The Journal (Book 5): Fault Line Page 3

  ***

  The weak November sunlight was fading. Billows of oily black smoke were forming to the west and the light breeze carried the stench eastward. Christine aimed her remote key fob at the silver blue PT Cruiser to unlock the car, then put her things and the shopping package behind the rear seat, deciding to put the water in front where she could reach it. She placed two bottles on the front seat and set her purse on the floor. A dog howling in the distance caught her attention. The dog sounded pathetic, like maybe it was hurt. Christine stuck one bottle of water in her jacket pocket and locked the car. She stood with her eyes closed, trying to get a direction on the dog. A half block later, she stopped again and finally got a bead on the barking.

  Rounding the corner, she had to step over several piles of bricks that had fallen from the nearby buildings, then spotted the dog. A beautiful golden retriever was sitting atop a large pile of wreckage.

  “Well, hi there,” Christine said softly to the dog, edging closer. She loved animals, sometimes more than people, and they were usually better behaved too. The dog stood and wagged its tail. Concrete dust billowed in the air from the sweep of the friendly wag. She saw the leash attached to the collar, the other end buried in the mass of bricks and broken glass.

  “Oh, you poor thing. Are you trapped?” The dog whined and lay down, panting hard. Christine reached in her pocket for the bottle of water, cupped one hand and poured, offering it to the dog, which lapped eagerly. She poured more, and kept pouring until the dog stopped drinking and stretched to lick her face. It turned and pawed at the bricks.

  “Let’s get you out of here.” Christine started pulling bricks away and tossing them aside. As more and more of the leash was exposed, she wondered how the dog got loose. After moving a few pieces of window frame, a hand was exposed, causing Christine to jerk back. It was small and delicate, a rich chocolate brown, and very feminine. She gently removed the leash strap from around the hand, and the fingers moved, startling her and she fell backward. The fingers moved again, searching. Christine inched forward and took the hand in hers. The fingers clenched tightly around Christine’s with a strength that surprised her. She squeezed the hand back to reassure the person under the fallen building then turned to the waiting canine.

  “Come here, girl.” The dog belly crawled forward, and then licked the fingers. The hand stretched upward and the dog nuzzled the palm. Christine pressed forward and patted the hand again. She continued her chore of removing bricks with renewed vigor, flinging the bricks at a frantic pace until she heard voices.

  “Help! Help me!” she called out, without looking around to see where the voices were coming from.

  ***

  Joey Martin and his buddy Jake Alsteen were on their way home from basketball practice at the YMCA when the quake hit. Jake had been hit with a falling flagpole and suffered a deep cut across his scalp that wouldn’t stop bleeding.

  “We need to get home so Katie can look at that cut,” Joey said after he helped his friend up.

  “It ain’t that bad,” Jake protested, wiping the blood that ran down his cheek. “That was really something, wasn’t it? I read in school about us being really close to the New Madrid Fault, and how much damage it caused back in 1811. Do you think that’s what happened, Joey? That after two hundred years the fault line moved again?”

  “Maybe. What I do know is we need to get home, get Katie and Holly, and get the hell out of here!” They skirted wrecked cars with alarms blaring, avoided fires that seemed to be burning thin air, and saw people staggering away.

  As they got closer to the apartment building where they lived, they heard a voice frantically calling for help. Joey stopped short when he saw Christine.

  Jake stopped too and looked at Joey. “What’s the matter, Joey?”

  “She’s white.”

  “So what? She needs help.” Jake slapped Joey’s shoulder with his big brown hand and kept moving. Joey reluctantly followed.

  ***

  Christine saw the two black young men approach her and swallowed her nervousness. “Someone is buried here! Please help me,” she pleaded, still pulling at the bricks and tossing them aside.

  Joey saw the dog. “Holly?” The dog wagged its tail in recognition. Joey hurried to Christine’s side and saw the hand, immediately recognizing the ring that graced one finger. “Katie!” He knelt down and took the hand, placing his under it, and began to move his fingers. The hand frantically responded.

  “What are you doing?” Christine inquired, curious about what she was seeing.

  “It’s my sister, Katie. She’s deaf. I just told her we were here and would get her out. Holly is her service dog. Move over,” he demanded.

  “Careful where you stand. From the angle of the wrist, her head is about here, and her body is right here,” Christine said sweeping her hand over the area. “We don’t want to put additional weight on her.”

  “How can you tell?” Jake asked, grabbing two bricks at a time and throwing them to the side. His big hands lifted two more pieces, and the glass beneath sliced his palm. He ignored the dripping blood and took two more chunks.

  “I like to draw people. Positioning was an anatomy class I took,” she replied simply.

  “Why are you doing this for a black girl?” Joey questioned angrily.

  Christine glared at him in disbelief. “What the—? I don’t care if she’s green! She’s hurt and needs help. Let’s get her out of this mess before another aftershock hits.”

  Five minutes later Katie’s face was exposed, along with one shoulder. Christine got the bottle of water and held it so Katie could see it. She opened her mouth and Christine poured a little in. Each time Katie’s mouth opened, she poured a little more. All the while the two boys frantically uncovered the rest of injured girl.

  “We need to move her,” Joey said.

  “Yes, although it will have to be carefully,” Jake cautioned. “She could have internal injuries that movement might make worse.” Being big and strong, he lifted her out of the debris pile and gently set her down in an open area.

  “Just what we don’t need,” Christine sighed, looking up at the sky. “It’s starting to rain. She needs to get into shelter.”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s not much left standing,” Joey said, looking around.

  “There’s the hotel I was staying in a block over,” Christine commented.

  “We can’t carry her that far without hurting her,” Jake said.

  Christine thought a moment, and then removed her jacket. “If we slide this under her back and shoulders, and I put my left arm in this sleeve on her left side and you do the same on the right side with your right arm, Joey, we can cradle her head with our other hands and Jake can take her feet.”

  Jake considered what Christine said and slowly nodded. “Yeah that would give support and the three of us could move quickly.” He lifted Katie slightly while the other two positioned the jacket.

  When they were in position, Christine said, “Now give me your hand.” Joey glared at her. “Joey, don’t be an ass. Give me your hand.” They laced fingers behind Katie’s head to support her neck, and Katie moaned softly when they lifted her.

  They moved quickly in the rain with Holly following behind, dragging her red leash.

  ***

  The trio carrying the injured Katie made it to the big glass doors of the hotel in record time, and just before a deluge hit. They set her down so Christine could open the massive doors, and then Jake tenderly picked Katie up and entered the gloom of the tinted glass walls.

  “Let me get some cushions,” Christine said. She grabbed several pale gray couch cushions from the lobby furniture and arranged them on the floor near the plate glass walls and Jake set the now unconscious girl down. Holly lay down next to her mistress, resting her chin on her extended front paws.

  “Where are you going?” Joey asked.

  Christine flicked on the flashlight she still had. “To get more water.” She disappear
ed into the Coral Room where lunch had been served earlier, with Jake following her.

  “You have to forgive Joey,” Jake said when they were out of earshot of the others.

  “He does seem to be a bit angry,” Christine remarked. She located two pitchers of water and a stack of Styrofoam cups. Jake picked up the metal bowl containing the remaining sandwich rolls. Christine raised her eyebrows in question.

  “Holly,” Jake said with a smile. “And yes, Joey is an angry dude. He hasn’t been treated well by white folks. You might be the first.”

  When they returned to the main room, Jake dumped the bread rolls onto a table and filled the bowl with water for Holly, who lapped greedily at it. She then sniffed at the rolls and whined. Jake gave her one, then a second one when she wolfed it down.

  Katie’s eyes fluttered open, momentarily looking panicked. Christine wiped cool water across her face, squeezing her hand as she had done before. Katie smiled, her fingers signing at a rapid pace.

  “She said to say thank you, just knowing she wasn’t alone made all the difference to her when she was buried,” Joey interpreted.

  Christine smiled and leaned forward to kiss Katie’s forehead. “I’m going to see if I can find the housekeeping room and get some blankets. I’ll be right back,” Christine said, heading back toward the hallway that held the elevators, the little light bouncing off the walls.

  She discovered the four-story hotel had more than a housekeeping room. There was a large laundry area and individual rooms for sheets, blankets, and pillows. Christine pushed on one swinging door and heard someone cry out in pain.

  “Who’s there?” she asked nervously.

  A young Hispanic woman peered out of the round window set in the door. “Is it safe to come out now?”

  “As safe as it’s going to be. Why are you hiding?”

  “All the shaking and people screaming scared me. What are you doing here? Guests aren’t allowed in the employee area,” the young woman stated, feeling suddenly brave.

  “I’m looking for some blankets… Anna,” Christine said, glancing at the girl’s name badge. “There are injured people in the lobby. Can you help me?”

  Anna produced a housekeeping cart and they loaded up blankets and pillows, and with Christine leading the way with the flashlight, they inched their way down the dark hall.

  ***

  “I need to get going. I think you two can care for Katie now.” Christine stood to leave, tucking one of the blankets around the injured girl. “Do you know where the nearest gas station is? I’m on empty.”

  “Hey, white girl, don’t you know you don’t drive around in the hood on an empty gas tank?” Joey smirked.

  “First of all, Joey, my name is Christine, and I didn’t know I was coming to ‘the hood’,” she snapped back. “Is there a nearby station or not?”

  ***

  In the now near empty parking lot, Christine stood by her car while Joey headed to the scene of the car crash, one of the empty water pitchers in his hand.

  “What are you doing?” she said over his shoulder.

  “Jeez! Don’t sneak up on me like that!” Joey huffed. He took a screwdriver from his pocket and reached under the disabled car. He hit the screwdriver with a brick he’d picked up from the ground, and gas spurted out of the gas tank and into the water pitcher.

  “You’re stealing gas?” Christine said hesitantly. “I don’t know about this.”

  “You’re not going to find any open gas station for at least twenty, maybe thirty miles. Think you can make it that far?” Christine shook her head. “I’m only taking gas from the wrecks, okay?”

  Joey poured four pitchers of gas into the PT Cruiser, enough to fill the tank a quarter full.

  “Thank you, Joey. My dad always said I should never let the tank get less than half empty. I should have listened to him.”

  Joey turned to leave and stopped. “Thanks again for helping my sister. Ya know, for a white girl, you’re okay, Christine.”

  She smiled to his retreating back and then sat in her car fiddling with the GPS, programming it to take her home.

  ***

  Christine turned left as her GPS instructed her to do and thought she would have a clear route to the expressway. After making the required turn, she ran into a side street filled with rubble and had to back up and try a different turn, much to the chagrin of the programmed GPS voice. Another bad turn and one good turn brought her straight in line with a burning gas station.

  “Holy shit!” she gasped aloud and backed away quickly to turn around, just as the gas station’s tank blew and impaled a brick in her back window. Panicking, she hit the gas and bounced over a few bricks that hadn’t been there a minute earlier trying to put as much distance between her and that gas station.

  A block later, with her GPS nagging her to turn left again, Christine stopped the car, turned the useless GPS off and got out. She held on to the door and leaned over, vomiting up the remnants of her lunch.

  “Are you okay, miss?” a low voice asked.

  Christine snapped her head up in terror. The elderly man, carrying what looked like a purse, had a kindly face and kept his distance. It wasn’t until she stood fully up, that Christine noticed he wasn’t alone.

  “My name is Henry Palazzola. This is my wife Sadie and our grandson Michael,” he informed her with a hesitant smile.

  “Thank you for your concern, Mr. Palazzola. I’m Christine Tiggs. The explosion just now really scared me. In fact, all of this has really scared me.” Her lip quivered a bit and her lashes dampened. She studied the man in front of her. He was in his late seventies, with a head of silver hair in tight curls and waves. His kindly face was etched with deep lines and a complexion that bespoke of a Mediterranean heritage.

  She straightened her shoulders and took a deep breath. “I don’t know where I am and I can’t find my way to the expressway to go home!”

  “There, there, Christine. I think you’ve just had an adrenaline burst from being justifiably frightened and it upset your stomach,” Sadie said, coming closer and putting her arm around Christine’s shoulders. “We can’t go home either.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re standing in what was our parlor,” Sadie chuckled, and then frowned. Christine looked around her for the first time, really looked, and noticed bits and pieces of furniture, shattered glass sprouting from broken picture frames and a china teacup, still intact. She picked it up, a tear slipping down her cheek and handed it to Sadie.

  Sadie looked at the china cup in her hand and looked the young girl in the eyes, smiled, and let the teacup slip from her fingers to the ground where it shattered. The action startled Christine.

  “It’s only stuff, Christine. It’s all only stuff,” Sadie said, her strong voice adding to the conviction. “Where are you headed?”

  “I guess I’m going back to the hotel,” Christine answered, still staring at the cup in shock. “It’s getting late and I’ll only get lost in the dark.”

  “May we come with you?” Henry asked. “I think we would be safer in a group.”

  As the three piled in the car with Christine, Michael tugged on his grandmother’s hand.

  “Noona, I’m thirsty.”

  Christine looked in the rearview mirror and met Sadie’s eyes. “There’s bottled water in that suitcase,” she told her. The old lady smiled and nodded.

  “So, Christine, why are you in this dark hole of humanity? No offense, dear, but a young white girl shouldn’t be in this neighborhood on her own,” Sadie said while Christine maneuvered around some debris in the road while Henry guided her back to the hotel. A blast from another exploding gas tank rocked the small car and everyone instinctively ducked.

  “I was at a training seminar at the Carlyle when the quake hit,” she explained nervously. Neither adult caught her faraway look as her thoughts automatically turned to Lois. “I actually live in Greenwood, about five hours from here, and this GPS isn’t any help getting around the b
locked roads. May I ask why you’re in such a rough neighborhood?”

  “You tell her, Henry,” Sadie said with a touch of defiance to her strong voice.

  “My wife would rather we retired to Florida,” Henry said. “I’m a veterinarian by profession, and when I got pushed out of my own practice by partners I reluctantly hired, I decided to open a new office, one that would be more satisfying.” He glanced back at his wife. “I offer my services to the poor for nominal or no fees. Their pets need care too.”

  “That’s a generous and noble thing to do, Mister.. um, Dr. Palazzola,” Christine said.

  “I’m just Henry now.”

  Christine turned the GPS back on when the streets were clear and as it guided them back to the hotel, she could almost hear the disgust in the mechanical voice as they pulled into the parking lot.

  ***

  “What’s the matter, white girl, you get lost?” Joey smirked when Christine pushed open the large glass door of the damaged hotel. The sky was getting dirty from the billowing oily smoke from all the fires.

  “As a matter of fact, Joey, I did,” she admitted. “In a way it was a good thing. I found three more survivors. This is Henry and Sadie Palazzola, and their grandson, Michael.” The trio had followed Christine into the building, trailing a few minutes behind so she could prepare the others for the intrusion.

  “Hey, Doc!” Jake said with a big smile, recognizing the veterinarian.

  Holly got up from her post next to the sleeping Katie and made a beeline for the old man, her tail wagging furiously. She gave a quiet woof as she nuzzled the extended hand.