Earth (Complete)

Thirteen

I attempted scurrying to the edge, hoping, praying, that this wasn't the end. That I didn't lose him... The ground shook violently beneath me and I called out his name, unable to peer down into the big, gaping hole of nothing. I waited, and waited, and waited. Each and every one of those seconds were torture at its finest.

And I felt it – the buildup of what was going to be an exceedingly long night. Tears of despair brimmed my eyes and just as the first salty tear was about to fall, a hand appeared on the edge of the shaking cliff. Swiftly filled with a newfound hope, I grabbed handfuls of sand and grass to pull myself to the edge and just as I got there, a whole arm appeared. As quick as I could, I gripped onto Dylan's dirty leather jacket and pulled with all my might.

His other dirty, scratched up arm appeared and soon, I was helping him up onto the solid part of the ground that still shook beneath us. Without any word, he grabbed me with an impressive amount of strength and we ran to one of the houses on the far left.

He shoved me against the wood and pressed himself against me, wrapping his thickly shredded arms around me, shielding me from the danger behind, protecting me from what lay before. The ground beneath us shook still, but only for that few more minutes, and the quaking, turned into a slight tremble, then disappeared.

Breathing heavily against one another, he slowly looked up and into my eyes. They flickered to mine, then behind us, his breathing slowing as mine did. The field behind us had literally turned into a board of grassy chess, the black blocks being the wholes created by the quake, and the white being the bits of grass left behind. Chunks of the earth had caved into itself, leaving the rest to stand by in a collection of patterns. And through all this, the dome wall stood and the waves of sand outside, left untouched.

And as if the earthquake wasn't enough...

Hovercrafts sounded in the distance, approaching the scene. Dylan glanced around the corner, then ducked back. "Fuck. Police monkeys. C'mon."

Rounding the back of the house, we approached a basement door and he threw it open, shoving me inside as he jumped down and shut the door. I rushed down the stairs into a pitch-black room. It was cold and felt awfully soggy. No sooner had I entered the dark room, had I felt a large hand on my back, then on my arm, and then a strong rough hand slipped through mine.

And soon, my eyes had adjusted to the dark and I could make out certain things – things like the fact that the basement was completely empty and the fact that Dylan and I were the only living things in it. We stood silently in the dark and listened. People exited their hovercrafts and feet was heard stomping towards the destruction the disaster created.

"What do you think it was?" a manly voice said.

"Definitely a quake. Nothing else could've done this much damage. And just inside the dome too."

"So what do we do?"

"Look around. See if anyone's nearby. Someone could've triggered it."

Triggered it? A natural disaster? The thought almost felt impossible until I realised what we did. The dome wall didn't only run above the ground, but a couple hundred kilometers below as well. When Dylan and I threw the stones at it, the vibrations must have – unsettled? – the tectonic plates, caused a shift or something. I don't know what we did, but that was the most logical conclusion.

"Dylan..." I whispered.

"Shuuuu." He hushed me, his eyes glued to the stairs where the light beamed through the tiny slits in the wood of the basement door, his hand tightening around mine. A few more minutes in the dark and anxiety settled into my bones. What if they found us?