The Journal: Fault Line (The Journal Book 5) (4 page)

“Let’s get you out of here.” Christine
started pulling bricks away and tossing them aside. As more and
more of the leash was exposed, she wondered how the dog got loose.
After moving a few pieces of window frame, a hand was exposed,
causing Christine to jerk back. It was small and delicate, a rich
chocolate brown, and very feminine. She gently removed the leash
strap from around the hand, and the fingers moved, startling her
and she fell backward. The fingers moved again, searching.
Christine inched forward and took the hand in hers. The fingers
clenched tightly around Christine’s with a strength that surprised
her. She squeezed the hand back to reassure the person under the
fallen building then turned to the waiting canine.

“Come here, girl.” The dog belly crawled
forward, and then licked the fingers. The hand stretched upward and
the dog nuzzled the palm. Christine pressed forward and patted the
hand again. She continued her chore of removing bricks with renewed
vigor, flinging the bricks at a frantic pace until she heard
voices.

“Help! Help me!” she called out, without
looking around to see where the voices were coming from.

***

Joey Martin and his buddy Jake Alsteen were
on their way home from basketball practice at the YMCA when the
quake hit. Jake had been hit with a falling flagpole and suffered a
deep cut across his scalp that wouldn’t stop bleeding.

“We need to get home so Katie can look at
that cut,” Joey said after he helped his friend up.

“It ain’t that bad,” Jake protested, wiping
the blood that ran down his cheek. “That was really something,
wasn’t it? I read in school about us being really close to the New
Madrid Fault, and how much damage it caused back in 1811. Do you
think that’s what happened, Joey? That after two hundred years the
fault line moved again?”

“Maybe. What I do know is we need to get
home, get Katie and Holly, and get the hell out of here!” They
skirted wrecked cars with alarms blaring, avoided fires that seemed
to be burning thin air, and saw people staggering away.

As they got closer to the apartment building
where they lived, they heard a voice frantically calling for help.
Joey stopped short when he saw Christine.

Jake stopped too and looked at Joey. “What’s
the matter, Joey?”

“She’s white.”

“So what? She needs help.” Jake slapped
Joey’s shoulder with his big brown hand and kept moving. Joey
reluctantly followed.

***

Christine saw the two black young men
approach her and swallowed her nervousness. “Someone is buried
here! Please help me,” she pleaded, still pulling at the bricks and
tossing them aside.

Joey saw the dog. “Holly?” The dog wagged its
tail in recognition. Joey hurried to Christine’s side and saw the
hand, immediately recognizing the ring that graced one finger.
“Katie!” He knelt down and took the hand, placing his under it, and
began to move his fingers. The hand frantically responded.

“What are you doing?” Christine inquired,
curious about what she was seeing.

“It’s my sister, Katie. She’s deaf. I just
told her we were here and would get her out. Holly is her service
dog. Move over,” he demanded.

“Careful where you stand. From the angle of
the wrist, her head is about here, and her body is right here,”
Christine said sweeping her hand over the area. “We don’t want to
put additional weight on her.”

“How can you tell?” Jake asked, grabbing two
bricks at a time and throwing them to the side. His big hands
lifted two more pieces, and the glass beneath sliced his palm. He
ignored the dripping blood and took two more chunks.

“I like to draw people. Positioning was an
anatomy class I took,” she replied simply.

“Why are you doing this for a black girl?”
Joey questioned angrily.

Christine glared at him in disbelief. “What
the—? I don’t care if she’s
green
! She’s hurt and needs
help. Let’s get her out of this mess before another aftershock
hits.”

Five minutes later Katie’s face was exposed,
along with one shoulder. Christine got the bottle of water and held
it so Katie could see it. She opened her mouth and Christine poured
a little in. Each time Katie’s mouth opened, she poured a little
more. All the while the two boys frantically uncovered the rest of
injured girl.

“We need to move her,” Joey said.

“Yes, although it will have to be carefully,”
Jake cautioned. “She could have internal injuries that movement
might make worse.” Being big and strong, he lifted her out of the
debris pile and gently set her down in an open area.

“Just what we don’t need,” Christine sighed,
looking up at the sky. “It’s starting to rain. She needs to get
into shelter.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s not much
left standing,” Joey said, looking around.

“There’s the hotel I was staying in a block
over,” Christine commented.

“We can’t carry her that far without hurting
her,” Jake said.

Christine thought a moment, and then removed
her jacket. “If we slide this under her back and shoulders, and I
put my left arm in this sleeve on her left side and you do the same
on the right side with your right arm, Joey, we can cradle her head
with our other hands and Jake can take her feet.”

Jake considered what Christine said and
slowly nodded. “Yeah that would give support and the three of us
could move quickly.” He lifted Katie slightly while the other two
positioned the jacket.

When they were in position, Christine said,
“Now give me your hand.” Joey glared at her. “Joey, don’t be an
ass.
Give me your hand.
” They laced fingers behind Katie’s
head to support her neck, and Katie moaned softly when they lifted
her.

They moved quickly in the rain with Holly
following behind, dragging her red leash.

***

The trio carrying the injured Katie made it
to the big glass doors of the hotel in record time, and just before
a deluge hit. They set her down so Christine could open the massive
doors, and then Jake tenderly picked Katie up and entered the gloom
of the tinted glass walls.

“Let me get some cushions,” Christine said.
She grabbed several pale gray couch cushions from the lobby
furniture and arranged them on the floor near the plate glass walls
and Jake set the now unconscious girl down. Holly lay down next to
her mistress, resting her chin on her extended front paws.

“Where are you going?” Joey asked.

Christine flicked on the flashlight she still
had. “To get more water.” She disappeared into the Coral Room where
lunch had been served earlier, with Jake following her.

“You have to forgive Joey,” Jake said when
they were out of earshot of the others.

“He does seem to be a bit angry,” Christine
remarked. She located two pitchers of water and a stack of
Styrofoam cups. Jake picked up the metal bowl containing the
remaining sandwich rolls. Christine raised her eyebrows in
question.

“Holly,” Jake said with a smile. “And yes,
Joey is an angry dude. He hasn’t been treated well by white folks.
You might be the first.”

When they returned to the main room, Jake
dumped the bread rolls onto a table and filled the bowl with water
for Holly, who lapped greedily at it. She then sniffed at the rolls
and whined. Jake gave her one, then a second one when she wolfed it
down.

Katie’s eyes fluttered open, momentarily
looking panicked. Christine wiped cool water across her face,
squeezing her hand as she had done before. Katie smiled, her
fingers signing at a rapid pace.

“She said to say thank you, just knowing she
wasn’t alone made all the difference to her when she was buried,”
Joey interpreted.

Christine smiled and leaned forward to kiss
Katie’s forehead. “I’m going to see if I can find the housekeeping
room and get some blankets. I’ll be right back,” Christine said,
heading back toward the hallway that held the elevators, the little
light bouncing off the walls.

She discovered the four-story hotel had more
than a housekeeping room. There was a large laundry area and
individual rooms for sheets, blankets, and pillows. Christine
pushed on one swinging door and heard someone cry out in pain.

“Who’s there?” she asked nervously.

A young Hispanic woman peered out of the
round window set in the door. “Is it safe to come out now?”

“As safe as it’s going to be. Why are you
hiding?”

“All the shaking and people screaming scared
me. What are you doing here? Guests aren’t allowed in the employee
area,” the young woman stated, feeling suddenly brave.

“I’m looking for some blankets… Anna,”
Christine said, glancing at the girl’s name badge. “There are
injured people in the lobby. Can you help me?”

Anna produced a housekeeping cart and they
loaded up blankets and pillows, and with Christine leading the way
with the flashlight, they inched their way down the dark hall.

***

“I need to get going. I think you two can
care for Katie now.” Christine stood to leave, tucking one of the
blankets around the injured girl. “Do you know where the nearest
gas station is? I’m on empty.”

“Hey, white girl, don’t you know you don’t
drive around in the hood on an empty gas tank?” Joey smirked.

“First of all,
Joey
, my name is
Christine, and I didn’t know I was coming to ‘the hood’,” she
snapped back. “Is there a nearby station or not?”

***

In the now near empty parking lot, Christine
stood by her car while Joey headed to the scene of the car crash,
one of the empty water pitchers in his hand.

“What are you doing?” she said over his
shoulder.

“Jeez! Don’t sneak up on me like that!” Joey
huffed. He took a screwdriver from his pocket and reached under the
disabled car. He hit the screwdriver with a brick he’d picked up
from the ground, and gas spurted out of the gas tank and into the
water pitcher.

“You’re stealing gas?” Christine said
hesitantly. “I don’t know about this.”

“You’re not going to find any open gas
station for at least twenty, maybe thirty miles. Think you can make
it that far?” Christine shook her head. “I’m only taking gas from
the wrecks, okay?”

Joey poured four pitchers of gas into the PT
Cruiser, enough to fill the tank a quarter full.

“Thank you, Joey. My dad always said I should
never let the tank get less than half empty. I should have listened
to him.”

Joey turned to leave and stopped. “Thanks
again for helping my sister. Ya know, for a white girl, you’re
okay, Christine.”

She smiled to his retreating back and then
sat in her car fiddling with the GPS, programming it to take her
home.

***

Christine turned left as her GPS instructed
her to do and thought she would have a clear route to the
expressway. After making the required turn, she ran into a side
street filled with rubble and had to back up and try a different
turn, much to the chagrin of the programmed GPS voice. Another bad
turn and one good turn brought her straight in line with a burning
gas station.

“Holy shit!” she gasped aloud and backed away
quickly to turn around, just as the gas station’s tank blew and
impaled a brick in her back window. Panicking, she hit the gas and
bounced over a few bricks that hadn’t been there a minute earlier
trying to put as much distance between her and that gas
station.

A block later, with her GPS nagging her to
turn left again, Christine stopped the car, turned the useless GPS
off and got out. She held on to the door and leaned over, vomiting
up the remnants of her lunch.

“Are you okay, miss?” a low voice asked.

Christine snapped her head up in terror. The
elderly man, carrying what looked like a purse, had a kindly face
and kept his distance. It wasn’t until she stood fully up, that
Christine noticed he wasn’t alone.

“My name is Henry Palazzola. This is my wife
Sadie and our grandson Michael,” he informed her with a hesitant
smile.

“Thank you for your concern, Mr. Palazzola.
I’m Christine Tiggs. The explosion just now really scared me. In
fact, all of this has really scared me.” Her lip quivered a bit and
her lashes dampened. She studied the man in front of her. He was in
his late seventies, with a head of silver hair in tight curls and
waves. His kindly face was etched with deep lines and a complexion
that bespoke of a Mediterranean heritage.

She straightened her shoulders and took a
deep breath. “I don’t know where I am and I can’t find my way to
the expressway to go home!”

“There, there, Christine. I think you’ve just
had an adrenaline burst from being justifiably frightened and it
upset your stomach,” Sadie said, coming closer and putting her arm
around Christine’s shoulders. “We can’t go home either.”

“Why not?”

“You’re standing in what was our parlor,”
Sadie chuckled, and then frowned. Christine looked around her for
the first time, really looked, and noticed bits and pieces of
furniture, shattered glass sprouting from broken picture frames and
a china teacup, still intact. She picked it up, a tear slipping
down her cheek and handed it to Sadie.

Sadie looked at the china cup in her hand and
looked the young girl in the eyes, smiled, and let the teacup slip
from her fingers to the ground where it shattered. The action
startled Christine.

“It’s only stuff, Christine. It’s
all
only stuff,” Sadie said, her strong voice adding to the conviction.
“Where are you headed?”

“I guess I’m going back to the hotel,”
Christine answered, still staring at the cup in shock. “It’s
getting late and I’ll only get lost in the dark.”