Could we have saved them? The question haunted me, even as they vanished in the rearview mirror, fleeting images of horror etched onto my mind. The tremor grew into a shudder beneath us, and the red truck rumbled further into a nowhere that, impossibly, felt better than where we'd been.
Vast, empty fields stretched in every direction. In the distance, the convulsing earth seemed to heave itself upward, forming menacing, black hills. At least, that's what it looked like, just before the truck lurched to a halt. An optical illusion born of the trembling night, a trick of the senses. The very directions blurred, up and down, left and right dissolving like sand washed away by the relentless tide.
The longer you sit in darkness, the more the darkness seems to move. Within the swirling shadows, shadows that seemed to have learned to walk, we sat in silence, eyes glued to the misted windows. Finally, Sarah's gravelly voice broke the silence, shattering it like precious crystal.
"We shouldn't get out. If it gets worse, won't the hills slide?"
"Before the hills slide," Gerard insisted, "the truck will. We have to get out! Definitely."
Suddenly, a blinding light sliced through the darkness, squeezing between them and banishing the last vestiges of night from the cab. It pierced the rear window, forcing me to squint. Fog lights. In the distance. We weren't alone. A dozen or so cars emerged from the darkness, their headlights bobbing erratically as the shivering earth tossed them like glowing ping-pong balls.
"What are we going to do now?"
Some questions are asked without any expectation of an answer. Like a casual "How are you?" on the street, or the rote "Can I help you?" at the supermarket checkout, Gerard's question felt like nothing more than a verbal tic.
Would the approaching fog lights change anything? Would the people driving them influence our decisions?
"We could stop them. Team up," Michael mumbled.
But even if the others had heard him over the roaring quake, they would have pretended he hadn't spoken. Fear. Nothing breeds loneliness quite like it. The fear of the world outside, of the unknown, often morphs into a fear of others, and ultimately, a fear of yourself.
The afraid want to hide, to burrow in, trusting no one, least of all strangers emerging from the fog. They fail to see how isolation can strip you of everything you once were.
Does anyone truly recognize themselves when they look back? When they see themselves as they were at some point in their past, or do those memories always feel like something alien, strange? Does the caterpillar know it will become a butterfly? Do maggots anticipate wings, and, once airborne, do they even recognize their former selves wriggling in the trash?
You think you know yourself, believe you know exactly who you are, what you would do, how you would never act. And for a long time, you might be right, behaving according to the carefully constructed plan of the person you believe yourself to be. Until you can no longer think, no longer plan, because something entirely unscheduled is happening. Only then does a harsh, glaring light illuminate who you truly are. At that very moment, at least.
Afterwards, when the memory washes over you, and the self it reveals feels like a stranger, is the person you see truly no longer you? Or is it simply that you tell yourself how profoundly you've changed?
When I think of that night—floating above the events unfolding in the fog-drenched landscape—I don't recognize myself. I see a maggot in the trash and am almost convinced it will never sprout the wings that carry me today.
Even though I clearly heard Michael's suggestion, I wanted nothing to do with the strangers lurking behind those fog lights. I desperately wished they would keep driving, past the red truck, without so much as a glance. But life rarely grants such selfish wishes. My silent plea remained unheard, joining the chorus of all the others.
Perhaps they would have passed us by, driven by the same fear that gripped us. The misty air reeked of it, and you could see it, too, in their breakneck speed—far faster than we had been traveling moments before. Too fast to maintain control.
They reached our position—we stared out our window into theirs—just as a deep, paralyzing rumble like a thousand simultaneous thunderclaps erupted. Then, in the seconds that followed, the trembling ground, like nervously shaking legs, refused to remain still.
The earth moved. A crack, jagged and hungry, tore through the black asphalt. In what felt like an eternity condensed into mere fractions of a second, the road buckled and sagged. It wasn't a dramatic collapse, but it was enough to send the speeding caravan careening off course. Screeching brakes pierced the night, followed by the sickening sound of metal grinding against metal, of glass shattering. One by one, they fell like dominoes, racing into the adjacent fields. The first car overturned, triggering a chain reaction. The second braked hard and slid down the embankment, only to be slammed from behind by the third. The road was littered with the splintered remains of fog lights, glowing weakly as plumes of smoke billowed into the sky. Gerard wrenched open the truck door. A surge of wind and smoke, laced with fragments of mist, assaulted my skin.
"We have to leave! Now!" His hair whipped around his face as he screamed over the din. "They're going to explode!"
Heroes and cowards. We're all one or the other. Either those who rush to help in the face of disaster, or those who flee.
"We can't leave before we get them out!"
Even before Will spoke, the same thought had flickered through my mind. Only fleetingly, though. I didn't want to be one of those who fled, but I couldn't help it. Nowadays, I would stay. That's what I'd like to say, but would I really? Stay? Even when the mind longs for an end, the body still fights it off. It still clings to life, still craves survival, and will sacrifice anything, anyone, if that's the only way to keep its heart beating.
Perhaps there's something inherently flawed in heroes. Perhaps they were never meant to endure. Perhaps they're simply not wired that way. Will was the only one among us who truly embodied that spirit. He was about to rush toward the wreckage when Robert grabbed his arm.
"Gerard's right! You can't help them! Look at the earth! It's liquefying! There's no time!"
Bathed in the ghastly glow of the shattered fog lights, the surging earthquake transformed the solid earth into a viscous fluid. Sand and gravel became mud, as if churned by the relentless tread of heavy boots. Stunned by the sight, my body finally obeyed and dragged itself out of the truck. I was seized by an overwhelming, primal urge to survive.
"Why should we help them at all?" Fragments of Clare's voice cut through the chaos. "Whatever happens," she added, her tone chillingly detached, "can't kill them anyway!"
My gaze pierced the smoke-filled air towards the crumpled vehicles by the roadside. Utter destruction. Shards of shattered windshields were embedded in the bodies within, as if they were wax figures: seemingly fragile, yet impervious to harm. They were moving, writhing, as if to confirm Clare's words. Impaled humans ablaze inside vehicles about to explode.
"It hurts them," I mumbled, so softly I could barely hear myself.
Inches away, Michael read the words from my lips. He must have been thinking the same thing when their faces—slick with moonlight and sweat— contorted in agony.
"They're suffering," his voice cut through the fog. "Maybe they won't die, but they're still human. They can still feel!"
He was right. They were human. Unlike us, however, that night, we were not. We didn't feel for them; we didn't feel with them. We simply left them behind. Gerard pulled Michael along, and Sandra and James restrained Will from looking back. The remaining three led us forward through the darkness, as if the earth had ceased its violent dance. And I: I was somewhere in between. Exactly where I had always been.
Climbing the hills was nearly impossible. Thrown back and forth by the relentless earthquake, I stumbled, fell, and constantly had to reorient myself. Once on the ground, I struggled to rise, disoriented, with no sense of up or down, as long as the moon remained hidden in the fog, like a villain lurking in the shadows.
The third time I fell, I struck a rock, sharp-edged and unforgiving. I thought I heard my ulna snap and splinter, but with a suppressed groan, I simply pushed on. How often the others fell, I don't know, nor can I say whether they were injured. When climbing a hill in darkness as black as a raven's wing, you perceive nothing beyond the burn in your lungs, the sweat on your brow, the frantic pounding of your heart, and the searing pain in your muscles.
The hills weren't high, but high enough to offer a vantage point over the town on the horizon. As I stumbled forward, my eyes inadvertently turned in that direction, to where the town should have been. But it was no longer there. In its place, a swaying, shifting canvas of red-orange, streaked with grey. Fireballs danced on the misty horizon, tracing the outline of what had once been a city. So beautiful, if it hadn't been so terrible.
The wider my mouth opened, the more mist crept in. I remember the bone-deep weariness, the trembling fireballs, the wet grass and sharp stones beneath my aching limbs. The fog swallowed the sound. When the stones beneath me began to slide, I barely noticed, lulled by the silence and the darkness, until my exhausted body slid down the damp slope, as if the earth itself was trying to shake me off.
In the ensuing rockfall, I braced myself for the hill to collapse, when a hand, strong and sure, grabbed me. It reminded me of my father. When I was eleven years old, he took me fishing. The happiest day I remember. Bright sunshine, not a cloud in the sky, and within me, the boundless, joyous curiosity of a child. The light glinting off the water seemed to dance, a celebration of pure joy. My shorts and shirt were soaked from my futile attempts to catch it.
It's funny how happiness breeds carelessness. Overjoyed, you stop paying attention because you feel safe, almost invulnerable. Happiness is the most vulnerable state you can be in, and perhaps that's why it's so fleeting. My joy almost killed me that day at the lake with my father. My blissful ignorance nearly drowned me if his firm hand hadn't yanked me from the rapids I had failed to see.
"Never do that again!" He sounded angrier than I'd ever seen him, and although I know he wasn't talking about my happiness, I haven't been so happy ever since.
Paralyzed with exhaustion, I heard his voice on the shaking ground as the strong hand Gerard had grabbed me with yanked me onto my feet. As unsteady I stood on the sliding ground as on the marbles I used to play with in my parents' house. From further up the hill, an avalanche crept towards us: a giant caterpillar, dark and fast. It was too late to evade it.
"Protect yourself!" Gerard yelled. "We're going to be hit!"
And we were. Such raw, untamed power. With breaking bones I thought only of that, when the churning mass of earth and stone slammed into us. You can try to protect yourself all you want—run for cover, raise your arms, bury your face—but if nature decides to crush you, it will.
We were crushed that night. In every fiber of my being, I experienced incomprehensible pain, a pain so intense it stole my consciousness. Hours passed before I awoke. Buried up to my neck in boulders, I was unable to move. I was completely helpless, and panic swelled inside me, like a malignant tumor, threatening to burst me open.
How and when did nature become so enraged with us, I wondered as the night retreated from the horizon, as if it could no longer bear witness to the world's fury. The brighter it became, the less the ground shook. Out there, the worst was over. For us, however, it had only just begun.