"Unshakable" -- July 16

Word count: 1500

Unshakable

They called it unshakeable. Nothing short of a continental breakup on the scale of Pangea would move it.

Reporters made faces on air when they mentioned it. Skeptics decried government corruption that allowed taxpayer money to fund such an absurd project. Protestors picketed every government building in the country. The President tried to quiet the dissent without giving answers. Quietly, inexorably, the Tower rose in the middle of the Nevada desert.

That was ten years ago.

A year ago, the shaking started.

****

Kennedy rolled to her feet and stood poised, waiting for the ground to shake again. She squinted against glare of the white sand. A mile away, her tent floated in a haze of heat, the Jeep parked next to it. Trey would have spotted her by now, and he would be sitting in the entrance of the tent, his shotgun in easy reach, the portable fan turned off to conserve energy while he let hot air into the tent. If the tent hadn’t collapsed during the quake.

It had been a small one, nothing like the 8.9 that had destroyed their home in Yuma, Arizona.

The ground remained still.

Trey was waiting with his shotgun over his knees, leaning back and eating corn straight from a can.

“Find out anything?”

“They’re going to the Tower, too.” Kennedy looked back at the dust cloud in the distance that denoted another traveling family. “Four of them.”

Behind the tent, the outline of the Tower poked through a thick haze of dust. It would probably take two days to reach it as they detoured around the cracks in the roads.

As they disassembled the tent, the Jeep radio blared, listing quakes and magnitudes. The quakes were a nightmarish fact of life now, too close together to allow rebuilding, too violent to allow peaceful rest. If the radio told of one in your area, the best you could do was pray your family wasn’t trapped under some rubble.

“How many people do you really think are going to the Tower?” Kennedy asked. She tightened the last strap over the shapeless pile of tent gear in the open back of the Jeep.

“Too many.” Trey’s hand hovered over the steering wheel. “Ready?”

Kennedy hopped into the front seat and slammed the door. “At least we have a chance.”

“If the Tower is even safe.” Trey set the Jeep in motion and they buzzed toward the Tower.

“This many people can’t be wrong,” Kennedy muttered. She pulled her legs up into the seat and prepared for the drive.

Around the Tower, tents and makeshift huts sprawled for a mile in any direction, filled with people driven from their homes by the quakes but too poor to afford entry into the Tower. Trey slowed the Jeep as they approached the brilliantly colored confusion and made their way through makeshift streets.

Kennedy opened the glove box, where a can of pepper spray and a loaded handgun were tucked within easy reach. The cash box with their life savings inside lay on the floor beneath her feet.

“Play it cool,” Trey said, leaning back. The radio announcer’s voice blended with scattered snippets of music and commotion from outside.

Kennedy grabbed Trey’s arm. “Do you hear that?”

Too-familiar screams in the distance announced another quake. Trey stopped the car and put his hand on the key, ready to shut off the engine. Kennedy braced herself against the seat.

A long swell of earth rippled beneath the car, shaking it. Dust filled the air like fog, and startled screams echoed out of it.

“Thirty seconds,” Kennedy said as the shaking subsided.

“We were close to the center. Did you see the ground?”

“Yeah.”

…4.3 magnitude, epicenter located three-quarters of a mile northeast of the Tower…

Kennedy shut off the radio.

“I thought it wasn’t supposed to shake here.”

Trey shrugged. “I guess there’s no way to be sure.” He started the car again and they inched forward across the cracked ground, squinting through the thick cloud of dust.

“What if the Tower isn’t safe?”

Silence. Kennedy shuddered and turned the radio back on.

…9.1 just off the coast of Argentina, on the former site of Santiago del Chile, caused massive tsunamis; aftershocks are expected as far as central Bolivia and Peru…

The dust cleared as they neared the perimeter fence around the Tower. Set at a half-mile radius, the fence was two stories high and monitored by dozens of guard towers. Here there was no sign of a quake. Just a solid fence towering above their heads, casting deep shadows on the sand.

Trey crept up to one of the checkpoints. Kennedy counted a dozen guards, armed with multiple weapons. She pushed the glove box shut with a quiet click.

“What if they find the gun?”

“Shh.” Trey reached into the console for their IDs. “Don’t panic.”

Kennedy took a deep breath as they coasted up to the checkpoint and Trey put on his most dazzling smile. Behind them, more screams broke the air. Kennedy twisted and squinted into the haze. A flagpole that poked out of the top of the cloud of dust swayed and fell, dragging the flag with it.

Another quake.

“Please park your vehicle in the designated spot and follow me,” the guard said, his voice flat and professional. He pointed to a spot marked with flags.

“Bring the cash box,” Trey said as he pulled in. Kennedy slipped it into her backpack.

They followed the guard into a long, low building with thick walls and reinforced doorways. The sterile white walls and antiseptic chill were identical to every other government building. A few people huddled in an orderly bank of chairs on one side of the room. One was bleeding from an ugly wound on his leg.

“We need to get into the Tower,” Trey said, leaning over the counter to get a clerk’s attention.

The clerk pursed her lips, leaned back in her chair, and grabbed a fistful of papers secured with a binder clip. She plunked them on the counter in front of Trey.

“Good luck,” she said, dropping a pen onto the stack. She turned back to her computer screen.

Kennedy pulled the cash box out of her backpack, moving to shield it from the people on the other side of the room. She tapped on the counter to get the clerk’s attention again.

“We’re paying in full,” she said, opening the cash box.

Twenty minutes later they followed a guard out of the building. Kennedy held the last of their money against her chest. They’d taken her backpack and everything from her pockets except her ID and her chapstick.

They followed the guard across a wide open space and into the Tower. As the automatic doors hissed closed behind them, Trey gave Kennedy a fist bump. They were in. They were safe.

Later, freshly showered and with clean hair for the first time since the hotel in Arizona, Kennedy stood looking out a narrow window. They had been assigned a room halfway up the Tower and she could see for miles across the empty desert. The tops of the tents looked like a patchwork tree skirt around the roots of the Tower.

“What do we do now?”

Trey sat down on one of the two beds in the room. Kennedy crossed to the other bed and laid down, staring at the sprinkler set in the smooth white ceiling.

“I don’t really know,” Trey said. “Wait, I guess.”

“I hate waiting.”

“I know.”

At least they were safe. Kennedy didn’t have to spend nights waking every hour, listening for the earth to grumble. She didn’t have to watch people overtaking them on the desert road, wondering if they would be hostile. She didn’t have to practice pulling the handgun from the glove box in one seamless movement.

As she lay on the bed, tension she had been carrying across her shoulders since the first quake melted from her body.

“Kennedy.”

“Hmm.”

“Kennedy!”

Kennedy sat up. The tension returned as her heart rate spiked. “What?”

Trey leaned over the tiny radio they had let him keep. He twisted the volume knob up higher and held it out toward Kennedy. The announcer’s voice filled the quiet room with tinny noise.

Reports continue to come in of quakes above 8.0 magnitude worldwide. Everyone is advised to move away from coastlines and densely populated areas as scientists predict increasing large events over coming days…

A burst of static cut off the broadcast.

“Crap,” Kennedy whispered. She went back to the window. “How long do you think we have?”

“It might not—”

Kennedy pointed out the window.

In the distance, thick clouds of dust rose. Swells of land rose as well, advancing toward the Tower. Wide cracks opened in the landscape.

Trey stood beside Kennedy. A soft whistle escaped him. “It’s really something else to see from up high.”

“It’s scary,” Kennedy said, touching the window gently.

Right on cue, the Tower began to shake.