🩸The Earthquake Games 🎲

            “Alright, let me think,” Fred said.

            There is a group of teenagers in a circle at Fred’s house playing a game. Learning how to play the game is simple.  The person to the left of you thinks of a word; when they say it, you then have to say that word with the opposite of that word in one sentence that makes sense.

            “Earthquake,” Fred said.

            “The earthquake made it hard to be stable, in the horses stable,” Cal said.

            “That’s funny,” Mrs. Lakisha said, coming into the room with cookies.

            That’s when they felt it, the heart-stopping shutter. It felt as if the pipes in the walls shook like it was screaming for mercy.

            “That was weird,” Susie said.

            “Anyways, let’s continue. Cal, think of a word, please,” Max said.

            “Hm…” Before Cal could finish, there was another shudder, this time shaking the walls, floor and ceiling.

           

            “Did you have to choose the word earthquake?” Cal asked.

            “Well, it was off the top of my mind!” Fred objected.

            “Now is not the time to be playing such games,” Mrs. Lakisha said.

            For the next few minutes, they all put the cookies back on the tray.

            “I hope that was the end of that shuttering,” Susie said.

            She was never so wrong. Everything shook so much; not only did the cookies fall again, but the chairs fell, drinks on the kitchen table shattered, and eventually a siren went on.

            “That’s the earthquake siren,” Mrs. Lakisha said.

            As if on cue, all their cell phones started shouting. “Warning, warning, earthquake incoming, take shelter,” it repeated itself over and over until the group turned down their volume.

            “Oh my god, I did jinx it!” Fred shouted.

            “It was just a coincidence,” Mrs. Lakisha said.

            The quakes got more extensive, and with that, deadlier. Windows shattered, the roof started collapsing.

            “Take shelter! Follow me!” Mrs. Lakisha shouted.

            We ran outside with Fred’s mother, in fear the house would collapse.

            “What now?” Max shouted.

            People ran in all directions, trees fell, and the non-stop quakes made Cal feel queasy.

            “Cal doesn’t look right,” Susie observed.

            “She has motion sickness,” Max reminded.

            “No, I mean, her outfit is so drab. It needs color,” Susie replied.

            “Everyone! Take shelter! The world is falling!” some crazed-looking man shouted.

            Everyone around them was going crazy. People were drinking, praying, shouting, “this is the end!”

            “We need to get outta here,” Max said.

            “I realize that. Too bad no one taught us what to do in case of emergency,” Mrs. Lakisha replied.

            In this town, nothing ever happened; therefore, the major and the government never took precautions in case something did happen.

            “Over here! We have a weatherproof shelter in our basement!” Fred’s neighbor shouted.

            The lot looked at each other; Fred shrugged, they then went over to the neighbor’s house to investigate.

            “It’s down here!” the neighbor screamed.

            They went through the crumbling house and into the basement. Lights were flickering; tables turned, screams were coming from a steel-looking trapdoor.

            “Are we sure this is safe!” Cal shouted, peering into the so-called “weatherproof” room.

            “No!” Max shouted back.

            Fred noticed that someone was missing. Looking back, he saw Susie struggling to get downstairs, her leg a waterfall of blood.

            “Susie!” he shouted.

            Max and Cal heard him and turned around while Mrs. Lakisha climbed down a ladder into the dark, scream-filled shelter.

            Fred, Max, and Cal went over to help Susie, just as the shuttering stopped.

            “What happened?” Max asked.

            “I don’t know! Something hit me!” Susie gasped.

            Susie’s face was all red; her eyes were closed in pain.

            “How’re we going to get down those stairs?” Cal asked while Max and Fred helped Susie down the stairs.

            “I don’t….” The sudden, violent shake cut off what Fred was about to say, then the feeling of falling came over them. Not the kind of falling on the drop at a carnival, the kind of falling that one would never want to experience. it was like an elevator, but much faster, much more deadly. it also produced a loud, indescribable sound.

            “We’re… falling?” Max asked.

            A heart-stopping bam sounded as the house landed in the dirt. To Cal, it felt like her insides were thrown to her legs as she almost fell into the shelter. To Susie, it felt like her leg got crushed to dust as the top of the house fell on them.

            Max, Susie, and Fred crashed into each other once the house landed, the ceiling and walls collapsing onto them as they fell unconscious.

            Cal, however, wasn’t unconscious. The roof above her didn’t fall; the threshold she was under was metal. She was halfway into the room, dangling by her feet off the ledge of the ladder. Both feet were broken.

            Cal screamed into the now quiet darkness.

            “Cal?” Mrs. Lakisha asked.

            “My… feet!” Cal managed to shout.

            That was the last thing Mrs. Lakisha and everyone inside the cellar heard. At that time, the walls fell in on them, and the ceiling as well. The whole room was stained red.

            Hours later, police surrounded the hole that used to be the house, with firefighters attempting to lower their ladders down there. They could hear Susie’s screams as she woke up from the never-ending nightmare.

            “This is how far the ladder will go, sir,” one of the firefighters said.

            “Very well, we’ll need to get a rope,” the firefighter captain said.

            “We can see four heat signatures inside. Five are slowly turning blue,” an investigator said, walking up to the trio.

            “English, please,” the police captain said.

“Four people are alive; five are dying,” the investigator said.

            Fred woke up half an hour after the house fell. All he felt was a pain in his left arm and some type of liquid covering it. He slowly opened his eyes to see darkness. It took a few minutes, but his eyes finally got into dark adaptation mode.

            Above him, he could see a steel beam that somehow protected him. Looking down at himself, he was relatively uninjured. He was in an awkward position, however, and couldn’t move.

            “I’ll run out of air,” Fred realized.

            That’s when he heard it. A few feet away from him, he heard a panicked rustle.

            “Hello?” Fred croaked.

            “I can’t…. move!” Susie’s frustrated voice sounded.

            “We’ll get out of this, don’t worry,” Fred said.

            “Wait, is this blood!” Susie shouted.

            “Stop shouting! You’ll run out of air!” Fred shouted.

            “Help! Help!” Susie screamed.

            “She can’t hear me,” Fred observed. Are her ears broken? As loud as she is, there’s no way she couldn’t’ve hear me in this small room. Or at least what used to be a small room.

            When Susie woke up, she couldn’t feel the pain in her left leg or her ears. Adrenaline was still pumping into her.

            Fred lied there, not daring to move, for he might crush himself if he moved the steel beam above him. He wouldn’t be able to do it anyway, for it was too heavy.

            “I’m going to die; no one’s coming,” Susie sighed.

            A moment of eerie silence passed.

            Fred’s ears almost burst when Susie suddenly started screaming at the top of her lungs, as the pain from her leg and ears was becoming more and more evident.

            “Stop screaming!” Max’s voice said from near Susie.

            “She can’t hear you! Her ears are broken!” Fred shouted back.

            “Oh, I can see that now,” Max said.

            “You can see her?” Fred asked through the screaming.

            “Just barely, there’s a gap to the right, and I could see something flowing on her silhouette,” Max answered.

            “Is Cal… alive?” Fred croaked.

            “Not sure, last I saw of her, she was by the entrance to the shelter,” Max said.

            “Are you injured?” Fred asked.

            “I think so; if I try to move too much, I get a pin in my side, I think there’s a piece of wood stabbing me. I don’t feel anything, however,” Max replied. “What about you?”

            “I’ll live, assuming we don’t suffocate,” Fred replied.   

            The darkness, complemented with the screaming, was unnerving. Susie never stopped; Fred and max could feel the air getting thinner and thinner. They were soon breathing their own air.    

            “I’m not ready to die,” Fred thought after another half hour of screaming. “I want to open a comic book store. Have a family.”

            Meanwhile, the firefighters managed to get a rope and started lowering their men into the pit.

            “Status update,” the police captain said.

            “We’ve lowered some men into the pit; they’re excavating the area,” a fireman said.

            “We need to go faster,” the police captain said.

            “I’ve called someone to come out here and help,” The firemen captain said.

            “How’re the victims coming along?” the police captain asked.

            “The people alive have a bunch of heat moving in their bodies and are slowly getting colder. I’ve checked with the Paramedics; they said the victims are probably losing a lot of blood,” The investigator said.

            “What about the other people?” the firemen captain asked.

            “The dying ones? In a few minutes, they’ll be dead,” the investigator answered darkly.  

            “Let’s keep moving! These people are in critical condition!” The police captain shouted.

            The air continued dwindling as Susie kept screaming. She eventually stopped, just in time for the air to completely get used. Fred was just closing his eyes in despair when he started hearing things being moved from on top of him.

            “We’ve got one!” one of the firemen shouted, carrying Fred out of the hole.

            By now, Fred was unconscious from the pain in his arm.

            In the light, the firemen could see Fred’s arm was broken at the elbow; something had struck it, for there was a huge gap taking half of his elbow off. He also had many cuts and bruises on his face and all over his body; his right foot was also fractured.

            After the firemen got Fred into the ambulance, they found Susie and Max. Susie was rushed out of the pit as soon as possible, for her left leg was nearly falling off with the additional injures, and her ears were so bloody, you couldn’t see the wound.

            Max, however, had to be left in the pit for a little. If they got him out of the position he was in, he would bleed to death before they got him out of the hole. One of the paramedics had to go down there to put gauze on him.

            Two more ambulances arrived, and the trio of teenagers was off to the hospital with many other victims.

            “Any more survivors?” the policemen asked.

            “Yes, one,” the investigator said.

            One more ambulance later, Cal was rushed to the hospital, and all the bodies were recovered. The policemen and firefighters then moved on to the next houses with victims inside.

            “Hey, kiddo. You do‘in alright?” Fred’s Dad asked when Fred recovered to consciousness.

            “Yeah,” Fred croaked. “Where’s Mom?”

            His Dad turned away for a second. “You’re arms broken; the doctors say you have to be in the hospital for a month to recover,” he replied.

            “Dad, where’s Mom?” Fred demanded more urgency in his voice.

            “She… get some rest, you’ll need it,” his Dad said.

            “She’s dead, isn’t she?” Fred asked.

            Now that Fred asked this, he could see tearstains on his father’s face. Unfortunately, he was right.

            “I was told not to tell you until you were better,” his Dad said.

            “I just guessed,” Fred said, then started crying as much as he could through his aching lungs.

            He and his father cried together until a doctor came into the room and rushed Fred’s father out.

           

            Max’s side was stitched up; he lost a lot of blood, however. He had to drink lots and lots of water to regenerate the blood lost. He also had a dent in his head that didn’t do too much damage to his brain.

            Susie’s whole left leg was cut off; there was an infection inside it. She was deaf in one ear; they were able to fix the other.

            Cal, on the other hand, lost both feet and nearly broke her spine. For the rest of her life, she had to sit in a wheelchair, and it seemed like she was constantly bending a little bit backward. Part of her brain was slightly damaged as well from hitting her head on the ladder. She also almost lost her nose.

            As it turns out, the old owner of Fred’s neighbor’s house lied or just was mistaken about the weatherproof room. The so-called “weatherproof shelter” was actually a safe put there by some wealthy person years ago. The steel in the safe had weathered down, even though it did look strong. Everyone in the safe except the teenagers had died. That included the neighbor, his family, and Fred’s mother. Fred’s father was on a trip for work, and when he heard about his wife and son, he was able to catch a flight to the hospital.

            Despite their injuries, everyone who survived lived happily. Fred got his comic bookstore, Susie wrote a blog about the tragedy, Max made video games, and Cal became a restaurant manager. They all forever stayed friends, bonded by the tragedy they expirenced.