I don't own DBZ.
The ground overhead shook violently, knocking loose a few pieces of rubble, which showered down upon us.
I clutched the edges of my coat tightly around my shoulders and cringed. If there had been light to see by, I knew my face would have been streaked with tears, flushed bright red where it wasn't ghastly white with fear. My eyes felt swollen and dry, stinging from the dust and from crying too much.
It was made even worse, since my contacts felt like gobs of sticky, scratchy stuff all over my cornea and I couldn't blink without having what light we had swirl around as the contacts moved out of place, before eventually settling back over my iris to restart the whole cycle..
"When do you think it's going to stop?" one woman whispered, her voice trembling.
We sat in a group of five, huddled together in a miraculous open space beneath a collapsed building. There was no other light than the soft glow of our cell phones, which threw our harrowed faces in sharp relief. I was probably the youngest of the group, if the dark haired woman sitting to my left was the second youngest, and didn't simply look older than she actually was. The man sitting left of her was middle aged and balding, with dirty work slacks and torn shirt. The woman sitting next to him to his left had been the one to speak, and she was visibly trembling. Her eyes were wide and expressive and couldn't settle down on one thing for more than a few seconds, except for the creaking ceiling. The man next to her; the one to my right, was an old man who sat stiffly in a crisp suit, which managed to be dignified despite the heavy coating of dust and dirt that ruined it. His jaw was clenched shut, almost as if he refused to admit his own abject terror.
We were alone, except for a few still bodies lying just outside of the small circle of light.
No one answered the womans' question.
Is it terrorists? Are we under attack?
The woman sitting next to me flinched badly as another tremor caused the roof overhead to groan and squeal.
We all jumped as a cheerful string of beeps sliced into the thick, silent air.
Slowly, as if realizing its existence, the balding man put his cell phone to his ear.
"Hello?" he asked hoarsely. In the pale blue light, his facial expression shifted drastically from patient fear to near hysteric worry. "Ohmygod—Lenore! Yes—yes—I'm alright—don't worry! Where are the kids?"
The man went rigid and said nothing. All our hearts stood still.
I glanced up uneasily.
"...You don't know? The school's line is dead?" His voice was pale with disbelief. Pulling enough composure together to continue, he asked, "Well...are you alright? Good? Well, thank God...Where are you? Main—Lenore? Lenore! Lenore! Answer me, goddamn it!"
The man's panicked cries echoed off the walls. A couple of us, including me, winced as some more rubble trickled down.
We all stayed silent, and eventually the man threw the phone away from him, sobbing piteously. It flew into a dark corner and for a few seconds its light glowed, and then sank into darkness as the screen went black.
When the Earth hadn't trembled in a good ten or twenty minutes, we started to hope it was over.
"We're going to have to get out of here," the old man in the suit said gravely.
"How?" I asked, and squinted at his face.
"We should wait until the rescue crews come!" the woman to the left of me said. She looked like she'd hopped right out of an old Pat Benatar music video.
"That might take far too long," the old man replied.
"It took a long time to fully search the Twin Towers," I said. "It could be weeks if the city up above is in too bad a shape."
"What are the Twin Towers?" the hysteric woman asked, staring at me with wide, crazy eyes.
I was stunned, and opened my mouth to reply, but the old man interrupted.
"It doesn't matter, the point is we should try to get out of here. She's right, it could take them weeks to find us."
We glanced at each other.
"We might make this place cave in on us if we try and dig ourselves out," the same woman to the left of me said. "This isn't some movie! This is real life!"
"I'd rather die trying," the old man in the suit snapped shortly. "It would be better than starving to death!"
I stood up, and began to pick my way to the edges of the small space, stepping delicately over bodies, grateful for the near non-light. Every now and then my toes or heel nudged or stepped on something soft and pliable, and I would toe at it for a way around it, trying hard not to think about what I was poking.
"Stay here if you like, but that's your choice," the old man said, as he, too, rose to his feet to look for an exit. "Tell me if you find anything!"
I glanced over my shoulder. "Alright!"
The man whose wife had not replied stood up too, wordlessly, and mechanically began to help, as well. He had no cell phone to see by, anymore, and edged his way by touch alone.
A small tremor made the ground shudder, and I immediately looked up at the dark ceiling, instantly alert. There was a small, hollow trickling somewhere.
I decided that until big rocks started raining down on us, it would be best to keep looking.
"I found something!" the strained, hoarse shout of the beleaguered balding man sliced through the darkness. "There's an opening!"
"Really? That's great! Can you see anything?" I called, and immediately felt that was a stupid question.
"No, I think it's a hallway, though, maybe to the basement!"
"Ah! That's right!" the voice of the old man said. The blue light of his cell phone made him a small patch of glow in otherwise inky darkness. "There are underground levels, for keeping files and such. The subway is down there."
"There's a subway station underneath this building?" I asked.
"No, but the tunnels themselves were accessible."
"Well, great! We should try to get there!" I said. Our voices echoed hollowly back at each other. "Maybe we could follow the subway tunnels to get out!"
"What happens if people find us, and we're mucking around in subway tunnels that might not even have any exits anymore?" the pessimistic woman, who had sat to my left, snapped.
"Then stay here and wait!" I said angrily. "Nobody's saying you have to come with us!"
I couldn't see her face in the darkness, and that was probably a good thing.
"We should hurry," the old man called.
I nodded. "Kay..."
"I'm coming too!" the hysterical woman's voice cried out, sounding weak and wraithlike.
I didn't want to make the first chapter ridiculously long, and it just kind of sets it up, I guess. The other option was to have a really long, drawn out chapter, and people don't tend to like that, I guess.
Please, for the love of God, review! #prostrates self in front of readers#