Quake
Copyright© 2025 by Gordon Johnson
Chapter 3
He beamed his pleasure at this accolade, saying, “I like helping, Paul. Do you like helping too?”
“I do, even though it can be hard work sometimes. Helping is almost never easy, so be prepared to work at it, young man. It all does you good in the end, trust me.”
He sobered up, but still grinned his eagerness.
Pat and Sylvia, after scanning with looks of horror the nearby demolished townscape, noticed me sitting disconsolately on the ground. They walked over to me and each gently took an arm to lift me to my shaky feet.
“You tired, Paul?” asked Pat with a worried look at me.
“A little,” I admitted the truth. “When the quake hit, I was indoors and dashed to a corner for protection, then the corner cracked open and I was thrust outside and landed on the rubble. Since then, I have constantly been on the move and the shock of everything finally got to me when I sat down. It is nothing really. I’ll get over it soon, girls; don’t you fret.”
Sylvia looked again at the shocking devastation spreading before us and said, sadness in her voice, “Is it all like this, Paul? How far afield has this gone? How much has been smashed and destroyed?”
I shrugged, “No idea, Sylvia. I only saw what was near me and then worked my way down to the harbour, collecting young James as I went. I don’t know how long it will take for rescue teams to reach us, but I wouldn’t expect it to be any time soon. It will be more difficult if road bridges have been shattered, making getting cranes and other heavy lifting equipment here problematic. They may have to use minor roads as a diversion route to reach here, and that will slow them down. I think we have to make do with whatever we can find in the way of food, water and clothing. It might also be difficult to find a safe place to sleep tonight, certainly not easy to find somewhere indoors. Time to do some serious re-imagining of our world,” I concluded bleakly, faced with disaster all round.
The girls stopped to think this over, and Pat brightly suggested, “Why don’t we look for the shopping district and see if we can find clothes that will fit us? Food too, of course. James found a working water fountain, so some utilities are functional, at least around here.”
I remarked by way of explanation, “It may be because the harbour is at the foot of the slope, so water is going to remain in the pipes nearest the harbour for a while, assuming they are not all completely fractured. How long we will have safe water to drink, I have no idea.”
Sylvia was very practical. “Water is the most important need, so if we can find a few bottles, we can fill them with water while it is available at the fountain.”
“Sounds good to me. James, where do you think we can find plastic lemonade bottles?”
He perked up as the thought struck him, “Recycling bins? These big bins are made of plastic so they’ll be less damaged. There may be bottles inside that we can wash out and fill with water.”
“Good thinking again, James, brilliant in fact. Do you want to go looking for such bins around the harbour where there is less destruction? If you find anything like that, check for bottles and if in luck you could see about cleaning and filling the bottles at the water fountain, eh? The ladies and I can go looking for shops that are not too badly damaged, and see if we can find food and clothes. Food in sealed containers like tins and cartons might give us some reliable sustenance for a few days,” I mused, forgetting to use simpler words in his hearing. “We can all meet back here in half an hour or so, very roughly. The actual time may vary depending on what we find. Do we all have watches?”
Both girls and I had wrist watches, but James had none, so Sylvia took hers off and strapped it to James’ wrist tight enough that it would not fall off with normal movement.
“There. I assume you can you tell the time on a watch, James?” He straightened up. “I am a big boy; I can tell the time on a clock, and this is just a little clock, right?”
“Quite right, James. Quite right. Good for you. You can see the time on it now. Half an hour will take the longer hand to the opposite side of the watch face. Got that?”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you for lending me your watch. It is very pretty, like you.” Sylvia giggled, “Oh, when you grow up you are going to be a hit with the ladies, James!”
He looked puzzled, and declared, “But I was only saying it was pretty. Was that wrong?”
“No, not wrong James. Just keep on as you are, and you’ll be a fine young man.”
The ladies and I sought out, as best we could, where we were in relation to where the shops ought to be. The girls roughly remembered a plan of the town and we set out for their target, using the available road layout as our planned approach. We assumed the shops would not be far from the harbour, due to the more level ground, and they were, but most of them had collapsed to one extent or another. A ladies’ dress shop was the target but when we reached there, it was leaning precariously apparently in all directions, but two walls had meet to become an arch and could be safely entered a little way, so the girls ventured far enough to see what was reachable in the way of dresses, underwear, and other female items on the metal display rails.
They came back out with their arms full of a dusty assortment of clothing, but how much would fit them was a moot point; they did not have time to look closely. Once safely out, they began to check for the dress sizes marked on each hanger, putting ‘possible’ to one side and rejecting any others that were too small for their breast or hip sizes. A slightly too large size was acceptable if there was a belt that could be tightened and the dress made to fit more closely. They also set aside a batch of underwear they had located and purloined. I contrived not to take notice of that detail.
I suggested they put a dress on now, to protect them from sunburn if the sunshine remained strong. “Not that I object to what I see in front of me, but you need to be safe from too much sun intensity.”
Sylvia, newly dressed, was about to respond to the compliment but stopped abruptly, listening, and put up a hand to halt any talking by us.
“Did you hear that?” she asked after a long moment of listening. Pat and I tried to hear whatever she was hearing, but all was silent. Then a faint cry came from the shop the girls had just raided.
“It is coming from further inside the dress shop!” exclaimed Sylvia, and we all moved closer to the badly damaged building. It was only one storey high, so there were some spaces between the fallen roof and the tilting walls acting as light holes. This was what had enabled the girls to see enough to get partly inside and grab what they could, despite the safety worry.
I heard it again, and to me, it came from deeper inside the shop, out of direct sight. Pat observed with her knowledge of such shops, “That must be where the changing cubicles are; but the partitions are flimsy in such shops. How could someone survive back there?”
I sighed and announced, “We can’t just ignore such a cry, girls. Let’s see if we can get back there without disturbing anything more than is already messed up.”
I started to move forward in leader mode, but Pat held me back by my arm.
“Wait, Paul, dear man. This not a hero task, it is more a practical one. Look at it this way: smaller and slimmer people can get in and out more safely, so this is up to me and Sylvia. Are you up for it, sis?”
Sylvia replied staunchly, “Paul risked his neck to reach us. We should do the same for whoever is stuck, if they can be pulled out. Let’s try, Pat.”
I saw the inevitable, but cautioned, “Okay, I take your point, but be careful. Try not to lean on anything that might move and cause more to fall on you. Shout out if you need me to come for you. I don’t want to lose either of you.”
At this, they looked at each other, and then both thrust an armful of dresses into my hands, saying, “Look after this lot, then,” before stripping off the new dresses they had just put on. “No sense in damaging these,” Pat said intelligently as she handed me the dress she had just removed. Sylvia copied her. I noticed they had somehow switched to flimsy underwear they must have found in the shop; very attractive, I thought; very sexy. Perhaps that was the idea. They still wore their sandals, but these were of a tough material, plastic or rubber, well suited to this exploration.
The girls moved inside, and walked single file to make progress easier. Pat called out, “Is someone there? Yell out so we can hear you.”
There was another faint call, “Help!” and the girls set off deeper into the wrecked building, treading carefully as they ventured farther. Fortunately there was no major solid structure above them, but even single roof beams can be heavy and dangerous if they fall on you. There were some helpful shafts of sunshine coming through holes in the roof, so that helped the girls see their way further inside.
I forced myself to stay silent so that I would not distract them in their rescue attempt, but I was anxious for them all the same. They vanished from my sight, going round a cracked wall to a further back section. I hoped they didn’t get diverted by seeing more dresses they fancied ... stupid male thought of mine! This is serious, and dangerous, I told myself.
From time to time I vaguely heard voices saying something but I could not make out the words. It sounded more like the girls were direction finding by the cries of the trapped person. There might not be a direct route towards the trapped person.
The voices either ceased or went too soft to hear from outside, and lacking data I was forced to wait, and wait, and wait. I wondered if James was worried about us, as the half hour was surely up by now. I hadn’t dared look at my watch. The rescue effort had all my attention.
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