Read Online Darla's Story by Mike Mullin - Free Book Online Page A

never have
earthquakes in Iowa.
    The power went out. I stood to open the
curtains. I thought there might be enough light to read by, at
least for a while.
    Then it happened.
    I heard a cracking noise, like the sound the
hackberry tree in our backyard had made when Dad cut it down last
year, but louder: a forest of hackberries, breaking together. The
floor tilted, and I fell across the suddenly angled room, arms and
legs flailing. I screamed but couldn’t hear myself over the noise:
a boom and then a whistling sound—incoming artillery from a war
movie, but played in reverse. My back hit the wall on the far side
of the room, and the desk slid across the floor toward me. I
wrapped myself into a ball, hands over the back of my neck, praying
my desk wouldn’t crush me. It rolled, painfully clipped my right
shoulder, and came to rest above me, forming a small triangular
space between the floor and wall. I heard another crash, and
everything shook violently for a second.
    I’d seen those stupid movies where the hero
gets tossed around like a rag doll and then springs up, unhurt and
ready to fight off the bad guys. If I were the star in one of
those, I suppose I would have jumped up, thrown the desk aside, and
leapt to battle whatever malevolent god had struck my house. I hate
to disappoint, but I just lay there, curled in a ball, shaking in
pure terror. It was too dark under the desk to see anything beyond
my quivering knees. Nor could I hear, as the noise of those few
violent seconds had left my ears ringing loudly enough to drown out
a marching band if one had been passing by. Plaster dust choked the
air, and I fought back a sneeze.
    I lay in that triangular cave for a minute,
maybe longer. My body mostly quit shaking, and the ringing in my
ears began to fade. I poked my right shoulder gingerly; it felt
swollen, and touching it hurt. I could move the arm a little, so I
figured it wasn’t broken. I might have lain there longer checking
my injuries, but I smelled something burning.
    That whiff of smoke was enough to transform
my sit here-trembling terror into get-the-hell-out-of-here terror.
There was enough room under the desk to unball myself, but I
couldn’t stretch out. Ahead I felt a few hollow spaces amidst a
pile of loose books. I’d landed wedged against my bookcase. I
shoved it experimentally with my good arm—it wasn’t going
anywhere.
    The burning smell intensified. I slapped my
left hand against the desk above me and pushed upward. I’d moved
that heavy desk around by myself before, no problem. But now, when
I really needed to move it, nothing . . . it wouldn’t shift even a
fraction of an inch.
    That left trying to escape in the direction
my feet pointed. But I couldn’t straighten my legs—they bumped
against something just past the edge of the desk. I planted my feet
on the obstacle and pushed. It shifted a little. Encouraged, I
stretched my good arm through the shelves, placing my hand against
the back of the bookcase. And snatched it away in shock—the wall
behind the bookcase was warm. Not hot enough to burn, but warm
enough to give me an ugly mental picture of my fate if I couldn’t
escape—and soon.
    I hadn’t felt particularly claustrophobic at
first. The violence of being thrown across the room left no time to
feel anything but scared. Now, with the air heating up, terror rose
from my gut. Trapped. Burned alive. Imagining my future got me
hyperventilating. I inhaled a lungful of dust and choked,
coughing.
    Calm down, Alex, I told myself. I took two
quick breaths in through my nose and puffed them out through my
mouth—recovery breathing, like I’d use after a hard round of
sparring in taekwondo. You can do this.
    I slammed my hand back against the wall,
locked my elbow, and shoved with my feet—hard. The obstacle shifted
slightly. I bellowed and bore down on it, trying to snap my knees
straight. There’s a reason martial artists yell when we break
boards—it makes us stronger. Something