Jackson Ford - Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air

The giant pine tree above him snaps in two, the top half falling towards them with a hissing, crunching roar. Amber gets a hand up, as if she can stop the tree herself. Matthew yelps, thrusting his hands into the soil. There’s an explosion of dirt, a giant pillar of it rocketing upwards, leaving a gash in the ground. The dirt slams into the falling tree, knocks it sideways. It lands a few feet away, boughs snapping, just as Matthew hurls himself onto his mom. Despite how he hurt her, what he had to do when she wouldn’t listen, she holds him. Tight.

Another blast of dirt, dropping them into the earth. Matthew cocoons them in a sphere of it. The world goes dark, the smell of damp and rot invading his nostrils.

In the cramped space, under the insane noise from outside, the sound is a dead, muffled thing. He laughs, delighted, horrified, his breathing hot and heavy as he tries to hold their prison together. They are tossed about like a beachball in stormy seas. Amber sobs, her body shaking against his. The terror and excitement he feels is cut with annoyance. Just like her to start crying now.

He doesn’t know how long the shaking lasts. A while. Either way, when he finally lets the light in, the world is still. No sound but the wind.

He clambers out of Amber’s grip, crawling under the last wisps of floating dirt. He lets them drop, dust and rocks and roots raining down on them. Amber lies there, hitching in cold, agonising breaths, as her son gets to his feet.

“That was awesome,” he breathes. He turns to her, his eyes shining. “That was awesome .”

He punches the air, his feet actually leaving the ground. “I found a ton of stored energy down there,” he says, his words coming so fast he fumbles some of them. “They were right. At the museum? There was all this pressure that hadn’t gone anywhere. And I just… it just let go, the second I touched it.”

Nobody could stop him. Not even Amber. She tried, and he did it anyway, and it was the best thing ever. He giggles, wanting to look everywhere at once.

One of his teeth is loose. He jabs it with his tongue – aren’t they supposed to start dropping out soon? The thought is a distraction, unwelcome, and he shoves it away. Maybe he just hit his face somewhere. And who cares, anyway?

“The whole Pacific Plate… boom !” He claps his hands together, delight glowing on his dirt-streaked face. “That was two whole plates sliding past one another. All that pressure went all at once, the second I touched it!” He spins in a circle. “We gotta go see. That must have hit the whole of LA! Maybe even San Francisco!”

He rushes over, pulls her to her feet. Her blonde hair is crusted with dirt, blood drying on her face. Cuts and scratches mark her cheeks.

The landscape around them has changed. Most of the trees have been toppled like dominos, roots moving in the wind. The dirt track is gone. There are new hills everywhere, new rocks, still crusted with the dirt that held them deep in the earth. Fissures zig-zag across the ground, some pencil-thin, others a foot wide, more, their interiors black as night.

Matthew hardly registers the choked sob that bursts out of his mother. He turns in another circle, slower this time, taking in the details. The heights at which the tree trunks snapped – most lower to the ground, but some halfway up, as if they were better able to withstand the energy release. Perhaps because of their roots, spread wider through the soil. The sky above them is filled with great flocks of honking birds, whirling in confused, terrified circles. Matthew beams up at them.

OK. Enough little stuff. He leads them back to the pickup, dancing across the cracked dirt.

The quake tore the road in half. When they reach the tarmac, the pickup is lying half-inside a huge fissure. Its engine compartment is crushed, the air stinking of oil. A tyre spins on a bent axle, creaking gently.

For the first time, Matthew slows down, considering the pickup. He forgot about it entirely – he should have figured out how to shield it during the quake. For some reason, he doesn’t feel like admitting this – not to Amber, that’s for sure.

“I tried to shield it, like I did for us,” he says, the lie slipping out of him with no trouble at all. “I must not have aimed right.”

Out of nowhere, he yawns, his mouth gaping. He’s tired – like, really tired. Not surprising, given what he just did. He squeezes his eyes shut, opens them again, trying to clear his head. “You need to get us a new car,” he tells Amber. “And I bet it was more than an 8.3! That’s supposed to be the max for San Andreas, but I bet I pushed it even further!”

The interior of the truck is a wreck, their possessions and supplies thrown around the cabin. A few bottles of water have split open, but the rest looks OK. The blood on Amber’s cheeks has dried to a thin crust.

He’s glad she isn’t badly hurt. It would be a real pain in the ass if he had to walk to Big Pines alone, carrying all their stuff. He has a momentary image of himself teetering down the road with a pack twice his size, and giggles again. The giggle changes to another yawn, one which brings irritation in its wake. Ugh, why does this stuff make him so tired?

Maybe it won’t be that way when he gets older. When I get my big teeth , he thinks, suddenly bitter. He wishes he was bigger. He wouldn’t even need Amber then. He wouldn’t need anyone.

Amber is staring at him. Dull horror on her face.

“What?” he says.

She doesn’t reply, turning to gather the water, the last of their food. Packing clothes in a backpack. Matthew sits down against the side of the pickup. He’ll just rest. Just for a second.

He wakes briefly when Amber snuggles in beside him, wrapping her arms around his chest. In that moment, he’s angry with himself for falling asleep – what if she’d tried to run? She could’ve just left him here, and he wouldn’t have been able to stop her.

Then again, she didn’t. She knows he’d find her.

Matthew smiles, and gives a long, contented sigh.

The world outside Schmidt’s plane isn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.

It’s worse.

Much worse.

I get to my feet at the bottom of the slide, gaping. A little, involuntary sound sneaks out of my throat, half-moan, half-whimper.

We’re off to one side of the runway. From here, I can see clear across to the terminal building. Every plane that was on the ground during the quake has been tossed and tumbled around like childrens’ toys. They lie on their sides, sunken into the earth, crashed, burning. Wrecked airport vehicles are everywhere – trucks and tugs and luggage carts.

The ground itself is… It looks like the ocean in rough weather, frozen in time. The tarmac is cracked and bruised, thrust up in some places, fallen away in others. The runway we came in on is a nightmare. How in the hell did we manage to land on that?

The terminal building – what’s left of it – is on fire. Everything is on fire. It’s raining, but not nearly hard enough to make a difference. The chill drizzle soaks my shoulders through the thin Homeland uniform.

The 7.1 from two nights ago was a glancing jab; this is a haymaker, a knockout punch, one that sends teeth flying and blood spattering the canvas. I put my hand to my mouth, a horrible, sick nausea filling up my gut.

There’s nothing I can do .

Not against this. Not against something this huge and violent. I can lift things and throw them around, maybe help clear some rubble – if I can actually convince myself to reveal my ability. But there will be thousands of other people to help, thousands of buildings and cars and trucks and houses and offices. I won’t be able to do more than make the smallest dent.