Chapter 3

35 minutes until the next earthquake.

Barks drove recklessly. His family was more scared of his driving, than the earthquake. The highway was full of cars. There was a huge traffic jam. So, Barks had decided that he would dismount the highway and then, somewhere ahead, he would come back on.

But the small road had also been packed with cars. But, because of his mad driving skills, they were easily out of the jam and were at full speed.

No one had spoken since they had left San Francisco. Barks’s family knew that if they somehow reduced his concentration level, then god knows what would happen.

A moment later, they were running parallel to the highway, and realized the cause of traffic jam on it. A flyover had collapsed to dust. So, the highway was totally unusable. Barks had made the right decision.

He saw that some chunks of concrete were also lying on his road. He used his mad-driving-skills to dodge the chunks and once again, they were on the clear road.

Till now, he had been driving parallel to the San Francisco Bay, but now, they turned inland, towards San Jose.

***

The headquarters of The United States Geological Survey had somehow survived the earthquake. And now, all the workers were struck to their computer screens.

Dalton, the chief scientist of the headquarters, was pacing up and down his room. Then suddenly, a worker rushed into his office, with a paper. He was really scared, his eyes told it all.

‘Sir,’ he swallowed hard. ‘The volcano has stopped erupting but predictions say that it is going to erupt once again. So, there will be series of earthquake, more devastating than this one. And, th-the tsunami is bigger than we had expected. It will reach Hawaii in just ten or twenty minutes. That means we don’t have more than an hour.’

‘So, basically, what you are telling me is that I should ask the government for the evacuation of the coastal town.’

‘Not only towns or cities, but just to be sure, half of these states need to b evacuated completely,’ he replied.

That sentence sent a chill down Dalton’s spine. Evacuating all coastal states would be very expensive, America could bankrupt.

‘What about Hermes Research Centre in San Francisco?’ Dalton asked the worker, although, he knew what would have been its fate.

‘The building is destroyed and now we are trying to contact any worker on their personal numbers, but the signals won’t let us do it.’

‘What about the satellite phone?’

‘The workers don’t have anything like that, sir!’

Dalton dismissed the worker and sat on the chair, thinking what to do and what not to do.

He was not going to take any chances. So, he took the receiver and dialled the white house’s number.

***

25 minutes until the next earthquake

The trip to San Jose had been brief, but it had seemed like a lifetime. The effect of the earthquake was the same as in San Francisco. But, here only some of the big building had survived the tremor.

‘What are we going to do, daddy?’ Brian asked, looking scared.

Outside the window of the car, the world was in horror. People were crying and shouting like nothing in the world, sending chills down Barks’s spine.

Barks tried the music player, but no radio channel was emitting any signal. Barks felt queer as his family had seen him trying the radio.

Now, they entered the downtown of the city. The people were really in miserable condition. But, what Barks felt more unexpected was the traffic.

There were only a few cars on the road and abandoned cars were far less. They had reached here very smoothly and were continuing smoothly.

They decided that they would stop at an abandoned store and gather supplies for the rest of their journey.

They obviously stopped at a supermarket, which had been able to withstand the tremor and was now abandoned. But, when they entered, they saw that it had nothing. The shelves were all empty. So, cursing under their breath, they went off looking for another shop.

Of course, not realizing that another earthquake was on its way to create more drama and wipe out some of the remaining people.