We Who Remain

by Jacqueline Druga

  “Maybe they want to get us there and inside. I’m sure that takes time.”

  Liv nodded. “You’re probably right. I’m sorry, I’m just …”

  “Scared?”

  Liv didn’t answer.

  “Liv, scared isn’t a bad thing.”

  “How can you remain so calm?”

  “Because I know everything is going to be alright.”

  She started her stock agreement nod but stopped when she felt it. A tickle against her feet, a buzz in her ear, as her equilibrium seemed to be suddenly thrown off. She grabbed the gate edge at the same time she grabbed one of the bars.

  “What is it?” Mitch asked. “What’s wrong.”

  “Earthquake.”

  The word barely slipped from her mouth, when the rumble intensified. The already speeding truck jerked hard to the left and jolted, what felt to Liv to be five feet in the air.

  She flew to her left into Ollie, bounced from him then hitting her head off the metal bar.

  The pain was intense, causing her to literally see stars. Her vision was temporarily blinded and her ears rang.

  “You alight?” Ollie asked. “Liv? You alright?”

  She squinted hard, trying to push away the pain and the ringing.

  “Liv.”

  The truck stopped moving and the shaking ground slowed down.

  “Oh, shit.” Ollie said.

  Liv opened her eyes. She knew by the sound of his voice something was wrong. “What? What is it?”

  But she didn’t need for him to answer.

  Glancing up and across from her was all she needed to do.

  Mitch was gone.

  22 – OLYMPIAS

  The pain in her head was instantly replaced with worry and fear. Without thinking Liv lifted her leg over the back end gate. When she did, the truck started moving again.

  “Stop the truck!” she screamed. “Stop the fucking truck!”

  But it didn’t even slow down.

  It was a ‘freak out’ moment, shouting over and over for them to stop, until those closest to the front started banging and shouting.

  The truck stopped again, and Liv didn’t hesitate. She climbed over and jumped down.

  “Liv,” Ollie called her name as she climbed over. “You’re bleeding.”

  “I don’t care. Where is he?” She stepped forward on the road. “Where is he?”

  “Ma’am,” Ledders called out.

  Liv turned. When she did, she saw Bob climbing out.

  “You folks need to get back in the truck! Now!” Ledders said.

  “We lost someone. He flew out,” Bob replied.

  “We don’t have time to search.”

  “Mitch!” Liv shouted moving down the road looking left to right. “Mitch.” She spun to Ollie. “Help me find him, Ollie, please help me find him.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Bob approached them. “He has to be way down there.” He pointed. “We drove a couple hundred feet before we stopped again.”

  Liv started to run the opposite way.

  “Ma’am!” Ledders shouted. “We need to go!”

  Liv turned around. “Then go. I can see the fucking mountain and if you can’t take ten minutes to help us find him, then don’t.”

  Ledders stared at her hard. His square jaw clenching. “Fine. Ten minutes.” He pivoted his body and signaled, calling out. “Back the truck up. Then anyone physically able to do so will help search.”

  “Thank you,” Liv said.

  He didn’t acknowledge her, he just returned to the truck.

  Liv, Ollie and Bob didn’t wait for the truck, they picked up the pace and made their way down the road.

  It was brutal and the truck could only back up so far. They knew it had to be the area where Mitch was lost once boulders and falling debris blocked the roadway. Most every got out and shouted his name, looking every direction for Mitch.

  Liv kept thinking back to her cousin. How it took almost an hour to find him.

  They didn’t have an hour.

  Please Mitch answer, she begged in her mind.

  “Found him!” someone shouted.

  Liv exhaled in relief, her heart raced. She saw one of her people, Greg, was his name, standing by a fallen tree looking over the side of the road.

  “I think he’s dead.”

  “What? No.” It was an anger that swelled in Liv. How could Greg say it like that? How could he just callously blurt out Mitch was dead? Like he was nothing.

  She ran over as fast as she could and looked over the embankment.

  He wasn’t that far down. It appeared as if that part of the road collapsed. Mitch lay there, motionless, partially on his side, chunks of cement, rocks and trees seemed to surround him, some even looked as if they buried half his body.

  Without hesitation she jumped over, her feet sliding as she ran down the twenty feet or so to reach him.

  “Mitch. Mitch.” She called his name, lifting what she could. “Mitch … someone! Someone help me!”

  Ollie, leg cast and all, made it down the hill. He arrived to help, along with Bob and two others, they started moving the items that covered him.

  “Mitch.” Liv crouched down to his head. “Answer me.” She touched him, her hands feeling his neck. “He’s alive.”

  Mitch groaned.

  Liv laughed. “He’s alive.” Her hand rested on his face. “It’s okay. We’re getting you out of here. Just hang on.”

  “Liv,” Ollie called out softly.

  “Hang on. They’re getting you out.”

  “Liv,” Ollie called her again.

  Then Ledders spoke up. “We can’t. We have to go.”

  “What?” Liv looked back. “What do you mean? He’s alive.”

  “This …” Ledders pointed. “You said ten minutes. This will take longer than ten minutes.”

  Liv’s eyes looked downward. Part of Mitch’s body was pinned, not only beneath a tree and a bolder seemingly too large to move, but it looked like the ground had swallowed him.

  “We can’t. He won’t make it anyhow,” Ledders said. “Even if we move this, it will take every one of us to move him and more time than we have.”

  “So, we leave him?” Liv asked.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No! We have to try.”

  Ollie stepped forward. “I’ll try if you want me to, Liv. Bob and I both.”

  “Good we’ll …”

  It was soft and crackling, but Mitch spoke up. “Go.”

  Liv’s attention went to Mitch. “Mitch. Just you talking tells me we can’t leave you.”

  “You have to,” Mitch said. “There’s no time.” He opened his eyes. “Go. Liv. Go. All of you.” He winced in pain. “Go.”

  “And leave you alone to die,” Liv said.

  “It won’t be long.”

  “Everyone,” Ledders called out. “Let’s go. We have to get going. I’m sorry.” He looked at Liv then down to Mitch. “I’m sorry.”

  Mitch nodded.

  “Wait.” Liv stood and chased Ledders. “The mountain is right there.” She pointed. “It’s a few minutes away. How long to get up there?”

  “Ma’am, even though it isn’t far …”

  “Can’t we all work together? What if we did that? We can free him in an hour.”

  “We can’t,” Ledders said. “The bolder alone will take more than manpower to move, we don’t have the time to do so.”

  Liv pursed her lips and sadly nodded. After a glance to Mitch, she brushed by Ledders and climbed her way up the hillside.

  Once on the road, she saw the truck and walked there. The back end was opened and Donna stood there.

  “Is he?” Donna asked.

  “No, he’s alive. But stuck.” Liv reached into the truck and pulled out her small backpack. “They can’t get him out in time.” She shouldered the backpack. “Get Trent and Rose to Dr. Gimble. She’s waiting. Take care of everyone.”

  “Liv?” Donna called out.

&
nbsp; “Good luck, Donna.” Liv walked back toward the embankment.

  Ledders led the group as they emerged on to the road, Ollie and Bob were the last to climb up.

  Ledders stopped her. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m staying. Thank you for everything. Please see these people to safety.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. I am.”

  Ledders acknowledged her with a nod and walked away.

  “What are you doing?” Bob asked. “Mitch wants you to go.”

  “Yeah, well, Mitch is literally stuck between a rock and a hard spot. He doesn’t have a choice.”

  “You do,” Bob said.

  “And I choose to stay. I’m not leaving him. He stopped me from taking my life for a reason, I think this is why. Go.”

  Bob gave her a quick embrace. “Maybe a miracle will happen.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ll stay with you, Liv,” Ollie said. “I’ll hang back.”

  “No, Ollie. You go,” Liv told him. “I mean it. Go. I’ll be pissed at you both if we got this far and you don’t make it.”

  Ledders whistled then shouted, “We have to go. Now!”

  “I really don’t like that man.” Liv hugged Ollie. “Be good. Be safe.”

  Ollie nodded.

  Liv didn’t want to stick around, she didn’t want to hold them back. After pulling from the embrace, she walked to the embankment then straight down, never looking back.

  “What are you doing, Liv?” Mitch asked with a struggling voice when she arrived.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “Don’t ... don’t use me as your excuse to die.”

  “I told you I didn’t want to die.” She sat on the ground next to him. “And shh, listen.”

  The sound of the engine starting carried to them, and she remained silent listening as the truck revved up some and pulled away, the sound of it fading.

  “Too late.” She opened her backpack. “I have a shirt. I want you to use it as a pillow for your head, okay?”

  “I can’t believe you stayed behind. I’m so mad at you.”

  “Why?” She rolled up the shirt, tucking it under his head as she spoke. “Because you wasted all your heroisms pulling pills from my mouth only to have you be the reason I end up dying?”

  “You suck for saying that.”

  “Kinda ironic, don’t you think?” She reached into the backpack. “Comfy?”

  “Not really.”

  “In pain?”

  “A little.”

  “Drink?” She pulled out a tiny bottle.

  “Please.”

  Liv undid the cap and helped bring it to his lips.

  <><><><>

  “Our best option,” the maintenance engineer said to Buford. “Is get everyone to the lowest point possible, until Olympias and the tail have passed.”

  “That tail is going to take almost a day. That’s a lot of people in a small space. Do we need to go that low?”

  “Target is five hundred feet. If the water is as high as they saw, the mountain is going to be swallowed. The deeper the better for the wave and the comet. I say keep people together because we’re closing the air vents.”

  “Will we run out of air?” Buford asked.

  “We’ll pump oxygen in.”

  “What about CO2?”

  We’ll have to open the door every so often to let whatever air remains in the other areas.”

  “We’ll have to time this,” Buford said. “We can only last so long down there. What happens if we open the door and it’s flooded?”

  “To be honest if that happens, it won’t really matter,” the engineer said.

  “So, when do we move people below?”

  The engineer didn’t answer, another voice did. It was the radar specialist. “Now.”

  Buford turned to the sound of the answer. “Now?”

  “Wave arrives in less than an hour,” the specialist said. “We made contact with London Observatory. They survived the wave.”

  “That’s good news,” Buford said.

  The specialist nodded. “But unfortunately, Olympias is right on the tail of the wave.”

  The engineer faced Buford. “One way to look at it. We get it over with all at once.”

  Buford slightly rolled his eyes. If you want to see a positive in that. You know this place inside and out. Will we, like London survive the wave?”

  “Our inner blast doors stand the best chance of holding it back, I like to hope we’re like one of those under water caves that retains air and the water can’t get through. We can speculate all we want. The truth is,” the engineer said. “We will know soon enough.”

  <><><><>

  Mitch watched Liv sip from her own tiny bottle. “If you plan on getting drunk, you’ll have to drink faster than that.”

  “Nope. I don’t plan on it,” she said.

  “I can’t believe you stayed.”

  “And I can’t believe you didn’t hold on to something.” Liv shook her head.

  “Is thanking you wrong?”

  She shook her head. “Not at all. I wasn’t leaving you here, Mitch. Not to die alone. Since everything began you have been with me every step of the way, so we … we take this final step together. You know …” she sipped her drink. “You said the day I tried to kill myself, you said I would thank you one day. This is that day. Thank you.”

  “Liv …”

  “No, listen. That day I was out of my mind with heartache and devastation. Not saying I’m not heartbroken, I am. But I feel at peace right now. Up to this moment, especially over the last couple days, it’s been so tense. Will we make it, will some earthquake swallow us … which by the way, it did to you.”

  Mitch looked down. “I know.”

  “I am clear headed,” Liv said. “I’m going to see my family again. There’s no worry about what will happen next. We know. We’re going to die. There’s something calm about knowing that.”

  “I’m not calm, Liv.”

  “That’s because you wanted to survive this. You did.” She winked. “But look at it this way. You and I get a front row seat to the end of the world. That mountain …” She pointed. “Is east. We’ll watch that giant wave roll over the mountains, making its way to us.”

  “I don’t think it will be like that.”

  “Sure, it will be.”

  “No.” Mitch shook his head “This isn’t one of your disaster movies. I think we may hear it. We may sense it, but that water is moving so freaking fast we won’t see it coming.”

  “I have this vision in my mind of the water rolling majestically our way.”

  Mitch laughed, he laughed so hard, he winced in pain. “I hope you’re right. I wonder how much time we have until …” he paused. “Do you hear that?”

  “Is it the wave?” she asked.

  “No, it’s a car or something.”

  The moment she questioned with a ‘what’, she heard the squeal of the brakes, followed by car doors shutting. “Maybe it’s someone trying to get to the mountain and they can’t get through. The road is blocked.”

  “I hope they can.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Maybe you should …”

  “No.”

  “Hey!” Bob’s voice carried to them.

  Liv looked up to see Bob on the hillside, he started his way down.

  “Oh, thank God,” Mitch said. “Liv, he came back for you. You have to go with him.”

  “No. No. I’m good. I want this.” She peered to Bob when she did, she saw Ollie. He hobbled with the cast as he dragged something behind him. “Guys.” She stood. “What are you doing? Huh? Go. You have to get to the mountain.”

  “We were on our way,” Bob said. “We made them stop. They gave us a jeep to come back. We couldn’t leave you behind. You, me and him.” He pointed to Mitch. “We’re the original team. We ate noodles and hid in a bunker. We have a bond. No offense, Ollie.”

  “None, taken. Liv a
nd I have a bond, too. She hit me with a car.”

  “And you shouldn’t be climbing down hills,” Liv told him. “Look. I appreciate this more than anything. I do. And before you say anything Mitch, there’s no argument here. I’m staying. I can not leave him here.”

  “Neither can we,” Bob said. “That’s why we’re here.”

  “Wait you …” Liv’s eyes shifted to see what Ollie had. “Is that our amputation case?”

  “Yep,” Ollie nodded.

  “Oh my God,” Mitch exclaimed.

  “I checked it out when you stormed off,” Ollie said. “It’s the one leg. The other I think we can easily free. But the left leg is the hold up.”

  “Oh my God.” Mitch repeated.

  “So, we’re all getting out of here,” Ollie said, dragging the box near Mitch. “We’ll save him by doing what you and I are naturals at and we’re fast, too.””

  “Oh my God.”

  “Don’t worry, dude,” Ollie patted him on the shoulder. “We have some really good drugs for you.”

  Liv rushed over. “I didn’t even think of that. Ollie, you’re brilliant.”

  Mitch looked up at her. “You’re going to cut off my leg?”

  “No,” Liv replied. “We’re going to get you out of here. If that’s how we have to do it, so be it. We’re getting you to that mountain.”

  “You can do this.” Bob told him.

  “Ready?” Ollie asked and lifted the lid to the case.

  Mitch wanted to get out one more, ‘oh my God’, but he didn’t. Even though he was far from ready, he nodded and grabbed on to Bob’s arm when Liv joined Ollie standing over his left leg.

  23 – RUN

  George really didn’t say much to Buford’s urgent request for them to get below. He told him he was going to wait, but to appease his friend the general, he and Mallory moved their chairs directly before the tunnel entrance. It was a great view from there and he would be able to see and hear the truck coming up the hillside.

  Just as he understood why the general wanted them inside, George heard the truck. “No worries,” he had said. “They’re here now with almost an hour to spare.”

  But that wasn’t the case.

  George was excited and rushed to the truck. “The General said to roll it in.” His eyes scanned the truck, “Hey, I don’t see my friends.”