Earthquake Terror (6 page)

Jonathan nodded. By then—oh, surely by then—his father or a rescue crew would come for them. “I’d better get started on our house,” he said.

“I want to help. I want to build the house, too.”

“You can be the boss. You sit right there and I’ll ask you questions.”

Jonathan looked around for trees that were big enough to use and small enough that he would be able to move them. He found three small alders and dragged them, one at a time, to where Abby sat.

“Which one shall we do first?” he asked, and Abby pointed.

After stripping off as many of the lower branches as he could, he laid the root end of the alder on top of the downed maple’s trunk. He did the same thing with the other two alders.

Next he gathered pine and cedar boughs. Some of these he put on the ground, as a bed for Abby and Moose. The rest he laid on top of the alders, forming a crude roof. He placed the alder branches that he had removed across the far end of the shelter, propping them up to form a back wall.
The shelter was shaped like half a tent, with an opening at one end.

“There,” he said, stepping back to admire his work. “It’s a fine looking house, if I do say so myself.”

“It isn’t very big,” Abby said. “We won’t be able to stand up in it.”

“We don’t sleep standing up,” Jonathan said. “Crawl in and try it.”

Abby crawled under the roof and lay face down on the pine boughs. “It’s too prickly. The branches scratch my cheek.”

“Lie on your back. Smell the cedar?”

Moose sniffed the branches around Abby’s toes.

“It smells like Mommy’s blanket chest,” Abby said as she rolled on to her back.

Jonathan patted the branches beside Abby. “Here, Moose,” he said. “Lie down.”

Moose walked in a circle beside Abby and then flopped beside her. She put an arm on his side and Moose thumped his tail.

“Stay,” Jonathan said.

Abby sat up. “I’m thirsty,” she said. “I want a drink of water before I go to sleep.”

Jonathan hesitated. Maybe if she thought he was going after water, she would wait without so much fuss.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll go look for some water.”

Abby patted the dog. “You can use the red bucket, to carry the water in.”

Her words made him realize that she still did not comprehend
that they had lost all of their equipment. “The bucket was in the camper,” he said. “I can’t get it.”

“I want to go along and look for water, too.”

“You can’t. It would take too long.” He saw her lip start to quiver again.

“It’s not fair,” she said.

“You’re right. It isn’t.” Jonathan squatted beside the shelter and looked at his sister. “I’m sorry, Abby,” he said, and he truly meant the words. “You’ll have to wait here for me. Moose will stay with you. You can be in charge of Moose.”

“I’m Moose’s boss?”

“That’s right.” He leaned in the opening of the shelter and put Moose’s leash, which had been dangling on the ground, in Abby’s hand. “Hold on tight,” he said, “and talk to Moose so he won’t be scared.”

“But
I’m
scared.”

“Pretend you aren’t. Pretend you’re brave and that will help Moose.”

“I’ll take care of you, Moose,” Abby said, “until Mommy and Daddy come back.”

“I’m going now,” Jonathan said. “Lie down and close your eyes. Smell the pine smell and think about what Santa might bring you this year.”

“Hurry?”

“As fast as I can.” Which won’t be very fast, Jonathan thought, given the condition of the trail. As he turned to go, Abby started to cry.

“I don’t want to stay alone. What if the earthquake comes back?”

The same thought had occurred to Jonathan. He knew more aftershocks were likely. Smaller earthquakes often followed a large one. Sometimes they weren’t so small. Another huge jolt could come any minute. But he couldn’t sit around doing nothing, waiting for disaster to strike.

“I wish I had Raggedy,” Abby said.

“I wish you did, too.” She looked so young, lying there. She was so helpless, without her walker. What if there was another earthquake before he returned? What would she do?

His worst fear kept popping into his mind.
What if Mom and Dad didn’t make it off the island?
Any hope of a rescue depended on his parents being where they could send help. But what if they hadn’t made it that far before the earthquake hit? What if they were also trapped on the island?

With a broken ankle, Mom wouldn’t be able to climb over fallen trees. She couldn’t hike across the bridge.

Stop it, he told himself. Quit being a pessimist. Maybe they
did
make it off the island in time. Maybe they’ve already alerted the police or the road department or whomever would need to authorize a crew to get us out of here. Maybe help was already on the way.

Maybe. Everything was
maybe.
He needed to know, and the only way to find out was to walk along the road from camp to the bridge and find out if his parents were trapped there or not.

“I’m going now,” he said, and left quickly, before Abby could protest again.

Jonathan went around the redwood, passed the crushed camper, and headed toward the bridge. The dirt road was
visible in places but he had to climb over downed trees and push through tangles of fallen branches in order to follow it.

He tried to hurry but, even without Abby, his progress was slow. He wished he and Abby had walkie-talkies or some other way to communicate.

Periodically, he snapped a twig into a
V
shape and laid it down, pointing behind him. It would be easy to get lost, now that most of the road was covered. He had to make sure he could find Abby again.

An uneasy stillness hung over the island and the air seemed heavy and thick. Perspiration soaked Jonathan’s T-shirt and trickled down his forehead.

He wasn’t certain how far it was to the bridge. A mile, perhaps. Maybe a little more than that. A mile’s hike was nothing, under ordinary circumstances. But this road, in its present state, was far from ordinary.

The earth shuddered again, a small jolt this time, but enough to put Jonathan’s nerves on edge. He hoped Abby was asleep. She might not feel it, if she was asleep.

He pushed on, jogging whenever there was a clear space, which wasn’t often. His eyes searched the woods ahead, dreading what he might see. The farther he got without finding a smashed car, the more hopeful he was.

As he neared the approach to the bridge, the trees gave way to low shrubs. He could hear the river now and with fewer fallen branches, the road was visible again. Encouraged, Jonathan hurried on. Mom and Dad must have made it off the island.

He ran the last fifty yards, up the embankment to the start
of the bridge. He had not found the car, so he knew Mom and Dad had made it off the island before the earthquake. Maybe Dad was already on his way back to Magpie Island.

When he reached the edge of the bridge itself, he stopped running and gasped.

The bridge went only partway across the river. The steel structure stretched across half the water and then ended abruptly. The other half of the bridge looked like a giant water slide. It lay at a steep angle from the opposite shore straight down into the water of the Tuscan.

The bridge had been snapped in two by the earthquake.

D
ad won’t be back.

The knowledge filled Jonathan with alarm. He stood at the edge of the embankment, looking at the broken bridge, and knew there was no way Dad’s car or any other vehicle would come to the island now. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not for many weeks, or maybe even months.

There was no way for Jonathan and Abby to walk off the island, either. They would have to wait for someone in a boat or a helicopter to rescue them.

Jonathan’s knees felt weak and he plopped onto the ground, as all hope for a fast rescue vanished.

Jonathan looked into the rushing water. Had Mom and Dad made it safely across the bridge before the earthquake
tore it in two? If a car had been on the bridge when it broke, the car would have plunged into the river, would have sunk quickly to the bottom.

A person with a broken ankle would have a hard time climbing out of a car that was underwater. A person with a broken ankle would probably not be able to swim to shore. A person . . .

Stop it! Jonathan told himself.

He turned and started back to Abby. Fear formed a hollow place in his chest.

Until now, Jonathan had thought if no one came to rescue them, he would walk across the bridge and hike to Beaverville and bring help back for Abby. He would have been a hero. “Courageous boy walks twenty miles to save sister. Details at six.”

Well, forget the hero bit. That plan was no longer an option.

Jonathan felt far more helpless, knowing he had to wait for help to come to him, than he had felt when there was some action he could take.

Weighed down by this new disaster, Jonathan walked more slowly on the return trip. Twice, the V-shaped twigs served to direct him. Each time he came to one, he snapped it into several pieces. He had to be sure he didn’t start going in circles, following the same twig more than once.

Moose heard Jonathan coming and came to greet him. Jonathan knelt and hugged the dog, burying his face in the soft fur, inhaling the familiar doggie scent.

“Some boss,” he whispered. “She didn’t even hold on to your leash.”

Moose licked Jonathan’s arm.

Abby was asleep. Wearily, Jonathan crawled into the shelter and lay beside her.

The sun was low in the sky. Where were Mom and Dad? They made it off the island but that didn’t necessarily mean they had made it to the hospital. It was twenty miles from the bridge to Beaverville and that road could be as impassable as the road between the bridge and the campground.

He had not found a smashed car on the island, but maybe the car was smashed somewhere else. Or maybe it was at the bottom of the Tuscan River.

If his parents could send help, they would. Jonathan knew that. He also knew they might not be able to send help, and if that were so, Jonathan must somehow help himself.

I need to make a signal that can be seen from the air, Jonathan decided, some sign that we’re here. That way, even if Mom and Dad haven’t made it to town yet, someone in a plane might spot the signal and realize we need help.

A fire, perhaps? Smoke would be seen a long way off, and a fire would be noticed even after dark. He had learned in Cub Scouts how to create sparks by rubbing stones together. He could gather twigs and start a fire.

He crept out of the shelter without waking Abby, and quickly gathered a pile of dry leaves. It was easy to find twigs for kindling and he soon had a tepee of twigs built over his leaf pile. But as Jonathan bent to pick up a larger branch, he
realized how dry the forest floor was. There had been no rain for months.

He couldn’t build a fire, not with the forest so dry. One wayward spark and the whole island would go up in flames. Jonathan kicked his pile of twigs and leaves, scattering them in a circle.

He needed a clearing. He needed a big open space where he could take large sticks and spell out H-E-L-P.

The lakeshore! There was a wide stretch of beach between the end of the trail and the edge of the lake. It would be perfect. He could make the sign and start a fire, too, to draw attention to the sign. He would build the fire close to the lake, and put wet sand all around it to keep it from spreading.

Jonathan scooped up some of the dry leaves and twigs and stuffed them into his backpack. He gathered an armload of inch-thick sticks, for firewood.

He hurried through the woods toward the lake, following the path he had cleared earlier when he and Abby returned to camp. Alone, he covered the distance quickly.

He saw the big redwood tree that he and Abby hid under during the earthquake. Just beyond it, he saw water.

Jonathan stopped and stared. The earthquake hadn’t hit until he and Abby were far down the trail, well away from the lake. He shouldn’t be able to see water already. Yet there it was.

Jonathan dropped his sticks and plunged through the brush until he reached the big redwood. He scrambled up on the trunk and stood, looking across what had been the trail.

The lake was different than before. Closer. Water now covered the forest floor where he and Abby had first struggled to walk. Broken branches bobbed on the surface.

Jonathan slid down the far side of the redwood. Splash! His feet landed in an inch of boggy water. He slogged forward, curious to see where the water came from. Had the earthquake rearranged the lake?

He continued walking until the water was ankle deep. Then he climbed partway up a maple tree and looked west. With so many trees down, the forest was not so dense and he could see clearly. What he saw sent chills down the back of his neck.

The sandy beach was underwater. The junction of stream and lake, where he and Abby played sink-the-ships, was underwater. And a large portion of Magpie Island was underwater.

The lake was much bigger than it had been before. It was far larger even than it got in winter when the Tuscan River was at its deepest.

In his mind, Jonathan saw the layout of Magpie Island as it looked on the map. It sat in the middle of the wide Tuscan River. One small stream, Magpie Creek, flowed across the island into Magpie Lake, and then flowed out the other side where it rejoined the Tuscan.