10: Total chaos

At the Rostia Central Hospital, panicked nurses rushed through the corridors as patients were thrown from their beds.

“Get everyone away from the windows!”

“Move the patients to the stairwell!”

“The elevators are down!”

A doctor grabbed the railing as the entire corridor lurched violently. “What’s happening?!”

Nobody answered him.

The lights flickered, then the ceiling split open.

A nurse screamed as a section of concrete crashed down behind her, narrowly missing an occupied bed.

“GET OUT! EVERYONE, GET OUT!”

But where could they go?

The main stairwell had already fractured down the center. Emergency exits were jammed with panicked patients and family members, while outside, the streets were no safer than the building they were trying to escape.

A young father carrying his infant daughter stumbled through the smoky corridor, desperately searching for his wife.

“Sarah! Sarah, where are you?”

He had left her in the maternity ward just minutes before to grab their bags. Now, he couldn’t find her.

“Sarah!”

A nurse caught his arm as she ran past. “Sir, you have to evacuate immediately!”

“My wife is in there!”

“Sir, please!”

He shook her off and sprinted toward the maternity ward. The building shook again and he barely had time to look up before the world came crashing down.

His daughter’s cries were swallowed whole by the roar of collapsing stone.

By 2:00 PM, the death toll was climbing at an unimaginable rate.

Emergency services were overwhelmed. Communication networks began failing as power stations shut down, communication towers toppled, and underground cables snapped.

Some cities lost electricity entirely and entire sections of power grids collapsed.

The few emergency broadcasts that remained operational repeated the same desperate instructions.

Remain calm. Stay away from damaged buildings. Seek shelter in an open area. Wait for further instructions.

But there was no calm. There was only fear.

A little boy stood in the middle of a shattered road, his school uniform stained with dust and blood.

He was crying so hard that he could barely breathe.

“Daddy?”

He turned in circles, looking at the wreckage surrounding him. “Daddy! Mommy!”

People rushed past him, desperate to save themselves.

Nobody stopped.

He stumbled toward a woman lying motionless beside an overturned car and shook her arm. “Please, have you seen my mommy?”

The woman didn’t answer.

He shook her harder, tears streaming down his face. “Please! I can’t find my mommy!”

A passing man paused, grabbed the boy’s hand, and yanked him upright. “Come with me, kid. We have to move right now.”

“No! I want my mommy!”

“Listen to me, we have to go!”

“I WANT MY MOMMY!”

The man looked around helplessly, his own face streaked with dirt.

He had no idea where the boy’s parents were. He didn’t even know whether his own family was still alive.

All he could do was drag the screaming child away from the collapsing buildings as the ground continued to shake.

3:00 PM.

The earthquake showed no signs of stopping and it had already been eight hours.

To the people trapped beneath the rubble, every passing minute felt like an eternity as they wondered and prayed for it to stop.

A woman crouched beneath a concrete staircase, holding her elderly father while her younger brother tried to force open a blocked doorway.

“It’s stuck!” he shouted. “I can’t get it open!”

“Try again!”

“I AM TRYING!”

He threw his shoulder against the metal door once, twice, and on the third hit, the entire staircase above them groaned and shifted.

“MOVE!”

His sister barely had time to pull their father against her before the ceiling collapsed.

The last thing she heard was her brother screaming her name, and then the dark took everything.

Elsewhere, a bus full of passengers overturned when the road split apart beneath its wheels. People screamed as the vehicle rolled down an embankment, crushing its roof against the ground.

A train derailed outside a major city, its carriages colliding in a chain of deafening impacts.

A coastal settlement watched in horror as the earth cracked beneath its buildings, sending houses sliding toward the water.

And throughout the world, people who had never imagined they would die that night found themselves fighting for their lives.

Some prayed, some screamed, some desperately called their loved ones, listening to the unanswered ringing of their phones.

Others simply sat on the ground, unable to move, watching the world they had known crumble around them.

Nobody understood why the earthquake was happening and nobody knew when it would stop or if it ever will.

Out in an open public park devoid of high-rises, Ward and Susan stood shoulder-to-shoulder among a crowd of dazed survivors. Their clothes were shredded, and their bodies were covered in jagged cuts and dark bruises, their chests heaving with every ragged breath.

After a while, they could no longer feel the quake, the tremor.

“Oh God… has it stopped?” a panicked woman nearby whispered aloud.

Everyone looked around slowly, realizing with dizzying disbelief that the shaking had actually ceased.

“I need to find my son! I need to find my son!” a mother shrieked, suddenly breaking into a frantic run toward the smoking ruins of the avenue.

Ward looked at Susan, letting out a long, shuddering sigh. “Let’s go look for Vivi.”

Susan scoffed, still gasping for air as she shook her head. “Are you insane? There’s no way she survived that. Nobody in those old apartments made it out.”

Ward nodded slowly, his jaw tightening. “I told her to stay with us, but she wouldn’t listen. I could have protected her. I have to go check her building. You go see if your parents are safe.”

Susan grabbed his hand instantly, her fingers digging in with desperate panic. “No. Please, we can’t separate. What if it starts again? I’m so scared, Ward.”

Ward gave a tired, defeated nod, pulling her close. “Okay. Then let’s stick together and find a way out of here. Making calls is impossible right now, and finding anyone is going to be a nightmare. Let’s go.”