'Of course. See you later.' Eric stopped at Betty's desk in time to get flashed a mouthful of capped teeth. 'Betty, I'll be out for the rest of the day. If any of my young scholars come looking for me, set them up with an appointment for tomorrow, okay?'
'Sure thing, Dr. Ravensmith.'
He'd given up trying to get her to call him Eric. She seemed to like the titles, as if she were the head nurse in a hospital full of doctors.
'Thanks. See you tomorrow.'
'Fine. See you to-'
And it began.
The building trembled slightly, as if shivering against a great wind. Betty hunched over the papers on her desk, trying to keep them from being shaken to the floor. A stapler tipped over the edge, bounced onto the carpet. 'My, my,' she said. 'Oh, my.'
The students who'd been walking the halls or reading the bulletin boards looked around at each other, up at the ceiling, then down at the floor. One young girl flung her books down in panic and screamed.
'Under a table!' Eric shouted at them. 'In a doorway! Move!'
'Oh, my,' Betty repeated as the tape dispenser scooted across the desk and plunged to the floor.
The trembling became shaking now, as if the building were a salt shaker clutched in the first of an angry giant. Eric was tossed off his feet, his briefcase flying across the room as he fell. There was a loud rumbling sound, a groaning really, and suddenly the building began to lean.
George Donate came charging out of his office shouting, 'What the hell is happening?' But before anyone could answer, the ceiling above him collapsed, dropping Dr. Luskin's antique rolltop desk and oak filing cabinet onto George's head. There was an agonizing scream of pain, then silence.
Eric looked over at Betty, who was huddled under her desk. Back down the hall, two boys and a girl were hugging the wall, their faces contorted with terror.
'Get in the doorway!' Eric yelled at them, motioning with his hand. But they were paralyzed with fear and horror as they stared at George Donato's mashed body, the lifeless arms sticking out from under the desk. Eric scrambled to his feet and bolted down the hall, scooping them all by their waists and shoving them in to the nearby supply room. Against the wall was a long wooden table that held the ditto machine. He drove them under the table, throwing himself after them. There was another loud crash out in the hall as more of the ceiling caved in. The building leaned even more as the ground vibrated under it.
'We're going to die,' the girl cried, tears splashing out of her eyes, mucus dripping from her nose. 'Please, God, not now. Please God.'
Eric spoke slowly and calmly. 'What's your name?'
'My name?' she said, confused.
'Her name's Melinda,' the skinny boy said. 'Melinda Oulette.'
'What about you guys?'
'Jim Tolan,' the skinny kid said.
The other boy, short but brawny, a thick weightlifter's neck, mumbled, 'Robin Thomas.'
'Fine. I'm Eric Ravensmith. And I'm going to get us all out of here alive. But you're going to do everything I tell you to do as soon as I tell you, or I'm going to leave you here to die. Understand?' He waited. 'Answer me!'
'Yes,' they chorused.
Eric looked around the room. There were cracks up the side of the concrete wall, some of them from the last quake, but several new ones. Big deep ones. The building was listing to the left, not enough to tip over, but enough to cause structural damage that would probably result in a collapse. Besides, they had to worry about fire. More people were killed by fire in earthquakes than for any other reason.
Yeah, they'd have to get out of this building. And to do that they'd have to be calm enough to think straight. Under the circumstances, the only way to calm them down was to make them more afraid of him than they were of the quake.
'Okay. We're going to dash down the hallway and out the south fire exit. Then we run down the stairs-and you'd better hold onto the handrails considering the building's shaking-and out the side door.' He pointed at her high-heel pumps. 'Take those off. You'll have to run barefoot. Let's go.'
'Shouldn't we just wait here?' the girl sniffed. 'I mean, I read where you're supposed to stay put.'
Eric nodded. 'So stay.' He climbed out from under the table, stood up, and started for the door. The three of them immediately followed.
The hallway was a mess. Debris cluttered every step. Papers, supplies, books, shattered furniture. Several sections of the ceiling had collapsed, so most of the debris came from the Sociology Department upstairs. Eric noticed George's body and the puddle of blood seeping around the shattered legs where sharp splinters of bone poked through torn pants. He turned away, waved the kids to follow him. Running down the hall was like running on the back of a rickety old flatcar as it rattles down the railroad tracks at a hundred miles an hour. They bounced off walls as they ran, trying to keep their balance. The weightlifter tripped, diving face first into the mushy corpse of Tina Porte, the Sociology secretary, who'd apparently dropped through the floor with her desk.
'Help. God help!' he cried, the blood from Tina's crushed chest smeared all over his face and hands.
Eric ran back, tugged him to his feet and shoved him after the others. 'Move it, damn you, or it'll be your blood next.'
The kid stumbled ahead leaping smashed furniture as he followed the others out the fire exit. The dust had become thick in the room, and Eric could smell faint traces of smoke.
'Betty?' he shouted. 'Betty?'
'Professor Ravensmith?' a faint voice whispered.
'Yeah. Let's get out of here. It must be time for your break.'
She coughed out a laugh as she crawled out from under her desk, the fallen stapler in one hand and the tape dispenser in the other. She looked around at the mess on her desk, tears slicing through the dust on her face. 'What will we do? What will we do?'
'Survive,' Eric said, grabbing her hand and pulling her after him.
Outside was even worse.
People were screaming and running and trampling each other in their rush to get anywhere but here. Cars. were overturned on the lawn, the heavy equipment used to shore up the buildings had toppled, and severed electrical lines sparked and hissed along the ground near the parking lot. One dead co-ed still clung to her car door, which she'd been trying to open when the snaking wire had whipped around and touched her Pinto's roof, sending twenty thousand volts burning through her body. The air was thick with black, sour smoke puffing out of the shattered windows of the Biochemistry Building. Fires were licking the ivy-covered walls of half a dozen buildings.
The ground itself seemed to sway and buckle, like an elaborate Disneyland ride. People had trouble keeping their balance as they stumbled, clawed back to their feet, and kept running. Some had exhausted themselves already, and lay in panting heaps here and there.
The rumbling sound continued like a stampede of horses, and for a moment Eric had an image of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse galloping across the earth on wild, snorting steeds.
And then it was gone.
The rumbling faded like a disappearing train. People stopped for a moment, looked around, shook their heads as if suddenly waking from a terrible nightmare.
But the nightmare continued.
Fires raged. The wounded lay moaning and bleeding amid the rubble of the ancient Administration Building. Sirens whined everywhere as fire trucks, ambulances and police cars rushed in all directions. From where he stood, Eric could see at least three car wrecks from the quake. Two were minor, but in the third the driver, an elderly woman who served food in the school cafeteria, had rammed her old Fury into a telephone pole. The impact had hurled her half through the windshield, where she now lay, her eyes wide and confused in death.
Eric looked around, saw the three students he'd led out of the building as they ran across the quad. Betty wandered off toward the parking lot mumbling, the tape dispenser and stapler still clutched stubbornly in each hand.
'Eric!'
