Earthquake
Chapter 1

Copyright© 2013 by aubie56

Action/Adventure Sex Story: Chapter 1 - What would happen if there was a repeat of the New Madrid earthquake? And what if that earthquake was just the first of a series that encircles the world? This is the story of two teen boys who have to face that situation and lead the return of humanity to its rightful place on Earth.

Caution: This Action/Adventure Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including mt/ft   Consensual   Science Fiction   Oral Sex   Violence  

Hi, I'm Joe Hillcrest, just an average All-American boy going on 17. Bill Peters, same age and description, and I were on a camping trip through Missouri along the Mississippi River. We weren't hiking but were traveling by boat and stopping at likely camping places as each night fell. We are both going to be Seniors in high school when it starts up in the fall, and we were getting in a last fling before finishing high school and going on to college.

My main interest was in geology and Bill's was in forestry, so you might call this a "working" vacation as we were especially interested in looking at our fields of interest as we moved down the river. The Mississippi River is well studied, so we were not going to find anything new, but we were interested in simply comparing our observation with the findings reported by experts over the years.

This was a vacation trip, so we were mostly having fun. We fed ourselves by fishing and hunting small game, and we got our vegetables from cans. We still had two weeks to run on our vacation when it happened the first time. We were on the river and it was mid-afternoon when we felt the water suddenly get quite rough. There was no change in the wind to cause this, and the river had been running at a pretty steady quarter-mile width, so it could not be a change in the current to cause the rough water.

The phenomenon lasted only about half a minute and then was gone. My first thought was of an earthquake, but that was ridiculous! There had not been an earthquake in this region since the New Madrid 7.2 earthquake of 1811, over 200 years ago. Not only that, the land around here had been so quiet that many geologists were saying that there would never be another such quake. Well, I may not be a pro geologist yet, but I know the symptoms of shaking ground.

The first thing Bill said was, "Turn on some news, Joe. That felt like an earthquake to me."

We had been listening to an all-music station and who knew how long it would be before they would notice that anything had happened, so I tuned the radio for a news report. It took a few minutes, but I finally found a voice somewhat hysterically talking about a 4.6 earthquake along the river. I said, "Bill, that's almost unbelievable. This is supposed to be a quiet zone from all of the measurements that anybody has been able to make. We all know about the New Madrid quake of 1811, but there has been nothing since. This is a freak occurrence, no matter how you look at it."

"Maybe, but I hope that is the last tremor we encounter."

Nothing else happened, so we went back to our music station and our viewing of the scenery. About an hour later, there was a massive shaking that no sane person could ignore. Dammit, suddenly the radio went dead. The water got so rough that we were shaken about and decided to head for the shore. We had hardly gotten there when the water level dropped about 15 feet. Shit, we both knew what that meant!

Our boat was suddenly resting on the mud of the river bottom, and Bill had the motor shut off before the shear-pin on the prop could break. Just moments of conversation had us dragging the boat to dry land. Fortunately, the river bottom along here was a thin layer of mud over sand so that we had decent footing as we walked as fast as we could pulling the boat over the slippery mud.

We didn't stop when we got to shore, but pulled the boat up a hill to get as much elevation as we could before the tsunami hit. We had nearly 40 feet of elevation when we ran out of hill: hopefully that was going to be enough to save us and our boat. We tied the boat to the sturdiest tree that we could find and then climbed that tree as high as we thought the branches would support us. Now, there was nothing to do but wait.

We spent 20 minutes in that tree before we heard the roar of the approaching tsunami. We could see it from our vantage point high in the tree. There was a wall of water close to 35 feet high rushing at us at what looked like 100 MPH or more. Dammit, we had forgotten to tie ourselves to the tree, but we grabbed hold of the trunk and held on for dear life.

My God! We were too lucky to believe it! The water swept past us about 20 feet away. It was uprooting trees as it tore past, and we could see several animal carcasses in the water as it went by. Our hill was barely high enough to preserve our boat, but the aluminum hull never got wet except for a few drops splashed on it as the wall of water rushed by. We had no way of knowing how long the tsunami was going to last or if there would be any after effects. It was getting dark when we finally figured that it was safe to leave the tree.

The river had returned to more or less normal by the time we climbed down from the tree. We looked over our boat and found that nothing had been disturbed. That was a big relief for both of us, and we considered what to do. In the end, we decided to stay where we were. Supper consisted of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) and instant coffee. We pitched our tent and were ready for bed by the time the sun went down. Dammit, there were two aftershocks that night that woke us up, but nothing serious.

The next morning after breakfast, we dragged our boat back to the river and started down it. My God! That tsunami had played hell with the land on both sides of the river. Not only that, it had played hell with a tug and its load of barges. The tug and the barges had gone down and stuck in the mud. Apparently, the workers on board did not make an effort to escape because we found them gathered in the wheelhouse of the tug. They were battered to the point that I wondered if there was an unbroken bone in any of the bodies.

None of the barges were visible on the surface, but we could see ripples that suggested that they were still on the bottom of the river. Parts of the barges that projected toward the surface were making ripples from the flowing current, but we doubted if any of those barges would ever see the light of day again.

The tug was down by the bow as if it were jammed against one or more barges, but the stern was poking in the air. The wheelhouse barely cleared the waterline, and we had no idea how long it would stay that way. Bill and I got away as soon as we realized that, and didn't want to go back to the tug after that. We had no way to report what we had found, so we had to sit on the information until we could find some authorities to report the sinking to. Any time, I expected to see a helicopter fly over the river looking for wrecks just such as this. The Mississippi River was such an important link in the nation's infrastructure that I could not imagine the devastation being ignored for very long.

There was absolutely nothing useful we could do at the tug, so we cast off and continued down the river. I was acting as navigator, so I marked the site of the wreck on my map. At least, I could now report the wreck's location when the time came.

According to the map, we had spent the night in the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area a few miles north of St. Louis. Well, we had not gone far down river when we saw a pall of smoke virtually covering the horizon. Shit, were we looking at the fate of St. Louis? It certainly looked like there was enough smoke to justify the assumption, but we were wondering how such a large city could be so completely destroyed.

We had gone about four more miles when we heard a cry for help come from the west bank of the river. We steered for the source of the cry and found a teenage girl standing on the bank of the river and frantically waving for us to hurry to her. Bill put on a pulse of speed and took us to the girl as fast as our little boat could move.

"Oh, my God!" she said. "You guys are the first humans that I have seen all day. My mom is injured in our cabin, and I have been trying to find a doctor for her."

Bill said, "I'm no doctor, but I am a part-time EMT (Emergency Medical Technician). Maybe I can help. Where is she?"

The girl led us on a dead run to a little shack just beyond the worst damage done by the tsunami. It looked to me like the shack had been caught by the edge of the water and a tree trunk had smashed into the corner of the building. That had knocked down a part of the roof, and I guessed that was how her mother had been injured.

We ran inside, and I was not sure but what the rest of the roof would fall on us. Dammit, the woman lying on the bed was already dead! She had a piece of a 2x4 jammed through her chest, and she could not have been saved by anything short of major surgery, if then. Bill took one look at the poor woman and pulled a sheet up over her head.

The girl began to shed tears in a virtual waterfall, and she fell into my arms. Why me, instead of Bill? I guess it was because I was closer to her. I led her out of the shack and tried to console her. I wasn't having much luck, but at least I did provide a shoulder for her to cry on.

After a while, she ran dry and I introduced Bill and myself. "Thank you for doing what you could for my mother. I'm Sue Alden. I don't know what I am going to do now that mom is dead. She was all that I had in the world, and we lived off of what she made at this fishing camp. What are you two guys doing out here? Are you part of some sort of rescue service?"

"No, I'm afraid that we aren't. Bill and I are on vacation before we return to school. We were traveling down the river for four weeks with no special plans. The earthquake and tsunami caught us on the river, and we barely escaped, mostly by luck. What can we do to help you?"

"I guess that you can help me bury my mother. This house is beyond repair, so I will have to go into St. Louis and try to find some sort of work. I am 18, so I don't need a work permit."

"How will you travel to St. Louis? I don't see a car, and I think that it is too far to walk."

"Oh, that will be no problem. We have a fishing boat that can hold up to five people, and I can use that, if you guys will help me to get it into the river."

Well, Bill and I were suckers for girls in trouble with a sad story, so we agreed to do whatever we could to help Sue. Fortunately, Sue had a couple of spades and a pick, so we were able to dig a shallow grave in the soft ground rather quickly. Bill rigged up a marker for the grave, and we looked into what we could do about the boat.

The boat was comfortably large and there was a suitable motor for it. We loaded the things from the cabin that Sue wanted to take with her and we considered what else to do.

Sue said, "Look, I hate to keep imposing on you guys, but I could use one more favor. My boat is big enough for all of us and all of your stuff, so will you two ride with me as far as St. Louis?"

Sue not only needed our help, but Sue was what any male would call a "babe!" She had dark hair, almost black, and hazel eyes that could look so helpless that no man could resist when they dripped tears. Her face went with her body, so she had us by the gonads even though she might not know it.

Her request put Bill and me into planning mode, and we decided that it would be easy to tie up our boat behind hers. We could all ride in the larger boat as far as St. Louis, and we could decide what to do when we saw what was going on there. The necessary changes were made in the distribution of goods between the two boats and we started out down the river.

We had hardly gone a mile when we were hailed from the eastern shore. This time, it was what seemed to be a family. I was driving at the moment so I steered us over there to see what the family needed. When we got close, the man called out, "PLEASE HELP US! MY SON HAS A BROKEN LEG!" Well, we pulled in to shore, and all three of us climbed out and tied up the boats.

Bill asked where the boy was, and the man said that he was down the other side of the levee. Bill headed down there, and the man hit Bill in the back of the head with a blackjack. The woman cried out, "WATCH OUT! HE HAS A GUN!"

I was in a favorable position, so I dove at the man with the blackjack and Sue ran to see what she could do for Bill. I caught the man with a shoulder block in the kidney area and was glad that I'd had some experience with football. The two of us rolled down the levee bank, struggling with each other as we went. The man kept trying to hit me with the blackjack, but I had hold of his right wrist so that he could not get any power behind the swings.

The moment we stopped rolling, I butted the man as hard as I could in the nose with my forehead. Shit, that hurt! However, I got lucky and broke the man's nose. In the process, his broken nose was driven back into his brain, and he died on the spot. I guess that I was guilty of murder, but I did not care at the moment. It was a great relief that the man was dead!

I looked around and did not see anyone else on this side of the levee, so I went through the man's pockets to try to find the gun. Yes, he had an old Colt revolver in .38 caliber. It was not very good looking, but it was a gun, and it did have four bullets in the cylinder. I shoved the gun in my pocket and ran back up the levee. Well, ran was not a very good word: let me say that I clawed my way back up the steep wall of the levee as fast as I could go. I was worried about Bill.

When I got up there, I found that Sue and another girl about her age were fussing over Bill. The girl was the one that I had mistaken for the man's wife, but she turned out to be as young as the rest of us. Bill had come around, but he was nursing a terrible headache. I told Sue to look in our medical kit to find the Tylenol. We had nothing stronger, but that might help Bill to feel better.

While Sue was getting the Tylenol and a bottle of water, the other girl introduced herself. She was June Templeton, and the man she knew only as Sam had kidnapped her by means of the revolver. She assumed that she was to be raped when they stopped for the night.

June had encountered Sam in Illinois, and each had escaped from the burning city by clambering over the nearly destroyed railroad bridge. Both highway bridges were down with spans actually in the water, so the railroad bridge was the only way out of the city to the east without a boat. Sam had seen her cross the bridge and had chased after her. When he approached June, Sam had produced the gun and ordered her to stay with him. Well, she no longer had to worry about Sam!

Bill was still in no condition to travel, so I went back down the levee wall to see if Sam had more ammunition and anything else worth taking. He had no more bullets, but he did have the blackjack and some money in a wallet. I took those items and made my way back to my friends.

As I got there, June was telling Sue to stay away from St. Louis. The city was in chaos. Great sections of the city had burned and looters and rapists were everywhere. That was why she had crossed the bridge, and she certainly was not going back there. It looked to her like it would take the National Guard and several weeks to return order to the city.

Okay, that was enough to convince Sue that she did not want to take a chance with St. Louis. Her next thought was Cairo, IL. That was a city on the river so it would be easy to reach by boat. If that was not a good place to stop, she would figure out where to go after she saw her options.

Chapter 2 »

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