by Ellis, Tara
He noticed his dad was holding the Garmin in his free hand, while the other held the strap of the bugout backpack slung over his thin shoulder. The connection to his mom felt like their only lifeline to the rest of the world and it had gone dead not long after the hot, dusty winds started. “Is it working?” Tyler was desperate for more information.
“No.” Bill glanced back at him. “It probably won’t for a while, but we’ll keep trying.” He hesitated and missed a step. “Your mom will be coming for us.”
It sounded so dramatic and like a line out of a thriller movie, that Tyler didn’t know how to respond. Was it his turn to say something brave? Because he really just wanted to curl into a ball in a corner somewhere and wish it all away. Instead, he forced a half-smile at his father and bobbed his head slightly in a show of solidarity.
As they reached the slanted, dual metal doors to the ancient root cellar in the backyard, Bill stopped with his hand resting on one of the handles. Tyler’s mom relayed earlier how the radar showed the pyroclastic flow dissipating as it hit the southern end of their thousand-mile-long island. Since they were at the extreme north of Madagascar, and there were steep mountains around them, she’d been confident they would be protected enough inside the house. However, she’d been adamant about what she was calling a methane cloud being potentially deadly.
Though Tyler wasn’t eager to go down inside the dark, dank underground room, his father suffered from extreme claustrophobia. While Tyler had never actually explored the cellar, he figured it was pretty much a claustrophobic’s worst nightmare. The next few hours were not going to be fun.
“Do we really have to go in there?” Tyler asked. He coughed once to clear his throat, and then pulled the dust mask back up over his nose and mouth. While there wasn’t much ash floating around in the wind, even the short walk from the house was enough to cause irritation. “Maybe we’d be better off in the house instead of this old cellar, Dad. I still don’t get how this other gas could be worse. Won’t it slow down once it reaches the island, like the pyroclastic thing did?”
Bill finally hauled the door open, letting it clatter against the ground. Rubbing his hands together as he turned around, Tyler was once again thrown off by his father’s demeanor. “Your mom made some changes down there last week, so it isn’t so bad. And this was built originally as a fallout shelter by a French Colonel who lived here during their reign in the mid-1900’s. It can be made airtight by shutting down the scrubbers, which is what we’ll need to do with the methane, even if just a little of it spreads this far. It doesn’t take very much of it to displace the oxygen. Don’t worry, we’ll have at least twelve hours of air with the two of us down there.”
“Twelve hours of air?” Tyler echoed. “Twelve hours until what? Until we suffocate? What if the methane isn’t gone by then, and how are we even gonna know?”
Bill frowned as he tried to decide what question to answer first, but Tyler didn’t give him a chance. “And why was Mom messing around with this thing!” he yelled accusingly, gesturing to the cement steps descending underground. “I’m done, Dad. I’m so over all of the secret spy stuff and you guys acting like I’m a total moron who can’t tell that you already knew this was going to happen! If Mom got wind of this last week, why are we still here? How come she didn’t warn people? Mikael and everyone else on this island could die!” Tyler started backing away from the opening as he spoke, his breathing becoming rapid and his chest tightening. He knew he was panicking, but it was too late. He’d unleashed his emotions and there was no reining them back in. Tyler could hear his heart hammering in his ears and his mouth filled with the taste of copper as he looked around wildly for a place to run. All he knew was he had to get away. Away from the insanity, his dad, and the fear.
“Tyler!” Bill grabbed at his son and missed when Tyler backed away. Thrown off-balance by the heavy pack on his shoulder, he stumbled sideways and fell to his knees. “Tyler, please! You need to listen to me, son. You have to trust me. You know you can trust me and your mom.”
Tyler blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision so he could see his dad more clearly through the hazy air. His familiar voice was soothing and Tyler focused on it, trying hard to form a cohesive thought. Why was it so hard?
Bill slowly pushed himself back to his feet and approached Tyler as if he were a scared animal about to flee. His blue eyes kept darting back and forth between Tyler’s face and the dark sky. “We have to get inside now,” he begged, pointing behind them at the gaping cellar door. “We’ll be safe in there.”
Tyler shook his head to clear it and sucked in humid air through the dust mask. Being safe wasn’t enough. “How did she know, dad?”
Bill sighed audibly and shoved the Garmin in a back pocket of his jeans, but kept his hand over it for a moment, like he was afraid to break the connection with his wife. “Of course, your mom didn’t know this was going to happen! She’d been given some confidential information which implied a possible seismic or volcanic event somewhere on the horizon. But not this soon, or this size.” Bill brought his hand to his face and rubbed at his eyes before holding it out to Tyler. “I promise to tell you everything I know. Please, son,” he urged.
Tyler stared at his father’s offered hand, and only the protection it had provided to him over the years broke through his paralysis. He focused on that symbol of comfort and found he was able to make his feet move. Together, they descended into the darkness.
Chapter 12
JASON
Seattle, Washington
Jason served as a medic in Iraq before moving to Seattle to work at one of the top trauma centers in the Pacific Northwest. He was familiar with death. He’d seen things that would forever haunt his dreams. Still, none of it prepared him for the twisted aftermath he found himself thrust into.
“Marty!” Jason was hoarse from yelling over and over again for the dog while stumbling, dazed, around the vicinity of his collapsed apartment complex. He’d lost track of time. While it felt like an eternity since the initial earthquake, he figured in reality it was less than an hour.
He had to find Marty.
Avoiding the mangled corpse of his next-door neighbor he’d already encountered on his first circle around the property, Jason ventured out onto what was left of the street. Cars that had been neatly parallel parked were strewn about like Legos, with power poles and scattered trees laying across them at various angles. He was careful to avoid the electrical cables, even though they weren’t sparking. Dark smoke was rising in columns from several nearby buildings, so he wasn’t going to assume all of the power was out.
His cell phone was sitting on the kitchen counter when it all began, not that it would have been much use. Even if the 4G was still working, he knew the lines would be overwhelmed with calls. He didn’t need Google to tell him a major earthquake had struck downtown Seattle.
“Help!” a man shouted, though his voice was muted and impossible to locate right away.
Guilt racked him as Jason stood, torn between answering the call or continuing his own search.
“Help me, please! Is anyone there?”
Turning to his right, Jason spotted a blue pickup truck with someone moving in the driver’s seat. The back portion of the dual cab was crushed by a tree. While the front end was relatively unharmed, both front doors were pinned by other cars pushed up against them.
Other, more distant screams were constant and had already become a sort of backdrop melody to the horrific scene playing out around Jason. Moans and sobbing from close-by were mixed in when the growls from the earth subsided enough so he could hear them. The after-shocks were relentless, forcing him to drop to his knees and cover his head every ten to fifteen minutes. His body throbbed from the on-going assaults and he knew he’d be discovering injuries later on, once the adrenaline wore off.
“I got you, man,” Jason barked once he reached the truck. It was hard to tell exactly how old the guy was due to the bloody mask he wore, but he couldn’
t be more than forty. “Let’s get you out.”
Rounding the front of the vehicle, Jason discovered it was the only feasible entry and exit point. With the back crushed, and both sides pinned between other cars, he was forced to climb onto the hood and examine the windshield.
“Not me,” the man shouted angrily while waving Jason off. “My son is in the backseat. Help him, first.”
Jason froze. He swallowed and then wiped at his forehead while squatting on the truck like a six-foot-one hood ornament. Trying not to focus on the space behind the driver, he instead reached out and grabbed at a spot on the passenger side where the glass was already missing, and began to peel the laminated safety glass back.
“Did you hear me?” the stricken father screamed, spitting blood on the windshield that still remained.
The truck heaved under Jason and he dropped down as the world vibrated around them. The metal was hot against his stomach and he closed his eyes, willing the trees and buildings left standing not to choose that moment to fall and crush him like the child in the backseat.
It was a short aftershock in comparison to the others. Jason let out his pent-up breath as the rattling and creaking faded back to its new baseline.
“Hurry!” Jason urged, reaching a hand inside the truck through the hole he’d created. When the man simply stared at him without moving, Jason recognized that he was in shock and tried a different tactic. “Come with me, and then together we’ll get your son. I can’t do it by myself.”
It took several minutes of pulling and encouragement, but Jason managed to drag the guy out onto the hood. Once there, his demeanor changed again. Whether due to the shock, grief, head injury, or perhaps a combination of everything, he became combative.
Jason was shoved backwards. Unprepared, he landed in a painful heap on the road. Fortunately, he happened to pick a clean spot to fall so he was spared any new notable injury. Though in his final year to be a trauma physician, Jason’s military training would always be a part of who he was. It automatically took over then, as he moved to an upright position and into a defensive stance, ready to fend off a direct attack.
It was an attack that would never come. The other man had already turned away and was attempting to climb on top of the destroyed portion of the truck. “Ryan!” He was straddling the trunk, half of it embedded in the warped metal. His hands left bloody, smeared palm prints on the wood, cut from pulling futilely at random pieces of the frame.
“Come with me.” Jason moved cautiously around to the back of the truck, and stood staring up at the hysterical man, unsure of how to help him. “I work at Harborview; I’ll take you there.”
“Get away!” He continued to claw at things unseen from Jason’s point of view.
“You can’t help him now.” Jason jumped back to avoid a piece of flying metal, uncertain if the guy threw it at him intentionally or not. He didn’t know what to do. It was a situation he rarely ever found himself in. One of the reasons Jason became a medic in the Marines, and then chose the path of a trauma doctor, was due to his constant need to be in control. Even when he really wasn’t, he needed to at least know what had to be done. A broken bone, bleeding cut, or gaping wound, he could deal with. Even such things as being under fire while trying to drag a hemorrhaging solider to safety. He always had the ability to clearly see what had to be a priority, and in what order to do things to obtain the best possible outcome.
Standing there that early, sunny morning on the unrecognizable streets of Seattle, Jason was at a loss. His ears rang, either from one of the many times he had hit his head in the past hour, or from the overwhelming noises and stress. He wasn’t sure, but it made it hard to think. He realized he could smell the smoke then, and an even more concerning odor of natural gas. There was so much destruction and chaos that he couldn’t decide where to focus. Instead, the edges of his vision were becoming hazy and distorted, along with his hearing.
Maybe I’m the one in shock.
Blinking, Jason tried to sharpen his view and walked several feet away from the truck. With the unbearable scene at his back, he chose instead to look out at the lake. If he could clear his head enough, he might be able to come up with a game plan.
Part of his training as a responder was how to cope with his fight-or-flight response, as well as any emotional shutdown. Bearing up under something as overwhelming as what he was experiencing would require a careful balance of the two, and Jason understood he was at a precipice.
“Come on, Sergeant Hunter. Pull it together,” Jason muttered to himself. He found a patch of remaining grass in his side yard to stop on. Then, did his best to block out everything other than what he chose to see.
In the minutes following the initial earthquake, the water of Lake Washington had jumped around like it was at a rolling boil. The water wasn’t actually heated up, but literally shaken so hard by the low frequency ground waves that it created vertical pillars of water around six-feet tall. It had settled back into place soon after, though there was a clear delineation along the shoreline as proof that the level had dropped by several feet. Jason remembered how someone once explained the phenomenon to him, and believed it was a special kind of wave called a seiche. Not that it mattered.
He was in the middle of a mass-casualty incident on a scale possibly unseen in modern American history. To think he could go around and play savior in any meaningful way was unrealistic. The boy was gone, and trying to convince his father of that was only jeopardizing his own safety.
He had to let them go.
The openness of the lake made it easier for Jason to breathe and with it, his head began to clear. His apartment was gone. Transportation as well as any form of infrastructure in the city would be inoperable for days – maybe weeks. He had to accept he was in a survival situation. Before he could help anyone else, he needed to attend to himself. And he could provide the most care at the hospital where he worked; Harborview.
The multi-building structure had undergone a two-hundred and fifty plus million-dollar renovation around ten years before he started his residency. Part of that had been to shore it up against the predicted Big One. It would be one of the safest places in the city. He’d be needed there, and so Jason chose to make that his first destination.
Having made a plan of action, a mental shift immediately started and Jason fell into the calm and confident role of a responder. He knew what he needed to do and was already figuring out how to accomplish it. His apartment was exactly one-point-nine miles from Harborview. On days when it wasn’t raining, he would either jog or ride his bike to work.
Although Jason preferred the gym to a bike and he’d never gotten into the whole cycling scene, he begrudgingly found it to be the best way to navigate the congested roads of the city. As he walked with purpose back toward the patio where the bike was stored, he was forced to stop where the ground had given way at the height of the quake. The crevasse spanned the length of his fourplex, as well as the houses to either side, effectively drawing a line between the buildings and the lake.
The ground appeared to have stopped sliding toward the water, though Jason wasn’t willing to bet on that, given the size of the aftershocks. The bike was probably toast, anyway, and he would do just as well on foot. Maybe better. However, he really wished he could at least get to the garage and his hiking pack. He always kept the ten essentials in it, as well as his Glock.
Jason studied the partially collapsed building from the other side, looking for a way to safely get inside. Thank God both the upstairs neighbors were gone at school and work.
Woof!
Jason’s head snapped up from where he’d been staring at what he thought was a support beam.
Woof!
“Marty!” His heart suddenly hammering, Jason threw caution aside and sprinted back around to the road, his stocking feet finding several sharp things to step on in the process. “Marty!” he screamed, not caring how desperate he sounded.
A blur of motion drew Jason’s attention to
his neighbor’s house to the north and relief ballooned in his chest when he saw a familiar shape bounding across the littered yard. Covered in what looked like drywall, Marty crashed into Jason’s legs in an uncharacteristic display of abandon.
Dropping to all fours, Jason allowed his best friend to freely lick his face, a behavior usually only moderately tolerated. Wrapping his arms around the shepherd, Jason buried his face in the dog’s hair and began to weep. “I thought you were gone, bud.”
Whimpering, Marty didn’t try to pull away, and instead nuzzled Jason’s neck, sensing his owners need for closeness. Jason took a shuddering breath and didn’t care when he got several long dog hairs in his mouth. He didn’t have much in the world that he would feel a great loss over, if it was taken away. Marty was the exception. They shared a connection, a companionship that helped give his life purpose on those days when he felt there wasn’t any.
He wasn’t alone.
“Come on, Marty,” Jason said hoarsely after allowing himself a couple of minutes of reprieve. “I’ve got a job to do, and you’re going with me.”
Chapter 13
MADS
Undisclosed mountainous region in northern California
“I told you never to call me, Captain Edmonds. We have an arrangement. I will get hold of you when your services are required!” Madeline Schafer almost threw her phone. The gall of the woman, to call her at home. On the landline. “How did you even get my number?” she barked into the phone and then rolled her eyes. Of course. The officer was Naval Intelligence. She could probably find anyone she wanted at the touch of a button.
Mads hauled her short, somewhat thick frame up out of her chair and began to pace the length of her home office. She was already uneasy with the loose alliance she’d recently formed with Captain Therese Edmonds. While necessary, it didn’t mean she had to like it. The wider the circle, the more chances there were for mistakes, and Doctor Madeline Schafer did not like mistakes.