The Shock Wave

Prologue

        The building shook. Connie looked up as dust fell from the ceiling.                             
        Everyone went silent and looked up at the ceiling. The ground three stories beneath them rumbled and Heidi, Connie's best friend, who was closest to the window stood up and looked down. The rest of the students ran over to look. A huge crack had formed in the charcoal pavement. Another large quake sent the crack expanding toward the brick building. It stopped right under a black car. Two of the tires fell into the wide gap and the car alarm started ringing. After another quake, the crack split into many different sections and snaked toward the school. The building was old, at least sixty years old. One kid screamed as a large chunk of the building fell, crashing onto another car and sending that one and the one next to it's alarms off. Connie backed away from the window and her teacher started grabbing other kids' arms and pulling them into an open space in their classroom. The teacher glanced at the broadcast screen and then looked back to us with wide eyes, but soon relaxed them to calm us. I tried to look at the screen, but Mrs. Duelly was blocking my view, already herding people toward the door. Everyone started to swarm, and I was pushed along.
        "Get to the first floor, then wait for my instruction. Stay away from windows and shelves in the halls," Mrs. Duelly said calmly.
        Hayden, a boy who was closest to the door, ran out of the room and joined a line of kids running down the stairs. Everyone followed, with Connie near the back since she had waited for Heidi. As they joined the bundle of kids, Connie realized that most of the teachers had the same idea as Mrs. Duelly. She wrinkled her brow as she recalled the rule she was taught for earthquakes. Drop. Cover. Hold on. They weren't doing that. She wondered why they were being ushered toward the bottom floor, and possibly outside, but she decided it would be best to just follow the orders. They finally reached the door to the stairs and squeezed through the doorway. Inside the stairwell they were joined by kids from other grades. Not first-graders. They were on the second floor.
        "Connie!" She heard her name and looked up to see her older sister holding hands with her older brother. Connie grabbed Heidi's hand and stopped her from rushing down the stairs until her siblings had joined her. Hadley and Jace pulled Connie into a hug and then reached out for Heidi. After Heidi joined the group hug, Hadley joined hands with Connie. Hadley and Jace were twins, and had come from fifth grade, on the sixth floor. Connie wondered how they'd gotten out so fast, but decided it was a story for another time. The group raced down the staircase, but it soon became crammed and Connie and Heidi could no longer see where they were going, so Jace picked up Heidi and Hadley picked up Connie and they began carrying them down the stairs. A piece of the stair level above them came loose after another massive quake and crashed down on three kids. Connie screamed and Heidi began crying, like many other kids. One person fell through the hole it left and crashed onto the concrete below them. Connie couldn't see who it was, but they didn't move. A few people stayed behind trying to carry them, to no avail. Someone else stepped in the hole and Connie heard the crack of bones. She closed her eyes and buried her face in Hadley's shoulder. Everyone stayed quiet after then. They managed to get down another two levels with just the occasional person tripping after a large quake before a scream broke the silence. Everyone turned to look at a girl—a fourth grader—clutching her sides. Blood started pouring out of her mouth. She tried to scream but it was muffled by the blood and it came out like a gurgle. She reached out for someone, pleading them to help, but everyone was paralyzed in fear and shock. Then the girl collapsed on the ground and lay motionless. One girl let out a cry and stumbled toward her, but Hadley reached out and grabbed her wrist.
        "I'm sorry Molly, but we have to go," Hadley said. Molly looked at Hadley like she was a monster.
        "We can't just leave her here!" She shouted and then started to hoist the girl onto her shoulder. Molly stood up shakily before walking down the stairs. Everyone made a path for her, clearly trying to avoid the girl and the blood. As Molly walked in front of them, Connie started to notice a resemblance. Both Molly and the girl had dusty brown hair and rosy pale skin. She couldn't see the girl's face, and she hadn't gotten a good look at Molly's, but she could tell that the girl was Molly's sister. They finally reached the ground floor and everyone gathered with the rest of their classes, waiting for their teachers. The people who had tried to carry the kid who fell through the hole pushed their way into the lobby area and collapsed, laying down. They had blood all over them. Connie gagged and Hadley hugged her.
        "Jace and I have to find our class, now. Go find yours. Be safe," Hadley said as Jace put down a tear-stained Heidi. Then the twins ran off. Connie spotted Hayden and led Heidi over to him.
        "Where's the re—rest of our cl—class?" She said stuttering in shock. Hayden shrugged. Then he looked behind Heidi.
        "There's Mrs. Duelly!" He said and took off running toward her. As Connie and Heidi reached her, they realized she was holding a kid—a boy. She set down the boy on the carpet, but he didn't move. Connie stared at the pale boy, but Mrs. Duelly gently turned her head to face the other direction.
        "Come on, we need to find the rest of our class," she said and led us over to a group of four kids huddled by a fake tree. One kid was hugging the tree. Connie recognized Darla Smith, Kate Jenkins, Fallon Gray, and Mary Hudson. Mrs. Duelly brushed a hair from Kate's face and picked her up off the tree. Connie walked over to Fallon and hugged her. Fallon was Connie's next door neighbor, and they had grown up together. Hayden ran off to a group of boys and dragged them back over to Mrs. Duelly. She started counting them.
        "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven... eight, nine, ten, eleven..." she murmured. She suddenly stopped and looked around. "Where are Collin and Autumn?"
        Connie's face grew pale as she remembered one of the faces crushed under the concrete. She started crying but managed to say, "Autumn's under—under  the stairs... a piece crush—crushed her..." Mrs. Duelly opened her mouth as to speak but then closed it again. She pulled Connie close to her and hugged her. She pulled a few strands of hair away from Connie's face and gently wiped away some tears with her thumb.
        "Shh, shh, it's okay. It'll be okay..." she murmured softly, calming Connie. She stood up again to whisper with another teacher. Finally they both nodded and turned back to their classes. "We need to go to the basement," Mrs. Duelly said. As Connie  followed her class, she saw everyone trying to squeeze into the narrow staircase that led to the basement level. Not another one! Connie thought as she started down the stairs.
        The stairs seemed to go on forever, and Connie tuned out everything around her. Her ears were ringing and all she could think of was Molly's sister, her muffled scream; the boy Mrs. Duelly had been carrying, his blank stare; and poor Autumn, crushed under the concrete. When they finally reached the very bottom floor, Connie looked around and was shocked as she emerged from the stairs. Everything seemed different than the rustic, old schoolhouse she knew. Shiny steel made up the entire basement. Lights were long blueish bars built into the ceiling in little crevices made specially for them. Connie wondered if it was really a basement. It seemed more like a... base...
        All eight grade levels in the school squeezed into a large gathering area. Connie's heart raced. There was just something off about the basement. Why had Connie never known it was there? Or gone down there? Why did it look like this? But the question that chilled Connie's core was: what was the basement used for regularly?
         A man in a black suit walked into the room. No one wore suits. Teachers mostly wore jeans, and even the principal usually wore a skirt.
        As soon as everyone was in the room, two men in suits pulled the doors closed. The lights weren't very bright, and Connie could barely see, so she just listened.
        "... president's office..."
        "...just another quake..."
        "...different..."
        Another large rumble shook the building. Dust fell from the ceiling. Everyone went quiet. Then Connie heard a guy in a suit say something to another guy:
        "They're calling them Shock Waves."