Quake (24 page)

If not for the moonlight Nick would have had no choice but to use his flashlight. As it was, he still needed it when negotiating particularly tight spots, but by cupping a hand over its lens he reduced the risk of being discovered by the lurking Alivi. But as he trooped through the postapocalyptic library, he began to suspect that one of the world's most sought-after terror radicals might not even be his largest worry.

Bodies lay everywhere.

He checked each one, both to confirm it wasn't Lauren and to see if any might still be among the living. He slid down the back of an overturned book stack into a ragged-edged pit filled with an incongruous assemblage of rare tomes, corpses, and random body parts. Never in his life had he even imagined that he would ever see anything as gruesome as this. To say that it was a “living nightmare” didn't begin to do justice to the sheer scope of the horror that confronted him. All of these lives . . .

He simply couldn't go on at that point, couldn't bring himself to take another step, and he sat amidst the annihilation in the dark.
How could anyone, especially my fragile little Lauren, have possibly made it through this?
She was sure to be among this bibliographic hall of horrors. He began to wish that Alivi would just find him and kill him. He didn't see how he would be able to go on after this. He didn't see how, even in daylight, he'd ever even find Lauren's body amidst this chaotic ruination.
Like 9/11 all over again . . . her body might never even be found . . . both of the females in my life . . .

But Nick was not one to give up and there were two things that fueled his mind to will his body to rise to his feet and climb out of the pit of death.

Lauren. Until he saw her body, he would keep looking.

Alivi. Even if he found Lauren dead, he would track that bastard down and bring him to justice. That was his job, in spite of everything, and so he would do his best to complete it.

He shone his flashlight in a quick arc down in front of him, almost daring Alivi to come and get him. He still didn't hold out any real hope of finding Lauren alive. He found more unmoving bodies below.
How many people were in this library when it fell?
He knew that in the fall season, a new semester having just begun, it must have been packed. He checked the faces of the deceased he found and made his way toward a dangling but not completely fallen catwalk made of black wrought iron. Could this be a way to get to the second floor? Looking up there, he could see that, if he could get to it, there was some room to walk around up there. But it wasn't like he'd yet run out of bodies to check on this floor. And many of these must have fallen from the upper floors when the building collapsed, Nick realized.

For the next hour he toiled among the ruins, painstakingly shining his light on each and every face he came across. And with each additional body came an increasing awareness that this structure collapse did not appear to be survivable.
None
of these people had survived. Not one.

A tear slicing down his face, Nick was working the far reaches of the rubble field when he heard something. He traveled closer to where he thought the source might be.

“Help!”

A voice! There it was again: “Help me.”

Male voice, so it wasn't Lauren, but it was still a ray of hope that at least someone had survived this catastrophe, and so maybe Lauren had, too.

Nick started running to the source of the voice, but then halted, switching off his light.

Could this be a trap?

What if it was a ruse by Alivi, pretending to be a victim trapped in the rubble? When Nick went to him, he'd put a bullet in his head.

But he heard the voice again; it was so feeble, utterly desperate. He couldn't distinguish an accent from the single syllables so weakly vocalized, but while he couldn't be sure, it did sound like it might belong to a younger man than Alivi. He decided that sometimes you just had to take a chance, and this was one of those.

Still, Nick approached at an oblique angle so as not to take the most obvious route. When he was sure he was close enough, he aimed his flashlight into the dark recess from where the voice originated and switched it on.

He was instantly relieved to see the blood-streaked face of a young man—a college kid.

Nick moved the light so that he wasn't blinding him, sweeping the beam over his body to appraise his situation. He was lodged under a book stack, but also entwined in what looked like a section of metal railing. Spotting with his light, he saw thick, black blood oozing through the kid's jeans on one knee where it was wedged through the spacing in some spiraling metalwork.

“Hey there, young man. Stay calm, don't move. I'm going to try and help you.”

Nick saw the man's eyes alight with an ephemeral hope that quickly transitioned to nervousness. “Thanks. Do you think . . . do you think I'm going to make it?”

“Look buddy, I'm not a doctor or even a paramedic, but from what I've seen so far, you're doing a whole hell of a lot better than most people today. Let's see what we can do here. . . .”

For the next few minutes Nick worked to free the man, cringing when he would cry out as Nick moved a piece of debris. Particularly difficult was the wrought iron entwined with his leg. If the piece of metal was any smaller he'd just as soon move him with it still entwined and seek specialists to cut it free. But it was too large to permit him to be extracted from the pit he was in, so he had to try to remove it. The poor kid screamed in agony, but Nick managed to slide his knee through the railing piece.

As soon as he did he switched off his light and took a look around. It was eerily quiet in the large, devastated space, and there was a good chance that Alivi could have heard the wails of agony. He would certainly be drawn to them like moths to the proverbial flame.

“What's wrong?” the kid asked.

Nick switched his light back on. He didn't see how he could break it to the kid that there was a terrorist running around loose in here somewhere, looking for him. He needed him to be calm.

“No problem, just hit the off button by mistake. Okay, I think we're ready to try and slide you out of there. You with me?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I'm going to hook an arm under your shoulder and pull you out this way.” He illuminated a path with the light. “I'm sorry, but it's probably going to hurt. There's nothing I can do about that, but just hang on and know that it'll be over in a few seconds.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Nick positioned himself as best he could to be able to move the kid out. He'd heard that it was best not to move someone who had sustained a possible neck or back injury, but from the looks of the debris piled around him, he was in danger of being totally crushed, not to mention simply dying of thirst and shock and whatever else might be wrong with him. And if there was another aftershock . . .

So he pulled the kid from the wreckage, dragging him out and onto what looked like a flat piece of marble flooring that was tilted at an acceptable angle. He didn't scream much, either, which Nick was thankful for. He made sure he was lying in a stable position and then stood and went to his knee, directing his light on it.

“We're going to want to get you some medical attention for that leg, pal. Say, what's your name, anyway?”

“I'm Ray Knowles.”

“Nice to meet you, Ray. I wish it could be under better circumstances. I guess you're a student here at Columbia? My name's Nick Dykstra, by the way.”

“Yes, I'm a student. I was conducting a—Hey, did you say Dykstra?”

Nick had been scoping the wasted library for signs of Alivi, but at the mention of his name he turned his head sharply to look Ray in the eyes.

“Yes. I came here to look for my daughter, Lauren Dykstra, who was on a campus tour. She—”

Ray cut him off. “Wait! Did you say
Lauren Dykstra
?”

Nick crouched, wanting to be more at eye level with Ray for this communication.

“Yes. Lauren Dykstra. Seventeen years old.” He described her physical appearance without the kind of details that could be construed as parental embellishments.
There is no girl more beautiful . . .

“I was with her!”

“What? Say again?”

“I was with her when everything started falling apart. Lauren Dykstra. She was the prospective student that the director of admissions asked me to take on a tour of the library.”

Nick knelt so that his head was level with Ray's.

“Ray, do know what happened to her?”

“We were only a few feet apart when—the earthquake, I guess it was—right?”

“Yes.”

“Once it happened, I was trapped under that same stack, I guess,” he said, pointing over at the massive bookcase Nick had just extracted him out from under. “And Lauren was trapped somewhere nearby, because at first we could talk to each other, but not see each other. She kept me real calm, just knowing she was there and hearing her talk. But then, a while later, there was a second earthquake.”

“Right, maybe a couple of hours ago,” Nick said.

“After that one, I remember being tossed around real bad, and then I fell into something, hard. I passed out and when I woke up I knew I wasn't in the same place anymore. I couldn't hear Lauren anymore.” Ray tried to prop himself up on an elbow to look around. He got a look for a few seconds, but then the effort was too much and he winced with the pain as he settled back into his supine position.

“Take it easy, Ray. Don't move too much if you don't have to.”

“I'm just trying to figure out where we are. What floor are we on?”

“First floor. I'm not even sure how many floors are left anymore. How many did there used to be?”

“Eight.”

Jesus.
“Looks like part of the second is still standing,” Nick said, glancing up there, also scanning for Alivi.

“We were on the second floor!”

“You're positive?”

“Yes! Yes, we were in the stacks on the second floor and I had just asked her who her favorite author was and that's when things got crazy.”

“So you don't actually know what happened to her?”

Ray appeared to think about this for a few seconds before answering. “Well, not other than what I already told you. But if I fell down here,” he said, looking around at the first floor, “then she may have fallen down here somewhere, too.”

Nick was already probing the area immediately surrounding them with his flashlight.

“Were there a lot of other people besides you and Lauren when the quake hit?”

“No, not right by us. On the second floor, yeah, but we were the only two in the row of stacks we were in.”

Nick couldn't help but reflect on the fact that his daughter had set foot on a college campus for all of an hour or so before she ended up alone with a guy. In a library. That was Lauren, all right. He forced himself to snap out of it.
Focus
.

“I'm not seeing anybody else around here. I should warn you that there are plenty of dead bodies back that way,” Nick said, pointing, “ but I checked them all and didn't see Lauren.”

“She must be still up there, then,” Ray said, looking up to the newly created overhang where the second floor had split in half.

Nick followed his gaze. He saw the hanging high stacks catwalk and traced its length to the floor, where it dangled maybe five feet above a smallish mountain of former construction materials. He turned back to Ray.

“Listen, Ray. I've got to go up there and look for her. Hang tight, I'll be back.”

“Okay. I hope you find her and she's okay. She's a great girl.”

Nick gave him a stare for a second and then stepped off the pile of junk he was standing on in the direction of the catwalk. When he didn't have to focus on what was immediately in front of him to avoid tripping, which wasn't often, he checked the far reaches of the former library for Alivi. Still no trace of him.

Maybe this was a positive sign? Nick mused. Maybe Caroline did in fact have a touch of delirium after passing out under the bushes? But she had sounded awfully convinced. And how could she have come up with “Middle-Eastern descent” on her own, at random?
No way. It's real.
Yet another seedling of hope stepped on by the boot of his own logic.

He reached the dangling structure and climbed the debris mountain so that he stood directly beneath it. He stretched out his arms and the bottom of the hanging walk was still a good two feet above his hands. He tried to talk himself out of what he knew he had to do next.
She could still be tucked away in some rubble pocket down here.... I could walk around some more and try to find an easier way up. . . .

But he knew that every second was precious. This was a way up. He swung his arms in a couple of practice swings, flexed his legs, made sure his footing was as solid as could be atop the loose mound of stuff. He eyed the railings on either side of the catwalk. Then he jumped.

Nick grabbed on to both bars on either side and gripped hard, his legs swinging through the air.
Do not let go
was all that went through his mind. He did not need to fall back onto a sloppy pile of loose concrete, rebar, and broken marble slabs. He let go with his right hand for a split second in order to grip the railing a little higher up. Did the same with his left. He repeated the process several times until he was able to swing his feet up onto a step.

Yes! Now as long as this thing holds my weight . . .

Falling with the catwalk landing on top of him would be even worse than just dropping onto the debris pileup. The structure creaked and groaned as he advanced up its length, swinging mildly as he neared the rim of the second floor. It made him nervous as hell, but there was nothing he could do other than to keep putting one hand above the other, and soon he was swinging a leg up onto a solid horizontal structure.

Nick was watching for Alivi as soon as his eyeballs cleared the level. As he rolled up onto the level he heard something clatter near him and saw an object fall off the edge back down to the first floor. Quickly he felt his pockets.
There's the flashlight. The gun!
His pistol had slipped from his pocket and was now back down from whence he'd started.

Shit!

He shined his light down on it to see it. It was there somewhere but probably slipped deep into a crack in the maelstrom of rubble and debris. He couldn't see it. Even if he could, he reasoned, Lauren was right up here, no more than a few yards away. The thought of going back down, finding the gun, then repeating the arduous process to get back up here, all while his daughter needed him so badly if she was still alive, was too much.

He turned back around to face into his new environment.

It looked to Nick like he was now in what used to be somewhere near the center of the roughly rectangular floor. To the left of him were a series of book stacks that had toppled like dominos. To the right lay some type of computer work area now in total disarray. The entire space was disorienting because it was open to the sky both above and looking straight across. In the middle of the former room lay what looked like a sea of loose books on the floor strewn about dozens of upended stack units.

Nick turned back around and shined his light down into the first floor. He spotted Ray lying on the marble slab and then quickly killed the light. If Ray was up here when he'd fallen, then he would have been over to the left more, into that group of nested stacks. And by extension, if what Ray said was correct and he was near Lauren when the quake hit, then Lauren should also be somewhere in those same stacks.

Nick walked as fast as he carefully could in that direction, a few feet from the edge of the remaining floor. His heart stopped when he stepped on a pale arm protruding from beneath a fallen stack. He spent three minutes lifting the massive unit enough to slide it off of the person. She was dead, but she was not Lauren. He was thankful for that, but at the same time the little statistics keeper in his head racked up another one for the Dead column, and lowered the odds just that much more for Lauren.

His intuition was on high alert when he spotted a wrought-iron railing that had been sheared off—same exact type as what Ray had been entwined with. He looked over the edge and searched with his light again, and there was Ray. Nick had found him directly under where he was now.

This is the area!

Then, in an odd moment of reflection that sometimes came to those facing stressful, life-and-death situations, Nick flashed on something unrelated to his immediate predicament. His friend Mendoza. He wondered how Frank was doing, if he had found Jana. Because for Nick, his moment was at hand. He was about to find out, one way or another, if this quake had taken everything from him. There was much agony in waiting to find out. He hoped that Frank already knew.

Turning back around, he stared at the procession of domino-stacked bookcases. The excitement that he was so near to Lauren overwhelmed any instinct for caution he may have harbored and he flipped his light on, running to the fallen book stacks that now concealed his daughter.