What Stands in a Storm by Kim Cross

Author:Kim Cross
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

At the far end of Charleston Square, two newlyweds crawled out of their bathroom to find every wall of their student apartment warped, torn, or missing. Water dripped through holes in the ceiling, and through the front door of their second-story apartment they could hear a neighbor screaming and crying. They looked at each other and filled the sinks and tub with whatever water was left in the pipes. Then they opened the door and realized how lucky they were.

Their corner of Charleston Square was the only section of the complex that still retained some semblance of a roof. Looking around them, they took in 360 degrees of chaos. Much of the complex was leveled to the foundation, and the massive oaks that had shaded the courtyard were splintered across the lawn. Muffled screams were coming from beneath great piles of rubble.

Derek and Susan DeBruin closed the door and rummaged through rooms that looked as if they had been hit by a hurricane, gathering first aid kits, headlamps, knee pads, gloves, and water. Derek, a grad student in higher education administration, was grateful he had taken a Wilderness First Responder course just a few months ago, a requirement for his summer job as a rock-climbing guide. He was still wearing his yellow mountaineering boots, which he had pulled on that morning to try out a new pair of crampons—the pointy metal spikes that would allow him to walk across a glacier. He kept the boots on as he and his young wife, Susan, began scrambling across precarious heaps of broken boards spiked with rusty nails.

Someone on the east side of the building was calling for help from the parking lot. Derek climbed over a three-foot wall of debris as Susan ran around it. In the parking lot they found three college students hovering over a figure sprawled on the ground. He ran to them and saw on the ground a blonde woman who looked a year or two younger than Susan, probably a fellow student. Her blue eyes were open but unseeing, pupils dilated, and when he pressed his fingers to her neck he felt her thready pulse slipping away.

Beside him, Susan did not see what her husband saw with a trained and clinical eye, that the extent of this woman’s injuries was such that CPR was not possible. She only saw a beautiful young blonde woman, and a shirt that was ripped to pieces.

Derek looked up at the three students, two boys and a girl, standing over him, holding their breath. He had assumed they were the young woman’s friends, but they did not know her, and yet they visibly mourned her loss. He asked them to go find him a sheet. He laid it gently over her body. Nicole Mixon, twenty-two, a junior in accounting, was an honor student and a member of the Gamma Phi Beta sorority. She left behind three younger sisters.

Charleston Square was now throbbing with people exhibiting a kaleidoscope of mental states. A hysterical woman emerged from the periphery, crying loudly and uncontrollably.

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