Seattle Quake 9.2 (A Jackie Harlan Mystery Book 1) Read online

  Jenna listened to him talk while she struggled to maneuver her body around the desk. Pulling on one side, she managed to move the corner nearly six inches away from the other desk.

  "Hey, watch it will ya. Dust is falling everywhere. Warn me next time so I can cover my good eye."

  "Okay, Mister Cranky. You don't need to take it out on me. Cover your eye." She wedged her body between the desks and shoved hard until the heavy desk moved another five inches. "How am I doing?"

  Tim lowered his hands and looked, "Good; real good for a kid. Another shove should do it."

  "Okay. Cover your eyes now." Jenna groaned and applied all her strength. The desk moved another four inches.

  "My hero," Tim said. He waited just long enough for her to move out of the way, and then crawled on all fours until he could stand up.

  When he turned to face her, she gasped. Splinters of blue tinted glass dotted his face and a jagged, one and a half inch piece jutted out of his forehead. Blood still oozed from the wound, dripping into his right eye.

  "I couldn't get that one out. Too slippery. You got any tweezers?"

  Jenna grabbed his arm and pulled. "Come on, it's not safe in here."

  "You're telling me?"

  *

  As hard as James tried, he still couldn't find any other frequency on his Ham Radio with the same clarity as the one reporting from Seattle's North end. So he returned to the original frequency, got a pen, opened a spiral notebook and began jotting down call signs, damage and injuries.

  "KE7SRT emergency."

  "SRT, go ahead."

  "Carl, we've got three city blocks with heavy damage at 103rd NE between 36th and 37th Avenue in Inverness. They're brand new apartment buildings, four or five floors high, but they slid down the hillside. We have three dead and six injured so far. And we've got a lot of water coming from somewhere. Could be from that tower on the hill, over."

  "Copy SRT. Phones are down here. Have you got service out there? Over."

  "KE7SRT, we get a dial tone but nothing goes through, over."

  "SRT, you got a phone number for your water company?"

  "KE7SRT, roger. The number is 428-206-2838."

  "SRT, copy. I can try from here, but we don't even have a dial tone. SRT, you have any contact with police or fire yet? Over."

  "Negative control. I'm heading that way next."

  "Copy, SRT."

  *

  High in the Cascade Mountains, a man from Spokane made a final adjustment to one of several tall antennas. He climbed down off the concrete and metal housing, and then walked back down the dirt road to his Ford Bronco. Reaching through the open window, he withdrew a hand-held Amateur Radio, brought it to his mouth, and pressed the Push-To-Talk button.

  "AS7E to K7ZLP."

  "This is K7ZLP, go ahead."

  "The repeater looks pretty good. I replaced one of the antenna so it should work okay now, over."

  "K7ZLP, copy. I've already picked up three more frequencies out of Seattle. Thanks my friend. You headed that way? Over."

  "Yep, if I can get there. With five kids and no husband, my sister will need help. I'll stay in touch. AS7E, out."

  With each new step down the two flights of stairs, Max slowed. When he finally reached the first floor landing, he sat down and gently pulled off his tennis shoe and sock. Just as he suspected, the corner of the falling transmitter left a bright red mark surrounded by a hideous purple bruise. Next, he eased his T-shirt sleeve up and examined his shoulder. It was bruised as well, but not as bad as he expected. Carefully, he put his sock back on and retied his shoe to allow more room for the swelling. Then he limped down the stairs to the basement.

  Cans, once stacked on sturdy shelves, lay strewn across the room, with the shelves lying haphazardly on top of them. Broken glass containers added their gooey liquid. Candy's gardening tools and dirt for potted plants mixed in the wet mess. A crack large enough for a finger stretched up the side of both walls. But the generators were intact, each humming their call to duty.

  Max stepped through the mess and quickly switched both generators off. Just hours before, he'd connected the wire to the generator, threaded it through a hole in the basement window, and then ran it up the outside of the building to the roof. Now, the window was gone. He carefully examined the connection to the generator, and then every inch of the cable. It looked okay.

  He eased back up the stairs and opened the door to his apartment. The living room was in shambles. Mixed with overturned furniture, broken plaster and glass, high chairs were toppled amid scattered crayons, color books, toy cars and baby rattles. Max swooped down, picked up a small teddy bear and gently laid it on the overturned sofa. Testing the floor, he cautiously inched closer to the window. When he was near enough, he grabbed a coloring book, scraped the broken glass out of the frame and then tested the strength of the wall. It felt sturdy. Grabbing hold, he leaned out the window and scanned the cable. It was still tacked to the outside wall and ran unbroken from the basement window to the attic.

  "Good!" Max breathed. He limped back to the door and out of habit, pulled it closed behind him.

  On the floor, in what was left of the usually neat and orderly dining room, an upside down Ham Radio crackled to life, "W7LGF, this is KB7HDX. W7LGF, this is KB7HDX. Max...can you hear me? Max?"

  *

  Yakima's designated frequency was suddenly alive with call signs reporting availability. The section manager quickly became Net Control and gave each an assigned duty. Not once did Boyd call for assistance from James. He listened a while longer, and then glanced at his little sister. "I feel so helpless."

  "Me too." Perched on his bed again, Heather toyed with the red dots. "We could go there, and help, maybe."

  "Get real. Seattle's a long ways away and who knows if the roads are still in one piece. Besides, it'll get dark soon and Mom would skin me alive if anything happened to you."

  "Yes, but I've got first aid. I took it last year, remember. And I could work that stupid radio if you'd let me. We could take shifts and report what we see."

  James thought about it for a moment. "I don't think we should, it's not safe, Heather. For all we know there are dead bodies everywhere."

  "I've seen a dead body."

  "When?"

  "When Grandpa died."

  "It’s not the same. Grandpa died in his sleep and wasn't bloody or anything." James folded his arms and thoughtfully blinked his eyes. "I'd like to go. I'd like to see what happened. But if I do, I'm not taking you."

  "You have to. Mom and Dad are in Portland and I'm your responsibility. Where you go, I go!"

  *

  By the time Tim and Jenna climbed back over the file cabinets and reached Seely, her color had greatly improved. Her head wasn't bleeding and she was on her feet. At first, she winced at the sight of Tim's face. She narrowed her eyes and looked closer. "I've got tweezers in the earthquake kit. You stay here. And sit down before you fall down."

  Tim blinked his usable eye, "I just love it when a woman gets bossy." He put his back against the only portion of solid wall and slid down, bending his knees and then stretching out his legs. "Man that feels good. I couldn't stretch my legs under that desk. I thought I was going to die out there. First we fell, then…”

  Seely just let him talk. Holding aside the dangling wires, she carefully stepped through the rubble and led Jenna down the hall toward the elevators. When she reached the end, she stopped. To her left, a wider hallway offered six closed elevator doors on one side and a badly damaged wall on the other. Beyond that, the inside conference room wall, once holding large windows in narrow frames was gone, leaving a wide open area surrounding the reception desk. Chairs and a hutch sat precariously close to the outer wall. And the oak table, large enough to seat twenty people, had disappeared. Gone also were the identical narrow frames that once separated four, floor to ceiling blue tinted, outer windows. Beyond that, sunshine, crystal clear air and a forty-three floor drop.

  Seely sta
red at the unmoving, sheer curtains pulled to the right hand side of the windowless room. "Still no wind."

  "What?" Jenna asked.

  "No wind. We're so high up, there should be wind." She dismissed the thought and continued straight ahead. The door to the supply room at the end of the hallway was closed. Seely turned the knob and shoved, but the door only opened an inch. She put her head closer and peered into the darkness. "No windows, I can't see a thing."

  Suddenly, Tim was standing right behind her, "Here, let me." When both women turned to stare, he shrugged his shoulders. "I don't want to die alone. So sue me." He waited until Seely moved out of the way, put a shoulder against the door and pushed hard. The door abruptly opened another foot."

  Seely grinned. "Perfect. The earthquake Kit is right inside the door, on the bottom shelf. Do you see it? It's a black, nylon duffel bag?"

  "Okay." Tim knelt down, reached his hand in and felt for the bottom shelf. Suddenly, he jerked back, stood up, grabbed the doorknob, and slammed the door shut.

  "What? What is it?" Jenna asked.

  Tim's good eye blinked repeatedly and his breathing became labored, "A hand. I felt a dead hand."

  Seely slumped against the wall and closed her eyes, "I thought Bob went home early. I didn't know he was still here. Are you sure he's dead?"

  "I'm positive, his hand is ice cold and clammy."

  Jenna started to cry again. "We've gotta get out of here!"

  "We can't." Tim slowly turned the knob and eased the door open again. "We fell, remember?"

  Jenna tightly folded her arms and huffed, "Yes, but that doesn't mean we can't get out. Don't say that Timmy!"

  "Okay, so maybe I'm wrong. Try not to stress Jenna; I've been wrong before -- once." Tim carefully reached in, avoided touching Bob's hand and grabbed hold of the duffel bag. "I got it." He tugged, let the bag fall to the floor and then dragged it through the doorway. Instantly, he pulled the door shut. "May he rest in peace."

  Seely took the bag, but didn't move out of his way, "Tim, on the next shelf up, there is a gallon of water. Let me do it."

  "No. I'm the guy, I'll do it." Tim quickly opened the door, grabbed the plastic bottle of water and brought it out. He handed it to Jenna and once more pulled the door closed. "I say we let poor Bob rest in peace." With that, he waved Seely aside, and then headed back down the hallway.

  Before they reached the bathrooms, the earth shifted, sending another shiver up the walls of the Winningham Blue Building. Each of them stopped and waited to see if it would increase or pass. It quickly passed.

  Her arms still tightly folded, Jenna lowered her voice and growled, "Doesn't it ever stop?"

  Seely tenderly placed a hand on the young girl's shoulder and urged her forward, "No, baby, it doesn't. We left LA two weeks after the San Fernando Quake and it still hadn't stopped moving. But the aftershocks diminish in strength and frequency. We'll be all right, Jenna. We can survive here for days if we have to and eventually, someone will come for us. You'll see."

  "Days? But Seely, Kevin's coming home tomorrow."

  Tim sneered and continued on down the hall. "Don't count on it. If the airports can function at all, and there's a landing strip within fifty miles still in one piece, they'll use it for emergency flights only."

  Seely agreed, "True. And worrying about Kevin is the least of our problems. We need to get Timmy bandaged, and then we'll see about finding food. I've always wanted to break into a candy machine, now's my chance." When they reached the ladies room, Seely waited for Tim to sit down, and then knelt down in front of him. She opened the bag and searched through the supplies until she found scissors, bandages and the tweezers. She glanced at Jenna's worried expression, and said, "Sugar, right where we are, is the safest place to be."

  Jenna rolled her eyes and reluctantly sat down. "Safe?"

  "Think Jenna. Directly below the bathrooms are elevator shafts ... the ones that only go two-thirds of the way up. With all those walls so close together, it's the strongest part of the building. And even if we fall, people on the top floors survive more often than those on the bottom."

  "That makes sense," Tim said. He watched Seely bring the tweezers up, closed his good eye and gritted his teeth. "Just yank. I can take it."

  Seely took a deep breath, steadied her hand and grabbed hold. With a jerk, the jagged, blue tinted glass pulled free. She quickly covered the wound with gauze and applied pressure.

  Jenna watched, and then folded her arms and studied the floor. "Well, if it's safer on the top floors, we should go up."

  "We probably can't go up either," Tim said. "Fire locks, remember? All the doors are steel and lock automatically from the inside. On the other hand, maybe they fell off or one of you has a key."

  Disgusted, Seely clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth, "Don't look at me. If they had keys to the bathrooms they wouldn't give me one. I'm just a lowly supervisor, a religious freak, a nut, and an earthquake alarmist. And now that we've had one, I'm furious. How dare they build buildings we can't get out of? They knew the chances of an earthquake were high. We should have keys to the stairway doors, we should have two way radios and we should have a big enough earthquake kit for the four thousand people who work in this building every day!"

  This time it was Jenna who tried to comfort Seely, "Hey, calm down. It's okay. It's Saturday, remember, and there are only three of us that we know of." She suddenly frowned, and then cautiously went on, "Seely, do you think Pat made it down?"

  "I don't know. I've been worried sick about her. I think she might have been in the elevator when it hit."

  CHAPTER 10

  High above Seattle, in the body of the chopper, Jackie eased her feet out of her high heels and leaned her head back against the headrest. Moments before, the mock woman moved thirty seven feet west, stayed still for six minutes, and then moved back. Hopeful, Jackie placed a call to her employer, "Sir, I think she's going to make it, if we can get her out of the building."

  Evan Cole's weary eyes drooped and circles were beginning to darken under them. His aborted Seattle landing took him to Spokane International Airport where the decor and hard seats were just like any other airport, only on a smaller scale, "Can you see her?"

  "Well no, not exactly. We tapped into the building's security cameras but nothing down there works anymore."

  "Then how do you know she's alive?"

  "Well, you may not like this, but we put a computer chip in her necklace. It's a tiny sensor that allows us to know where she is and monitor her heart beat."

  He was quiet for a time, rubbing his chin and thinking, "Are you telling me there's more to worry about than injuries from the earthquake?"

  "Christina had a heart attack a couple of months ago and the truth is, she's had another one today. But she's alive. We think she has medication with her. When does your next flight leave?"

  "Twenty minutes. I'm flying to Vancouver, British Columbia, which is about 140 miles from Seattle. I'll take a car from there, or walk if I have to."

  Jackie considered not asking, and then went ahead anyway, "Mister Cole, why did Christina go into hiding?"

  "I don't know, not yet anyway. I think my sister-in-law has something to do with it, but I can't find her. Jackie, I hope you know money is no object. Please do whatever you can to get my wife to safety."

  "We'll do our best."

  The voice over an Amateur Radio on Mercer Island was clear enough, yet the words were slow and labored, "WA7Y emergency."

  "WA, this is Net control, go ahead."

  "WA7Y. The Mercer Island floating bridge over Lake Washington is out. Looks like it fell. A witness saw cars go in the water. I can see two, maybe three survivors and a speedboat headed that way. Miles Landing is under water and firehouse sixteen reports heavy damage. We've got no power, no phones and thank God, no fires…yet. Crestwood Retirement home collapsed. We have seven elderly dead and I don't know how many injured – a lot. Over."

  "WA, copy. See if you can lo
cate Doc. Parker. He lives on Greenwood Avenue, in the three hundred block, I think. He's got an office over there with supplies and some equipment. Then let me know where they're setting up emergency services. Over."

  "Will do. WA7Y, out."

  *

  Old, tired and constantly muttering to God, Sam steadily drew closer to the clubhouse. Keeping the oddly slanted forest within reach, he strained to climb up ruptured chunks of green, and then cautiously slipped down into cracked and unstable valleys. Just as he was about to climb another, a shock wave zipped beneath his feet. Wide eyed, he took a clumsy step toward the trees and nearly fell. But the waves did not continue. "Oh good, a little one…maybe it was just my imagination." He righted himself, tucked his shirt in his pants, adjusted his cap, and started off again.

  *

  At KMPR, the cracked and slanted studio console was still without electricity. Collin cleared off the rubbish and used a paper towel to remove plaster dust. Once more he tried both the phone and the cell phone. Neither worked. When the earth rolled again, he waited to see if it would worsen. When it didn't, he went back to cleaning up. The mike looked unharmed and the cord was uncut. Nevertheless, he checked it all the way to the control booth. It looked okay. He dusted off his stool, set it next to the console and reached for a cigarette. Suddenly, he stopped and stared into the control room, "Hey Max, you turn off the gas?"

  "Didn't need to. Everything's electric."

  Collin lit his cigarette, deeply inhaled and blew out the smoke. He rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand, thought for a moment, and then grabbed his cigarette pack. It was half empty. "Uh oh."

  "Collin, go down in the basement and turn on the generators. Let's give it a shot."

  Quickly, Collin obeyed. He passed Max and Candy's apartment twice, once going down to the basement and once coming back up stairs. Neither time did he hear the voice of young James McClurg trying to raise Max on the Ham radio.

  *