Virtue Falls by Christina Dodd

the middle of the street. The driver sat inside clutching the steering wheel as if she could somehow control the wild motion. Behind it, another driver honked his horn, perhaps imagining that if she got out of his way, he could drive to safety.
    There was no safety. Not anywhere. Not in this disaster.
    Citizens Foster recognized, tourists he did not, clung to lampposts or squatted with their arms over their heads, protecting themselves from flying debris. A five-year-old stood alone on the sidewalk, face raised to the sky, crying his fear to the heavens.
    Foster holstered his gun and ran out.
    One whole brick smacked him in the back, knocking the air out of him. Another one, lighter and broken, struck his ear, and he felt a warm stream of blood gush down his neck.
    He reached the child and scooped him up, and carried him into the middle of the street. He pointed his index finger at the honking driver.
    The driver stopped that infernal noise.
    But the infernal noise didn’t stop. The church bell on the old Episcopal church across the street rang wildly, and when Foster looked up, the steeple toppled in slow motion into the roof.
    Behind him someone yelled, and he turned to see the town hall’s concrete scrollwork drop straight down onto the street. It smashed three parked cars; one was a county patrol car.
    Someone else shouted to him, and he saw the woman step out of the shelter of her car.
    “Give him to me,” she yelled, and extended her arms to the child.
    Not her kid, but she saw the child’s need, and his.
    He thrust the boy at her and ran toward the crushed vehicles. God knows why. Anyone inside was dead.
    But no one was inside, and now people knew what to do. They all scrambled toward the middle of the streets, falling, crawling, away from the buildings and the traffic lights that snapped up and down on wires that cracked like whips.
    Other cops joined him, running through the increasing destruction.
    Good men and women. They would risk their lives for the people of this county. Even while the earthquake still tore at the town with its vicious teeth, ripping the roads, the homes, the buildings, he sent them fanning out across Virtue Falls.
    He knew that before the day was over, this calamity would take all his attention, all his energy, all his knowledge, and no one could blame him if for the moment he forgot the events in San Francisco and did the duty for which he was hired.
    No one could blame him at all.

 
    CHAPTER NINE
     
    Kateri raked in the pile of chips and rose from the table. “I’ve got to pour me a cup of coffee. Anybody else want some?”
    “No, I want liquor,” Sánchez said.
    “You’re on duty,” Kateri retorted, and grinned at him.
    Sánchez was kidding. She knew that. He was responding to the first-class poker ass-whupping she had just delivered on the whole crew … but especially on him and Adams. Sánchez would never cause her trouble, but Adams was sulking big time.
    Of course, the teasing the rest of the guys had given him hadn’t helped, and as she turned away from the table and headed for the coffee pot, she wondered whether he was the kind of guy who would try to foment trouble for her, or if he’d be pulling strings to get transferred out of here.
    But she wasn’t expecting a physical attack, so when he slammed her in the back and knocked her to the ground, she landed hard, then rolled and came up, fists raised, instantly ready to fight—and stumbled like a drunken fool.
    The earth rocked like the deck of a ship in a storm.
    An attack, yes. But not an attack from Adams. An attack from the earth itself.
    Kateri’s mother’s tribe had legends, that a giant frog monster-god crouched off the coast and when it woke and hopped up to taste the sun, the earth broke apart. They had other legends; that here on the coast, in this particular spot where the river met the harbor, the ocean would periodically rise to eat the land. Her tribe spoke of the government’s stupidity in