“Yeah I’m fine Bev but, what the hell happened? My God, look behind you. The whole building is gone. Where is everybody? Where are our parents? They were right inside the doors, but I don’t even see the doors anymore. What could have possibly happened?”
“I don’t know Sally but, we have to get some help. We have to find somebody. We just have to do something.”
“Oh look Beverly! Here comes one of those boys now. He’ll know what to do. He has to”
Mark Summers, ran up to the two girls and put both hands on his knees and bent over gulping in large breaths of air.
“Are you girls alright?” He managed to squeeze out between breaths. “Have you seen anybody else?”
“No!” Beverly sobbed. “We don’t even know where our parents are. You have to help us find them.”
“Listen girls, as soon as my brother gets here we’ll find your parents. He’s bringing some rope and we’ll see what’s going on. Look at the size of the hole where the lobby was. I can barely see the roof, but it doesn’t look like the top fell in. Don’t worry your parents and everybody else will be safe. All we have to do is climb down the hole and help them back out. Everything will be fine.”
Mark’s eyes slowly misted over as he walked toward the gaping hole where the resort had stood. Peering down into the hole he thought nobody could have lived through that tremendous jolt the buildings must have taken when they had rapidly sunk into the freshly opened earth. The second floor wing of the resort was about fifty yards away and was now at ground level.
Just when Mike came running up with three bright yellow coils of nylon rope the screams began.
“Help me. Please dear God, somebody help me.”
The female voice, shaking with fear, was soon joined by a chorus of others. Distinguished from the rest was the plaintiff wailing of a baby not unlike the cry of a newborn calf.
The helpless cries ceased for a moment as the ground abruptly shook again and this time the roof line disappeared from sight. The pitiful pleas for help began drifting again towards the surface along with a tremendous cloud of earthy smelling dust. The screams for help, about a third of the number before the latest jolt, were filled with pure terror that made the twins and both young girls shiver with fright.
Mark, shaking his fear off like a freshly washed dog, grabbed one of the ropes out of his brother’s hand and ran towards the closest newly planted royal palm that was lining the driveway.
“Come on Mike and you girls too. Let’s tie the ropes to these trees and throw the other
ends into the hole. We’ve got to try to get those people out before it caves in any more.”
Steve Sidel, up since 5:15, fifteen minutes late of his normal waking time due to the overindulgence of too many drinks the night before, had just zipped the trousers of his charcoal colored suit when the floor fell away from his feet. Banging his head on the side of the nightstand when he fell, he managed to regain his feet rather groggily by pulling himself up on the now very slanted double bed. The room was in complete shambles, his still unpacked suitcases, now very unpacked, were stacked haphazardly along the doorway wall next to the self contained air-conditioning unit, its power source pulled away from the wall like a freshly severed umbilical cord. The bathroom door, hanging on one hinge, was still swaying with a slight creaking noise. The large double window, now shed of its thick earth tones drapery was at a sixty-degree angle from the frame but miraculously hung unbroken.
Steve, reaching up with his left hand, felt his now throbbing forehead and could feel a gash about three inches long right across his left side hairline. Looking at his open palm and fingers when he brought it away from his face, he saw his hand was completed covered in scarlet. Staggering past the overturned day chair, he pulled himself into the bathroom and grabbed the extra roll of toilet tissue that had been on the back of the toilet but was now leaning against the white porcelain side of the motel tub. Ripping away the paper wrapper he tossed it uncaringly down on the tile floor and held the entire unwrapped roll against his forehead. The pain seemed to push inward and at least he could now try to think. The blood not yet in his eyes soaked quickly into the homemade bandage and he began to wonder what kind of bomb had gone off. He had not heard any loud bang but more of a muffled type explosion. He decided the next course of action was to find out what was going on so he headed toward the door of the room and whatever he would find outside.
He tried to turn the doorknob but the handle was in a frozen position. Putting the now blood soaked tissue roll on the floor next to the door he grabbed the handle with both hands and tried to twist it open. It still wouldn’t open so he stretched his right leg up on the air-conditioning unit and pulled himself into the now exposed window frame. Reaching out, he pushed the window the rest of the way out and it crashed noisily onto the concrete walkway in the front of his room. Jumping down to the walk, carefully avoiding the broken glass, he saw that the entire wing of the resort had sunk into the ground. His second floor walkway was now even with the carefully manicured courtyard and the ground floor had completely disappeared. Still not really realizing what had happened, Steve Sidel started making his way toward the now missing lobby.
The warm needle spray of the hotel shower soothed Kathy Santos’s stiff shoulder muscles as she hummed a song she had not heard since her childhood days. The days in the penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Her black nanny had sung many songs to try to bring a little happiness in an otherwise lonely childhood. Her parents were big time socialites and they were away from home a lot more than they were there. Having no siblings, Kathy had invented imaginary playmates, girls with names like Sissy and Patty and sometimes little boys named Sammy or Billy. She managed to endure those lonely years without them having much effect on her blossoming teen years. She had been sent to a very prestigious finishing school after high school and had turned into a very lovely, very mature, young woman.
She lathered her very tanned torso as she recalled the big turning point in her life. She had been working in her parents’ business, Santos Cosmetics, as a sales representative, when her world collapsed. Her parents, on the way back from a convention in Puerto Rico, aboard their fifty six foot yacht, stopped to help a fellow boat that was flying a distress signal. The boat turned out to be modern day pirates and they had boarded her parents’ boat and tied the crew and her parents up while they ransacked the entire boat. Not being satisfied with the abundant jewelry and cash that they found aboard, the pirates began executing the crew members one by one with a single shot in the back of the head. The pirates left Kathy’s mother and the female cook for last and then brutally raped both women before firing the by now merciful shots in the back of their heads. This entire event was recorded on the video security cameras mounted on the boat and later sold to several sleazy tabloids around the world.
Kathy shivered as she recalled that terrible moment when she had been awakened in her motel room in the middle of the night by the phone call from the executive vice president who informed her of her parents’ deaths. She had been on a sales trip to Charleston, South Carolina and caught the first plane back to New York. She had started working in the company as a gopher and worked her way up to sales representative, by her hard work not her parents’ position and therefore, knew the company from the ground up. When the board of directors met a week after her parents were laid to rest, they unanimously voted her president of the corporation, her being the sole heir, and having extensive knowledge of the workings of the entire company. She achieved not only a personal success as president but was now regarded as one of the top women executives in the country. She was at the resort to represent a new line of cosmetics that Tankinato wanted to start selling in Japan and she decided to stay a few extra days to take a little mini vacation that she was well entitled to.