The big one, p.1
The Big One, page 1
The Big One
Patrick Barb
Anuci Press
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2025 by Patrick Barb
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address:
Tanuci69@gmail.com
First paperback edition 2025
Anuci Press edition 2025
www.anuci-press.com
Cover Design by Lynne Hansen
ISBN 979-8-9989778-4-8 (paperback)
ISBN 979-8-9989778-5-5(eBook)
THE BIG ONE
PATRICK BARB
Chapter 1
Someone dying wasn’t a reason to celebrate. Hank knew that.
And yet, when the last call of the day ended up being an O.D. in the Haight, with cops and the city’s overworked medical examiners swarming a filthy single-occupancy apartment, the resulting relief was unavoidable.
After Vic and Darren were waved back into the ambulance and their three-person crew was told to go home, Hank revved the engine and flicked on both lights and siren.
Darren made his way up from the back, pushing against the seatbacks and sliding over the center console like a gymnast on a pommel horse. Landing in the front passenger seat, he turned to Hank and said, “You know you’re only supposed to turn those on for an emergency, right?”
The way he said it—deadpan, with a hint of concern at the end—made Hank turn his head. But the driver rolled his eyes and huffed out an exasperated breath when he caught the shit-eating grin on his co-worker’s face.
“You fuck,” Hank said.
Darren exploded with laughter.
In the back, Vic stretched her seatbelt across her stout upper body and clicked it in place. Her hand, with concealer worn away to reveal many self-inflicted scars, hovered above her pants’ pocket. Hank watched from the rearview. He knew she sometimes brought a flask on the job. He hoped she didn’t have it and wouldn’t take a drink from it if she did. Even though their shift was over, one more infraction while in the ambulance and he’d have to report her to the hospital administrators.
And that was the absolute last thing Vic needed.
When she pulled her empty hand back and laid it across her lap, Hank breathed a sigh of relief. With that mini-crisis averted, he slammed on the brakes, sending Darren—who still hadn’t buckled up—headbanging into the dashboard. “Man!” the gangly man shouted, palms slapping the glovebox.
This time, Hank laughed. A single sharp HA!
As if to say, NOW, we’re even.
Giving the driver side-eye, Darren clicked his seatbelt in at last. Hank’s foot bounced on the gas pedal in anticipation of the trip home.
“What’s the hurry?” Darren asked.
“Sitter’s leaving soon. Gotta get back to take Marcy and Abel out for ice cream. I promised ‘em,” Hank said.
“Oooh, look at Mister Mom here taking the kids out for ice cream. Whatchoo gonna have, man?”
Vic chimed in from the back. “Butter pecan?”
“Naw, naw, my man’s gonna have himself some rocky road…”
Hank’s answer came as a mumble, tone modulated so the others wouldn’t hear.
He should’ve known what a bad idea that was. Like throwing chum for sharks. Would’ve been better to say nothing at all.
Darren leaned to the left, pushing his shoulder against the driver’s. “Excuse me? What was that, senõr?”
Hank sighed. “I’m not having any. Trying to watch what I eat…”
Ever the shark, Darren attacked fast. He grabbed the white uniform shirt covering Hank’s stomach. Gave his belly a good jiggle.
“Awww, buddy, ain’t gonna lose the muffin top though, are ya? That’s your moneymaker, bay-bee.”
Hank grabbed Darren’s hand. Pushed it away. “You asshol—”
He bit off his rejoinder. Without warning, his stomach flip-flopped with its acrobatics matched by the steering wheel sliding sharply from side to side, rubbing hard at the tan skin of Hank’s palms.
“Pull over!” Vic shouted from the back.
She didn’t need to tell Hank twice. He wrestled control of the vehicle back from the rattling tremors shaking the ambulance and its passengers. He aimed for the nearest bit of available curb. By the sound of honking horns, screeching brakes, and what might’ve been the tinkling of broken headlights falling on asphalt, it seemed every other driver had the same idea.
The trio braced for impact. No one said the word. But they were damn sure all thinking it…
Earthquake.
Except, what came next wasn’t the typical early morning rumbler, the kind Hank and the others were accustomed to, the small price to pay for living in the Bay Area. It wasn’t a minor tremor, where a lamp falls over or a few wine glasses shatter. The initial rumble that sent the ambulance off the road was a mere amuse-bouche compared to the sumptuous main course of mass destruction that followed.
First, there was nothing. But a bad nothing, accompanied by unease and a certainty that the worst was yet to come.
And come it did.
The earth exploded as though it were a shaken can of soda stabbed with a Bowie knife at maximum pressure. The ground cracked open ahead of them. One minute the road and surrounding scenery were whole, maybe a pothole here or there, a piece of gum stuck to a sidewalk, and then…
A loud cracking followed, the way thunder trails lightning. The sound alone made Hank nauseous. He clapped his hands over his ears and moaned softly. The splintering earth reminded him of feet stomping dry leaves in a New England autumn pastoral. This strange sense-memory flung him back to childhood travels East, and visits to his Gramamaw’s for Christmas.
The rending of rock, asphalt, and concrete was more intense. Like the tread of a giant—some fairy tale ogre come to life—trampling the earth and leaving its mark across great swaths of civilization.
The jagged tear split the street ahead of the ambulance and surged forward, backward, sideways, everywhere and anywhere all at once.
“What’s happening? What’s going on?” Vic asked from her inconvenient spot in the back.
“You’ll see soon!” Darren shouted.
And he was right, as the tremors continued and the resulting shockwaves brought the damage past the ambulance.
“Hold on!” Hank cried, taking his own advice as he gripped the steering wheel tighter. Asphalt and concrete rolled under them like choppy sea waves. Up and down, up and down.
Darren wasn’t laughing anymore. Instead, he whispered prayers under his breath. Enough Dios mio’s and Madre Maria’s to go around.
When Hank checked the mirror, he saw Vic’s mouth turned shiny. Droplets of brown liquid beaded at the corners of her lips. Her eyes met Hank’s, pleading. Please don’t tell anyone what I’ve done.
Hank returned a smile that probably appeared more like a grimace given their ongoing circumstances and his accompanying confusion and uncertainty. But it was the best assurance he could offer her.
With his heart beating and his stomach continuing its internal gymnastics, it was a moment before Hank realized the tremors had subsided. The sudden squawk of the radio managed to scare everyone inside the ambulance, more than the immense quake they’d just survived had.
“Ambulance 7, do you copy?” a disembodied, extremely agitated voice asked through the roaring static.
Hank clicked on the two-way. “Copy, dispatch, Ambulance 7 here. How’re y’all doing over there?”
There was a long pause and then, “Not great. We could use you all back here…”
Darren reached over and shook Hank’s shoulder. “Hank! Hank! Look!”
Hank did. Letting the two-way cord droop in his hand, like a wilted rose, he peered across through the front passenger window, following Darren’s finger.
He did so in the nick of time. From the curb where they’d parked to the liquor store—QUAN’S DISCOUNT LIQUORS AND WINE—was probably about a foot. Through the now open-air front of the building, thanks to the shattered plate glass all around, the driver and EMT observed screaming, crying patrons and shop employees, each person covered in glass shards. Some of the slivers cut into flesh, glass from the store windows but also from smashed bottles, glistening with liquor and the deep burgundy reds of wine.
Hank shook his head. The scene was like something from a medieval illustration of Hell, with glass-studded, bleeding wretches begging for mercy. He whispered a prayer of his own. Then, a low moan emanated from underground, a giant awakening below the liquor store.
One second, the store was standing, damaged but present. Then, the ground, just one foot from the ambulance, cratered and the resulting sinkhole swallowed QUAN’S LIQUORS AND WINE like a gluttonous Fourth of July hot-dog-eating contestant. Bloody, glass-scored survivors and all.
“Fucking drive!” Vic hiccoughed from the back. The zig-zag fissure, racing across the sidewalk from the sinkhole, headed straight for the ambulance. Its movement compelled Darren to join the chorus.
“Drive! Drive! Drive!”
Hank pulled forward, the front of the ambulance knocking over a shiny, barely-used Harley Davidson that probably belonged to some tech bro. He wrenched the steering wheel hard to the left, smashing into a stroller left aban doned and empty (God Hank hoped it was empty) in the middle of the road. Then, he drove.
Sirens wailed. Flashing red and white lights spilled across crumbling buildings, electrical fires burning unchecked, and all the dead and dying people kept out of sight.
Inside his head, Hank’s panicked screaming continued unfettered. When that stopped, he started repeating the names of his kids. Over and over again.
Marcy, Abel, Marcy, Abel, Marcy, Abel…
He wouldn’t, couldn’t allow himself to picture their faces. He knew if he did, the chances of imagining the carnage spread across the Bay to their apartment complex would be too strong. He couldn’t go on if he managed to envision their sweet light brown faces buried under brick and steel, plastic and glass. It would be too much to bear.
Even as he sped toward the hospital, his whispered words struck the windshield. Not a prayer, but a promise.
“Daddy’s coming home.”
Chapter 2
The two men and one woman sat in the ambulance, each puzzling over the answer to the unexpected question before them: how could an entire hospital disappear in broad daylight?
Of course, at a physical level, Hank and the others understood what’d happened. Moments prior, they’d pulled up short of the massive sinkhole where their hospital and surrounding buildings had stood a mere hour earlier when they’d gone for their final call of the day. After reversing ever so carefully and taking more time than a near-sighted blue hair to execute a Y-turn from the edge of the pit, Hank and his two co-workers climbed carefully from their vehicle to assess the situation.
Hank thought he was ready for whatever sights might wait past the rim of the sinkhole. He’d had two tours of duty as an M1 armor crewman driving a tank in Afghanistan under his belt, then five years behind an ambulance in one of the major metropolitan cities of the West Coast. He knew from injuries, minor and massive, and he’d seen death up-close and personal more times than he cared to share.
But the wreckage of San Francisco Uptown General showcased destruction and death at Costco-sized proportions. The crater spread across several city blocks, just as the hospital once had. Steel, concrete, glass, and plastic, none of the building materials were spared from the damage. The hungry earth had ripped away everything that was built on top of it.
Sewer lines leading to the site must’ve burst from multiple impacts since the sinkhole was filled with blackened water sloshing through the shattered ruins. The buildings had crumpled into each other like a collapsed house of cards. Brackish wastewater flowed between the debris, adding an otherworldly appearance to the damage site. It was like the crew had stumbled upon the sunken remnants of an ancient civilization reclaimed by the sea.
But there was no marble-columned temple, no row of terra cotta statues, or ruler’s gilded coffin waiting below their feet. Instead, they found a twenty-first-century, state-of-the-art hospital leveled in an instant with no regard for the purpose it served, the good it provided, or the people inside. Given the function of the structure, not only was there flooding, but electrical fires danced across the water in a blue-green flaming pattern like frost on windshields writ large…larger than Hank, Darren, or Vic could conceive.
Still, Vic tried to put words to the tableau. “All those people. The children’s wing…doctors, nurses…”
Darren turned away, dropped to his knees, and vomited up the meatball sub he’d scarfed on their last break—an event that felt like several lifetimes ago. He didn’t bother wiping his mouth when he finished. Instead, he let orange spittle strands dangle from his bottom lip.
Hank said nothing. He hardly moved.
The hole was so big, like a meteor had struck the Earth. Like the monster asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs had come back for more, plummeted down from space and striking in the middle of San Francisco.
All around the trio, alarms blared. Screams echoed off those few buildings still standing…for the moment. Hank was certain some of the cries for help came from below their feet. Those voices of the damned urged whoever heard them to come closer. But to do so would mean the destruction of the listener as well.
It was all Hank could do to tear himself away. With a bellowing cry, tears running down his cheeks, he turned from the crater. Heavy stomping feet crushed ruined asphalt into black crumbs under his heels as he made for the idling ambulance.
Behind him, Darren rose to his feet and took Vic by the elbow. When they got to the ambulance, Hank was already in the driver’s seat, ready to leave. However, he hadn’t closed the driver’s side door yet, so the EMTs had a small window in which to act.
Darren, finally wiping away his vomit, spread his befouled hand across his uniform shirt. “What’s next, buddy?” he asked.
“I’m gonna go to Oakland.” Hank shot a sharp-edged look at Darren and Vic, daring them to say something in response.
But his glare softened when he found no resistance forthcoming. Darren simply nodded and walked to the front passenger side. Likewise, Vic went to the back and pulled the doors open. She hoisted herself up and removed the flask from her pocket. Hank pulled his door shut and Darren did the same on his side. Vic guzzled caramel-colored liquid from the flask’s tiny metal hole before taking her seat. Neither of her co-workers appeared to give much of a shit.
Darren waited until Vic finished her swallow before he held his hand out. When the silver flask came around to Hank, he demurred. “Gotta drive,” he said.
“You’re sure about getting to Oakland?” Vic asked from the back. Her voice was a husky rasp. On days devoid of natural disasters, Darren used to joke about Vic making more money doing phone sex work. She’d roll her eyes and shoot back, “How do you know I’m not?”
Hank missed those days already.
In place of a time machine to return to that unblemished period, Hank focused on navigating through the crisis at hand. He pointed to the radio, already tuned to the news channel. A droning NPR anchor pronounced each word from Emergency Services, slow and steady, as though they might break—or break her—at the slightest pressure. She made note of minimal damage across the bay in Oakland and Emeryville. Then, she expounded on the reported damage in San Francisco before moving to reports out of southern California, scant as those were.
Everything the newsreader said about the lower portion of the state came in the past tense. Los Angeles was… Residents of Orange County were believed to be all… No one in Hollywood was expected to…
Hank rubbed his kneecap, feeling as though he’d lost a limb. Suddenly, the unfathomable loss of life in the hospital crater became a community theater performance of disaster in comparison to what was reported by that monotone news drone. Whatever sobs she might’ve produced were apparently swallowed off-mic.
“Holy shit, man. It’s the big one.” If Darren expected a response from his companions, then, perhaps their non-reactions would’ve disappointed him. But they were all three professionals, with a combined twenty-five years of experience in serving the dead and dying. So, Hank let the words slide past. For her part, Vic fumbled with her seatbelt, staring at the medical equipment across from her with a dull, glassy-eyed expression.
Hank put the ambulance back into drive and repeated his earlier assertion. “We’re going to Oakland. I can get us there. I can find a way.”
Darren was a long-time bachelor, and Vic was fresh from her third failed marriage. “But hopefully third successful divorce,” she’d said deadpan in those hours before their worlds collapsed.
Neither of the EMTs had anyone waiting for them at their respective homes. If they even had homes to return to. But Hank did. Marcy and Abel: the smiling, dimple-faced ten and seven-year-old girl and boy whose department store portrait wallet print picture he kept clipped to the visor every shift. Hank’s little rebellion against the ambulance corps’ rules.
“Okay, dog,” Darren said, “You got the wheel. Let’s go save those kiddos.”
Chapter 3
Darren flipped the radio dial back and forth, checking each station on the FM and AM bands with a shifting frequency that revealed no discernable pattern. Sometimes Hank had him switch away mid-sentence even as the president’s spokesperson expressed concern about the loss of life and property, other times they’d leave static roaring in their ears like so much white noise for long, ever-expanding minutes.
