I moved my right hand very slightly, prodding at my resting place. Yes. Yes, it was mud. It schlucked and gooed and generally behaved like mud. Which was all wrong, because last time I was conscious it not only wasn’t muddy, but hadn’t rained in several weeks. Mud was very unusual. I wondered where exactly I was. There was a sound like thunder somewhere nearby, confusingly alien to the whisper of wind through trees that I last remembered. Well, that I last remembered in a world that made sense. There were dark places in my memory that I was reluctant to prod at yet. The mud and the thunder were enough for the moment.
My hand explored a little more, apparently content to do this without me opening my eyes. I was grateful. Perhaps I could get my hand something nice later on, when I’d gotten up again. A manicure, perhaps, or a ring. No, not a ring. A ring would get all nasty with oil and grease. Didn’t matter if I was a cop with a beat these days. I still thought of myself as a mechanic. I could start wearing the copper bracelet my father’d given me. It would look nice on my wrist, close to my hand. I thought my hand would like that. It seemed like a good idea, and I was satisfied.
There were branches and twigs in the mud, and then a puddle. The puddle surprised me enough that I opened my eyes.
It didn’t help. Not that I couldn’t see: I could. It was more that what I saw made no sense. Tree roots stuck up in the air, globs of dark earth hanging from them. Broken branches were strewn in every direction over a shattered landscape. There were huge humps of earth standing with their sides sheered away, looking precarious and wobbly without the support they used to have. One of them had a tree still standing on it, perfectly serene and unbothered by the changed world around it. Its roots stuck out of the sides of its earth pillar, reaching down for ground that had fallen away around it.
I lay in a low point. I pushed up on my elbows, the mud sucking at my face and chest before releasing me. The puddle my hand had discovered wasn’t a puddle at all, but a stream that hadn’t been there the last time I’d looked. It was muddy and thick and quite determined. If I listened I could hear its burble under the sound of thunder.
The thunder came from behind me. I pushed myself up to hands and knees in slow motion, my entire body stiff with mud and sore muscles. I had to scrape my leg out from under the tree I’d fallen with, but I didn’t seem to have taken much damage. As my hand sank into the mud, supporting my weight, I found that the tree was still beneath me, as well, just buried in the muck. It had very probably prevented me from drowning. I patted it with a fingertip and said, “Thanks,” absently, then crawled around in a half circle to see where the thunder was coming from.
Even looking at it, it took several moments to wrap my mind around the idea that the waterfall I was staring at had formerly been the western side of Lake Washington. The ground had collapsed at least fifteen feet. I couldn’t be sure if it was more, from where I rested on my hands and knees. It was a lot, anyway: fifteen feet is a lot when you’re talking about where the ground used to be and isn’t anymore.
The waterfall was broad and enthusiastic, tumbling down noisily and creating the stream my hand had discovered. I wondered if they’d let me call it Jo’s Hand Stream. Probably not. That was okay. It was a terrible name. I sat back on my heels, cautiously, and stared. The sun was rising, painting the falls and the lake behind them a startling gold color. I had no sense of how long I’d been out, or how long the ritual the night before had gone on.
“Oh, Jesus.” I staggered to my feet before consulting my body on whether it was a good idea or not. It wasn’t an impossible feat, but I hung on my fallen tree for a few moments, trying to regain my sense of balance. The coven must have been caught in the earthquake just as I’d been. If any of them were still alive, I had to find them and get help.
“Jesus Christ, there’s somebody over there. Hey. Hey! Lady! Are you okay?”
I wobbled around, trying to place the speaker over the sound of the waterfall. A man a few years older than I was appeared from around one of the tall earth humps, leaping gingerly over the stream and approaching me. “Hey, are you all right?”
“I’m not dead,” I offered. The guy split a grin and jumped over another stream rivulet.
“Well, thank God. We didn’t expect to find anybody alive down here.”
My stomach fell through my feet. “You’ve found dead people?”
“Not so far. It’s a goddamned miracle. Usually this time of year the parks are all madhouses, but it’s so damned hot everybody’s been at home with their air-conditioning.” His expression darkened. He had sandy hair and blue eyes and the complexion of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. “Not that that hasn’t caused its own problems with this quake.”
“What time did it hit?”
“‘Bout ten o’clock last night. 6.2 on the Richter. You don’t remember?”
“I got hit by a tree.” My voice scraped and I coughed, trying to swallow the dryness away. “I don’t remember much after that.”
“Well, you’re goddamned lucky,” he opined. “We’ve got to get you to a hospital, get you checked over. You know your name?”
I blinked at him. “Yeah.” He waited, and I blinked some more before startling. “Oh! It’s Joanne. Joanne Walker.”
He stuck his hand out. “My name’s Crowder. Geologist.”
“Is ‘Geologist’ your first or last name?” I cracked a little grin as I shook his hand. He laughed.
“David Crowder, geologist. Damn, you are one lucky woman. C’mon. Let’s get you out of here. Hey! Ricky! C’mon, help me get Miss Walker out of here! Somebody call an ambulance!”
“I don’t need one,” I protested. “As long as my car’s still there. Oh God.” Panic hit the pit of my stomach again. “Is it? Is the parking lot still there?”
Crowder hesitated. “Kinda. There are islands of it. What do you drive?”
I swallowed and knotted my hands into fists. My left hand suddenly cramped and split through the mud, starting to bleed again, and I fought back tears of pain and dismay. “A Mustang. A purple 1969 Mustang. License plates say PETITE.”
Dismay washed over Crowder’s face and he took a step back like I might kill the messenger. “I saw it tail-down in one of the crevasses. Looked like the back end got pretty badly crunched. We called it in. I’m sorry.”
White rose up over my vision for a few seconds, static hissing in my ears. “How badly crunched?” My voice was hollow, and I don’t think I expected Crowder to give me a real answer. The words just came out as an effort to not start screaming. “Were there any other cars up there?” My hands were cold and my stomach cramped, making something go wrong with my eyesight. More wrong than usual: it was all blurry and stinging, the itch of unshed tears. I could handle pretty much anything, but not my car being destroyed. Between that and Gary I thought I might just throw up.
Crowder took my elbow and started leading me out of the mess that used to be a park. “I bet you can get it fixed.” His encouraging words could’ve been coming from several light-years away. My head rang until I was dizzy, tipping over as I tried to put my feet on solid ground. “Might cost a bundle, but it can probably be winched out, or maybe helicoptered, and then you can really see the damage. But that solid steel frame’ll keep it from being smashed up as some of the others up there, right? You’re the first person we’ve found down here,” he added, clearly hoping to change the subject. “Were you down here with anybody?”
“Some friends.” My answer was low and fuzzy to my own ears, like somebody’d sucked all the life out of me. “I don’t know what happened to them. I’m not sure when they left. Is there a search and rescue team out here?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m part of it. You, ah, not sure when they left, huh?”