stood stock-still. Had I imagined those cries? I tiptoed ahead, the gun still held out in front of me. I felt like a cop, or would have if I knew how to manage a firearm. Muffled sobs. I spun around and saw her: Jen bent over, crying in the kitchen, her pale blond hair flopped wet across her face, dampening her cries. Not locked in the laundry room, after all. I was standing in the same place where I’d had the showdown with Lee, near the top of the stairwell. A voice inside my head warned me what a fool I was. Get out. Run towards the front door.
I wanted to rush to help Jen, but instinct told me to wait. Was this another ruse? Were they using her as bait? “Jen?” I called across the room. “Are you okay?”
“They’ve killed them all,” she bawled. “Who the fuck were those guys? What the fuck just happened?”
A dart of guilt jabbed at me. I’d done this. But I couldn’t help feeling relief, too.
Thunder roared outside. A rumble so deep and raw, I felt the earth roll beneath my feet like a dragon surging from below the earth. Just as I took a step towards Jen, the whole house shook, the alarm sounded like a siren, the walls trembled, the great glass windows rattled in unison, shifting forwards, then backwards, then side to side. Backwards. Forwards… like a ship in a storm…
An earthquake. I hadn’t imagined things could get worse.
I held on to the bannister but the stairway swayed and I lost my balance. The gun flew from my hand and clunked down each step. I lost my footing and fell after it, clinging to the bannister as it snapped in two, splintering like a cheap matchstick. I landed on my side with a thud, the ground buckling beneath me, the floor suddenly a small hill, rippling underneath: a living being like an undulating serpent. I tried to scramble to my feet. An excruciating pain seared through my right thigh as I limped ahead, not even seeing where I was going. The wall was coming in on me, golden stone crumbling like cake mixture, the white ceiling folding in like whipped cream. A smash, rubble tumbling around me in great chunks and slabs, just missing my head by inches.
A great cloud of dust choked the atmosphere. I tasted grit and sand, my gums and teeth clogged with filth. I spat and cleared my throat only to breathe in another cloud of filmy particles swirling in the thick white air. I shook my hair. Chunks of plaster landed on my shoulders, which were sore from my thumpy landing. I blinked away the dust congesting my vision, sticking my lashes together. I couldn’t see a thing.
A piercing scream. Jen.
“Jen?” I shouted into the choked swirl of rubble.
Nothing.
I covered my eyes with my hands, my lungs wheezing from the haze of particles, debris flying and smashing, dangling and shredded from what was the ceiling only a minute ago. A piece of mattress poked through. A lamp shattered to smithereens.
I pulled the raincoat hood over my head and curved my nose down into my sweater to help myself breathe. There was another scream from somewhere above me. Kate?—at least I think it was her. The house creaked then tilted. The ground suddenly vertical, I tumbled like Alice through the rabbit hole and was in my bedroom on the ground floor, the great glass walls exploding as if a bomb had been detonated. The bathroom slid towards the ocean, part of the house falling in a great crack as loud as a firework.
In front of me, through the whirling clouds of dust, I could just make out a faint beam of light. I frantically crawled towards it. Sharp spikes of wall and upside down ceiling ripped into my hands and knees. Shards of broken floor tile stuck up like daggers. A TV spiraled across what was left of the room like a Frisbee.
Above me, I heard a great groan. It was Cliffside moaning in pain.
She was breaking apart.
More screams from above and then water flowing as if a dam had been released, mud whooshing through every crack, every orifice of the house. A river of oozing, russet mud, thick and red like blood gushing through arteries.
With only one eye open, my vision a blur, I kept crawling through the hole until I reached the light. I let out a gasp and filled my lungs with oxygen.