Otis Sherman was knocked unconscious when the marina office first dropped into the sink hole. He was still unconscious when it fell another twenty feet and was just regaining his senses when the building sank a third time. The first initial drop had dislodged one of the rough sawn cypress beams from the roof. This beam grazed the back of Otis’s head and sent him into slumber land. The second drop tilted the building at a sixty-degree angle and the upright beer cooler came crashing down on his prone legs crushing both mercifully while he was still unconscious. As he awoke, he felt a tremendous pain in both legs and was trying to familiarize himself to his newly arranged surroundings when he heard a large cracking noise. The part of the building facing the lake plunged completely away from the part Otis was trapped in and that’s when he heard the deafening sound of water roaring into the space where the building had been. Daylight was visible above the hole where the water started rushing in and he realized that a large crack had formed between where the marina office was and the lake. With horror he saw the hole rapidly filling with lake water and he would soon be completely submerged. He began praying forgiveness for all the sins he had committed even though he couldn’t really thing of anything he had done to wrong anyone in his complete life. Still, he didn’t want to go to heaven being a sinful person and he prayed for his dog Bart and anyone else who might be trapped like he was.
“Hey dad!” Yelled Todd Finley. “What’s happening on shore? The resort just disappeared. I don’t see the marina either. What do you think happened?”
“I don’t know son.” Jeff Finley answered as he turned his head toward shore. “Whatever it is, it looks very spooky. I don’t see how the whole place could vanish. Wait, the second floor is still there but, it looks a lot lower than it was. You know I bet it was a sinkhole. I heard a lot of rumors in town about how this place was honeycombed with caverns before they started building and they had just ignored the warnings of two engineers who had predicted something like this was going to happen. I guess those two environmental guys were right. Something certainly is happening now.”
“What should we do dad? We need to go see if we can help those poor people. Oh dad, this is terrible and I wonder if my dog friend Bart is all right. He is such a neat dog. Isn’t he dad?”
“You’re right son. We need to see if we can help. I’ll start the motor and we’ll head right in.”
Rebecca McClellan stared intently out the porthole on the top of the manmade mountain, at the carnage that lay below. The porthole wasn’t round like in a cruise ship but, was actually rectangular in shape and was constructed of heavy one way glass. The outside was disguised by an overshadowing of lush plant life and its reflective surface was made to look like mica in the mountain wall. The image that Becky was seeing through the glass looked like a bomb riddled village after a vicious aircraft attack. She could see large holes where buildings once stood and as she continued looking around some of her fear abated when she spotted her boyfriend Paul Zangallio standing near the edge of the lake where the marina used to be. There were two other people standing next to him and she recognized them as the people from the television station here to do a special interest story on the resort. She had earlier told Marcia Meadows how much she enjoyed watching her Monday night show because it was always about something very interesting to the average person. Becky told her how beautiful she looked on the show but she was even better looking in person because the TV didn’t do justice to her vivid violet eyes. Marcia Meadows thanked her before she had left the corporate office and said that she thought Becky was a very attractive young lady, very business like, and she was more than welcome to visit her at the TV station anytime, for a very special guided tour of how the station worked. Becky had been very pleased at the invitation and told her she would be overjoyed to do that but, she would call before she came to make sure Marcia would be there. She suddenly noticed and a look of sheer terror came to her face, the place where the marina had stood was slowing filling up with lake water from a large crack that had formed from the lake to the hole the marina was now in. She knew that Bart’s owner Otis was probably still in the marina office and then she saw Paul and the other two looking down in the hole and waving their arms. It looked like they were yelling even though it was silent inside the mountain. Becky loved Otis like a grandfather, he was always so nice whenever he came into the corporate office with his weekly reports and supply requisition forms and he never failed to bring her a little gift from the snack or soda machine. She prayed that nothing had happened to him and she quickly decided on a course of action in case it had. Her young mind was very sharp and her retention capabilities very strong. Working in the corporate office as long as she had, she was very knowledgeable about the workings of the lake recovery system. That really nice guy from Datafuture, Steve Sidel, had even shown her the actual workings of the system and how the computer software handled everything automatically. Knowing that the system was not manned in the control room because an alarm system was set up to flash on the corporate computer screens if a malfunction occurred she hurried away from the observation port with Bart right on her heels and took the spiral staircase steps two at a time. She was out of breath by the time she reached the ground floor but, went ahead at a full run to the door of the control room and twisted the knob with sweat slippery hands. She finally managed to turn the knob and pushed the door open and ran over to the central keyboard of the lake equalizing computer system. She didn’t bother to sit in the leather executive chair but, pushed it out of the way and logged onto the computer with her own code number. The system allowed her in without any delay and she used the mouse to select the icon for the pumps that would lower the water level. She activated the normal pumps for lowering the surface of the lake and kicked on the two auxiliary pumps, She deactivated the sensors that would turn on the pumps to bring water back out of the aquifer to replenish the diminishing level and pressed a manual hold button to prevent the system from kicking back to automatic. She breathed a sigh of relief and as she ran back out the door to head for the lake she kept praying that she was in time to stop the flow of the lake into the marina office.
Deputy Paul Johanson locked up his brakes and slid he thought, very skillfully into a diagonal stop blocking the front entrance to the resort. He left just enough clearance on the right shoulder of the asphalt road for the emergency vehicles to get through but, he figured nobody but a complete fool would attempt to go around a sheriff’s car with its blue lights flashing. He had just stepped out of the car, radio mike in hand, when rookie deputy Nelson Howirth pulled up even with his patrol car blocking the path he had left open for the emergency vehicles.
“Only a fool.” He whispered to himself and then loudly barked at the rookie. “What the hell are you doing blocking the part of the road I left open, you nimrod. The fire trucks have to get by and what are you doing here? I thought you were checking on the theft over at old man Bailey’s hardware store.”
“Shoot Paul. I’m just here to help. I heard the call from the sheriff when he radioed you and I had just finished with my report of the petty theft so I thought I’d come see what I could do to help.”
“Well ok Nelson. We’ll need all the help we can get. I’ll tell you what I want you to do. Climb out of that car and come stand over in front of mine. I want you to keep everybody and I mean everybody out of the resort until we get this mess straightened out. Only let the fire department, other law enforcement people, and ambulances in. From what I can tell we have a real mess in there and I don’t want a bunch of townspeople or tourist getting in the way of the rescue operation. I’m in charge until the sheriff gets here so, I am going to take your car and drive on into the resort and see what I can do to help till the reinforcements arrive.”