Dana Mentink - Shock Wave

He got to his feet, wobbling on the debris that slipped and slid beneath his feet. Every movement unleashed another tide of detritus and each sound made him stop, ears straining for some noise, any sign of life, from her. His heart hammered against his ribs as he floundered his way free, peering through the gloom to find her. Where are you? He prayed she was safe, that maybe she’d had time to run off the stage before it buckled. Yet another situation in which she would never have found herself if she’d listened to him in the first place. No time for quiet deliberation.

“Sage Harrington, answer me right now!” he bellowed in a volume so loud it echoed and bounced through the darkness.

It was not an answer, exactly, but a whoosh of debris stirred somewhere at his eleven o’clock. He scrambled over broken boards until he neared the spot, wishing he had not lost his grip on the flashlight earlier. He called again, treading gently on the rubble, turning over sheets of plaster until he saw a tiny pinprick of light. He got to his knees and pawed with his hands until he found the source, the luminous dial of Sage’s watch. He grasped her slender wrist and pulled her arm free, shoving aside as much of the mess as he could until he unearthed her.

She was covered in dirt, eyes closed.

He pressed two shaking fingers to her throat.

At his touch she jerked awake and bolted backward, her feet scrambling for purchase, eyes wild and glittering in the gloom. “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me.”

Trey held up his hands, palms forward. “It’s me, Sage. Trey Black. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The crazed sheen in her eyes did not abate. Panting, she scanned the ceiling as if expecting a weight to drop down from above at any moment. Her body began to tremble and a bead of sweat rolled down her forehead.

In the face of her reaction, his anger trickled away. He knew the look, he’d seen it before, long after the bombs had stopped and the bullets went quiet. He’d known good men to suffer from PTSD, even after they were safe at home, back with the people who had anguished over them their entire tour of duty. Maybe for some, there was no safety anymore after war imprinted that fear deep down inside. The realization added to the weight of grief he felt over what had happened to her, to them both, in Afghanistan. He tried again, softening his voice. “It’s okay. There was an earthquake.”

“An earthquake?” she parroted back in a whisper.

“Yes,” he said. “We’re in the Imperial Opera House. We were standing on the stage when it collapsed.” She nodded and he took that as a good sign. “I wondered if you are hurt. Would it be okay if I came closer and checked you out?”

She might have nodded, he wasn’t sure in the dark, but he approached slowly until he was near enough to get a better visual. She’d moved to a spot where the light from above was less obstructed and he could see enough to know she didn’t have any open wounds that he could detect, except for a series of cuts on her face and hands. At his touch she flinched and tensed, so he stopped and smiled. “Just going to make sure there’s nothing broken, okay?”

He tried again and this time she did not pull away so he moved his hands along her legs and arms, until he was satisfied that there were no bones massively out of place. It was impossible to discern if she’d sustained any internal injury or head trauma. He’d just have to pray she’d escaped those, too. By the time he was done with his makeshift medical exam, her breathing had normalized. She drew her knees up to her chest. His heart skipped a beat at how very young she looked, how very small and delicate against the yawning mass behind her.

“It was a big one.”

“Yes. The Big One, I’d say.” He could imagine the frenzy taking place on the city streets—fire crews, police and every available city employee working to salvage life and property. San Francisco was a modern city in every sense of the word, and it had the reinforced steel skyscrapers to show for it, but he’d seen enough of the old buildings during his morning runs to know that there would be plenty of destruction to deal with.

“We’ve got to get out,” she said with only a slight tremble in her voice. “Will someone come to help us?”

“I think we’d be better off taking care of our own rescue,” he said, seating himself on a chunk of broken bricks.

“Do you think Antonia fell, too? And Fred?”

“I haven’t seen anyone but the two of us.” No sign of whoever had pushed the boxes down on them. He looked up at the stage floor some twenty feet above them. What had probably been a set of two ladders leading up from under the stage area had been ripped away during the quake until only a few rungs were left clinging to the walls. All around them were piles of boxes, but most were smashed too badly to be of use helping them climb out.

Sage’s breathing was steadier now. She patted her pockets and produced a cell phone, groaning as she peered at the cracked screen. “No signal here. It’s completely useless. What about yours?”

“I don’t carry a cell phone.”

Her mouth fell open. “What kind of person doesn’t carry a cell phone in this day and age?”

He shrugged. “The kind that doesn’t want to be connected, I guess.” He sighed. “In a war everyone has to be accounted for every moment, for their safety. I just...” He shook his head, wondering why in the world he was telling her this. “I wanted to disconnect, to sort of vanish for a while and remember who I used to be. Does that make sense?”

Her eyes shimmered and she gave a tiny nod. He wanted to cup her cheek just then, to make her understand that war had changed both of them, but the bite of anger stilled his hands. Her trauma had been totally avoidable. “Cell phone probably wouldn’t help anyway, since we’re basically underground, and even if we could call, the networks are probably jammed. Texting might be about the only option.”

“I’ll text Antonia now.” She waited for a moment with no response.

“So this is going to be a do-it-yourself rescue,” Trey said. “I’m going to poke around and see if there’s an exit down here.”

She got to her feet. “Me, too.”

He was about to tell her she should remain seated, the memory of her earlier reaction haunting him, but something told him she did not want to be alone, even though it would kill her to say so. So be it. Her PTSD would be the unspoken elephant in the room. At least for now. He offered a hand and she took it, rising in a cloud of dust that made them both cough.

It was hard to access the perimeter of the room, blocked as it was by the ruins, but he found one section of brick that gave him a starting point. “We’ll work our way around as best we can, and if there are no exits, we’ll go to plan B.” He began feeling his way along the rough brick.

“What’s plan B?” Sage said, shuffling behind him.

“I don’t know. I haven’t come up with that yet.”

She sighed and pressed closer to his back. He tried to ignore the way her presence made his breath tick up a notch as they climbed over boards and scraps of what looked like ancient theater backdrops.

“What’s that?” Sage said, moving away from him. For a moment he lost track of her.

“Where are you?”

“Here,” she said, flicking on a light that illuminated her smile. “I found the flashlight and it still works.”

He couldn’t help but return that smile. “That’s one blessing working in our favor,” he said.

Her smile dimmed. “No blessing. Just a happy coincidence.”

He decided not to argue the point, but deep down he knew the truth. Both of us just survived a massive earthquake and God tossed in a flashlight to boot. Now it was up to Trey to get them both out of there.