the door. Launching himself at it, he clung to the doorknob as he twisted it open.
Seconds later, the two men threw themselves out the exit door and tumbled down the metal stairs.
Badly bruised, Wes managed to leap against the last door that led to the first-floor entry. It gave way and Wes tumbled through. He was out! Russ stumbled to the ground beside him.
The grass was damp with dew. As another wave of the quake hit, Russ rolled on top of him, then was swung to the left. A loud crash sounded behind them scaring Wes. As he got to his hands and knees, his fingers digging frantically into the damp grass and dirt for purchase, he saw half of the red brick building across the plaza buckle and collapse inward. Breathing hard, he gasped.
Finally, the quake stopped its deadly undulations. Silence pulsed around Wes for a moment as he sat up, his hands on his thighs. Russ slowly got off his belly, his mouth hanging open, white vapor coming out of it in sharp spurts. Then, as he looked around, Wes heard a series of explosions, too numerous to count, begin off in the distance. Fire vomited upward into the dark night somewhere off the base. The growl of the quake began again. Wes hunkered down, his arms outstretched, his fingers digging into the ground for stability.
“Oh, hell!” Russ shouted. “I don’t friggin’ believe this!” And he flopped on his belly again, arms spread outward.
The second wave hit, worse than the first. For the next thirty seconds, Wes was flung around on the damp lawn. More marine officers came out of the exit door of the B.O.Q., tumbling and tripping over one another to get clear of the building. In that second wave, Wes saw two of the stucco buildings in the square buckle and crash into heaps. Numerous smaller buildings caved in. Yet, half of them still remained standing including the B.O.Q. There were flashes of fire and explosions as gas lines were broken, showers of sparks from the electrical lines setting them off. Water lines broke, sending water gushing in the square like geysers. Luckily, most of the marines who had been in the B.O.Q. and surrounding buildings were now out. Anyone who lived in Southern California was used to low-grade quakes and knew the drill: get outside as soon as possible. Get into an open area where nothing could fall on you.
Breathing hard, Wes was flung savagely onto his back once again. His mind began to churn with terrifying possibilities. He’d been in California quakes before; the worst was a 6.0 on the Richter scale a year ago, shortly after he’d been transferred to Camp Reed to build highways and bridges for the Corps. But this one…hell, it was a monster in comparison. The damage it had done already was mind-blowing.
He had no idea how this quake registered on the Richter scale, but he knew as he lay there gasping with terror, while looking up at the eerie beauty of the stars in the black sky, that this one was a killer of unknown proportions. And somewhere in his colliding thoughts, Wes realized this was the earthquake that they always talked about, but no one really thought would happen: the Big One that would gut Southern California and cause hundreds of thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in damage, just as the 1906 San Francisco earthquake had totaled that city and population.
As the ground continued to shiver and shake like a horse wrinkling its skin to get rid of pesky flies, Wes slowly rolled over and got to his feet. All around him, people were crying and shouting in panic. There weren’t many buildings left standing on the plaza except for the old, solidly built B.O.Q. and about five others around the plaza. On the horizon, fires were lighting up the sky with frightening speed no matter which direction he looked. Most of them seemed to be beyond the base and for that he breathed a small sigh of relief. He hoped the damage at Camp Reed would be minimal compared to the destruction he saw before him. Wes knew there was a nuclear power plant located at San Onofre, at the western edge of Camp Reed and right on the Pacific Ocean. How badly had it been damaged? From an engineering standpoint, there wasn’t a question in Wes’s mind that it had been. The real question was had the concrete withstood the shattering impact of this killer quake, or was it leaking radiation?
“We gotta get to H.Q.,” he told Russ, who was a lieutenant in the motor pool, which was their transportation department.
Russ slowly got to his feet. He looked around, shock written on his face. “Yeah…. God, what’s happened, Wes? Was this the Big One?”
Grimly, Wes wiped his freshly shaved jaw, which was smudged with dirt and grass stains. “Yeah, I think it was. Let’s get over there. It’s only a couple blocks away. I hope it’s still standing.” He looked around the square. The asphalt was buckled and crumbled every few feet, from what he could tell. Without light, he couldn’t see that far.
Russ looked at the B.O.Q., awe written on his face. “Look at that, will you?” And he pointed up at it.
Wes turned. “I’m glad it’s still standing. We’re going to need a place to get some rest after putting in fourteen-hour days of rescue and recovery after this quake.”
Russ nodded. Pushing his thick fingers through his mussed blond hair, he muttered, “They’re gonna want every available officer over at H.Q. I know General Wilson will put the disaster plan into action.”
Grimly, Wes nodded, his gaze roaming over the devastation before him. It was gonna be one helluva long night….
January 1: 0030
Callie stood among the hundreds of Marine Corps officers who had been squeezed into one of the largest rooms at Camp Reed Headquarters. Fortunately, the building had sustained only minimal damage. There was a crack running up one of the stucco walls, but otherwise, the room looked fine. At least the lights were on, courtesy of the gasoline generator outside the building.
Callie saw General Jeb Wilson, the base commanding officer, standing up at the podium. A tall, gaunt-looking man in his midfifties with short black hair peppered with gray at his temples, the general was known around the base as “Bulldog Wilson” because his face was square, his jowls set and his thin mouth always drawn in a tight, downward curve. Tonight he looked even more grim than usual.
The officers milling around in desert cammos or civilian clothes were like tall trees around her and because she was so short, Callie was jostled often. The murmuring voices were strained, and she saw stress and shock in the face of every man and woman in attendance. They were crowded together so tightly that Callie felt suffocated. Either her feet were being stepped on accidentally or someone’s elbow was jamming into her back, or she was being pushed because some officer wasn’t looking where he was going.
It was now 0030, just a little past midnight, almost three hours after the killer earthquake had struck. The call for all officers to meet at H.Q. had gone out an hour ago over battery-fueled radios and cell phones. Because there was no electricity available at the moment, radios, the normal means of communication, weren’t available. Luckily, in this day and age, Callie thought, nearly everyone carried a cell phone.
Many of the officers were in civilian clothes. Their faces were grim, strain and shock clearly etched in their expressions, their voices low and emotional. Callie was the only one in the room from the rescue dog unit, that she could see. Standing on tiptoes, she tried to see if she recognized anyone else in the milling assemblage. There were twenty-two dogs and handlers in her unit, but most of the personnel lived off base. She lived off base, too, but had been on duty along with Sergeant Irene Anson, who was manning their facility right now. Luckily, the quake had not harmed them and had only opened a crack in the corrugated roof above the kennels. They had checked every dog to make sure it was okay, and thankfully, they were all fine. As Callie craned her neck to get a better view, she saw an officer with short black hair, his eyes grim looking, hold up a set of blueprints before the general at the podium.
Instantly, Callie was drawn to him and instantly she told herself he was far too handsome
