“Okay. Is that a problem, Terry?”
“Yes. For the first time I’m seeing an identifiable resonant response from the zone.”
“Resonant?” He stopped cold and hunched over the phone slightly. “Did you say resonant? Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. Whatever’s changed out there is directly causing microquake responses. A shudder goes down, a microquake comes back up like an answer from the most dangerous place imaginable. It wasn’t happening that way as little as a half hour ago.”
Doug heard himself exhale, feeling even more desperate and equally impotent. “We had some explosions out here and the power went off twice.”
“Doug, whatever’s changed, if they turned on a water valve or did something, they’ve got to reverse it right now! I’d bet we’re less than an hour away from the main break, and they’re almost forcing it.”
“Terry, we don’t have any way of knowing or predicting that. Stop grasping at timelines!”
The voice from the peninsula was exasperated.
“Look, maybe I’m reading psychic energy or tea leaves, or maybe I’ve tied into the ‘force,’ but it’s about to happen and I’m scared to death and scientific or not, I’m standing by that prediction. Can you get to Walker?”
“I’m a few yards from his office now. That’s where we were headed.”
“We?”
“Long story.”
“Okay.”
“Just… just stand by to head for high ground.”
“I am. But again, get the hell off that island!”
Doug briefed Diane on the conversation as they resumed their course and opened the outer door. Mick Walker could be seen through a series of inner doors pacing in his office, but he disappeared just as the floor beneath their feet seemed to jerk eastward and upward as a huge seismic compression wave shuddered through the island throwing all of them to the floor.
The P wave was followed almost instantly by an accelerating washboard of staccato, shortwave vibrations that began chewing away at the interior walls and fixtures around them, grinding gypsum dust into the air from disintegrating drywall, shattering window glass and splintering wood trim as desks and chairs and rubber plants danced across the floor and turned over amid a horrid, sustained din.
Doug grabbed Diane from where she’d fallen and pulled her under a table in one corner of the reception area as a cascade of crashing, breaking objects flowed off shelves in Walker’s inner office and a bookcase emptied with a series of small impacts as heavy volumes of law and history thudded to the gyrating floor.
He could hear the sickening sounds of rending metal and squealing structures from down the hall and a thunderous crash of something very large and complex in the distance. The lights went out again, but through the gaping hole where one of Walker’s window walls had been, other lights could be seen burning.
Emergency battery lights snapped on inside the mauled office, stabbing beams of light through the debris-laden air as if a Hollywood crew had filled the space with artificial fog.
And just as soon as it had begun, the shaking stopped.
“My God, was that it?” Diane managed.
Doug was still prone under the table, his arm around her unconsciously as he shook his head.
“That was a major surface break. At least, it was very close to the surface.”
“How can you tell?”
He was breathing hard, his hands shaking slightly. “The P wave and the S wave got here almost simultaneously. It’s somewhat like counting the seconds between lightning and thunder.” Doug hauled himself out and held out his hand and she took it and stood, shaking visibly.
Doug rushed into Walker’s inner office, amazed at the depth of the rubble scattered over the floor, but relieved to see that both Walker and a very fat man sitting in a large corner chair appeared unhurt.
“Jesus Christ!” Walker was muttering as he peeled himself off the floor. He took note of Doug’s presence as he glanced at the other man.
“You okay, Robert?”
“Shaken, but I suppose I’m okay, yes,” the man answered slowly, his voice husky, his small eyes moving from Mick Walker to the woman who had just appeared in the doorway of the office. Doug could hear Robert Nelms gasp and looked around, noting that Diane Lacombe was looking equally stunned and momentarily speechless.
“You’re all right, then?” Nelms probed. “We thought you’d been kidnapped.”
She cleared her throat rapidly and tried to recover.
“I… no, I’m okay. It was all a mistake. I didn’t mean to scare everyone.”
Mick had been surveying the damage and looking through the shattered window to assess what had happened to the rest of his hotel, but at the sound of Diane’s voice he turned around, his expression momentarily ashen as he recognized her, then recovered.
“Diane! You’re okay!”
“Yes, Uncle Mick. Surprised?”
Mick’s mouth was open, but before he could say anything, Doug cut in.
“Uncle Mick?” Doug asked, almost under his breath.
Mick recovered from his momentary paralysis and crunched through the broken remains of his office to hug her awkwardly. She turned back to Doug. “Mick has always been kind of a Dutch uncle to me.”
“I’ve known this young lady since she was in diapers,” Walker said, the remark stated almost as an afterthought, his mind elsewhere and his eyes still darting around the office. “Bad timing, sweetheart,” he said.
“Isn’t it always.”
“I’m so glad you’re all right.” He rushed back to the desk and pulled a receiver to his ear, trying various lines before giving up and searching for his handheld radio, which had been off. “I’ve got to go find out the extent of the damage,” he said.
There were excited voices in the hallway and a siren blaring somewhere in the night on the island. An assistant manager for the hotel skidded to a halt in the doorway just as the Operations Control Center answered.
“Mr. Walker! The east side of the building has collapsed, sir! You’ve got to come!”
“What? Which building?”
Robert Nelms pulled himself out of the chair and stood unsteadily, his eyes now huge as the man replied.
“Why, this one, Mr. Walker! My hotel. The whole east side… and it’s full of guests! God, it’s horrible!”
Chapter 28
CASCADIA ISLAND HOTEL 10:25 P.M.
Her head pounding with pain, Lindy O’Brien opened her eyes and tried to focus on the swirl of surreal sounds and feelings around her. She was aware of being very cold, aware of the wind whistling past her in the darkness, the sounds of a distant siren and frantic voices far away. There was rain and the sound of running water, as if someone had left a faucet open.
And there was a single light stabbing a small beam through a haze in the distance.
She pulled herself up, wondering why she was naked from the waist up, her feet bare and the leather miniskirt the only thing she had on. Where was she? Where had she been?
Wait. I was in bed with whatsisname… she thought, considering the dream that she was beginning to think might have been reality.
But this couldn’t be reality, could it? There was a memory of shaking… an earthquake… and then the memories ended.
Jeff!
That was his name. She sat up straighter, straining to see something familiar in what should have been a plush hotel room, but with the only light coming through a shattered door from the hallway, she couldn’t tell where the bed was, or had been.
Lindy pulled herself to her feet, taking inventory of her body, and suddenly feeling exposed. She thought of looking for her bra, but had no clue where it might be.
She stumbled toward the light from the hall, recognizing her blouse over a broken chair back, and she pulled it on as much against the cold as from any thought of decency.
The bed was over here! she thought, moving by feel in that direction. Somehow the ceiling was now partially night sky, whic
h made no sense.
She felt the edge of the bed, her hands progressing over the top to a heavy timber of some sort. She felt around it, down to the end, and partially up the other side, ducking below the massive thing as her hand closed on Jeff’s ankle.
“Jeff?” she called.
There was no response. His ankle was warm, but he was moving nothing, and she walked her hands up his body as she had from lust a half hour before, this time finding no response.
Oh, God! Her hands reached his left shoulder, but his right shoulder was inaccessible beneath the fallen timber, and as her hands felt up around his neck and the back of his head, she realized his skull had been crushed.
She pulled her hands back, feeling the gooey presence of congealing blood. He was clearly dead, and she had eight other friends in the main room next door who might have met the same fate. She could hear nothing from the next room, no voices, no screams… nothing.
Backing off the crushed bed was harder than she’d expected, and she noticed that something had sliced a gash in her right leg in the process—a minor matter she could ignore. She crossed carefully to the door leading to the main salon and tried to open it, but the frame had been crushed and it wouldn’t budge.
Her eyes were adjusting to the dim light from outside now and the full impact of what had happened was becoming apparent. The upper floor above had given way, crashing through the ceiling over the bed, and the roof above had also been breached.
Lindy made her way to the hall and turned toward the main salon’s outside double doors, which had burst open. There were sounds from within and she began calling the names of her friends as she entered, her fears rising by the moment. She had brought them here on a lark! She was responsible.
Here, too, the floor above had collapsed, but there were fixtures and large vases and tables everywhere in the salon, and they were supporting many of the fallen timbers.
“Davie? Karen?” Lindy could hear her voice being absorbed by the mess before her, but suddenly there was a response from somewhere to the right, and she picked her way through the debris toward the sound.
“Who’s there? Are you okay?”
“Lindy?” a female voice asked, the strain apparent in the reedy tone.
“Yes!”
“We’re… here… Jaimie and Matt. Matt’s hurt.”
“Where? Keep talking!”
There was just enough light to see that the ceiling timbers had been prevented from reaching the floor by a partially collapsed dining table whose legs seemed to have been pounded into the marble floor like spikes.
“Help us. Hurry!”
She shoved aside loose wallboard and broken chairs until she could peer beneath the crushed tabletop that had obviously saved them.
“Give me your hand, Jaimie. Matt? You follow.”
“He’s unconscious and… and I think he’s bleeding.”
She took Jaimie’s outstretched hand and pulled, slowly dragging her from beneath the ledge of the table. Even in the dim light she could see her friend was covered in blood. Jaimie grabbed her in a shaking embrace and broke into sobs.
“What happened, Lindy? Oh, God, what happened?”
Lindy patted her back, thinking of the dead body in the other room and wondering how many more of her friends were hurt, or worse.
“It was an earthquake,” Lindy replied, her voice otherworldly.
“Oh, God! Oh, God!” Jaimie was wailing, her body shaking.
Lindy felt something flowing through her, as if some strange elixir of liquid courage was pumping through her veins, washing away the fright and the horror and infusing a steely determination and a knowledge beyond herself.
She glanced toward the destroyed corridor, then pushed Jaimie away slightly and held her by the shoulders, searching for her eyes.
“Listen to me. Help won’t be here for some time. You and me, we’ve got to find and help the others.”
“I… don’t know what to do!”
“Yes you do!”
“Lindy, I’m scared!”
She shook her head and took a quick breath, recognizing the pleas of her friend as a form of paralysis she had to break.
“Jaimie!”
“Wha—?”
“Get hold of yourself! The first thing we’re going to do is get Matt out of there and get help.”
QUAALATCH, WASHINGTON
Marta Cartwright stood at her seaside window, her heart beating dangerously as she searched the mostly darkened island across the small stretch of channel. The searchlight had stopped earlier, then restarted. Now it was dark again, and there had been no tidal wave. When the hated searchlight had gone out the first time, she had been napping in her chair, and the sudden realization that the whole island was dark, and she was still alive, had been a puzzling way to wake up.
But her heart sank when her grandson called on his cell phone to tell her why the searchlight had gone out.
She hadn’t understood what Lester Brown was saying at first. He was making no sense.
“Where are you, Lester? What do you mean?”
“I mean that damned searchlight you hate so much is gonna stay dark. And their big party is gonna be ruined.”
“Yes, Lester, I know. Soon.”
“No, Grandmother. Now! We blew up their power station and we’re gonna blow up that searchlight. I’ve got to go. Enjoy this moment of victory, okay?”
“Lester, wait, this isn’t right.”
But he was gone, and when she looked up his cell phone number and dialed it, there was no answer.
The searchlight had come back on a half hour later. Then a powerful tremor, and it was off again. She could see flashing red lights from some sort of emergency vehicles on the island, but there was no sound except the wind and the roar of the surf.
A cup of cold tea stood where she’d left it on her kitchen counter as she tortured a dish rag and waited at the window, fearing the worst for her grandson and whoever was helping him.
How did this happen? she wondered. This is not our way!
CASCADIA ISLAND SECURITY OFFICE
Handcuffed, shackled, and hobbled, Lester, Bull, and Jimmy had been placed in different cubicles in what was designed as a modern, if small, police station. The presence of a casino on the island had necessitated the installation, including five barred holding cells.
Lester’s thoughts were on Marta and how she would react to their bravery. What little questioning they had been subjected to in the short time since the large earth tremor seemed to center around only one thing: where their other cache of explosives was hidden. He had no intention of telling them anything, other than how proud he was to be a Quaalatch brave and a defender of his nation’s territory, and how easy it had been to blow up their facilities.
Bull would be equally uncooperative, Lester knew, but Jimmy was likely to squeal like a pig at the first physical prod. He’d already disgusted Lester by wetting himself in fear as the cops dragged them from the hotel.
He felt a twinge of regret that they hadn’t finished the job, and fear that perhaps the threats of many years in prison would be true. He knew that would shake Bull, too. His marriage had ended, but he was still able to see his four kids, and losing that right would be a tragedy. But his new reputation as a defender of their tribe would make his kids proud. He would be a political prisoner, and he could handle that.
Once more a disgusted-looking man with a craggy face walked into the room. On his shirt was an official Cascadia nametag that said Jason Smith.
“Well, slimeball, nature is helping you. Half the hotel’s collapsed so I don’t have any rubber hoses to spare to beat it out of you, but you’re going to answer my question.”
“I have nothing to say,” Lester replied, feeling powerful.
“I figured you’d say that. We called Marta Cartwright, and she almost had a heart attack at the news that you three would risk conviction and the death penalty to do something that she specifically prohibited.”
“
Who are you, man?” Lester asked. “How do you know our chief?”
The man leaned forward, his face in Lester’s. “You don’t recognize me, dude, because you’re too young and obviously too stupid. My Quaalatch name is Jason Two Otters, and I was an FBI agent for twenty years before you graduated from the sixth grade. Marta is my aunt. And I’m going use some old ancient methods to skin you alive if I don’t hear the location of that arms cache right here, right now.”
The officer pulled a long-bladed pocket knife from his trousers and snapped it open, the gleam of a stone-sharpened blade all too obvious.
“You can’t do that!”
“This is the sovereign nation of the Quaalatch, right? I’m deputized as tribal police, too. You want to regard Cascadia as still being Quaalatch? Then you’ll yield to Quaalatch justice the old-fashioned way.”
“What old-fashioned way?” Lester was squirming in the chair. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re such a grand example of a brave, yet Marta told me you never had time to sit down and learn much of our history, or her stories. So you would never have known of the methods our ancestors used to extract information from the northern tribes when we captured one of their scouts. It wasn’t pretty, it was loud and gruesome and left them crippled, but our ancestors always got the information they needed. Why do you think a poor little coastal tribe managed to survive for so many centuries?”
“You’re bluffing! You can’t cut me to get information! That’s illegal!”
“You’re not in the state of Washington. You’re in a state of hurt.”
He reached out and expertly sliced through Lester’s shirt from neck to belly, using the tip of the blade to flick the separated cloth aside. Lester looked down, wide-eyed, aware that the blade had lightly traveled his skin without cutting him, though it was as sharp as a scalpel.
The cop was smiling an evil smile. “First,” he said, “we’ll change your gender. Then we’ll talk.”
CASCADIA ISLAND HOTEL
The dream was trying to kill her again.
Once more Jennifer tightened her death grip on the controls of the big Chinook helicopter and pulled with every ounce of her strength, but as always, the controls were frozen and the ground was coming up fast.
Saving Cascadia Page 29