his wrist against his chest and then joined her at the window, staring in horror at the black puddles deepening on the lawn. They drowned the clovers and the dandelions in seconds, blanketing the park until there was nothing to see except dark ripples coursing around the helicopter’s skids. Emily watched them flow over the trembling grass, racing toward the sinkhole that was quickly forming on the avenue.
She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.
Emily closed her mouth and tried again.
But she was speechless.
Blinking in disbelief, she watched the widening hole swallow the heavy stone fountain at the front of the park and the green metal statue that topped it. For a moment, she thought she could hear the fountain’s blackened pennies clattering as they fell into the abyss, but it was just the rain. It was coming down much harder now, and the floodwater swelled as it channeled across the field, carrying an abandoned police car in its newfound current. The police car groaned, spinning in slow motion as the houses that lined the park tilted toward the sinkhole, their porches creaking—teetering like dominoes on the verge of collapse.
But not falling.
Not yet.
Emily squinted into the darkness, her hands shaking as she watched the sinkhole spread. The asphalt crumbled like corn bread as it worked its way up the avenue, swallowing sidewalks and streetlights. Time seemed to stretch while thunder rolled overhead, lightning strobing across the nightmarish sky while thin rivulets of white water cascaded into the ragged hole. Alejo and Emily stared at each other, mouths agape, as the rear wheels of the police car tipped beneath the surface of the grass. Its horn blared as it backflipped into the sodden depths, then quieted, muffled by water and distance.
In the ensuing silence, it was easy to believe the worst was over.
But the worst was just beginning.
Forty-five miles beneath the sinking streets, long-dormant tectonic systems had been activated by Valerie’s seismic blasts. Prehistoric sediments shifted along forgotten fault lines, grinding against each other as the megastorm worked its way inevitably inland. By the time the bulk of the storm reached the park, the park would be gone—swallowed whole by an earthquake the likes of which the city had never seen. The helicopter bucked—gently at first, and then harder—as the grass pitched beneath its skids.
Emily hooked her arm through the nylon webbing for support, eyeing the cockpit as the cabin rattled. Even if she knew how to fly it, the dashboard was dark and the keys were missing from the ignition.
Without the pilot, they were trapped.
“We have to go,” she said, her voice catching in her throat. But there was nowhere to go, and even though he was finally awake, Elliot was in no condition to run. Emily’s legs turned to rubber as the helicopter bounced, then spun another half foot toward the sinkhole.
They didn’t have a choice.
“We can’t stay here.”
As if to prove her point, an ancient oak crashed to the ground just inches from the helicopter. Its upper branches exploded through the windshield, showering glass across the cockpit as the cabin filled with leaves and rain and splintered wood. Outside, a woman screamed. Emily’s stomach dropped as she picked herself up from the floor. The scream was so twisted with pain that she wished she hadn’t recognized it—that she didn’t know, instinctively, who it belonged to—but Emily couldn’t help it. The woman’s voice was a version of her own, just older.
And in trouble.
“Mom!” she shouted.
She didn’t want to leave Elliot again—but she couldn’t leave her mother, either. Not now. Not with the park eating everything in its path. Elliot’s lips pursed, like he was trying not to puke, but he looked at his sister and nodded.
Alejo nodded, too, throwing his good arm around her brother’s shoulders.
“Go,” he said. “I’ve got him.”
The helicopter twisted another half foot as Emily flung the door open, her wet hair catching in the wind. She didn’t believe the new kid—not a hundred percent, not with the city caving in beneath their feet—but she didn’t have a choice. “I’ll be back,” she said, jumping to the ground. The earth danced beneath her feet as she sprinted alongside the splintered trunk, toward the sound of her mother crying.
It almost felt like the storm was carrying her through the growing darkness.
Like she was flying.
Emily’s hair whipped against her face as she slid her hand along the fallen tree, tracing its bark down to its massive roots. Splintered branches scraped her legs and floodwater rushed over her shoes, tugging on her laces as it coursed toward the sinkhole. Half blind from the wind and the rain, it was all Emily could do to keep her eyes open as she followed the fading echoes of her mother’s scream.
“Mom!” she shouted, squinting into the storm. “It’s me, Emily!”
She stumbled forward, climbing over the debris—kicking and pushing it out of her way until her bruised shins connected with something soft and warm. Something yielding. Emily shrieked, covering her mouth with her trembling hands as she peered down into the dark water at her feet…and gasped.
It was Joy.
She was on her hands and knees, blood streaming down her cheeks as she dug her chipped blue fingernails into the sludge, clawing herself back to the helicopter through the rising waters. Joy’s pupils dilated as she stared back up at Emily, shaking from the shock. The tree weighed thousands of pounds, and some part of it had clipped her as it fell.
That much was obvious.
Swallowing a sudden nausea, Emily propped herself against the closest limb and pulled Joy to her feet. Joy swayed in the wind, blinking as the rain mixed with the blood in her matted hair. It ran down her arms in rivulets, and Emily tried not to gag as Joy hooked her elbow around her narrow shoulders for support.
It was hard to tell how hurt she was in the rain.
But Joy was lucky.
She was alive.
Beyond the roots of the dying
tree, the park had collapsed in on itself again.
Emily shuddered as she realized how close they were to the precipice of another gaping sinkhole. It was so vast it had claimed an entire grove of ancient trees, and Emily stood, frozen—twenty feet from its crumbling lips—as the last of them smashed and clattered into the darkness. Centuries of growth, gone in an instant. Only the one oak remained, its gnarled branches speared so deeply into the dirt that it was anchored, immune to the pull of the yawning pit.
“We should’ve…,” Joy mumbled, distracted by the leaves swirling in the current at her feet. They were racing inevitably downward, into the fractures and fault lines vibrating beneath the city. “We should’ve been gone by now.”
The sinkhole creaked and groaned in response, swelling with floodwater.
Expanding.
Emily steered Joy farther into the grounded canopy, hiding from the wind as it ripped the outer branches loose. The sinkhole might have felled the tree, but its thick layers of leaves still blocked the rain, muffling the storm as they pressed deeper into the twisted boughs. Slowing the downpour to a drizzle. Emily stopped to catch her breath, wiping her face dry with the back of her hand. Listening. In the strange quiet beneath the shivering leaves, she could hear voices.
They weren’t alone.
“Do you think…” Emily trailed off, pricking her ears. “Do you think you can make it to the helicopter without me?”
“I think so,” Joy said, stepping backward to test her balance. She leaned against the bark to steady herself as Emily hitched her legs over the mossy trunk. “But I can’t just leave you here….”