After the Quake, Before the Dawn

“D'mon... Lizzl!” Willa cried, trying to find her younger brother and sister through the shaking house. The walls rocked and cracked as the floor was rolling and bucking. Large chunks were falling loose from the floors above onto the street outside, the ceiling was dropping sections inside making staying inside treacherous at best. Still, Willa looked for D'mon and little Liz’ knowing that her voice was being drowned out by the noise. The sound of grinding stone was inescapable and elsewhere, alarms sounded, set off by the damage of the violent quake. Somewhere was an explosion and an emergency response unit was responding to a crisis.

Aarn, Jess, and Cosm huddled together in the middle of the plaza. The world around the boys was in ruins. The ground heaved and cracks formed. Buildings were coming apart on all sides of the square. The boys were scared to move for fear of being hit by the falling debris.

Entering the square but as yet unseen, the boys’ older brother, Toma, called out when he saw their red heads huddled together. “Hey buds,” he yelled over the noise. “Cosm, get the twins…” He wasn’t heard by the oldest of the three, but Jess saw him and started waving frantically. The other two turned to look, and there was a mutual sigh of relief. If Toma was there everything was sure to be all right.

“Randa, Randa, wake up! Randa…” Two children, one preteen and one slightly younger were trying to arouse their aunt who was responsible for them whenever their parents were gone. The shaking of the apartment building had caused a section of the ceiling to fall and hit her on the head, knocking her out, and leaving a gash on her forehead.

“Get a cup of water,” Jerys said to her younger brother, going for a cloth that she could use on Randa’s head. Sam ran to do just as his sister had ordered him to do. He was worried about Randa. She wasn’t that much older than Jerys, and he liked her.

“Please be okay, Randa.” He begged when he returned.

Jerys had gotten back first and was dabbing at the wound on Randa’s head. “Here, let me.” She said, taking the cup from her brother. She held the cup to Randa’s mouth, trying to encourage her aunt to drink. Randa stirred a little with the water being poured over her face. Jerys wet down the end of the cloth she had and used it to carefully wipe around the gash that matted down the chestnut hair of her aunt’s head.

Randa moaned. “What happened?” Just as she asked, there was another distinct rumble and shaking of the building. Her eyes flew open as her mind focused. She took the cloth from Jerys’ hand and said “Thank you,” wincing as she realized just how sore she was as she touched her head. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

Lizzl pressed tight between the shelves. She had found this place once when she was hiding from mother. Now, mother was nowhere to be found, but this seemed to be the best place to be. D'mon was trying to convince her to come out, but with the house’s power cut off, he couldn’t even see Lizzl’s bright blond curls tucked in her hiding spot. He had seen her go in there but she still hid from him. “Liz-zl!” he said drawing her name into two distinct syllables. “We must go!”

As the quake subsided into tremors, Willa reached the stairs to the basement of the house. “D'mon! Liz’!” She called. “We’ve got to get out of here. This house is unstable. It’s coming down around our ears.” She listened to the now-apparent evacuation warnings and wondered how long those had been blaring.

“Willa!” Lizzl shouted, pushing her way past D'mon and running to the stairs. The little girl wrapped her arms around her big sister and wouldn’t let go. Willa tightened her arms around the child’s shoulders in a quick hug before peeling the girl from her waist.

“It’s all right, Liz’. We’ll get out of here and figure out what’s happened to everyone.” Willa reflexively ran a heart-shaped locket along a chain around her neck then absently pinned it between her teeth, thinking. Looking back down the stairs she called. “D'mon? Are you coming?” Her brother appeared just as she asked, and Willa mused that his freckles seemed to arrive almost before him. They all left, back across the food preparation area and out of the house.

“Blazes!” Willa swore, looking at the destruction around her. “Where have they all gone?” Recognizing that there were simply no people. The streets were bare that she could see. Thinking it might be risky to go where there were more buildings, and tall buildings at that, the best bet to find others might be the city center. ...at least to find answers. Filling some water bottles for each of them as best as she could, Willa took D'mon and Lizzl in tow and headed for the normally more populated area of the city.

Walking while there were still occasional tremors was frightening. Willa kept finding herself wanting to find someplace secure and hide, but that simply wasn’t a safe option. Just after Lizzl had started to complain about being tired of all the walking, they saw something that made them all feel better. Coming out of the door of an apartment building ahead was a trio of young people supporting each other who looked like they might be in a similar position as they were in.

“Hello!” Randa called. “Where is everyone?”

“I’m not really sure,” came the answer from Willa, the oldest of the group. “I turned around and suddenly everyone was gone and the world was falling apart. Literally. I must be missing time.”

Randa nodded slowly, “Something's happened, I just can’t remember what!” She shook her head. “Then I was on the ground and these two were trying to bring me around. No one else was to be found.”

D’mon spoke up. “We’re going into the city.”

“That’s right. We’re going in to see if anyone is gathering.” Willa replied.

“Do you really think anyone would trust the inner core?” Randa gasped.

The young woman replied, “I hope so, I don’t have any idea where else to look.”

“Randa,” the girl with the gashed head introduced herself, “and these are Jerys,” she nodded to her little sister, “then Sam,” indicating the bright-eyed boy. “They’re both pretty cool-headed in an emergency.”

“I’m Willa.” Her counterpart explained. “I’m these two’s sister. D’mon and then the little one is Lizzl or Liz for short.” She indicated her charges who stood looking the new people over.

“I’m D’mon!” A voice piped up. “I take care of Liz’.” Jerys and Sam checked him out. Jerys was obviously older and Sam fell in between D’mon and his sister.

Smiles met D’mon’s outburst and he received greetings from Randa’s group.

“Would you like to join us and head into the center?” Willa asked. “We haven’t seen anyone in all the way we’ve come until we ran into you. I don’t know where everyone else has gone.”

Randa looked at her charges. “I guess we might as well. I have no idea what to do. There doesn’t seem to be any choice here. Everything seems to be pretty much wrecked.” She looked at the closer surrounding buildings and those down the streets. All she could see were cracked walls, leaning frames, roofs canted over, chunks fallen from the exteriors, and some sections of buildings fallen away, with flames licking here and there where the fire suppression had failed, but no other people, and no apparent injured victims.

Agreeing, they gingerly began their march into the civic center.

Toma offered Cosm and the twins, Aarn and Jess, food supplements he’d scavenged while he was looking around for someone to advise him about what to do. He also had bottles of water which he passed around. Hats were the next item on the agenda, and he had the boys move to where they were caught in the long shadow cast by one of the buildings on the plaza. Meanwhile, Toma himself was risking making quick checks of the crumbling buildings to see if there was any sign of survivors or people who were remaining after the quakes. It was to no avail.

Returning to the spot where he’d left his brothers, he found things in an uproar. Aarn and Jess were rolling around fighting and Cosm was trying to separate the younger pair. Cosm barked “Stop it! Stop hitting each other!... Jess, get your elbow off his shoulder. You’re not strangling Aarn. Get off!”

Toma dropped the bags he was carrying and inserted his lithe form into the fray, expertly dividing his brothers. “Now what is going on?”

“Aarn was going to go find you.” Jess tattled.

Pouting, Aarn answered, “You were gone too long.”

Cosm sorted it out by adding “He was worried that you had been gone too long and that something had happened to you, so he wanted to go find you, and Jess told him he couldn’t go.”

Toma looked around the bleak plaza with its cracked pavement where upheavals had caused the pavement to be broken and jutting at strange angles. He saw the thousands of empty and broken windows staring blankly, and realized that he’d left the boys in a very scary place, without anyone around where a thousand people normally would be.

“Look you crumbheads, you know I wouldn’t leave you.”

“But what if something happened? Aarn asked.

“Hey,” Toma stepped and lithely waved his hips in a wide arc. “They can never catch the Tom-man.”

“There’s someone!” Cosm called, looking past them across the plaza.

Toma looked to see where he was pointing and what he was pointing to. Almost directly across the plaza, a small group had appeared. It looked like there were two adults with a group of children.

Stepping protectively between his brothers and the newcomers who were still a couple of hundred feet away, Toma cautioned them to settle down. “Hey guys, how about you just quiet down and stick together until we find out about these people?”

Randa and Willa were both distraught to find the plaza devoid of crowds. They had been counting on finding people in the city center and having deliverance for their families. Instead, they found the bare broken pavement that Toma and his brothers faced. Jerys suddenly became excited and pointed across the square, into the deep shade of the building nearly opposite. There were people there.

Randa suddenly turned to the group “Shhh! Everyone down! Maybe they haven’t seen us yet.”

“What do you want to do?” Willa asked.

“Well, we came to find people, and these are the first we’ve found…”

Willa nodded. “You stay here with the children and rest a minute. I’ll go meet the new people and see where we stand.” She had noticed Randa shaking and rubbing her head, and knew she had a headache from the blow she had received earlier.

Randa nodded and Willa took off across the plaza as Toma came towards the party. Meeting midway, they were relieved to learn they both were looking for the same thing, information, and people who knew what to do next. They decided to combine families and move along. Toma summoned his brothers as Willa returned.

“We’re going to join up with Toma and his three brothers. We don’t know what’s to come of this, but we have better odds facing it together.”

“Ten is better than seven,” Randa winced, her headache becoming obviously painful. Willa searched in a waist pack she was wearing and offered her two tablets.

“We’ll all take care of each other.” Willa mused. “And our odds just got better.”