The World Gives Way: A Novel Read online

  Without sitting up he bent his arm into an awkward position between his back and the floor and tried to feel if any ribs were broken. He pressed his fingers against the most tender areas, wincing at the intense pain that accompanied every touch. It was excruciating, but as he felt around, it seemed as if his bones were intact. He pulled his arm out from under his torso and lay there for another minute, eyes closed.

  The building let out longer groans from somewhere deep within its core. It sounded almost musical, like low descending notes reverberating in a closed acoustic chamber. What floor was he on? Fifth, he remembered. In a thirty-story building. So if the building collapsed, he’d most likely die from being buried in the rubble. All this went through his head, but his thoughts felt oddly detached from his body.

  A loud knock brought him back to his senses—the sound of knuckles frantically rapping outside his door. He rose immediately, using his arms to gingerly push himself up. It was funny, Tobias thought, that this was what was finally getting him up off the floor. Propriety was priority.

  “Bendel! Are you OK?” Simpson.

  “Just a minute,” Tobias shouted back, and he steadied himself enough to stand up and walk. The room had a vanity mirror positioned adjacent to the door. He paused a moment, turned around, and lifted up the back of his shirt. A large welt-like bruise was blossoming across his back.

  “Bendel?” Another insistent knock. Tobias lowered his shirt and opened the door. Simpson looked amped up and wide awake.

  “Sorry,” he said in reference to his slowness. “I fell against a table—”

  “You OK?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  Simpson pushed past him into the room. “Get your stuff together—they’re evacuating the building.”

  Simpson moved with jittery energy, and when he saw how slowly Tobias was moving, he started packing for him, throwing his tablet and clothes into a backpack, tossing his wallet and badge at him, ducking into the bathroom to retrieve Tobias’s razor and toothbrush from the shower.

  The letters. Myrra Dal’s letters were laid out on a side table next to the bed. The shaking had scattered some onto the floor. It looked so unprofessional. While Simpson foraged for toiletries, Tobias collected the documents frantically, no time for gloves, his skin was actually touching the paper, everything out of order, but at least they were safe again in an evidence bag. He tucked them into the backpack, along with Dal’s book and the blue figurine.

  “What are you doing?” Simpson poked his head out of the bathroom door.

  “Nothing.”

  Simpson threw the last of his toiletries into the backpack for him. “Then let’s go.”

  Tobias stared at him, dumbfounded. Simpson snapped his fingers in front of Tobias’s face.

  “Move!”

  “Sorry—I think it was the fall…” Tobias took a deep breath, and his ribs screamed at him in response, but the extra oxygen felt good. “Let’s go.”

  Tobias grabbed the backpack that Simpson had put together and followed his partner out. He forced his body to walk faster than his mind wanted to allow. The groaning of the building was getting louder.

  Out on the sidewalk, hotel staff were setting up a perimeter, trying to usher all the hotel guests as far away from the building as possible, but unfortunately all adjacent buildings were also high-rises, each in its own tenuous state of disrepair. Tobias heard a strange crackling noise above him, even louder than the moaning buildings. He looked up and immediately felt another surge of adrenaline course through his system. Tiny fissures were growing and connecting and expanding across the dome, like cracks in an eggshell.

  Tobias felt his energy come back and the pain in his body dull. He swung his head around wildly, looking for Simpson. Tobias could see him across the street helping the staff.

  “Simpson!” Tobias shouted, and Simpson jerked his head over to Tobias, eyes alert. Tobias pointed upward, toward the dome. “They have to evacuate the city!”

  Simpson followed Tobias’s gesture, and for a split second, Tobias could see an expression of pure terror wash over his face. Then Simpson pursed his lips, looked back at Tobias, and nodded.

  Almost as if Tobias’s words had evoked a divine command, the harsh din of static sounded through the streets, coming from small silver speakers that Tobias hadn’t previously noticed. They rang with static for a few seconds more, like a digital cough to clear a digital throat, and then an authoritative voice reverberated through the city:

  “Attention. Attention. Please stay calm. This is an evacuation. All residents of Palmer, please walk in an orderly manner to the nearest ferry terminal and board the departing boats. Please stay calm.” The speakers quieted down for a moment, then repeated the message. “Attention. Attention…”

  The announcement was louder than the groan of the buildings, louder than the sharp sound of the plexiglass cracking. When the evacuation message sounded out the first time, the crowds of people seemed not to register it, but by the second cycle everyone had quieted down. By the third cycle, everyone was shouting again, and everyone was dashing to the ferry terminal. No one was calm. No one was orderly.

  People became animalistic and stupid in large crowds. He looked over to Simpson, who jerked his head at the legions of hotel guests who were running through the streets toward the boats. It was a wordless gesture, but Tobias understood it: they would have to be Security now and do their best to guide them.

  From there, time moved both quickly and slowly. Tobias had never experienced so much noise at once. He could hear metal creaking and the sounds of the cracks advancing in the glass, a low rumble anticipating the weight of water that wanted to bear down on them. And on and on, the din of the droning speakers, whose automated messages had not changed since the start of the chaos. “Attention. Attention. Please stay calm…”

  He and Simpson corralled people as they streamed out of the blocks of buildings in waves, shouting the way toward the ferries, and when shouting couldn’t be heard, they used hand signals. When it looked as if everyone in their general area had left, they started heading toward the ferries themselves.

  Tobias jerked Simpson’s sleeve as they made to evacuate and pointed toward the doors of the buildings. He shouted as loud as his lungs would allow, the strain of it ripping through his vocal cords: “Should we do sweeps inside?”

  It seemed impossible in a city full of towering high-rises, but it was protocol, and Tobias’s brain always jumped to follow protocol. It wasn’t clear if Simpson heard him, but he seemed to understand the question. He shook his head: no. There wouldn’t be enough time. They had to just hope everyone was out.

  Simpson jogged to follow the horde of people, waving his hands and continuing to push them toward the platform, and Tobias followed behind. After about ten blocks they spotted signs for the main ferry terminal behind an impossible sea of heads and bodies pushing forward, smashing each other. Someone’s going to get trampled, Tobias thought.

  Within minutes Tobias was crushed from all sides in the crowd as more and more people were added to its mass. He could see the corner of Simpson’s head, a patch of blond hair and an ear. They were no longer Security or authority—now they were part of the crowd.

  There was so much pressure coming from all around him that he was certain he could lift his feet completely off the ground without sinking down, and Tobias felt a resulting panic rise in him, but he forced his mind to beat it back. Other people were stupid, other people lost their heads. Not he.

  The noise was deafening.

  He moved a few blocks closer to the ferry entrance and could hear, barely, under the din of all the people shouting and the buildings groaning and the ceiling cracking, another loudspeaker sounding out ahead of him. He stood on his toes and willed his body to be a little taller and saw, just over the shoulders and heads, nine or ten men with megaphones, standing on the tops of trash cans above the crowd, trying to direct the flow of traffic. They all wore thick black bulletproof vests with “P
SB” printed in large white block letters on the fronts.

  Another large clap of noise roared above them, and Tobias looked up, though he was afraid of seeing how the damage had progressed. Cracks and fissures in the dome reached all the way down the sides now; it was getting hard to see through the glass for all the shattered pieces.

  Thousands of bodies pushed against him as he moved forward another couple of inches. He could see the ferry terminal platform now, raised a few feet from the sidewalk—the evacuation route. It won’t be long, he chanted to himself. It won’t be long. It won’t be long.

  Palmer Security agents were standing on the platform with tasers and barricades three meters high, forcing the waves of people into funneled lines once they got near.

  The barricades towered higher as they neared the evacuation line, and somehow the bodies around him managed to compress even further. Tobias tried to think of Barnes. Barnes would never crumble in a crisis, and Tobias would never disappoint Barnes. He could see the platform. It won’t be long. It won’t be long.

  A Palmer Security agent towered directly over him on a trash can. Even this close, Tobias could hardly make out what was blaring through his megaphone. All was noise. The crowd heaved him forward. Though he felt as though his ribs might snap, he let the bodies carry him.

  All he could see now were people’s heads and the shattered ceiling above him. Tobias felt a sudden burst of worry for whoever was left and twisted his head to see behind him. There weren’t that many people left behind him—enough to crush his body, but he could see where the crowd stopped. He and Simpson had spent enough time guiding everyone out of the hotel that they were in the last wave to board the boats. He looked up at the dome above and thought it would be a cruel cosmic joke if it came down now, just at the end, just when he was so close to being saved.

  At the platform a Palmer agent brandished a taser at him, ordering him to stay back and wait his turn. The agent’s face was gray and pale, and his collar was ringed with sweat. The glass and metal shrieked overhead. The dome was going to give it was going to give—

  “Let us up!” Tobias broke, transformed into that shrill panicked animal he’d sworn he wouldn’t become, shouting into the void of noise. “Let us up or we’ll die!”

  No one heard him, and it didn’t make him feel any better to shout it out. They were so close. Tobias spotted Simpson on the platform. Simpson would make it out, and Tobias would die here. Tobias swore he felt a drop of water splash on his head from above. The dome was going to give.

  In a frantic gesture, the agent waved him and four other people onto the platform. As Tobias scrambled up the stairs, he took a wide, grateful breath. Hot tears welled in his eyes. With the last shred of cogent thought he had, he checked his torso for his bag—still there. He took a brief moment to lift the flap and look inside. The tablet was still intact, all his data on the case was still safe. And the letters—Dal’s letters were still there.

  A ferry departed down the canal and disappeared into the dark tunnel. Another emerged from an opening on the other side of the loop, ready to take on new evacuees. People clambered on, rocking the boat violently back and forth.

  Tobias saw Simpson board as he himself climbed over a railing, too rushed to find a proper entrance. It was standing room only. Tobias grabbed on to a pole to hold himself steady and waited, praying for the boat to depart, praying to reach safety before a wall of water rushed up behind them.

  15

  MYRRA

  Myrra was shaken awake. The floor was moving. This was it.

  Her next thought: Charlotte.

  Lurching out of her bed, she ran to the bassinet. Fighting the shifting ground beneath her, she scooped up the baby and fell back against the mattress. Whatever else happened, Charlotte would not be alone, she would not be alone.

  The room shook. Charlotte struggled and screamed in her ear and Myrra clutched her tighter, this girl who was not her daughter. You are mine.

  A minute or two passed. Gradually the shaking ebbed and then ceased entirely. Myrra stared at the dark windows. They were both still breathing.

  Charlotte squirmed against Myrra’s grip. She was upset by the shaking and the noise, but once everything had gotten quiet again she seemed even more upset by how hard Myrra held on to her. The hours ticked by. Eventually Charlotte cried herself out and drifted off in Myrra’s arms. Myrra stayed wide awake.

  A soft blue light poured through the cracks in the curtains. In spite of everything, another day dawns. Myrra sat up, depositing Charlotte back in the bassinet with a pacifier. Her head hurt. She’d take the morning to calm down, she decided, then she would steal a boat and leave town. But it was getting harder and harder to picture leaving Charlotte behind.

  She took a look out the window to make sure the world was still there. The sea below looked choppier than normal, with all sorts of objects floating on the surface. Myrra thought she saw the arm of a couch pop through the crest of a wave. She wondered where it all had come from—the landscape looked fine from her balcony, but maybe part of Nabat had crumbled into the sea.

  Around ten, Sem knocked on her door. She invited him in, but he stayed on the threshold. He wasn’t meeting her eyes. Looking down at the doormat, he explained that Palmer had collapsed that morning, a couple of hours after the earthquake.

  “I don’t know if you felt the shaking this morning, that was when it happened.” When she was able to get a proper look at his face, she could see that his eyes were red.

  “I felt it.”

  Myrra couldn’t quite fathom what this meant. She tried to picture Palmer through the stories she’d been told—domes of glass on the seafloor. When Sem said “collapsed,” had he meant everything? Were there just some buildings wrecked, or had everything imploded? Suddenly it came to her, all the debris she’d seen in the water. A harbinger of things to come.

  “They say it’s the worst quake we’ve ever had… Palmer was built to withstand a lot, but this was too much—” His voice cracked as he said it. “The domes cracked under the pressure of the water.”

  So it was the whole city. Everything—gone.

  “How many people were in the city when it collapsed?” she asked. She noticed a tear forcing itself down Sem’s cheek. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, self-conscious.

  “Um… they evacuated,” he said, and she gave him time to steady his voice. “I think most people made it out, but—”

  He took a breath and continued. “But they all escaped here. It’s the nearest town, so—I guess it makes sense. Sorry—” He wiped another tear. “I have a lot of friends living there, so it’s just… it’s just kinda weird.”

  “It’s OK.” Myrra leaned in and gave him a hug. She wasn’t sure if the gesture would be welcome, considering their odd encounter the night before, but Sem wrapped his arms around her and hugged her back. She felt the moisture of his tears and his breath warming her shoulder. After a minute he let go.

  “Sorry,” he said again. He took another, longer, calmer breath. “What I came here to ask was if you’d take some of the refugees”—he stumbled on the word refugees—“into your room. It’s your choice, of course, but Palmer was a pretty big city, much bigger than here, and we don’t have a lot of space—”

  They needed the room. Myrra was reminded of emergency drills in New London—spare cots would be rolled out onto the floor, tired bodies would be ushered in to take up every square bit of space.

  “Sure,” she said, and reached out to place a hand on his shoulder. He flinched, and his face changed as he looked at her.

  “What is it?” Myrra asked.

  “That stuff you were talking about last night. Everything breaking down… That was just theoretical, right?”

  Myrra didn’t know how to respond. She’d tried lying when she arrived, then she’d tried telling the truth, and both options felt somehow manipulative and wrong. Guilt rose in her. She knew what he was thinking about. He was thinking about how many earthquakes th
ey’d had over the past year. Maybe he’d noticed birds flying in odd patterns, the odd shifts in the weather. He had been thinking about what she’d said, and then dismissing it, and then thinking about it again. No matter how implausible, once the thought had settled in it was unshakable.

  “I shouldn’t have said anything…” she whispered.

  “How would you even know, if something like that was happening—?”

  “I knew people in the government,” she said, hesitating on the word knew.

  She stopped herself from speaking further. Would it make his life better to know this? Had the damage already been done? Ultimately she gave in. There was no way for him to unknow the things she’d already told him.

  She fed him the same line Imogene had given her: “There’s a crack in the hull of the ship. It’s growing. And there’s no way to fix it.”

  She tried to gauge his reaction, but it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. His expression looked completely vacant. She reached out to him, and he leaned away from her hand. “Sem?”

  “I have to go check with the other guests,” he said robotically, and walked away.

  As far as Myrra could tell, there were only three or four other rooms booked in total in the whole hotel. She retreated into her room and closed the door, feeling disgusted with herself, feeling like the angel of death.

  Through the window she could see wide strips of sand at the base of the cliff. That beach had not been there yesterday. Objects littered the shore, though she was too high up to make them out. Beyond the beach the ocean roiled like it was caught in a storm, though the sky was cloudless and blue.

  16

  TOBIAS

  They were in a large cavern that smelled musty and wet. No natural sunlight, just a network of caged bulbs wired to the ceiling. Wherever this ferry station was, it was clearly used only for emergencies. It took a few minutes of searching, but Tobias found Simpson amid the hordes of people standing and shivering on the stone cave floor. He looked much more stable than Tobias felt.