Annabel wound up lying on her stomach with the rug bunched underneath her. She lifted her head and looked toward the door. It had been wrenched from its hinges and hung at a cockeyed angle. She reached out, caught hold of Cole's sleeve, and shouted over the rumbling, "Look!" She pointed at the door.
Cole made, it to his feet on his second attempt, and he took Annabel with him, grasping her arm to pull her upright. The floor wasn't shaking quite as much now. Both of them stumbled toward the door. They had to get outside, Annabel knew. They wouldn't necessarily be safe, but they would be better off out in the open than in this building, which had not been constructed to withstand such violent tremors.
Cole grabbed the doorknob and wrenched it to the side. One of the hatchet men was suddenly in front of him, weapon upraised to strike. Even in the middle of an earthquake, Wing Ko's boo how doy were going to follow their orders.
Before the hatchet could fall, Cole's fist shot put and slammed into the man's jaw with stunning force. The guard went backward, bouncing off the opposite wall before falling unconscious in the doorway. Cole took Annabel's hand and stepped over the man.
Once they were in the corridor, they saw that the other hatchet man had been trapped under a collapsing ceiling beam. Annabel knew at a glance that he was dead, his skull crushed.
Cole bent over and scooped up one of the fallen hatchets. "How do we get out of here?" he shouted. The noise of the quake wasn't as bad now, but it was still painful to the ears.
Annabel glanced around desperately. She had no more idea than he did which way led out of the mazelike warren of corridors and chambers inside Wing Ko's house. Another tremor hit, throwing Cole and Annabel into each other's arms. They hung on to each other tightly until the aftershock passed.
These were aftershocks now, Annabel knew. She had lived through the quake in '89, plus dozens of smaller ones. She knew the first shock was usually the worst, but the smaller ones that followed could be almost as devastating. This one, in fact, had caused the wall at the end of the hallway to collapse, and grayish dawn light flooded in from outside.
Cole saw the opening at the same time as Annabel, and he began racing toward it, tugging her along with him. He didn't have to tug very hard—she wanted out of here as much as he did.
Annabel pulled back slightly as they neared the gaping hole in the side of the building. She didn't want them to run out blindly and perhaps plummet into a fissure that had opened up in the earth. Cole must have thought of the same thing, because he said, "I'll take a look."
"I'm going with you!"
He didn't argue. They stepped cautiously to the edge, where the hallway had snapped off as if broken by a giant, careless child. The floor now slanted up at about a twenty-degree angle.
The drop to the ground outside was only four feet. Cole said, "Come on," and hopped lithely to the surface. Then he turned back and helped Annabel down. As they swung around, away from the house, they got their first good look at the general damage.
"Oh, my God," Cole breathed. Annabel knew the words were intended to be a prayer, because she was echoing them in her mind.
The destruction and chaos were incredible.
Everywhere they looked along this Chinatown avenue, buildings had either collapsed or were canted sideways at perilous angles. Cracks ran through the street, some of them narrow fissures only a few inches wide, others gaping abysses that spanned several feet. Steam spouted into the air from some of the fissures. In other places, water fountained high above the street from pipes—previously under the surface, but now exposed—that had buckled and broken as the earth shook.
The street was full of people running and screaming, shouting curses and questions, crying desperately for loved ones from whom they had been separated. Most were in nightclothes, though some had hastily and haphazardly pulled on regular garb and others were practically naked. Nearly everyone was in bare feet, and since there was so much broken glass lying scattered in the street, people also cried out in pain as their soles were slashed.
Cole put his arm around Annabel and pulled her tightly to his side as they stared at the wreckage of an entire city. Annabel had known, of course, that this earthquake was destined to be a bad one, but knowing something in a textbook sort of way was entirely different from witnessing the calamity and its accompanying human misery.
When Annabel looked up at Cole, he seemed dazed, as he must have been. What he was seeing here was completely unexpected to him. Annabel's brain was stunned, too, but she knew she had to snap out of it—and quickly.
"Cole," she said. "Cole, we have to get away. Wing Ko and his men could still come looking for us."
He gave a little shake of his head as he came out of his horrific reverie. "You're right," he said. "Let's go." Then he added in a bleak voice, "But where?"
Annabel cast her mind back to Earl's good-natured lectures and the things she had learned in school about the Great San Francisco Earthquake. As much death arid destruction as the monster tremor itself had caused, the fires that followed it had been even worse.