Jason Frost - The Warlord

He smiled weakly as he hugged her, sensing that it was a mistake. But realizing there was no other choice if he wanted to keep Annie and the kids. Perhaps he should move away by himself. Leave Annie and the kids. Go into hiding. He'd considered this alternative for weeks, exploring the possibilities like one probes an open wound. But he couldn't do it. He knew Fallows would go after them anyway just to punish Eric. At least if he stayed he could try to protect them.

"Don't worry, sweetheart," Annie said, burying her face in his chest. "We'll make it work. We can-"

The rumbling was louder this time, like a tractor driving through the door. The whole room shook, the bed shuddering at first, then inching across the floor, finally sliding toward the middle of the room. The dusty paintings on the wall clattered a moment before falling to the floor. The telephone pitched off the bedside table and clanged onto the floor. The lamp tumbled off next, but didn't break. Instead the lightbulb flickered then went black.

Outside, loud crashing could be heard. And screaming.

"Pick a year, any year."

They stared back, silent and confused.

"Come on," Eric smiled. "This isn't a trick. Just pick a year at random."

"1547," Philip Marcus shouted.

"A.D. or B.C.?"

"A.D."

"Good choice," Eric nodded, writing the number on the blackboard. "Any particular reason you picked it, Philip?"

Philip shrugged, embarrassed by the praise. "It's the combination to my bicycle lock."

Everyone laughed, including Eric. "Well, then you'll all be glad to know that Philip's combination is your next assignment." This time everyone groaned. "I want you to write a paper exploring the events of 1547, explaining their causes and ramifications. Any questions?"

Hands shot up.

"Lisa?"

"How extensive is this paper supposed to be?"

"Very extensive."

She looked annoyed. "How extensive exactly? What kinds of stuff?"

"All right, for example. Let's see, 1547." Eric scratched his scar. "What happened that year? Ah, yes. Henry VIII died and was succeeded by his son, Edward VI, aged 10. Francois I of France also died and was succeeded by his son, Henri II. England invaded Scotland. Ivan IV, known among partygoers as Ivan the Terrible, assumed full power in Russia, including the title of Tsar."

Philip Marcus interrupted. "So you're mainly interested in the politics of that year."

"Nope. I'm feeling greedy. I want it all. Philosophy, religion, art, science. Everything. Tintoretto painted his version of the Last Supper that year. The first Protestant doctrines were introduced into the English church. Calvinist reformer John Knox was exiled to France. I want to hear about all the important events and how they relate to each other."

Dayna Stewart shifted her broken leg, knocking over the crutches she'd stacked next to her desk. They clattered against each other and everyone in the room looked uncomfortable as they thought about how she was injured. And why there were so many empty seats in the classroom. "Sorry," she said sheepishly to Eric.

"That's okay, Dayna." Then to the rest of the class, "And before you ask, the paper's a minimum of twenty pages, including footnotes and a selected bibliography."

Lisa waved her hand. "Typed?"

"As always."

"Well, I just thought, considering what's happened…" Her voice trailed away.

"Anything else, scholars?"

"Footnotes," David Weathers asked. "At the bottom of each page or at the end of the paper?"

"The end is fine. No need struggling with that mess."

There was some muttering of approval over that.

"All right," Eric said, nodding at the clock on the wall. "I think that should give you something to do between now and the two weeks you have to write it. Now get out of here."

"Two weeks!" several protested aloud. Everyone else merely grumbled as they shuffled out the door.

Eric stuffed his roll sheet back into his battered briefcase and watched his students funnel out. European History Until 1700. Two weeks ago there had been thirty-one students. Now there were twelve. Two were dead. Ten were injured, a couple seriously. He'd visited them in the hospital, their limbs in thick white casts balanced at odd angles by weights and pulleys. Four people to a room, no more semi-privates or privates. Those days were gone. Even the corridors were lined with occupied gurneys, their groans drowned by fretting relatives pacing the floors. Makeshift hospitals had been set up by Red Cross at several public schools, but according to radio reports, those too were overcrowded.

The other seven missing students Eric wasn't sure about. A few, he suspected, had moved out of state, back to their parents, or just to safety. A couple were probably just not in the mood to go to school anymore. Something about disasters like this make people question the worth of what they do. Eric could understand that. Vietnam had been a two-year disaster, and he'd done a lot of questioning.

The earthquake had been devastating. Over three hundred people killed, mostly elderly patients at the Garden Grove Hospital where one of the older wings collapsed; most of the balance of victims were shoppers at the Fountain Valley Shopping Mall hurrying to buy one more item before the stores closed. Rescuers were still digging bodies out, one limb at a time. Eric had seen news photos of workers trying to reassemble the bodies, matching bloody parts in an effort to identify the dead. One Times photo showed a gloved workman gripping a severed leg by the ankle like a baseball bat as he wandered up and down aisles of partially assembled bodies.

Even the university had contributed its share of corpses. A ten-foot square plate glass window in the Student Union building had rattled violently, then exploded, showering the half a dozen students below who were watching a basketball game on the lounge TV with dagger-sized shards of glass. Two of the dead were Eric's students, Angela Hopkins and Jerry Martin. Both nineteen. They'd met the first day of Eric's class and had been inseparable ever since. A week before the quake they'd made love together for the first time.

Injuries were running in the thousands. Over two thousand so far. Most of the utilities and phone services had been restored, and businesses were all getting back to a kind of normalcy now despite the boarded windows and limping salespeople.

For once there'd been no hesitation from the president in declaring a federal disaster area. He'd even flown over the area in a helicopter for fifteen minutes, though he'd landed and immediately jetted home to Washington. But what he'd seen shook him, gripped a fear inside with a stranglehold that forced him to pop a glycerine pill he didn't want the public to know he took. Fortunately, the single news camera he'd allowed aboard the chopper ride had been too busy recording the gnarled remains below to notice. That night, the rest of the world witnessed the dusty remains of California on TV, shaking their heads in awe.

From the air it looked as if some careless giant had stomped angrily across the state. In some areas, houses had crumbled while only one street away there'd been no damage at all. A gas line had broken in Covina causing an explosion and fire that burned four homes to the ground. In Santa Ana a transfer pipe between vats at a chemical company ruptured spilling noxious chemicals and forcing the evacuation of three nearby residential neighborhoods. The land itself looked suddenly aged and battle-torn. Huge fissures wriggled through several areas along the various fault lines. Deep gashes in the ground webbed across parking lots and farm lands like bloodless wounds from a hacking sword. Eric particularly remembered the film of that Fallbrook farmhouse ripped in half when the ground under it split and began moving in opposite directions.