Mark Dunn - We Five

Molly nodded.

“I know this to be true,” she said groggily. “I know that San Francisco rattles and shakes as its wont, but it still woke me.”

“And now you’ve woken me ,” moaned Maggie in nearly inarticulate protest. “So do us both the favor of going back to sleep.” Maggie rolled over upon the sleeping mat she shared with Molly on the floor of the little Chinese room.

But Maggie had scarcely gotten the words out of her mouth when the foreshock which was its preamble gave way to the great quake itself. The room shook with terrific violence, the crockery and glassware on the room’s sideboard falling and shattering upon the floor, the walls shifting and juddering up and down and from side to side as if rattled by a giant hand.

In the next room Ruth and Jane tried to pick themselves up from the floor and could not. Nor could they even see one another through the thick cloud of atomized plaster dust, as strips and chunks and pellets of white plaster began to drop from the shuddering ceiling.

The same was occurring in the next room over, as Carrie, who had been sleeping alone, screamed out in terror, and Lyle, who was in the room on the other side, heard her even above the din and rose to his feet, only to be knocked back down again, and then was forced to crawl like a baby toward the door.

Now the walls and ceilings began to open up, to tear themselves into discrete planks and studs and beams, which snapped and cracked and fell this way and that, and one large beam came crashing down upon Lyle, pinning him flat to the floor, the boards beneath him continuing to undulate like the waves of an angry sea.

And all was a riot of noise from the tremendous quaking, and things throughout the tea house were crackling and fracturing into myriad pieces. And there was a thunderous rumble underneath it all that told the ear what the body could already feel and the eye could already see.

Molly tugged at the closed door that had wedged itself into its frame and she could not open it. Conversely, Ruth and Jane’s door flung itself open on its own and, in fact, unhinged itself entirely from its frame, ripping through the drapery hanging in front of it. Through the cloud of dust the two could see the large copper gasolier in the dining room swinging wildly back and forth like a mad pendulum, while beneath it a wooden Buddha rolled its roly-poly self across the rippling, heaving, snapping floorboards like a performing Chinese tumbler.

In her own little cell, Carrie covered her mouth and nose with her hand.

But even in that intermediary moment between sleep and wakefulness, she recognized and registered the acrid tang of smoke.

She was the first to smell it. And she was the one to wake and alert her sisters and Jane’s brother Lyle to the frightening reality of it, situated as they were upon surplus army cots in the basement storeroom of Sister Lydia’s new tabernacle.

Quickly did they all wake and just as quickly did they spring to their feet. It was Lyle who stated the obvious: “The building’s on fire. We have to get out.”

There was a little window in one corner of the room, but it was too high and seemed far too small for even Molly, the most petite of the six, to squeeze through it.

Jane was at the door now and pulling it open, only to be knocked backward upon her heels by a blast of smoke from the outside corridor. All began coughing and choking, each struggling for breath as the room became quickly filled with a thick fog of particulates and soot and ash. Each knew that survival meant leaving this room, for closing the door would only postpone the unthinkable. And so into the smoke they went, hands and handkerchiefs and pillowcases covering gasping mouths, each with one hand left free to grab the hand of another. Heads tucked and eyes half-closed, the six shouldered their way into the darkness — commending themselves into the waiting arms of either death or salvation, their fate dependent on how extensive had spread the electrical fire which only a few minutes earlier had been but a tiny spark, though now was something large and menacing and ravenous for the very oxygen We Six required to execute their escape.

In the midst of the darkness each of the six could hear the frightened cries and frantic, desperate shouts of those fellow shelter dwellers who had also been cast into a state of utter blindness by the blast. It was a 1,400-kilo semi-armour piercing bomb that had deeply penetrated the ground beneath Balham High Road just north of the Balham Northern line station. It exploded upon impact with the cross passageway between the two platforms and immediately unleashed a terrific volume of water from severed mains and shattered sewer pipes — the water gushing directly into the stygian subterranean tube station.

We Six could hear the sound of the cascading water as it quickly began to flood the Balham tube. It was Molly who first noted the wetness about her ankles as the gathering stream coursed past.

“Maggie! Maggie, where are you?” she called. Maggie, who was standing no more than two or three feet away, swung her arms about until she made contact with Molly in the blackness and latched a hand upon her arm.

Nearby, but seemingly miles away down the platform, its cowl of darkness being pricked by little pinpoints of light from the engagement of matches and little candles and cigarette lighters, were Ruth and Jane, who had also found one another and each of whom now clung to her sister in cold, silent terror. Carrie and Lyle hadn’t similar good fortune. Separated by the panicked thrashings and flailings of those who were rising from their sleeping spots, now sacrificed to that growing river of water and mud and sludge that was once the southbound platform of Balham Station, Carrie and Lyle could only call to one another, though it was difficult to be heard over the frightened screams and the roar of the surging torrent.

The sound rose and now became nearly deafening in its volume. The wind that was its source was fast whipping itself into a maddening circle about the barn. Yet Lyle continued to call out for Carrie to come to him, as he, in turn, tried to make his way to her . As the sideboards of the barn flew off and away, the entire structure became a skeleton-like vestige of what had only a moment earlier been wholly intact — a deceptively safe refuge for the five young women and one young man who had sought shelter there.

Ruth and Jane locked arms around each other’s hips as they hooked their other arms around a wooden post set into the corner of a horse stall, each debating whether they should flee the doomed structure altogether and take their chances in the open.

Molly and Maggie were considering the same, having watched the horses and the one frightened cow do that very thing without thought in their bestial brains for what might be the consequences. In the end, the two struggled through the churning wind and flying debris toward a large tractor which sat heavy and solid and unmoving in the middle of what was left of the dismantling barn.

As Molly took her few steps in this direction, putting herself upon the doorstep of her cousin’s house, she felt something hard and heavy strike her head and down she went. As she sank into unconsciousness, Molly looked briefly into the eyes of the madman now staring down at her with crazed, lascivious eyes. In that next moment Maggie sprang upon the man and began pounding his chest with angry fists for what he’d done, only to be flung to the ground by his companion. As the brace of men moved to make lecherous assault upon their two victims, their advance was halted by Jemma’s father, who had at that moment swung open his front door and aimed a gun at them with the threat that he would use it if they did not vacate his property on the instant.