A little better.
Wally paused at the bottom of the stairs for a deep breath before wading into the fray. It's hard to slip through a crowd unnoticed when your elbows can crack ribs.
"Look at me, I'm big and important!" said Mr. Berman. Jade Blossom, Matryoshka, and a few of the others stood around him, laughing. He waved his arms over his head. "I'm a rich Hollywood weasel! I'm—" Something crunched when Wally tried to sidle past the group. The television executive howled in pain as he dissolved into a pale-faced Andrew Yamauchi. "Aaah! My tail!"
"What?"
"My tail! Get off my tail!"
"Sorry, sorry, I'm sorry." Wally jumped back. Wild Fox swished his tail around and delicately inspected the tip. The last few inches, where the coppery fur blended into smoky gray, had been flattened. It also had a new kink.
"My tail . . ."
Wally spun around to get out of there, only to bowl over Spasm, causing him to splash his drink on Pop Tart.
"Damn it, you stupid tool. I was going to swi—talk wardrobe into letting me keep this top, too."
He tried to apologize, but he couldn't form the words around a very violent sneezing fit that nearly knocked his eyes out of his head. Wally bashed a hole in the wall as he stumbled blindly away, trailing apologies as he went.
"Clumsy oaf! Go crush some rocks or something."
"Did you hear about his audition?"
"No."
"Oh, man. It was classic."
Wally pushed his way toward the kitchen.
Somebody had made a pan of Rice Krispie bars. Now, how about that? Wally got the last one, too, until Blrr came zipping past and snatched it from his hand. He found some brownies, but Joe Twitch got those, too. They were having some kind of competition, she and him. For crying out loud!
Most of the good stuff was gone, but he managed to fill a plate. He didn't feel up to braving the crowd again on the way back upstairs. Instead, he slipped into the library. Nobody ever went in there, not even for a party. Wally didn't, either. He wasn't much of a reader.
Seated in a leather recliner with a paper plate perched on one massive knee, Wally took his first good look at the library. The first thing he noticed was that the books lining the shelves along every wall weren't actually books. They were cheap cardboard facades with the spines of books painted on them. Up close, there was no mistaking them for the real thing. Maybe they looked real on TV.
He did find one real book, a dictionary at the end of one shelf. Fanning through the yellowed pages released a cloud of dust and the mustiness peculiar to books.
They didn't do it.
The entry on Egypt was short. "A country in Northeast Africa, bordering the Mediterranean and Red seas and containing the Nile Delta. Capitaclass="underline" Cairo."
Not exactly what Wally wanted. Then again, he wasn't sure what he wanted. Thinking about those people in Bugsy's blog felt like an itch he couldn't scratch.
It was a long time before the party quieted down enough to let a guy sleep.
He woke around dawn to the loudest sound he'd ever heard. It was like a couple of freight trains, loaded up good and heavy with taconite ore, colliding head-on in the middle of the room. Over and over and over again. It shook the house so badly that he almost tumbled out of bed. Instead, the bed just collapsed underneath him.
A whump, and then from the floor, Hardhat yelled: "Ouch! God-fucking-damnit!"
Back home in Minnesota, summer thunderstorms were nothing special. But this was different. First off, thunder was never this loud. Plus, there wasn't any lightning. The house just kept shaking, shaking, shaking. And for another thing, a bad storm came with clouds so thick they turned the sky to ink. But he glimpsed sunrise peeking over the Hollywood Hills as the blinds danced and shuddered over the window. Something dusted his face when he opened his mouth to ask Hardhat about this. He tasted grittiness on his tongue. Plaster, raining down from the ceiling. Boy howdy, was this weird!
Tornados could be pretty loud. Maybe they were inside one, and the whole house was whirling away like in that scary movie with the flying monkeys?
"Um," Wally had to shout over the rumbling, "strange weather we're having."
"Weather? It's a big, motherfucking"—just then it stopped—"earthquake."
And then it was quiet again, at least compared to the sound of the house shaking apart. New sounds floated through the near silence. Creaking, as the house settled, punctuated with sudden cracks like gunshots. And a little fainter, but still nearby, moans and groans.
The floor shifted a little bit each time a new gunshot crack ripped through the house. More plaster sifted down, getting in Wally's eyes. He rolled off the mattress and climbed to his feet. The blinds came clattering down in a tangled heap around his feet when he pulled the cord to raise them. The glass in the window was cracked, but it hadn't shattered. Outside, plumes of smoke and dust threaded the hills and canyons, lofted skyward on the beeping of car alarms and the barking of terrified dogs.
Hardhat joined him at the window. "Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and camel. What a clusterfuck."
The floor shifted again.
Hardhat rattled the doorknob. "Door's stuck. Piece of shit."
Wally tried the door. Yep. It was wedged in the door frame good. "Some folks might wanna stand back." Wally gave the stubborn door a good yank. The doorknob snapped off in his hand, but otherwise the door didn't move.
Hardhat laughed. "Smooth move."
Wally stuck two fingers through the hole where the doorknob had been, braced his feet on the floor, and pulled. The door screeched open a few inches, gouging the floor, then cracked in half when it got stuck again. Wally gave up and smashed the two halves of the door into the hallway.
Apparently they weren't the only ones having trouble. People pounded on doors up and down the hallway. Wally worked one side of the hall, shoving the doors open. Hardhat worked the other side, prying them open with a glowing yellow I beam that he wielded like a crowbar.
Halfway up the hall they met up with King Cobalt. He seemed to be enjoying himself as he ripped the door frames apart with brute strength. Even tossed out of bed early in the morning, he still wore his Lucha Libre mask. Wally wondered if he ever took it off.
"I guess we work pretty good together, hey?"
King Cobalt shrugged. "Doesn't matter to me. I like smashing stuff." His tone suggested that this was the end of the conversation. Maybe he was black underneath that costume, like Stuntman.
I'm darker than all of them, though.
One by one, people assembled in the big TV lounge on the first floor. The bamboo floor had buckled and warped, and a couple of thumb-thick cracks in the walls ran from floor to ceiling. The flat screen TV had jumped its mounts on the wall, and was lying facedown on the floor.
Matryoshka took a head count while two of the camera guys went off to disconnect the gas and turn off the water. He came up short until Earth Witch stumbled through the front door. Wally noticed a pile of bricks strewn across the U-shaped drive. Apparently the chimney had collapsed. And from the trickle of blood on Earth Witch's forehead, she'd been out there when it came down. Sweat streaked her face. People cleared a spot for her on a sofa. When she plopped down, Wally saw dirt on the soles of her feet, the palms of her hands, and crusted under her fingernails.
Jade Blossom said, "Well?"
"This quake was strong and very deep," Earth Witch said, "and it caught me by surprise. I was sleeping." She looked around the room. "I couldn't stop it, but I did my best to weaken it. I might be able to damp down the aftershocks a little bit." Earth Witch said this last with her eyes closed, like she was ready to take a nap.
Just then another gunshot crack echoed through the house, making the walls shake. The cracks in the walls widened a little bit, as more plaster sifted down to the floorboards.
Wally jumped.
Bubbles went off in search of bandages and hydrogen peroxide. In addition to Earth Witch, a number of people had bumps, bruises, and cuts.