The Ridge: The Whisper of the Leaves - Chap. 35

Marshall glanced up and saw Parker some 100 feet away, about halfway between the car and the school building. He was still holding the newspaper in his hand and had taken a few steps toward the sergeant, reading as he walked, when he felt a sudden jerk of the ground under him. It caused him to stumble sideways.

A split second later he heard a sound like distant thunder, but it came from the building, not the sky. It seemed to build in intensity until it suddenly just stopped.

At that very same moment, Marshall’s mouth fell open as the school building began rising into the air. All 253 feet of the building rose some six feet above the ground and seemed to hang there momentarily.

As the building reached its apex, a rolling inferno belched out in all directions from under it. Marshall instantly felt the heat and did not so much hear as feel the accompanying explosion. And then gravity, as if it had decided the building had been defying its laws long enough, suddenly took hold of the structure and brought it back down....and down....and down.

Not all the building, however, came back down directly over the foundation, however. Marshall was suddenly being pelted by pieces of brick and concrete and other building material. A piece the size of a ping-pong ball hit him in the forehead, staggering him.

A moment later, Marshall was thrown to the ground by another jarring explosion which seemed much closer than the original blast. Instantly, four rapid-fire shot-gun-like blasts followed it.

He looked behind him from where the sound had come and saw what was later estimated to be a two-ton piece of concrete neatly resting on top of what was left of Parker’s car. The smaller explosions were the four tires bursting under the sudden weight of the concrete corner piece.

Marshall turned back toward the building and didn’t see anything for a moment. He quickly realized that what was obscuring his vision was a massive cloud of dry dirt and instantly pulverized concrete dust now in the air and rolling out in all directions. The dust clouds began to clear slightly as the March winds started to sweep them away and what Marshall saw instantly made him think of the Ridge.

Before him was a pile of debris which was mounded up in such a way that through the dust it looked like a small range of hills nearly the length of a football field. In places it was as high as fifteen feet, in others, two or three feet high. In the distance he could see oil derricks, once obscured by the school, now fully visible.

Among the mass of bricks and mortar, Marshall could see the steel beams which had been destined, according to the newspaper reports when the school was first built, to hold up the roof and walls for “a hundred years after we’re dead.” They jutted out in all directions, reminding him of a gigantic game of “pickup sticks.”

As the dust cleared further, Marshall could make out a body a few yards from him lying where he had last seen Parker. He jumped up and started to run, but the cobwebs in his head increased dramatically when he tried to move quickly. So, he stopped a moment where he was, and his head gradually cleared. Once he could walk without staggering, he slowly walked toward the man he had ridden with for almost all of the past week.

He didn’t have to get all the way to Parker to see that he was dead. His body was twisted too grotesquely for him to still be alive. Plus, his right arm was missing and the open wound which remained at his shoulder had poured out, it appeared, at least half a gallon of blood onto the ground.

Another sure indication that the sergeant was dead was the piece of galvanized plumbing pipe growing a foot out of the right side of his chest. The sergeant’s eyes were flared open, so Marshall reached down and gently closed them.

It was at that moment that Marshall began hearing again. As the ringing in his ears eased up, he shivered from the sounds he heard. Screams of agony, terror, loss, and death were rolling across the landscape. Fires began popping up out of the rubble and the smells of burning flesh began to waft through the air.

At that moment, Marshall realized he was crying, sobbing actually. He didn’t know when he had started or if he would be able to stop any time soon. He did, know, however, that he had to do something, so he started walking toward the building, too dizzy to run or even trot, yet.

Along with the sounds of death he suddenly heard running from both sides and behind him. He looked around and saw people converging. Some were in cars, some on bicycles and some on foot. Most of them were crying as he was. They were also screaming at the realization of what had happened. Of what they were about to see.

“Heather, Heather.” A woman in a red print dress screamed as she brushed past Marshall, nearly knocking him down. She was moving at a speed which seemed impossible for her size.

He heard other names called out. He also heard cursing as he had never heard before. But, those expletives of frustration seemed to be balanced by prayers of hope and healing he heard being lifted to heaven as well.

In fact, at that moment, Marshall himself was surprised by an overwhelming urge to pray. Praying was about as unfamiliar a thing in Marshall’s life as there was. He had prayed before, of course, but not with any amount of fervency or real faith and definitely with no regularity. And usually, like most people he thought, he prayed for ridiculous things he didn’t really need.

He didn’t even know if God would listen to him since he had ignored God for so long. All he knew was that he had to try. Something, he did not know what, compelled him to pray.

So, he stopped right where he was, knelt, bowed his head and prayed.

He hadn’t had much practice over the years, so he prayed a prayer which was simple and straight from his heart.

Lord,

Please help these people. There’s dead people in there, Lord. And there’s hurtin’ people in there, Lord. Give ‘em relief and if ya not gonna heal some, Lord, please put ‘em outta their misery. And, Lord, give me strength to do what I can to help ‘em. Lord, I don’t call on ya much, but please hear me today.

Amen.

Marshall felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned to see a man in black with a stark white preacher’s collar. The hand squeezed his shoulder.

“God bless ya son.” The man said then took off toward the wreckage.

With Parker dead, the only person Marshall knew was Linda Neal, the teacher. He remembered approximately where her classroom had been, so he started trotting toward the right side of the ruble pile.

He got around to the far end, close to her classroom area and almost fell over a body on the ground. It was a dark-skinned man outside of the building proper. The side of his head was caved in, obviously dead. Two men suddenly came rushing up from behind Marshall and stopped when they saw the body.

“Look there,” one of them said. “I think ‘at’s Joe Loman.”

“Yea, it is,” the other man said, then added. “I don’t think he needs help anymore.”

They turned and looked at Marshall and, thinking he was a student at the school, asked if he was alright.

“Looks like you got dinged pretty good,” the first man said. “Ya need us to help ya get home? Ya live close by?”

“No, sir,” Marshall said. “Thanks.”

They glanced at him a minute more, then heard a call for help and ran toward the sound. Marshall looked at where the classroom had been and despaired of finding anyone alive much less Parker’s girlfriend.

He moved around the almost sixty-foot width of the former building until he came to a place where he could climb up. Marshall carefully stepped across a couple of more bodies of twelve- or thirteen-year-old kids. He could not tell for sure if they were boys or girls. One had only the body showing, the head having been crushed under a section of wall. The other body had most of its right side missing.

Marshall stopped a moment to see if he could hear anything from the area where he was. But there was nothing. It seemed that Parker and his girlfriend would never have that wedding they planned. It seemed that a lot of people were suddenly going to have their plans changed.