Free New Title 1 by Dru Pagliassotti Page B

healed.
    “There’s a collection up in the attic,” Jack said.
    “Let’s take a look. I’d like to know the family a little better.”
    “I’ll lead,” Andy said, pulling Jack’s lighter out of his pocket again. The three men picked their way through the rooms to the stairwell. Hands braced on the intermittently trembling walls, they headed upstairs.

XIV

     
    Pastor Luther Lindgren had been working late when the first jolts had hit. By the time he’d inspected the chapel, tilting the freestanding cross back upright and picking up the candles that had been thrown off their stands, he was certain that this was no small quake. It had to be at least as strong as the Northridge jolt back in 1994.
    He walked back to his office and dug his flashlight out of the emergency equipment cabinet. Part of him wanted to leap into his car and drive home to check on his dogs, but he wasn’t sure it was safe to drive yet.
    The flashlight’s steady beam was reassuring. He headed outside.
    CHU’s chapel was tucked in the southwest corner of campus, behind the library and student union. Both buildings appeared intact, as far as he could tell, but he could hear distant shouts and screams that suggested that, elsewhere, students were panicking.
    The blue light over the emergency phone at the end of the parking lot was still glowing, powered by stored solar energy. Lindgren walked to it, stumbling when the earth shook, and lifted the receiver.
    The line was dead.
    “Dear Lord,” he prayed aloud, replacing it in its cradle, “please watch over us and protect us from danger.”
    He stood, shivering in the cold. Should he make his way across campus to see what comfort he could offer the frightened students? Or should he wait here, tending the chapel, until they came to him?
    Lindgren had been the campus pastor for fifteen years, and he knew that many students would come to the chapel pews seeking comfort and reassurance. Despite the increasing secularization of the outside world and the liberal policies of the university itself, the majority of CHU’s students still turned to their childhood faith when they were troubled. He did his best to be present for them when they did.
    “Hey! Hey, Pastor, is that you?”
    He turned, his flashlight beam flickering over the face of a young man hurrying toward him. Jarret Moore, one of his Bible study students. He lowered the beam.
    “Hi, Jarret. Do you know what’s going on?”
    “Earthquake! Feels like a really strong one, too. Maybe a 7.0?” The clean-cut young athlete reached him. “Are you all right?”
    “I’m fine.”
    “I was in the SUB with some friends. They headed back to the dorms, but I thought I’d better come out here to make sure everything was okay.”
    Lindgren smiled. Jarret was like so many other enthusiastically religious young men and women he’d tutored over the years; meticulous to a fault, but a good boy at his core. A little more life experience would temper and refine his faith.
    “I was just trying to decide whether I should stay here or head out to where all the noise is,” Lindgren admitted.
    “You should stay here,” Jarret said at once. “People are—”
    Abruptly, with a rumble like thunder, the earth leaped and rippled beneath their feet. Both Jarret and Lindgren lost their balance and fell. The flashlight rolled out of the pastor’s hand, its beam flickering and then regaining strength.
    The thunderous roar continued with a loud cracking, crashing sound. Lindgren turned his head, searching for its source.
    Across the parking lot, the library’s brick walls were collapsing.
    The ground bucked beneath them as though something were pushing it up from below. Another great mass of bricks tumbled off the library wall, revealing steel reinforcing girders that trembled like straws. More bricks collapsed, and windows cracked and shattered.
    Then the rippling beneath the earth stopped.
    Lindgren scrambled to his feet, snatching up his flashlight as he