Cascadia's Fault

Smack

Buses pulled in and disgorged their occupants all over the courtyard. Duffle bags, suitcases, and backpacks were vomited off the top racks and tossed indiscriminately to whomever felt brave enough to be a target. When Caz stood next to Johnny, she realized that she really was a shrimp. She’d always known she was short, but holy crap! He was huge! When the sss with the short spikey hair came to stand beside him, Caz could only conclude that this was his sister. Up close, they looked far too much alike to be anything but twins.

Caz’s shoulders ached from the effort of catching bags, and from being slammed into the bus’s wall, but she was certain others from their group were feeling similar. Even so, she grunted under the impact of a particularly heavy bag, felt her shoulders protest, but heaved it into the community pile without breaking her rhythm.

Johnny looked over, “You know, you could just help these bags find their rightful owners.”

“That would require me to actually talk to all those people. I think I’d rather be squashed by the next bag coming down, so thanks but no thanks. Head’s up!”

Johnny caught the next bag with little effort, “Jem, this is Caz of the few words. Caz, my sister, Jem the Social Butterfly. You two should have lots in common.”

Jem snagged another bag out of the air, stuck out her tongue at her brother. “Don’t listen to Mr. Nosy, he’s no better than me. I’ll apologize now if you had to suffer his company. He tends to pick one person and then wants to know everything about them. Few can resist, so if you did, you’re my new hero.”

Caz found herself smiling back at the tall, willowy girl. That, alone, surprised her, “While I gave him a few snippets, it was a battle, but I stood firm.”

Jem had a quick, bawdy laugh, “Definitely my hero.”

“Great,” Johnny grumbled, “now I have two women who can withstand my considerable charm.” He heaved yet another backpack into the pile.

“Oh, get over it. It only shows she has excellent taste,” Jem teased.

The bag slamming into Caz’s head and body sent her flying. She could feel her feet skidding away, the ground rumbling, her head going heavy and light, and braced herself for impact on the gravel that would definitely drive biting bits into every inch of skin even as she felt her body being swept up before that happened. Multicolored spots blurred her vision while the left side of her face throbbed like a rotted tooth.

She distantly registered shouting, thudding, skidding, but the rest of her was floating pleasantly as it tried to escape the pain.

The earth rumbled again.

She was moving and wondered vaguely if she was supposed to go toward the light or away from it.

She heard the crashing of feet.

People shouting.

She struggled to open her eyes and bring the world back into focus. To see and hear what was going on around her, but all she saw was brown. Brown and green passing in a blur.

Heavy breathing.

Heavy breathing?



Finally, pulling her eyes into focus, she blinked at CJ being tugged along by Jem, other campers leveraging themselves along tree trunk by tree trunk, and everyone being directed by adults wearing matching t-shirts. She wondered why she wasn’t running. Why were they running at all? Wait, everyone was stopping. Her head lolled over, and she wondered who that was standing in the center.

“Alright, campers, this made for an interesting first hour. A tsunami drill wasn’t on the schedule, but any time we have earthquake activity at the lodges, this is our safe zone.”

Caz struggled to follow the speaker’s train of thought, or even her own. It looked like he was one of the camp counselors, he was wearing one of those t-shirts… who thought that shade of yellow was a good choice? Then she realized, again, that she was floating in space and not standing on her own two feet.

Painfully, she rearranged her head to look up. Johnny had her cradled in his arms like she weighed nothing. He wasn’t even paying attention to her but rather had his head bent toward CJ. The two were talking so quietly that she couldn’t hear them above the ringing in her ears. There was also two of them, as in two CJs, two Johnnys, two Jems…

Not a good sign.