Chapter 8 #2
She blinked. That made sense. They couldn’t do anything as long as they were pinned down.
“How? What do we do?”
Her neck ached from trying to twist to see his face. But his face was what was keeping her sane. An anchor of sanity in a world gone crazy.
“Ok. I’m going to try to lift myself up and you try to slide out from under me.”
Wait. He was talking about her sliding out, not him. Parker saw exactly what he was doing. Sacrificing himself. Making sure she made it by taking the weight of the rubble onto himself.
“No.”
She saw him blink. “No?” He sounded dumbfounded. Clearly trying to wrap his head around someone saying no to him.
“No. We’re both going to get out of this or neither of us will.”
“Parker, if you don’t get out, you will die here.”
“And so will you. So, we’re getting out together.” Parker still felt fuzzy, not quite herself, but she was sure of this. They were in terrible trouble, but they’d face it together. She needed him but he also needed her. “So figure something out, fast.”
Silence. Slowly, Nick’s arms embraced her in a tight hold. His legs encased and held hers.
“Okay, this is what is going to happen. I’m going to see if I can press upward as hard as I can.
With luck I can buy us a second or two in which we’ll have more freedom of movement.
The rubble is interlocking and if I manage to shift the big pieces, it will take them a little time to settle back.
All we need is a second or two.” He tightened his hold on her, using his arms and legs.
“The instant we have room for maneuver, I’m going to roll us toward that piece of siding. Got it?”
She envisioned it for a moment, which is something she always did before doing something hard, running it through in her mind’s eye until she could see what was going to happen.
“Got it. We roll fast once you’ve shifted the weight upwards.”
“Yeah.”
Parker didn’t mention the fact that it would be almost impossible for Nick to shift all that weight bearing down on them. She had no way to assess how deep the rubble was, how heavy. Nick was strong but this seemed impossible. Not to mention the fact that he was wounded, had lost blood.
But what choice was there? If they stayed here, pinned down, unable to move, they’d die. If his attempt was unsuccessful and just managed to bring more rubble down on them… God. They were done for.
She couldn’t show her doubts. He was going to try something basically impossible, requiring strength and courage. If he failed, the bricks would fall on him, but he would be shielding her. She owed him her support.
“What can I do to help?”
“Move with me, the instant I tell you to.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to count to three and start pushing up, but don’t move until I say so. Yeah?”
“Yeah.” They might die. They might survive. It all depended on Nick’s strength and the configuration of bricks and shards above them. He could fail. The rubble could bury them even more. But it was the only chance they had.
“One…two…three!”
It was extraordinary. Under him, Parker could feel Nick as he strained against the weight over him. The body above her turned to iron as he pushed up. An immense force, there in the dust, strong as the quake, exerting force upward when the earth itself was bearing down on him.
Nick’s shoulders were shaking with the effort when he suddenly arched up, shaking off some rubble to the right and…
“Now!” he grunted, and Parker threw herself to the left, encased in Nick’s arms. He rolled them out from the pile as it fell to the ground.
Dust rose up and Parker started coughing.
Nick turned her around, then sat up with her in his arms. He pounded her back until she managed to get most of the dust out.
She looked around at the small space, lit by her cell, casting dark-edged shadows.
What had fallen on them had dropped into a jumble, dark and impenetrable and entrapping them no more.
They were at least able to move around a little in the lee of the corrugated steel panel.
They couldn’t stand up—certainly Nick couldn’t—but they could sit up which was infinitely better than lying crushed under an immense weight in the dust, unable to move.
She was held tightly by Nick, and he was the only thing keeping her sane. His strength was her bulwark against panic.
They sat in the dust, holding tightly to each other until Nick put his hands on her shoulders and pulled away. It felt awful not to be held by Nick. “You okay?” he asked.
Which was rich. He was the one who was wounded, who had taken the brunt of the world falling on them.
“Yeah.” Parker touched the side of his face where the gash was. It had stopped bleeding. “What about you?”
Nick didn’t answer. He’d picked up her cell and shone it around, studying their surroundings intently. There wasn’t much to study. Rocks and bricks and dirt. The frightening jumble which was left when the earth moved.
“We have to get out of here,” he said and she nodded. He studied the display of her cell. “No coverage. We’ll have to get closer to the surface to be able to call for help. I have my satphone with me, but it needs line of sight with the satellites.”
“We need to be fast getting out of here,” Parker said, worried. “The flashlight function uses the battery up and my recharger is in your vehicle.”
“That’s ok. When your battery runs out, we’ll use my satphone and I have a recharger with me.”
She glanced down at his cargo pants, dirty and bloodstained, with a billion pockets. “Hooray for cargo pants.”
He smiled at her. It was a crooked smile, with blood-caked dust providing the only spots of color in an ashen face. He was trying to buck her up because he understood as well as she did that they were in terrible trouble.
“Where’s the next room?”
“North. But I have no idea where north is.”
He bent his head over his complicated watch and pointed to his right. “There. That’s north.”
“You have a compass in your watch?”
He nodded.
“Then we need to keep heading north. The Blue Room was at the end of a wing. We’ll have to keep moving until we find a path through the rubble that will take us up. Without getting crushed in the meantime.”
Their eyes met. She knew he knew how almost impossible that was going to be. They were quite possibly already dead, and in their tomb, only they didn’t know it yet.
Parker was so grateful she was with Nick. He was probably regretting his offer to accompany her, but she was so glad to have him. She was barely holding it together, but though he was wounded and bloody, Nick looked perfectly capable. Just looking at him calmed her.
Without him, she’d…she’d die. She wouldn’t even know where north was.
She had zero survival instincts. She’d blunder about until she triggered another fall of material which might crush her.
Break bones. She’d keep her cellphone on until the battery ran out because she hated the dark.
And then she’d just wait for death in the dark.
Instead, crazily, she thought they might have a chance. Nick was carefully studying their surroundings, and she was sure he’d come up with a plan. It was the way he was wired. He wouldn’t give up until they were dead, which might not actually happen.
“What’s north, Parker? What’s in the rooms along the wing?”
Parker closed her eyes and tried to think. “Not much. No frescoes. The walls aren’t stuccoed, they are dirt. The rooms aren’t even fully excavated.”
“Are they faced with brick?”
Parker tried to focus. The focus of the team had been on the frescoed room, which had soaked up time and attention.
“Not that I recall. Sorry. We were all focused on the Blue Room. The other rooms hadn’t been fully excavated, and they were just empty containers.”
“That’s for the best. If they had had fortified walls, they would have crumbled in the quake. Simple dirt walls—well, we’d have more luck trying to tunnel through them than pick apart heavy rubble.”
Well, that made sense.
“Okay. What do we do now? I mean we have to go north. There’s nothing but packed earth to either side.”
Nick had finished his careful perusal. “I think I saw an opening.” They awkwardly shuffled behind the steel panel. And there it was. Another steel panel in the brick rubble.
Parker studied it. “It’s small.”
He sighed as he got on hands and knees. “It’s what we have.”
“Wait.” Parker put a hand on his shoulder, feeling strength and determination under her hand. “I think I should try to see how far I can get. I’m smaller than you.”
“Absolutely not.” Nick scowled. “We don’t know if getting in there might not precipitate another collapse. At least here you’ll be safe.”
“Until the next aftershock.” Parker measured the opening with her hands and brought her hands to his chest. Her hands didn’t even span two thirds of his chest. No way he could make his way through. “And at any rate, if something happens to you, I’m done for.”
Without waiting for an answer, Parker dropped to her hands and knees and
disappeared.
Nick had been in tight spots before. His whole career had been in tight spots. But he was always with fellow soldiers—well-trained men who had his back and he had theirs. He didn’t worry about them. They were men who knew what to do and how to do it.
Never with a woman he cared about.
It was hell.
He wasn’t entirely certain he could keep her safe. And alive. It ate at him.
He’d recognized an earthquake immediately and thrown himself over Parker. A ton of bricks and dirt rained down on him, and he was definitely dinged, but it would have killed Parker.
He couldn’t even go there. He’d just met her, had felt his life being turned around. He couldn’t lose her. It was absolutely unthinkable that she be in danger.