The Trip to Raptor Bluff (2 page)

“It sounds like a horrible place to work.”

“It would be for some people if it weren’t for the salaries.  All of the employees, me included, make too much money to consider going anywhere else.  And the perks are great, too.  This field trip is one of them.  Joshua is footing the bill for this whole trip to Raptor Bluff and giving Lucy, Brenda, Andrea, and me two weeks off to chaperone it.”

“It still sounds horrible.”

“We are just like any big dysfunctional family is all,” laughed Rick.  “And speaking of one of the dysfunctional members, here comes Brenda.”

Brenda lumbered to the front of the bus pulling a rolling cooler of drinks and carrying a large backpack full of snacks.  She looked at Abby’s name tag and smiled. “Hi Abby, care for a snack or a drink?” 

“I’ll take a sports drink, thanks,” Abby replied.  “Rick, what do you want?  I’ll get it for you.”

“How about water and two bags of chips? Any kind will do.”

Brenda handed the snacks to Abby and glanced at the sleeping Caleb under the seat.  “Thanks for taking care of the dog.  I was worried that he would be all over the place.  My son’s dog throws up every time he gets in the car.  Ugh!”  She laughed and patted Abby’s shoulder.  “Nice to meet you, Abby.  We are going to have a great time.”

“She seems really nice to me,” said Abby after Brenda had moved back to her seat.

“You aren’t a threat to her power and control.  The monster won’t come out unless Caleb misbehaves or Lucy tries to interfere with her game.  You will be fine.”

“Is that her kid?  The curly haired girl sitting beside her?”

“Yeah, that’s Shelly, Brenda’s thirteen-year-old daughter.  She’s a good kid.  The other kid, the one sitting beside Andrea, is Dakota, Lucy’s twelve-year-old daughter.  I don’t know much about her except that Andrea is her godmother.”  He glanced out the window and pointed down towards the coastline that was just coming into view.  “This is one of the most beautiful drives in the country.  I never get tired of it.  We will have these amazing Pacific Ocean views off and on until we turn inland towards Eugene.”

“The trip info said the drive is about six hours.  That’s just long enough,” sighed Abby.  “I love this drive too, although I’ve never gone past Port Fortand.”

“We are going to stay on the coastal highway until we get to Cooper’s Bay.  From there, we will travel inland to Eugene.  This drive along the coast takes a couple hours longer than the inland drive, but who would drive inland and miss this scenery?”

“I agree,” Abby said as she stuck her head in the aisle and looked towards the back of the bus.  “But it looks like Brenda and her daughter are the only ones looking at the view.”  One of Abby’s classmates, a strikingly pretty girl named Leanna, caught Abby’s eye from the back of the bus and rose from her seat.  Abby said a quiet curse to herself as Leanna made her way down the aisle.  Leanna was in the same grade as Abby but had only been a student at St. Mary’s since September of the previous school year. 

“Mind if I join you?” she whispered over Abby’s shoulder.  “I won’t crowd the dog sleeping under the seat.”

“Not if you are going to try to save my soul.”

“I won’t,” laughed Leanna.  “You guys think that having a relationship with Jesus means being all religious and stern and everything.  It’s nothing like that.”

“Um, you are preaching at me in the same sentence where you said you wouldn’t preach at me.”

“I won’t, I promise,” said Leanna, sliding into the seat next to Abby.  “Tara is sound asleep and her mom, Andrea, is making the rest of us be quiet so we won’t wake her up.  Like anything would wake her up.”  Leanna rolled her eyes as a look of disgust flitted across her face.

Abby had to laugh.  Tara was known for nodding off in class at least a couple of times a week.

“Between Tara’s scratching and her sleeping, she drives me crazy.  Not to mention that she looks down on me.  The only reason she’s nice to me is because Andrea and Lucy are best friends, and I’m Lucy’s foster daughter.  If Andrea and Lucy weren’t friends, Tara would totally bully me.”

“You are probably right about that.  Until you started at Saint Mary’s, Tara was the undisputed fairest in the land.”

“Oh well,” sang Leanna. “As long as Andrea and Lucy stay friends, I ‘m safe from Tara.  Sucks to be her!”

“How did you end up living with Lucy?” asked Rick, who was listening to the exchange.  “It’s none of my business I guess, but I’m asking anyway.”

“Through church,” said Leanna.  “Lucy teaches Bible study and the meetings are at her house.  I’m part of the youth group and that’s how we met.  I told her I was having problems with the dad in my last foster home and she offered to take me in.”

“Lucy teaches Bible classes?” The look of shock on Rick’s face made both girls laugh.

“Yeah, I know,” shrugged Leanna.  “She doesn’t come across as a people person, does she?  I was kind of worried at first but things have turned out OK.  She’s actually really good to me, not that we will ever be close.  The only person who she’s close to is Andrea, but that’s because Andrea acts like her slave.”  Leanna shrugged again.  “Like I said, Lucy is really good to me, and her daughter Dakota is a great kid.  I’m lucky that Lucy took me in.  Nobody’s perfect, right?”

“Shhhh, Leanna,” hissed Abby.  “What if someone hears you?  Your voice carries!”  Abby didn’t trust Leanna.  She had genuinely liked her when they met at the beginning of the school year, but soon realized that Leanna needed to project herself as an authority on just about everything. The girls were still friendly with each other, but Abby found Leanna’s preaching and her know-it-all attitude to be insufferable. Still, she couldn’t help but ask, “You sound pretty disgusted with Tara.  Did you guys have a falling out?”

“She has everyone fooled,” Leanna whispered.  “I better not say anything else.”  She pressed her lips together but her eyes shouted that she had gossip of monumental proportions.

Abby decided not to give her the satisfaction of pressing for information.  Instead, she lifted the book that was lying face down in her lap.  “I’m not going to be much better company than Tara is.  I want to watch the scenery and finish this chapter before we stop.”

Abby was still reading with her head against the window when the vibrations from the bus indicated that Rick had turned on to a gravel road.  “We are at Hammer Mountain Park,” he announced to the riders.  “The plan is to have a snack at the overlook and then stop for an hour in Port Fortand to do some sightseeing.”

Brenda walked up, kneed the antsy Caleb out of the way with a scowl, and said, “We can stop here to eat and use the bathrooms, but I’m not so sure we need to sightsee in Port Fortand afterwards.  The girls are anxious to get to Eugene.”

“Too bad,” said Rick with a shrug.  “We agreed beforehand that we would take the scenic route and stop to see the town of Port Fortand.  I’m sticking with the plan.  Besides, the hotel in Eugene isn’t expecting us until 4 o’clock and we won’t be able to check in.”

Brenda sighed, “The kids weren’t too impressed with the views from the 101.  If I had known they were so disinterested, I would have insisted on an inland trip to Eugene.  It would have been two hours shorter.”  Just then the bus shuddered with enough force to cause Rick to grip the steering wheel with both hands.  Brenda grabbed the hanging leather handhold above his head and nearly toppled into his lap. 

Squeals of “Earthquake!” came from the back of the bus. 

Brenda laughed.  “Don’t you dare scare the kids with your talk of the Cascadia Fault, Rick.  That’s all we need: a bus full of hysterical teenage girls.”

Rick glanced nervously out the window as he pulled the bus into a large gravel parking area on the coastal side of the mountain road.  “I don’t like the feel of that, especially after the small quake we had yesterday.”

Brenda winked at Abby and Leanna and said, “Rick and Joshua Zeem have been talking about the impending doom of the
Big One
, a giant rupture in the Cascadia Fault, for years.  It’s just silly.  Don’t let him make you nervous.”  Suddenly the bus lurched again and Brenda fell against Rick, who had stopped the bus and was standing.  The force of her fall pushed him back into his seat.  More shrieks and laughter came from the back of the bus.

“We are too close to the edge of the highway and the coastal cliffs,” said Rick as he restarted the engine.  I’m going to move us all inland.  There are other rest sites further in.”

“You are ridiculous!” chided Brenda.  She was still laughing as she walked towards the back of the bus.

Abby had felt her share of small to moderate earthquake tremors but she had never been in a vehicle when they occurred.  It felt as though the bus was shaking in a sideways motion, strongly enough so that she had to grab Caleb’s collar to keep him from toppling into the aisle.  When she glanced at Rick, his previously relaxed expression was replaced by a look of deep worry.  He caught Abby’s eyes in the rearview mirror and said, “It almost feels as though the bus is broken – like I don’t have control over it anymore.  Hang on, I’m gonna speed to the next nearest inland parking area.”  The bus lurched forward as another round of shaking occurred.  Two girls in the back of the bus were thrown from their seats, and items on the overhead baggage racks tumbled into the aisle.  Caleb started barking as the bus veered on to two wheels. More girls fell into the aisle as their dramatic screams turned to screams of real fear.  Rick shot the bus into a picnic area, noting that the picnic tables were moving and that trash containers were rolling on the ground.  He slammed to a stop but the bus was still in motion, rocking and shaking on the heaving ground.

“Clear the bus!  Leave your things and get out of the bus!” Rick shouted as he opened the doors.  “Abby, take the girls over to that area by the bathrooms but don’t get too close to the building itself.  I need to make sure everyone gets out.”

By now the ground was heaving so hard that Abby fell on top of Leanna, who was still seated.  “Leanna, you have to get out!  Move!”

Leanna jumped to her feet and ran for the door, but fell down the stairs leading to the exit when a gigantic shudder gripped the bus.

“Hang on to the seats when you walk down the aisle!  Go! Go! Go!” shouted Rick.  By then, more screaming girls had made it to the front of the bus and were trying to stay upright as they moved towards the exit.  Leanna picked herself up from the bottom step and jumped from the bus with Abby on her heels.  They gripped the safety bars beside the door and began pulling the frightened girls off the steps and onto the convulsing ground. Their hold on the safety bars was the only thing that enabled them to stay on their feet.

“Tell everyone to move to that area by the bathrooms!” Abby shouted to Leanna.  “I’ve gotta get Caleb out from under the seat!”  She rushed up the stairs against the flow of exiting girls and reached under the seat to grab the cowering Caleb.  It was all she could do to drag him into the aisle.  He charged the open door, causing Abby to fall to her knees.  Two girls fell on top of her as she lost her grip on Caleb’s collar.

“Move! Move! Move!” Brenda’s order sounded over a cacophony of screams. She was standing in the aisle towards the middle of the bus where the exodus was thwarted by Tara, who was trying to get her bag from the overhead storage rack. “Forget your bag, Tara!  For god’s sake, move!  You are holding everyone up!”

Tara scrambled onto a seat to better reach her bag, which was wedged in the back behind a backpack.  “My bag!” she wailed.  “I need my bag!”

Brenda grabbed the hood of Tara’s sweatshirt and yanked her off the seat and into the aisle.  “Andrea! Dammit! Get Tara out of here!  She’s blocking the aisle!”

“Keep your fu…  freaking hands off my daughter!” shouted Andrea as she elbowed her way forward.  Andrea clutched Tara’s arm as she was attempting yet again to climb onto a seat to reach her bag. She yanked Tara off the seat for the second time.  Tara was sobbing as she was pushed towards the door by the crush of desperate girls behind her. 

Rick used the bar beside his seat to keep his balance while the bus emptied. He was the last one off, and was caught by surprise as the moving ground rushed up to meet him when he stepped down.  The earth was pitching from side to side as he rounded the front of the bus and tried to run towards the open picnic area.  “Stay down and cover your heads!” he shouted as he fell forward.  The intense shaking beneath him kept him from rising to his feet.  He simply could not stand up.  A loud rumbling filled his ears, followed by the roar of a landslide as trees, earth, and boulders tumbled downwards towards the campground’s far edge.  From his hands and knees, he stared in disbelief as a six inch crack in a paved area opened beneath his eyes.  He rolled to the left and tried to rise to his feet.  Once again the force of the earth’s shaking threw him to the ground.  He saw another small crack in the earth, this one slowly opening and closing as it grew in length.  Pools of water appeared around him, in the pavement and in grassy areas, rising from somewhere deep inside the ground.  In other places, small mini-volcano looking sand hills appeared.  The roof and one wall of the bathroom building collapsed.  He could barely hear the screams coming from the area where the others were huddled; the noise from the settling landslide was just too loud.  Caleb’s pitiful howling pierced the air from the woods somewhere near the landslide.

In the center of the picnic area, the students and chaperones huddled in small groups.  Groundwater seeping up through the cracks and indentations in the earth soaked them as they tumbled like clothes in a dryer.  The rumble of yet another landslide from the hill on the east side of the area added to the din and Caleb, with his ears back and his tail between his legs, rushed to the group of cowering humans.  Abby grabbed his collar and forced him to the ground beside her.  She held his quivering body as he whimpered against her side.  Suddenly, a crack of thunderous noise shattered the air, followed by another and another, as the ground fell away from the cliffs west of the picnic area.  Terrified shrieks were drowned out as thousands of tons of earth and rock broke away from the mountain and plunged towards the coastline.  For the next three minutes, the group of petrified humans held each other and prayed for deliverance.

Rick had crawled his way to the others and was the first to stand when the shaking finally stopped.  Even then, he lurched to catch his balance; he was nauseous and dizzy from the long minutes of violent, nonstop motion.  He sought Brenda’s eyes and beckoned her closer with a nod of his head.  She approached on shaky legs, her arm tightly around her stumbling and crying daughter, Shelly.

“Look at the bus,” he whispered.  “A whole section broke away from the mountain and fell down to the coast.” 

Brenda turned panicked eyes to the bus and gasped.  It was tilted slightly sideways and only the two front wheels and the closest rear wheel had full contact with the road.  The far rear wheel was spinning in air above the cliff.  “Oh my god!  The whole highway is gone!”

Lucy had checked to make sure the teens were all unharmed before she stumbled towards Rick and Brenda.  Her arm was in a hugging grip around Dakota’s waist.

“We are stranded.  We will be stuck here for who knows how long,” said Rick, letting his eyes sweep the ledge where the bus teetered.  “We have to get our supplies and our clothes off the bus.”

“Rick, don’t you dare!” cried Lucy. 

“What are our other options, Lucy?  Everything we need to survive is on that bus.  All of our food, clothes, the emergency kit Joshua packed for us…  It could be weeks before we are rescued.  We have to plan for that.  I have to go back in the bus!”

Brenda caught Rick’s eye and nodded.  They didn’t have a choice.

“He’s right,” said Abby, who had come up behind them.  She was strangely calm when she said, “Someone needs to get on the bus and retrieve our supplies before an aftershock hits.  I’m the lightest of the students and I can help.”

“Me too,” said Leanna, who had tripped across the ground with Abby. 

When Brenda began to protest, Rick cut her off.  “It’s settled, Brenda.  Abby, Leanna, and I are going into the bus.  Unloading will go much faster with three of us working.  We will need everyone’s help to move our stuff away from the cliff, though.  Get the girls together and have them form a line starting at the bus door and ending near the bathrooms.  We will pass things hand-to-hand.  Now hurry!”

Brenda looked from the bus to the groups of cowering girls who were just beginning to stand up.  “Oh my god, Rick!”

“Go!  Get an assembly line ready for us.  An aftershock could toss the bus right off the edge!”

Brenda rushed back to the clusters of students as Abby, Leanna, and Rick sprinted towards the bus.  The open door faced them but was raised higher than it should have been due to the slight rear tilt over the edge of the cliff.

“I’m going in first,” said Rick.  “I’ll start grabbing stuff from the back and tossing it forward.  Abby, you pass it to Leanna, and Leanna, you throw it out the door.”

“Bull,” said Abby, cutting in front of him.  “Leanna and I will go in first.  You weigh twice as much as we do and you could tip us all over the edge.”  She was already hoisting herself up the steps when Rick reached up to grab her.  She jerked away and clamored into the bus. 

“Don’t be a moron,” Leanna said as she pushed in front of Rick and held out her hand so Abby could help her up the first step. “If your weight tips the bus, all three of us die.”

Rick couldn’t argue with the logic and reluctantly let them precede him.  “Rush it!  I’m right behind you!”

The bus felt surprisingly stable, even with the tilt, as Abby and Leanna quickly made their way down the aisle.  

Everything from the overhead racks on the driver’s side had already fallen onto seats or into the aisle.  The girls quickly began lifting and sliding everything they could reach towards Rick, who was standing near the front.  He hurled the items out the door as fast as he caught them.  The considerable weight and bulk of some of the items went unnoticed as they passed from Abby, to Leanna, to Rick, and finally to the line of girls waiting outside. 

The bags, backpacks, boxes, and coolers moved quickly out the door until Abby handed Leanna the bag belonging to Tara.  Rick and Abby stared dumbfounded as Leanna propped the bag on a seat, unzipped it, and began rooting around inside. 

“What are you
doing
?
”
shouted Rick.  “We don’t have time…”

Leanna, her face in a grim smile, held up the prize she fully expected to find in Tara’s duffel.  It was a small, zip-sealed bag filled with yellow pills. “OxyContin,” she said.  “Enough for an addict’s two-week supply.  Why do you think she got hysterical when we tried to make her leave the bus without her bag?”

Rick’s face still registered shock as he caught the bag of pills that Leanna tossed to him.  He quickly stuffed it in his pocket.  “Keep moving!  We’ll deal with this later!  How many more bags, Abby?”

“Two more!” grunted Abby from underneath the back seat.  “They are wedged in the far back corner.  Got them!”  She clamored to her feet and threw the first bag to Leanna.  She was reaching for the last bag when she felt the bus tilt slightly.

“Run!  Get out of the bus!” screamed Rick from the doorway.  He reached for Leanna’s outstretched hand, yanked her forward, and threw her onto the ground outside.  “Tell the others to move back!  Move everyone away from the cliff!”

Abby was on her hands and knees, trying to push the heavy bag in front of her.  Rick ran towards her, lifted the bag with one hand, and grabbed a handful of Abby’s windbreaker with the other.  He tossed both out the door.  Abby sprawled onto the ground and was scrambling to her feet when the bus’s movement caused a loud, screeching noise.  The bus tilted sickeningly towards the edge of the cliff and stopped.  “Rick!” she screamed.  “Rick, get out!”