She tried, but the words wouldn't leave her lips so she simply nodded.
Jenna quickly found Seely's purse, unscrewed the cap, poured another small pill into Seely's palm, and watched her put it under her tongue. She waited until it appeared the pill was taking effect, and then screwed the cap back on the bottle. Next, she examined the cut on Seely's head. The bleeding had almost stopped. Jenna made her way into the bathroom, came back with a wad of toilet paper and started cleaning Seely's face.
"Go help Timmy."
"But what about you? I can't leave you."
"Go."
Jenna hesitated, turned and went back down the hall. This time, she attempted to climb over the cabinets. At first, she slid and fell back on the slippery metal, reaching too late for a cable dangling from the ceiling. Her already bruised body cried out in pain and she moaned in misery. She closed her eyes, relaxed her body and waited for the aching to subside. Finally, she grabbed hold of the cable and pulled herself up. Using it for support, she carefully walked across the tilted cabinets and hopped down. "Tim? Timmy, where are you?"
"Over here!"
She pushed more rubble aside with her feet and more wiring out of the way with her hands, quickly passing the heavy steel stairway door. Horrified by what she saw, Jenna took a careful step into the Kitchenette. All the blue tinted windows were gone and the feel of fresh air so high off the ground made her skin crawl. Near the south wall, a section of the floor sagged, offering a horrifying view of the mangled and twisted I-5 freeway "S" curves. In the distance, columns of smoke drifted upward from large and small fires. Stunned, her words just barely came out, "Where Timmy?"
His voice was still muffled, but louder, "Over here." The rubble in the room was piled high on one side. Desks, filing cabinets and equipment were shrouded in miles of paper, wiring and fallen plaster. A huge steel I-beam stood in the middle of the large room, its bare metal exposed. Clumps of broken cement lay in clusters around it. Splintered boards hung precariously and all but one landscape painting lay on the floor in ruins. The kitchenette bar was tilted outward, the refrigerator door was open and ruptured pop cans added their sticky liquid to the carnage. But the microwave was still in its built-in cabinet and looked completely unharmed.
Mesmerized, Jenna took another step toward the microwave. Not one scrape or scratch marred the tinted black door.
"Hey, you gonna help me or not?" Tim shouted.
"I can't see you."
"Well I can see you…your feet anyway. I'm under a desk. There's another desk in front of me."
Jenna stared at the horde of desks crunched together on the east side of the room. "Are you hurt?" Timidly, she started over the rubble.
"I'm bleeding. I didn't duck fast enough. Reflexes must be slowing down. Course we were falling at the time and that might have caused the delay. The window exploded and the glass got me in the face. Is Seely okay, I heard her scream?"
"I think she's having a heart attack. Keep talking so I can find you. Are you cut bad?"
"Well, let's put it this way. My wife used to call me pretty boy Floyd. Now I'll be scar face. Don't worry. She'll love me just the same…if she's still alive."
*
James McClurg slowly moved the radio's tuning dial until he reached the desired, non-emergency frequency. "W7LGF, this is KB7HD, over." He paused, but heard only weak voices, transmitted on a frequency close to his. He adjusted the dial and tried again. "W7LGF, this is KB7HD. Max, can you hear me?"
Heather sat on the metal chair with four red dots stuck on the tip of each finger on her left hand, "Is he the one who taught you how to hook up free Cable TV."
"Uh huh. And if you tell Mom and Dad, I'll string you up. "W7LGF, this is KB7HD, Max? " Nothing. James eyed his cluttered bookcase and then grabbed his ARRL Manual. He quickly turned the pages until he found a list of emergency frequencies. With the snap of his wrist, he ripped the page out and laid it on the desk. He turned the dial, found the designated Yakima frequency and spoke into the mike, "W7CC, this is KB7HDX, over. W7CC, this is KB7HDX."
"Who's W7CC?" Heather asked.
"Boyd Smith, the section manager."
Finally, an answer came over the radio. "W7CC. Hey kid, what's up?"
"KB7HDX. Haven't you heard? Seattle had the big one. 9.1 on the Richter Scale."
"You're kidding. I've been up on the roof fixing the repeater. Come to think of it, I did feel something. Thought it was the wind. It's Saturday, there's nobody here at the courthouse except me. Are you available? Over."
"KB7HDX, you bet, over."
"Standby KB, let’s see how fast we can staff this place."
"Copy Net control, KB7HDX out." James moved his mouth away from the mike and stared at his desk. Even without homework, the desktop was covered. It held electronic manuals, magazine articles and hand written notes. "They'll use the more experienced guys to staff the courthouse."
"What'll we do, then?"
"Pass messages along to other stations. In the disaster area, guys will have their hands full with injury and damage reports, but out here away from Seattle, hundreds, maybe thousands of people are gonna wanna know if their families are alright."
Heather sighed. "I'd rather listen to what's happening. Can't you find that one channel again?"
"Frequency, you mean? Sure."
In the middle of the largest room on the forty-third floor, Jenna suddenly froze. The world was moving again and she was at least ten feet from the kitchenette. The building rose, humped, dipped down and then shuddered. She turned and started back, but as abruptly as it began, the earth stopped moving. "Timmy?"
"What? You think I'm going somewhere? Get me out of here Jenna before I lose my lunch!"
Jenna rolled her eyes and headed back toward the desks. "You do and I'll tell everyone I know what a coward you are. Just hold on, I'm doing the best I can." A large, overturned bookcase blocked one corner of the first desk and its contents blocked the other. First, she tried moving the bookcase. When it didn't budge, she began tossing the thick accounting records out of the way, scattering the unbound papers. Finished, she scooted rubbish off the desk and knocked on the top. "You hear that?"
"Yes. I must be farther back than I thought…maybe two desks."
Jenna cleared a space on the floor, got down on her knees and peeked under the desk. Instantly, she reeled back in horror. His face was covered with blood and she could only see one eye. Feverishly, she began scooting more debris out of the way. She tried to stay calm, but her cracking voice betrayed her approaching tears, "The good news is, you're only one desk back after all. The bad news is..."
"Yes? Go on."
"You're probably gonna bleed to death before I get you out."
"No, no, won't bleed to death. It doesn't run in the family. Besides, I think most of the cuts are only skin deep. Maybe one or two worth fretting over, but I've still got my neck. Juggler veins are working perfectly and..."
Jenna listened to him talk while she struggled to maneuver her body around the desk. Pulling on one side, she managed to move the corner nearly six inches away from the other desk.
"Hey, watch it will ya. Dust is falling everywhere. Warn me next time so I can cover my good eye."
"Okay, Mister Cranky. You don't need to take it out on me. Cover your eye." She wedged her body between the desks and shoved hard until the heavy desk moved another five inches. "How am I doing?"
Tim lowered his hands and looked, "Good; real good for a kid. Another shove should do it."
"Okay. Cover your eyes now." Jenna groaned and applied all her strength. The desk moved another four inches.
"My hero," Tim said. He waited just long enough for her to move out of the way, and then crawled on all fours until he could stand up.
When he turned to face her, she gasped. Splinters of blue tinted glass dotted his face and a jagged, one and a half inch piece jutted out of his forehead. Blood still oozed from the wound, dripping into his right eye.
"I couldn't get that one out. Too slippery. You got any tweezers?"
Jenna grabbed his arm and pulled. "Come on, it's not safe in here."
"You're telling me?"
*
As hard as James tried, he still couldn't find any other frequency on his Ham Radio with the same clarity as the one reporting from Seattle's North end. So he returned to the original frequency, got a pen, opened a spiral notebook and began jotting down call signs, damage and injuries.
"KE7SRT emergency."
"SRT, go ahead."
"Carl, we've got three city blocks with heavy damage at 103rd NE between 36th and 37th Avenue in Inverness. They're brand new apartment buildings, four or five floors high, but they slid down the hillside. We have three dead and six injured so far. And we've got a lot of water coming from somewhere. Could be from that tower on the hill, over."
"Copy SRT. Phones are down here. Have you got service out there? Over."
"KE7SRT, we get a dial tone but nothing goes through, over."
"SRT, you got a phone number for your water company?"
"KE7SRT, roger. The number is 428-206-2838."
"SRT, copy. I can try from here, but we don't even have a dial tone. SRT, you have any contact with police or fire yet? Over."
"Negative control. I'm heading that way next."
"Copy, SRT."
*
High in the Cascade Mountains, a man from Spokane made a final adjustment to one of several tall antennas. He climbed down off the concrete and metal housing, and then walked back down the dirt road to his Ford Bronco. Reaching through the open window, he withdrew a hand-held Amateur Radio, brought it to his mouth, and pressed the Push-To-Talk button.
"AS7E to K7ZLP."
"This is K7ZLP, go ahead."
"The repeater looks pretty good. I replaced one of the antenna so it should work okay now, over."
"K7ZLP, copy. I've already picked up three more frequencies out of Seattle. Thanks my friend. You headed that way? Over."
"Yep, if I can get there. With five kids and no husband, my sister will need help. I'll stay in touch. AS7E, out."
With each new step down the two flights of stairs, Max slowed. When he finally reached the first floor landing, he sat down and gently pulled off his tennis shoe and sock. Just as he suspected, the corner of the falling transmitter left a bright red mark surrounded by a hideous purple bruise. Next, he eased his T-shirt sleeve up and examined his shoulder. It was bruised as well, but not as bad as he expected. Carefully, he put his sock back on and retied his shoe to allow more room for the swelling. Then he limped down the stairs to the basement.
Cans, once stacked on sturdy shelves, lay strewn across the room, with the shelves lying haphazardly on top of them. Broken glass containers added their gooey liquid. Candy's gardening tools and dirt for potted plants mixed in the wet mess. A crack large enough for a finger stretched up the side of both walls. But the generators were intact, each humming their call to duty.
Max stepped through the mess and quickly switched both generators off. Just hours before, he'd connected the wire to the generator, threaded it through a hole in the basement window, and then ran it up the outside of the building to the roof. Now, the window was gone. He carefully examined the connection to the generator, and then every inch of the cable. It looked okay.
He eased back up the stairs and opened the door to his apartment. The living room was in shambles. Mixed with overturned furniture, broken plaster and glass, high chairs were toppled amid scattered crayons, color books, toy cars and baby rattles. Max swooped down, picked up a small teddy bear and gently laid it on the overturned sofa. Testing the floor, he cautiously inched closer to the window. When he was near enough, he grabbed a coloring book, scraped the broken glass out of the frame and then tested the strength of the wall. It felt sturdy. Grabbing hold, he leaned out the window and scanned the cable. It was still tacked to the outside wall and ran unbroken from the basement window to the attic.
"Good!" Max breathed. He limped back to the door and out of habit, pulled it closed behind him.
On the floor, in what was left of the usually neat and orderly dining room, an upside down Ham Radio crackled to life, "W7LGF, this is KB7HDX. W7LGF, this is KB7HDX. Max...can you hear me? Max?"
*
Yakima's designated frequency was suddenly alive with call signs reporting availability. The section manager quickly became Net Control and gave each an assigned duty. Not once did Boyd call for assistance from James. He listened a while longer, and then glanced at his little sister. "I feel so helpless."
"Me too." Perched on his bed again, Heather toyed with the red dots. "We could go there, and help, maybe."
"Get real. Seattle's a long ways away and who knows if the roads are still in one piece. Besides, it'll get dark soon and Mom would skin me alive if anything happened to you."
"Yes, but I've got first aid. I took it last year, remember. And I could work that stupid radio if you'd let me. We could take shifts and report what we see."
James thought about it for a moment. "I don't think we should, it's not safe, Heather. For all we know there are dead bodies everywhere."
"I've seen a dead body."
"When?"
"When Grandpa died."
"It’s not the same. Grandpa died in his sleep and wasn't bloody or anything." James folded his arms and thoughtfully blinked his eyes. "I'd like to go. I'd like to see what happened. But if I do, I'm not taking you."
"You have to. Mom and Dad are in Portland and I'm your responsibility. Where you go, I go!"
*
By the time Tim and Jenna climbed back over the file cabinets and reached Seely, her color had greatly improved. Her head wasn't bleeding and she was on her feet. At first, she winced at the sight of Tim's face. She narrowed her eyes and looked closer. "I've got tweezers in the earthquake kit. You stay here. And sit down before you fall down."
Tim blinked his usable eye, "I just love it when a woman gets bossy." He put his back against the only portion of solid wall and slid down, bending his knees and then stretching out his legs. "Man that feels good. I couldn't stretch my legs under that desk. I thought I was going to die out there. First we fell, then…”
Seely just let him talk. Holding aside the dangling wires, she carefully stepped through the rubble and led Jenna down the hall toward the elevators. When she reached the end, she stopped. To her left, a wider hallway offered six closed elevator doors on one side and a badly damaged wall on the other. Beyond that, the inside conference room wall, once holding large windows in narrow frames was gone, leaving a wide open area surrounding the reception desk. Chairs and a hutch sat precariously close to the outer wall. And the oak table, large enough to seat twenty people, had disappeared. Gone also were the identical narrow frames that once separated four, floor to ceiling blue tinted, outer windows. Beyond that, sunshine, crystal clear air and a forty-three floor drop.
Seely stared at the unmoving, sheer curtains pulled to the right hand side of the windowless room. "Still no wind."
"What?" Jenna asked.
"No wind. We're so high up, there should be wind." She dismissed the thought and continued straight ahead. The door to the supply room at the end of the hallway was closed. Seely turned the knob and shoved, but the door only opened an inch. She put her head closer and peered into the darkness. "No windows, I can't see a thing."
Suddenly, Tim was standing right behind her, "Here, let me." When both women turned to stare, he shrugged his shoulders. "I don't want to die alone. So sue me." He waited until Seely moved out of the way, put a shoulder against the door and pushed hard. The door abruptly opened another foot."
Seely grinned. "Perfect. The earthquake Kit is right inside the door, on the bottom shelf. Do you see it? It's a black, nylon duffel bag?"
"Okay." Tim knelt down, reached his hand in and felt for the bottom shelf. Suddenly, he jerked back, stood up, grabbed the doorknob, and slammed the door shut.
"What? What is it?" Jenna asked.
Tim's good eye blinked repeatedly and his breathing became labored, "A hand. I felt a dead hand."
Seely slumped against the wall and closed her eyes, "I thought Bob went home early. I didn't know he was still here. Are you sure he's dead?"
"I'm positive, his hand is ice cold and clammy."
Jenna started to cry again. "We've gotta get out of here!"
"We can't." Tim slowly turned the knob and eased the door open again. "We fell, remember?"
Jenna tightly folded her arms and huffed, "Yes, but that doesn't mean we can't get out. Don't say that Timmy!"
"Okay, so maybe I'm wrong. Try not to stress Jenna; I've been wrong before -- once." Tim carefully reached in, avoided touching Bob's hand and grabbed hold of the duffel bag. "I got it." He tugged, let the bag fall to the floor and then dragged it through the doorway. Instantly, he pulled the door shut. "May he rest in peace."
Seely took the bag, but didn't move out of his way, "Tim, on the next shelf up, there is a gallon of water. Let me do it."
"No. I'm the guy, I'll do it." Tim quickly opened the door, grabbed the plastic bottle of water and brought it out. He handed it to Jenna and once more pulled the door closed. "I say we let poor Bob rest in peace." With that, he waved Seely aside, and then headed back down the hallway.
Before they reached the bathrooms, the earth shifted, sending another shiver up the walls of the Winningham Blue Building. Each of them stopped and waited to see if it would increase or pass. It quickly passed.
Her arms still tightly folded, Jenna lowered her voice and growled, "Doesn't it ever stop?"
Seely tenderly placed a hand on the young girl's shoulder and urged her forward, "No, baby, it doesn't. We left LA two weeks after the San Fernando Quake and it still hadn't stopped moving. But the aftershocks diminish in strength and frequency. We'll be all right, Jenna. We can survive here for days if we have to and eventually, someone will come for us. You'll see."
"Days? But Seely, Kevin's coming home tomorrow."
Tim sneered and continued on down the hall. "Don't count on it. If the airports can function at all, and there's a landing strip within fifty miles still in one piece, they'll use it for emergency flights only."
Seely agreed, "True. And worrying about Kevin is the least of our problems. We need to get Timmy bandaged, and then we'll see about finding food. I've always wanted to break into a candy machine, now's my chance." When they reached the ladies room, Seely waited for Tim to sit down, and then knelt down in front of him. She opened the bag and searched through the supplies until she found scissors, bandages and the tweezers. She glanced at Jenna's worried expression, and said, "Sugar, right where we are, is the safest place to be."